Stones in their pockets

10 April 2012

Toby Wilsher was 18 when he was first bowled over by a piece of theatre. 'It was a Moving Picture production in 1977 at the Young Vic,' he says. 'They were one of the first Le Coq-influenced companies, and there must have been only 20 people in the audience. I was utterly exhilarated by their use of masks and mime.'

Masks and mime are dreaded words in theatre; in fact they are dreaded words full stop. Wilsher can under-stand why, and yet at the same time is irritated. He thinks mask, mime and TV can have too much in common for people to dismiss the first of these as arty nonsense. 'Mask is the oldest form of human expression,' he says. 'Look at the cave paintings in France, and you see a man with a reindeer on his head. Masks are part of all the great folk movements in theatre - Japanese, Chinese, Roman and Greek. Now that we have moved from a sacred society to a secular one, they have been superseded by the moving image. Yet I try to make theatre that understands the visual in the same way the camera and the editing suite allow film and TV to do - and yet which draws on the rough magic of live performance; the mask being the roughest magic there is.'

Wilsher has been doing just that for 21 years. That the anniversary of his theatre company, Trestle, coincides with its first ever run at the National Theatre is an irony not lost on him: 'I've been knocking on the door of the mainstream for more than two decades. Then suddenly they call me.'

The production, The Adventures Of The Stoneheads, is part of the National's Transformation season, which is attempting (with some success) to radicalise the profile of that institution with new, genre-bending work.

'It's a mistake to see that season as simply one geared towards a younger audience,' says Wilsher. 'I know many theatregoers of all ages, myself included, who would never go to the National because they simply do not consider people standing on stage talking about life particularly entertaining.'

Unsurprisingly, no one in a Trestle production stands on stage talking about life. When I call Wilsher, he is battling with a floor-to-ceiling wall of fire - 'it's our tech rehearsal today'. This particular production involves more than 45 masks, six of which have taken more than six months to create.

'We draw on all sorts of inspirations - from ancient Greek and Noh traditions to Australian TV cartoons. The six main ones in this production are based on paintings by a Polish artist, Andrzej Umiastowski. We've also got the sound designer of the Tomb Raider film working with us to give the show an epic, cinematic feel.'

The production itself, however, explores hard, gritty issues. 'The Stoneheads are a family of refugees who wash up on our shores. I wanted to explore the pressures that immigration places on a family,' says Wilsher. 'Using masks and mimes instead of text allows us a certain fluidity of definition: I'm hoping audiences will find their own resonances, be they cultural, political or personal. It also draws on the structure of the TV show Clockers - each family member takes it in turn to act out a story, as well as taking part in the stories of others.'

He points out how modern TV culture enriches our ability to receive visual theatre: 'We are constantly putting together the narratives contained in adverts. These days it takes only a three- to five-second cut to tell a tale.'

And yet it is performance that made the first, greatest impression on him, and which continues to do so. 'Audiences shy away from mask and mime because it places enormous demands on them. Without words, the telling of the story is left, in part, to their own imagination. But when that works, it produces the most powerful storytelling in the world. You know,' he continues, conspiratorially, 'the problem with British theatre is that we have spent the last 50 years looking for the new John Osborne. What we should have been doing is looking for the new Robert Lepage.'

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