Tonight, the two-week run of Our Country's Good begins. Earlier this week, Recess arts editor Cary Hughes had the opportunity to chat with the play's director, Jeff West, to find out, among other things, what to expect from this production. West is a part-time acting instructor at Duke who has directed three previous plays in Reynolds Theater and is also a freelance actor, director and producer.
As a director, why have you chosen Our Country's Good?
I was in a production of Our Country's Good in 1993. East Carolina has a professional summer theater company, and my friend who runs that theater asked me to come down and play three roles in this play.... I said, "Three roles, good grief! Sounds like fun."... So, for the past four or five years, I've been proposing it as a play we should do here at Duke. This year, Richard [Riddell, director of theater studies] decided it was time to do it. Luckily, he let me do it.... I'm pleased to be doing the show because it's about the value of art, the value of theater.
So how did the story of the first play in the Botany Bay Colony (modern day Sydney) become a piece of theater?
...So what happened was in 1988, Max Stafford-Clark was the artistic director of The Royal Court Theater in London was doing a production of The Recruiting Officer, and a friend of his had just given him The Playmaker and said, "Read this book." So he read it and saw, in fact, that was the play they did in Australia. He had a playwright on staff at the time-in Britain they have the luxury of doing that sometime-and her name is Timberlake Wertenbaker, she's an ex-patriate American and a very distinguished playwright. And he commissioned her to adapt Thomas Keneally's novel, The Playmaker, into this play, Our Country's Good. She had this wonderful luxury of having this group of actors workshop for her.... She got to have all these actors at her disposal as a tool to create character and dialogue. So maybe that's why it's unique.
Another reason, of course, it is unique is that these are the stories of these people. They are stories of incredible hardship and depravation. These people were eight-and-a-half months at sea, during that time-most of the time-the convicts... were beaten, they were hung, they were whipped. They were treated like animals.
What kind of work have you done with your actors, or had them do on their own, to prepare them for these roles?
We did quite a bit of research. We spent two full days of rehearsal, which is unusual in a rehearsal process like this. We spent two full nights of rehearsal with our wonderful dramaturge, Dave Worster, working with us. I have about 15 sources. We really wanted to equate them with 18th century England first of all, the prison system, 18th century transportation of the moors-of the criminal class it was called-because a lot of them play the convicts.... We really wanted to get them immersed, if you will, with that culture, at that time as much as we could.
What should audiences expect from the production?
It's not easy; it's not an easy play. It has a lot of scenes: It has 22 scenes. But it's something which I think is really worth seeing, especially in terms of recent events. Because to me, the conditions that brought on the misery of these people come from a narrow-mindedness that is very similar to the narrow-mindedness that caused the catastrophe on Sept. 11. A refusal to accept any other point of view, a belief in only one way-our way is the only way. That kind of narrow-mindedness is anti-art because art is about expressing yourself.
Finally, where does the title Our Country's Good fit into this?
There was a prologue that was supposedly written by a convict. Actually it was delivered in the real first production of the play. And actually they found later it was written by someone in London. It talks about "We left our country for our country's good." This idea that we are the criminal class, so in order to make our country better, we were shipped out. So, it's very ironic and sad. And one of the prisoners in the play wants to put this prologue onto the play instead of Farquhar's. The director of the play finally has to refuse him because it's so political, and there are so many people against them. But he tells them you have to make sacrifices in the theater; it's like a small republic. It's a wonderful thing. That's where [the title] comes from, that they were expelled from the country for their country's good.
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