Guest Post: 'I Want The Audience To Do The Transforming': Tim Crouch On 21 Years Of AN OAK TREE

BroadwayWorld sends me some guidelines for writing a blog. ‘Offer real insight’, they say. ‘Avoid repeating text we’d find elsewhere’, they say. When you’ve been talking about a play for 21 years, it’s hard to find new things to say. So let me talk about costume.

Before every performance of An Oak Tree, I like to iron my shirt. I wear a costume in the play. There was never any designer. I just bought some stuff. A pair of terrible loafers that I got in Germany when the play was previewing there back in 2005. Last year I had the soles glued as they’re falling apart. They’ve done 415 performances. Last week, nervous about this six week run at The Other Palace, I went into M&S to try on new pairs but nothing felt right. Beryl Reid said she started building every character from the outside in, starting with the shoes. Those loafers are my character (a stage hypnotist).

I also wear some equally horrible slacks. And a silvery, swirly waistcoat that I bought in Debenhams in my home town of Brighton also in 2005. That waistcoat has outlived Debenhams and it’s a badge of pride that I can still fit into it. And then I have two dress shirts – two for matinee days. That’s the costume. I look like a prick in it but that’s the idea and it’s remained unchanged for 21 years. Ironing the shirt is a meditative process. I have no time to prepare myself. The hour before the show is spent with my second actor. I say that this is the best warm-up you can have for a play – spending an hour focussed on someone else. So, before the second actor arrives, I like to iron my shirt.

There are two models of performance in An Oak Tree. Someone who knows the play and someone who doesn’t. Someone who looks like the character the play says they are (my horrible costume) and someone who doesn’t (the second actor is invited to wear whatever they feel comfortable in).

When this play began its life in 2005 the text described me as ’41 years old, a bald head, red face and bony shoulders.’ Every year I change that text to accommodate my increasing age. It now reads ’62 years old, a bald head, red face and bony shoulders’. This is what I am. This is what I look like. ‘I’m wearing these clothes’, I say about myself.

With the second actor, however, if they look too similar to the physical description the play gives of their character, then I change that description. I don’t want the second actor to look like their character. It is my contention, I suppose, that the second model of performance – the actor who doesn’t know the play – is more interesting, more live, more transformational for an audience. More theatrical. The play was written out of an increasing frustration I felt as an actor about always knowing what I was doing on stage; of always trying to transform before I meet an audience; trying to look like the person the play says I am. In An Oak Tree I want the audience to do the transforming. And the most inspiring discovery has been, of course, that the audience will do the work if you let them. They want to do the work. They want to see the things that aren’t there.

Finally. I’m writing this five days before we open. As preparation for An Oak Tree, I’m performing my solo Truth’s a Dog Must to Kennel this weekend at Shedinburgh at the Young Vic. I’m also being visited by the old Oak Tree anxiety – shouldn’t I be doing something to get ready? Shouldn’t I be rehearsing or, or fixing things, or re-writing, or something? And the answer to these questions is no. I’ll meet my first night actor an hour before the show. It all begins then.

For more information about Tim's show Truth’s a Dog Must to Kennel at Shedinburgh at the Young Vic, click here.

An Oak Tree runs at The Other Palace from 7 October - 15 November