CULTURE CLUB
We speak with director Ben Kilby-Henson ahead of the rehearsal schedule for the highly acclaimed new play by Succession writer Lucy Prebble.
THE EFFECT
• Written by Lucy Prebble
• ASB Waterfront Theatre Stage from April 16 – May 11
• Starring Jayden Daniels, Zoe Robins, Jarod Rawiri and Sara Wiseman.
• Ben Kilby-Henson, Director at Auckland Theatre Company After a stellar season at London’s National Theatre this highly acclaimed play is coming here and director Ben Kilby-Henson will be sticking to the script.
“For me, the playwright is paramount,” says Ben. “Lucy Prebble is a masterful writer; she just knows how people speak and to honour her text is first and foremost.”
Ben and the actors will spend the first week of rehearsals around the table unlocking the mechanics of the text.
“I see a play as a musical score, my job is to get them singing from the same hymn sheet. We build the world with research and homework into what is in that world so that all the actors’ choices and decisions are informed.”
The play is ultimately about love and whether this sits in the heart or the brain. When Connie and Tristan sign up for a clinical trial to test a new antidepressant, they fall in love. But are their feelings real or a side e ect from the drug that’s firing a dopamine hit to their brains?
It’s a gritty story where deception and reality thread throughout the scenes creating duality, confusion, and complexity.
Ben loves working with this dichotomy. Originally from the UK he first cut his theatre teeth working for the Youth Arts Leicester, an organisation for young people between the ages of 8 and 25. Ben was about 13 or 14 and found himself thrust into a leadership position. The organisation annually took 16 young people to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe to perform six shows in what he describes as a militant-style turnaround. They didn’t audition, just took who was able to go. The group was a motley crew – some passionate theatre geeks, some at-risk youths and some who had been expelled from school and could receive funding to do this show, prove commitment and then get reaccepted back to school. He did this for nine years.
“That galvanised me with an impenetrable patience,” he says. “There is nothing I haven’t seen, no problem a professional theatre situation has thrown at me that has ever topped some of the experiences I had with the Youth Arts. During that time, it never really occurred to me that I was directing as such, it wasn’t until I got to university and was horrified at the standard of student productions that I realised I had been directing all that time.”
Ben has been directing and writing plays ever since. He moved to New Zealand 13 years ago and within days of landing he applied for a bar job at Basement Theatre. They replied, suggesting he put on show at the Fringe Festival. He meet the challenge with a super quick turnaround adaptation of Turn of
the Screw. “It was a quick way to plug into the community. I did it with my overdraft,” he laughs. A similar situation he found himself previously in at University when he directed and produced a play – he has, where required, self-funded his initial projects and used that to launch his career from there.
Ben teaches in Auckland’s drama schools and is artistic manager of The Actor’s Program. He also writes plays but if there was one play in the world he wishes he could direct it would be X by Alistair McDowall. He can’t do it. Alistair has forbidden anyone to ever show it. “His work is deeply textural, highly influenced by reasonably low brow iconic TV shows and film. The play X is an homage to Event Horizon a truly horrifying horror film. I just find Alistair’s writing so juicy. I’m here when you’re ready Alistair.”