Creating Jekyll & Hyde
Interview with director and creator Leo Gene Peters
Jekyll & Hyde is the latest work created by Leo Gene Peters and his company 'A Slightly Isolated Dog'. It builds on the format of their previous work Don Juan - re-imagining a larger than life character from a classic text, and combining the story with our everyday lives. Leo Gene Peters, shared more about his creation process and what the show is about.
Jekyll & Hyde is the latest work created by Leo Gene Peters and his company 'A Slightly Isolated Dog'. It builds on the format of their previous work Don Juan - re-imagining a larger than life character from a classic text, and combining the story with our everyday lives. Leo Gene Peters, shared more about his creation process and what the show is about.
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What is Jekyll & Hyde about?
Jekyll and Hyde is a follow up to Don Juan – and the cast take on the personas of fake French performers. We wanted to make other works from other classic stories in the same way as we did for Don Juan. So Jekyll and Hyde made quite a bit of sense as a follow on. Don Juan was the best lover, the best fighter, the best everything (but also very ethically questionable). In this show with Jekyll and Hyde we get to explore questions of duality - rage and lightness. Jekyll & Hyde is really about the idea that we all want to be good people, but we all have this darkness inside. Jekyll is a philanthropist, a lovely guy, and everyone speaks of him fondly. But he has these desires, and in his youth he was a bit mischievous, and in order to preserve his reputation he has had to stop doing these things. So in an attempt to be extraordinary and transcend what is appropriate he created Hyde. The metaphor is very clear – it’s about the darkness within. Even the best of us have this darkness within. |
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So for us the show is about playing with those kind of questions in our own lives. We use this folk, mythical, thriller-style story as a way of working in a very playful way with all the domestic things that weigh us down. It’s a celebration of all the domestic ways we disappoint ourselves, and all the outrageous things we wish we could do but can’t because we’d be psychotic and get arrested. It’s a celebration of that ridiculousness.
Jekyll and Hyde is a classic text, so how have you used the original story in the creation of this version? It was originally a novella. We did a bit of research into the original story, but not an extensive amount. We looked at the different ways the story has been told. We use stories like this because taking the classic text gives us the ability to mash time periods together. It means we can use folk-tale themes and experiences, and use big dramatic texts to play against small domestic questions. The epic nature and theatricality of these characters telling these ridiculously intense stories, projected onto our small lives is joyful, and funny, and silly. |
"We use this folk, mythical, thriller-style story as a way of working in a very playful way with all the domestic things that weigh us down." |
What is your approach and style of story-telling in the work?
I feel like the theatre is obsolete. I feel like most of the shows that are put on are obsolete. They’re based on Victorian models, or they’re tied into this cinematic notion of audience relationship where you come in and sit there, and as actors we play a part, and we’re very good actors so you can watch us, and it’s amazing that you can watch us live. And that’s the notion I feel with most shows I see, that that is what I’m supposed to be appreciating. Some sort of art that’s ‘good for me’. But I don’t understand how it is good for me. And I feel often as theatre makers we don’t understand why or how anything is useful for anyone.
I feel like the theatre is obsolete. I feel like most of the shows that are put on are obsolete. They’re based on Victorian models, or they’re tied into this cinematic notion of audience relationship where you come in and sit there, and as actors we play a part, and we’re very good actors so you can watch us, and it’s amazing that you can watch us live. And that’s the notion I feel with most shows I see, that that is what I’m supposed to be appreciating. Some sort of art that’s ‘good for me’. But I don’t understand how it is good for me. And I feel often as theatre makers we don’t understand why or how anything is useful for anyone.
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But, it is absolutely useful for us to come together and to play. I think that the need to build community is clear and crucial. So in making theatre I start to ask myself ‘what are the things that could help us come together and play?’ It’s like when you go to a fancy-dress party, and what makes a party really good is when everyone is on the same vibe, and everyone is just dancing and they commit. When a dance floor is great, it’s a magnet, it’s a thing. When it’s bad, everyone just leaves.
So from there we think about what are the conditions or qualities that help us create that type of vibe in the theatre. You want people to be relaxed and having a great time, and laughing, and to feel comfortable being cheeky and playful. And that starts to inform how the space is set up, whether audience lights are turned on or off. Or if we have a bar in the theatre. And I mean, the real joy of this work is you just get to tell people they are attractive for an hour. |
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Tell us more about the process of creating theatre like this.
The work is never finished, which can be very difficult. It would be amazing if we could make a perfect show, but the quicker we can acknowledge that we can’t, the better our lives will be. I still struggle with that sometimes. In rehearsal we’re always just playing and testing.
We try to bring people into rehearsal really early. As we’re creating scenes we want people in there playing with us. We just practice playing with people and learning as much as we can about bringing them into the story.
We spend a lot of the time talking about what the central questions in the work mean to us and how they manifest themselves in our lives. So with Jekyll and Hyde we talked a lot about how we want to be these great cool relaxed people roaming about our lives. But in reality we’re also broke, or we treat everybody like an asshole cos we’re stressed out and tired. We end up talking about all the ways that we’re basically just children that get hungry and tired, and cranky and snap at each other, and feel all these ridiculous amounts of anger or rage or frustration.
That’s a thing we all do in the process of creating the work - we share our personal experiences of all those feelings and questions we are trying to express with our audience.
The work is never finished, which can be very difficult. It would be amazing if we could make a perfect show, but the quicker we can acknowledge that we can’t, the better our lives will be. I still struggle with that sometimes. In rehearsal we’re always just playing and testing.
We try to bring people into rehearsal really early. As we’re creating scenes we want people in there playing with us. We just practice playing with people and learning as much as we can about bringing them into the story.
We spend a lot of the time talking about what the central questions in the work mean to us and how they manifest themselves in our lives. So with Jekyll and Hyde we talked a lot about how we want to be these great cool relaxed people roaming about our lives. But in reality we’re also broke, or we treat everybody like an asshole cos we’re stressed out and tired. We end up talking about all the ways that we’re basically just children that get hungry and tired, and cranky and snap at each other, and feel all these ridiculous amounts of anger or rage or frustration.
That’s a thing we all do in the process of creating the work - we share our personal experiences of all those feelings and questions we are trying to express with our audience.
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How do you connect all of those feelings into the framework of a classic tale?
We play with ways to include all those little moments and feed them in to what is essentially the essence of the story. For this work, the framework is that Dr Jekyll is an amazing scientist in Victorian England, and he’s loved, and he’s just this really great guy. And then we feed in the moments and feelings we’ve created, so not only is he all that, but he now shops at Common Sense Organics and he bought a Toyota Prius.. but he doesn’t even drive it.. he just tows it around on the back of his bicycle. We create this story that he is just too good. But he still feels this darkness within him, and we can add all the other everyday rageful frustrations we’ve all experienced to bring out that side. And the whole thing becomes this ridiculous game of giving him all of our frustrations. So he can go off, and become Mr Hyde, and he can go on a bender, and let all these things out on our behalf. |
"We practice playing with people and learning as much as we can about bringing them into the story." |
Tell us more about the techniques you’re drawing on in your approach to audience interaction.
Some of the forms that we’re playing with and that inspire this work are very traditional, but at the same time, the show itself doesn’t fall into any of those categories. It’s not a Commedia show, or a bouffon show, or a clown show, but it uses elements of these different forms that are really theatrically aware.
These forms thrive when there is a connected relationship with the audience. So we made a choice that as performers we wanted to acknowledge the fact we were telling the story the whole time. And so the five performers who are telling the story, and their relationship to the audience evolves in its own way too. Their story unfolds along with Jekyll’s. That is as much, if not more so, the narrative of the show. And when the cast chat with audience directly, the audience become storytellers too. We build community, and trust, and a relationship, and a kind of complicite so we can all have this romp together.
The work just wants to be honest.
Some of the forms that we’re playing with and that inspire this work are very traditional, but at the same time, the show itself doesn’t fall into any of those categories. It’s not a Commedia show, or a bouffon show, or a clown show, but it uses elements of these different forms that are really theatrically aware.
These forms thrive when there is a connected relationship with the audience. So we made a choice that as performers we wanted to acknowledge the fact we were telling the story the whole time. And so the five performers who are telling the story, and their relationship to the audience evolves in its own way too. Their story unfolds along with Jekyll’s. That is as much, if not more so, the narrative of the show. And when the cast chat with audience directly, the audience become storytellers too. We build community, and trust, and a relationship, and a kind of complicite so we can all have this romp together.
The work just wants to be honest.
