The STC gets Frantic

Socratis Otto and Leeanna Walsman star in Stockholm. Photo by Derek Henderson.  

What happens when two people without formal training in drama, theatre or dance establish a theatre company? If Frantic Assembly is anything to go by, they become one of the most acclaimed companies in the UK.

Founded in 1991, Frantic Assembly has developed a reputation as one of the most exciting physical theatre companies in Britain; creators of thrilling, dynamic and uncompromising works which places equal emphasis on movement, design, text and music.

This month, in partnership with the Sydney Theatre Company (STC), Frantic Assembly brings their award-winning 2008 production Stockholm to Australia. Created in collaboration with prolific playwright Bryony Lavery (Frozen), the play focuses on a seemingly happy couple, Todd (Socratis Otto) and Kali (Leeanna Walsman) whose passionate, co-dependent relationship is far darker than it first appears. Indeed, as the play unfolds, it seems that Todd and Kali may quite literally love each other to bits.

“Our overriding intention with this show is not to dismiss the ‘love’ part and to emphasise the ‘to bits’ part, ‘cause I think everyone is getting the gist of the destructive element to their love; but what we’re desperate to do is not dismiss it as ‘not love’,” stresses Frantic Assembly’s co-Artistic Director, Scott Graham.

“Love is a very complex thing; there’s a complex bond that keeps these two people together, and they’re not idiots for staying together, because they truly do love each other.”

The challenge in creating a work like Stockholm, Graham tells Arts Hub, lay in trying to understand why people stay in a destructive relationship.

“People within that relationship often say ‘because I love her’ or ‘because I love him’, and I found that people really dismissed that, or said ‘you’re an idiot’. But the more we looked into it, the more we found that they’re being completely honest in that moment, and that they absolutely do love this partner.”

The dark, obsessive and complex version of love that appears in Stockholm was developed through the use of dance and physical performance very early in the development of the work.

“Before we choreographed the violent section, which is probably only about two minutes of extreme physicality, we made a version with the actors that was using the same choreography – they didn’t know that yet, but it was the same – and made it entirely loving and beautiful. They learned that version first, so that once we came to making the violent, hardcore version, they had a memory of the beautiful version, just to remind them that this is a complex thing, and that for every time you hit out at someone, there was a time when you stroked their face.”

For the STC’s re-staging of Stockholm, Graham and Hoggett began production by spending a week working with actors Socratis Otto and Leeanna Walsman, helping them develop their physical skills.

“We tend to start from the bottom up, and everybody goes through a kind of physical induction. We develop physical skills and we create trust. For this production, they had a week of tackling the choreography but not from the point of ‘this is what you do, now go and do it’ but from the point of let’s try and build up their strength, build up their ability and confidence, and when they’re ready we’ll go to the choreography. The last thing we wanted was for the two actors to be alienated by the physicality or choreography in this show. They had to possess it and own it, so that’s a slowly, slowly process,” Graham says.

British playwright Bryony Lavery, who Graham and his fellow Artistic Director Steven Hoggett commissioned to write the text for Stockholm, became instrumental in teasing out the play’s exploration of a domestic version of Stockholm Syndrome: a psychological condition in which hostages develop a strong emotional connection with their captor or captors. (Perhaps the best known example of Stockholm Syndrome concerns heiress Patty Hearst, who actively took part in a bank robbery with the Symbionese Liberation Army in 1974, two months after being kidnapped by the group. The term itself was first coined in 1973, after a group of Swedish bank robbers held a group of bank workers for six days, during which the hostages became emotionally attached to their captors.)

“It was a very, very fascinating process working with Bryony,” Graham says.

“We went to her with the idea for the show, and it was fairly fully formed in that it would be two people and it would explore this dynamic of Stockholm Syndrome … and then we started to flesh that out, physically; and what was amazing was seeing Bryony understand where that physicality lay, how it worked and its value. It’s not often that a writer really understands and appreciates the use of silence, especially when we were presenting things to her saying ‘Are these inspirations for you to write?’ and she was saying ‘I don’t need to write that, an audience just needs to see it’. And she knew where to place those moments in her script.

“And all of the darkness in this play, we were all absolutely on the same page in our belief that this had to be about love; we mustn’t loose sight of love and have it become about hate. I think it’s about love and paranoia and fear and insecurity, but ultimately about love, and the fear of losing love.”

Sydney Theatre Company in association with Frantic Assembly present:
Stockholm
The Wharf, Walsh Bay
March 12 – April 24
www.sydneytheatre.com.au

La Boite at the Roundhouse Theatre, Brisbane
April 28 – May 22
www.laboite.com.au

Riverside Theatre, Parramatta
May 26 – 29
www.riversideparramatta.com.au