Nomadic life, pulsating theatre
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For over 30 years Footsbarn has travelled across the world, pitching tent and sweeping up audiences in extravaganzas of colour, music, mime, puppetry, film, and theatrics, says HEMANGINI GUPTA
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Footsbarn, in the '60s, began as a dream for a local theatre company. — Photo: Sampath Kumar G.P.
HOW WOULD you like your Shakespeare? Adapted, improvised, translated, mimed, masked, screened or shadow-played? Footsbarn, the travelling theatre company based in France likes theirs all of the above. Their Perchance to Dream, was what they think as `Best of' Shakespeare and unleashed three hours of high energy acting, mime, dexterous props, music, shadow play and masks on an audience grappling for a foothold in a production that leapt with abandon across language and text, catching up and sweeping on-lookers away in a grand wave of theatrics.
Conceived by Jon-Paul Cook and Oliver Foot, two young acting students studying in America in the 60s, Footsbarn began as a dream for an essentially local theatre company. It would tour Cornwall, (where it was based, in a barn, hence Foot's Barn which later slid into Footsbarn) relying on age-old techniques of theatre drawing back on the travelling players: basic props, lots of music, mime, story telling and raw acting. It would be entertaining and it would appeal to everyone. Coming as it did on the receding wave of flower power, Footsbarn's lifestyle invariably drew the epithet `hippy'. They lived together, cooked their own food, travelled extensively and subsisted on whatever came their way. The hippy image and uncertain production schedule didn't make it easy for them to receive funding but they finally did find themselves money, settling down in France.
The founders have long moved on, but there are members of the original company still in the troupe. People from various nationalities have joined them, lending language and sensibility and they travel across the world, with their caravan, tents and plethora of props. The troupe's emphasis still very firmly rests on grass roots theatre, drawing generously from commedia to interpret the works of Moliere, Shakespeare and Steinbeck. But their range, colour and vibrancy is perhaps best located in Shakespeare, a favourite with Footsbarn.
Essential Shakespeare
Purists might have baulked at Perchance to Dream: a Kannada-speaking Lady Macbeth and actors of the play within a play in Midsummer Night's Dream threatening to run away to Bollywood. But if we discard the associations we often make of Shakespeare with BBC produced, true-to-text productions, and remember that Shakespeare wrote for the multitudes who thronged to the cheapest tickets of his plays to laugh uproariously and take home fragments of tragedy, comedy, jester and villain, farce and satire, then Perchance to Dream emerges as essential Shakespeare. The puppets, the film clips projected on billowing white screens, the clambering up and down poles, the live music, hair pieces, sudden surprises: all came together in a rough and ready journey which in totality reflect the energy and range of a Shakespeare text." We take the original and put our own breath into it. We can't just get up and say the words," explains Paddy Hayter, one of the original members of Footsbarn who is still with them today. "Shakespeare played to some 2,000 people a day, with no lights, no artefacts, just the ability to entertain and provoke using rituals like story telling. We don't interpret the story; the public does. We just have the idea to create something."
Hayter states that, despite the sheer antics on stage, Footsbarn would never be disloyal to a text. But "theatre is more dramatic than the word," he affirms. "Text is a motor; it stimulates me to love Shakespeare's poetry. But I can improvise around it more in the comic situation."
Footsbarn today comprises some 30 members, including children of the players, some of whom like Euan Shields have eventually joined the company. They travel the world with essentially French funding, sometimes picking up actors along the way, as they did with Snehelata, who joined them three years ago when they visited Trivandrum.
"People join us through an encounter through theatre or through our travels," says Hayter. "Through relationships, through workshops. Actors often leave us to go back to where their own theatre. It's important to go back to people; cycles keep repeating. Relationships don't just happen, you have to feed them, make them last." And so Footsbarn makes an effort to revisit places they have toured, to renew relationships and forge new connections.
Voice distinct
Actors from across the world lend their distinctive voice to a final production. Although there is a natural hierarchy within the troupe, with Hayter and other older members acting as `guides', individual actors are left to improvise. "We `see' a scene and then improvise around it," says Hayter. Although the final effort looks spontaneous (and a lot of it is), getting there requires as rigorous training as any other more realist form. "With so many international actors, we have to know how to find a common ground, with imagination and generosity."
Footsbarn's children are taught at a school that travels with the troupe, and has been doing so, Hayter says, for the last 24 years, adding that the day the school shut down, the troupe would too. Their current base is in an old and ruined farm whose 17th century buildings they have renovated. This is also the base for La Chaussee (The Road), an apt name for their drama school which currently conducts only workshops, but might soon acquire a permanent programme, once arrangements to run it while Footsbarn tours are put in place.
Footsbarn might have more international recognition than was ever dreamt of, but with funding bodies constantly searching for new experiments and names, legendary names might have to wait in line. "I get paid less than before," Hayter jokes. He explains that Footsbarn often innovates concepts, which then become popular and newer groups using them get funding preference. "We were the first and now we can't get in the door; that's frustrating," says Hayter. "People are always looking for something new."
Despite the passage of many years and actors, Footsbarn has remained true to its founding dream: "it's popular and accessible, not an elitist thing," says Hayter. "It gives pleasure and reflects our passion for theatre. We go to different cultures rather than be told what they are. And the energy that comes through makes it a joyous act."
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