Love & Information
(Dis)connection in our modern age is the focus of influential playwright Caryl Churchill's latest play – but what happens when you're faced with a script that doesn't specify a number of actors?
Love and Information is a typical Caryl Churchill play, meaning that it is unlike anything she has written before. Renowned for her bold experimentalism, the British playwright is tackling with her latest play an idea bound up with the Zeitgeist but also as old as human interaction itself: how do we communicate with each other in a meaningful way when the world seems bent against it? Made up of tiny vignettes of dialogue – some only lasting a single line – and totally nonprescriptive in regards to the casting of actors and even the order of scenes, the play is both daunting and exhilarating for director Kip Williams. “It's a complete act of empowerment for the theatre makers, the way she's written this play. It's more like a collaboration,” he explains. When Williams wrote to Churchill to ask how many cast members you need to perform it, her response was “between three and 140”. The original West End production (2012) had a cast of 16, while Williams' production for Melbourne's Malthouse and the Sydney Theatre Company has only half that. The effect on the play, not to mention the actors, is significant. “Our actors have, on one hand, a greater burden on them to jump from character to character and create a point of differentiation,” Williams explains. “But at the same time, the play becomes as much about the connections that accrue on top of those actors, who operate almost as a canvas for meaning.” To this end, Williams has cast actors less for their ability “to put on funny hats and faces”, and more for their skill at emotionally connecting with the audience. It's news to Anita Hegh, who recently triumphed in Melbourne Theatre Company's production of Churchill's Top Girls. “I guess I'll have to put my hats and moustaches away,” she says. “I'm often sought after for my ability to convey emotional fragility. I guess I'm an actor who can draw sympathy from an audience.” Having to play so many different characters in such quick succession might obscure this, but therein lies Churchill's point. Emphasising the sped-up, fragmentary way we communicate with each other only serves to highlight the tenuousness of our connections. A play made of rapidly shifting “soundbites” might sound almost apocalyptic, but Williams sees hope in it. “The question of how we generate meaning rather than being mere vessels of information is central.” It is, after all, called Love and Information – and love comes first.
Wharf Theatres Pier 4/5 Hickson Rd, Walsh Bay 2000. 02 9250 1777. www.sydneytheatre.com.au. Various times. $55. Jul 9-Aug 15.
“Our actors have to jump from character to character”