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L AT EST MOST RE A D

Kandinsky Theatre: 'There are millions of UK

theatres for new writing but only one for new
company work... it's crazy'

Wig maker Angela Cobbin: 'Theatre is a magical

world, and working in it is a privilege'

Wellbeing in the Arts founder Adam Bambrough:

‘Many in theatre consider anxiety a normal part
of their day’

Liz Robertson: ‘Rudolf Nureyev told me I’d never

be a big star because I’m not selfish enough’

Scottish culture secretary Angus Robertson: 'It's

critical we do everything that we can to support
Sophie Steer and Janet Etuk in Dinomania at London’s New Diorama Theatre in 2019. Photo: The Other Richard
the arts'

Kandinsky Theatre: 'There are millions The Stage 25: Theatremakers to watch out for in

of UK theatres for new writing but only 2022 and beyond

one for new company work... it's crazy'

F E ATURES JAN 12 , 2022 BY FER GU S MO R GA N

A mix of extensive research and innovative storytelling has earned the

acclaimed theatremakers a reputation for producing masterfully crafted
devised shows. As the company’s latest play opens as part of the New
Diorama’s 10th anniversary season, James Yeatman and Lauren Mooney
tell Fergus Morgan what inspires their work and about the creative
process of bringing a subject to life

Most people assume that the innovative, experimental devised theatre company Most Commented
Kandinsky is named after the experimental Russian painter of the same name. The
truth, says co-founder James Yeatman, is slightly different: it is named after a cat.
“The writer Al Smith and I met as students at Edinburgh University, and we had to
come up with a company name to put a show on at the Edinburgh Fringe,” Yeatman
says. “Al had two cats – Kandinsky and Kokoschka – and we just named the company
after one of them.”

That show – the first iteration of Kandinsky – was in 2005. Back then, the company
was a vehicle for producing Smith’s early plays. Its second iteration came in 2010,
Director Bill Bryden dies aged 79
when Yeatman wrote and directed his first show, before lying dormant again while
Scottish theatre director Bill Bryden has died aged
he worked with Complicité and its director Simon McBurney for several years. 79. Bryden mounted more than 20 plays at the
National Theatre as well as work at the Royal
Its third iteration arrived in 2015, when Yeatman, Smith and new producer-turned- Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh and the Old Vic in
London
dramaturg Lauren Mooney collaborated on Dog Show, an award-winning devised
piece based on the true story of the notorious Hong Kong dog serial killer. The
success of that show landed Kandinsky a long-term champion in David Byrne,
artistic director of the New Diorama Theatre, and established its reputation as
thrillingly thoughtful devised theatremakers.

“I saw Complicité’s shows as a teenager in the early 2000s and they blew my mind,
and then I worked with McBurney for several years as an adult, so he has been hugely
influential for us,” says Yeatman. “But David at the New Diorama has been like our
fairy godmother. He has made everything possible for us, like he has for so many
companies.”

Continues...
JOBS
dancers w... R EL AT E D TO T HCostume
I S A RT I CSupervisor
LE Sales and Ticketing Manager Head of Wardrobe – Maternity... Sales and Tic
Touring London Coventry APPLY London
APPLY New on
Dependent Diorama
experi... announces new commissions
AP PLY for 10th
Competitive package
A P PLY
£35k
anniversary season
Maternity... Install Directors Sales, Marketing & Developme... Deputy Head of Lighting & Sound Head of Visito
Surrey, Portsmouth Northampton Manchester
e...
APPLY
Dependent on experi...
AP PLY
£30,000-£35,000
A P PLY £25,000 per annum APPLY £45-50,000 p
There Is a Light That Never Goes Out: Scenes from the
chnical Co...
Luddite Rebellion
Group Sales Manager Technical Chargehand Technical Man
Bellhops
London London London London
APPLY AP PLY A P PLY APPLY
Competitive package... £15.05 per hour £28k-£32k

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Dog Show at New Diorama Theatre in 2015. Photo: Richard Davenport
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The cast of Still Ill at the New Diorama Theatre in 2016. Photo: David Monteith-Hodge

Kandinsky followed Dog Show with Still Ill, about functional neurological disorders,
in 2016, Trap Street, about the history of council housing, two years later, and
Dinomania, about Victorian fossil hunters, and There Is a Light That Never Goes
Out, about the Luddite Rebellion, in 2019. Every production has been an
imaginatively staged and fascinatingly layered exploration of an intriguing topic.

“We tend to think of our shows as a chance to find out more about something
interesting, whether that’s council housing, or dinosaurs, or whatever,” says
Yeatman. “It takes well over a year for a show to go from first idea to press night, so it
has to be interesting enough to sustain our interest over that long period. And if it is
interesting for us, hopefully it is interesting for audiences too.”

Kandinsky’s line-up has shifted over the past six years. Mooney joined, while Smith
left to pursue playwriting – his latest, Rare Earth Mettle, opened at London’s Royal
You are viewing
Court in November – but the company has gradually pulled a collection of regular
article 1 of your 3 free articles
creatives into its orbit, including composer Zac Gvirtzman, designers Joshua Gadsby
and Naomi Kuyck-Cohen, and actors Sophie Steer, Harriet Webb and Hamish
MacDougall.

“Our ideas come from all sorts of places,” says Yeatman. “I had a huge, awful
argument with the husband of a friend of my parents about the fact that he was
renting out a council house he had bought through Right to Buy, and that’s how we
knew there was fertile ground for Trap Street. I read a book about the discovery of
dinosaurs in 2011. That’s how Dinomania came about.”

"Generally, we will talk about an idea for a year

before anything happens" Writer/producer
Lauren Mooney

“Generally, we will talk about an idea for a year before anything happens,” adds
Mooney. “We will do a lot of reading and go on a lot of long walks. We might write a
few bits. Then, at some point, we will get in a room with actors and start devising –
improvising, writing, sticking scenes together. If we had the time and the money,
we’d all be in the room together all the time, but we don’t. People drop in and out,
and everything slowly comes together.”

Continues...

Nisa Cole, Amelda Brown and David Crellin in There Is a Light That Never Goes Out: Scenes from the Luddite
Rebellion at the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester in 2019. Photo: Manuel Harlan

Trap Street at the Berlin Schaubühne’s FIND Festival in 2019. Photo: Gianmarco Bresadola

There is a danger that the topics Kandinsky selects to make shows about – science,
geography, history and historiography – could come across as dry and undramatic,
Mooney says, so that is why a lot of the company’s devising process focuses on
developing an “emotional heart” and a “theatrical language” that will enliven the
topics: a story and a style that will bring the subject to life.

Take new show, The Winston Machine, which opens at the New Diorama Theatre at
the end of this month. It tackles the legacy of the Second World War, the long shadow
it casts, and the “intergenerational rupture” that shadow causes in present-day
Britain. Yes, it’s about Brexit, but it’s about a lot more than that too.

“In 2019, the German chief executive of Airbus said he would be forced to close
factories in the UK,” says Yeatman. “The Tory MP Mark Francois went on live
television with a printed off version of his statement, tore it up, accused him of
‘Teutonic arrogance’, and said something like: ‘My father was a D-Day veteran. He
never submitted to German bullying and neither will his son.’ I remember thinking
how crazy and sad that was.”

“We all have different inheritances of the Second World War, different stories to tell
about it,” Yeatman continues. “Both my grandparents actually met during the war.
One grandad was injured on D-Day and my grandma was his nurse. My other
grandma worked in a map room, pushing model boats around a giant map of the
Atlantic, and my other grandad was in charge of that room.”

Kandinsky’s task, then, was to take the intriguing topic of the war’s ongoing impact
on contemporary life in Britain and turn it into something dramatically and
theatrically alive. The result is a time-hopping story of a grandmother and a
granddaughter – one woman who lived through the Blitz and one woman who sings
songs about it 80 years later – and a design that plays with the aesthetic of a wartime
map room.

Continues...

Kandinsky's The Winston Machine will run as part of the New Diorama's 10th anniversary season. Photo: Guy J
Sanders

“There’s something about Second World War maps, and the idea that we knew who
we were and who we were fighting back then,” Mooney says. “The discourse about
Britain doesn’t feel as clear cut now. It doesn’t feel like you could draw it out on a
map. We wanted to explore that.”

Kandinsky has been lucky – with the long-term support of the New Diorama
Theatre, where it is an associate ensemble, and being a registered charity, allowing it
access to funding opportunities many other companies cannot apply for.
Nevertheless, Yeatman and Mooney are conscious that opportunities for devising
ensembles are few and far between in the UK.

“There’s about 500 million theatres devoted to new writing in this country but only
one dedicated to new company work, and I think that is crazy,” says Yeatman. “Back
in the 1980s and 1990s, companies such as Complicité and Kneehigh managed to turn
themselves into institutions. It is hard to see how any of the small companies that
have flowered over the last decade will do the same now.”

The difficulty of sustaining a company such as Kandinsky in Britain is one of the

reasons Yeatman and Mooney are increasingly thinking internationally. After The
Winston Machine, they are travelling to Austria to premiere a show at Vienna’s
Schauspielhaus in April – the result of a serendipitous series of connections through
Yeatman’s work with Complicité.

“We took Trap Street to the Berlin Schaubühne’s FIND Festival in 2019, where it was
reviewed by the New York Times, and Thomas Ostermeier came to see it,” Yeatman
says. “The now dramaturg at Schauspielhaus saw it too, flew us out to Vienna for a
meeting, and commissioned us to make whatever we wanted. Imagine if companies
had that level of support here.”

The Winston Machine opens at the New Diorama Theatre on January 25. More
information at: newdiorama.com

Acting & Performance Creative team Fringe theatre

SH ARE T H I S
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P OST

Richard Voyce 1 hour ago

Really? Where are these millions of places itching to do new work. I wish you'd let
me know. I can't even get theatre companies to open the cover of anything, let alone
read it.

Reply

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