Cocteau and Orphee
Jean Cocteau’s 1949 film Orphee was the starting point for the play. Cocteau’s adaptation of the Greek myth reflected very much his own circumstances, so we wanted to re-work the story to make it personal to the experiences of young people. Thus, the middle-aged artist feeling that he has lost his creativity and looking for new inspiration becomes the young man with artistic potential who has sold his soul to advertising. Similarly, the ‘hell’ of Cocteau’s film shifted from his own background of war-torn Paris and interrogation of resistance fighters to the urban decay of London and resonances of organised crime familiar from films such as Eastern Promises. Thus, urgent if dada-esque resistance-style radio messages from Cocteau’s underworld became tattoos reminiscent of organised crime. Just as Cocteau’s film uses the old idea of the phoenix-like rebirth of the artist, so did our play focus on creativity born out of damage and desolation: graffiti and street art, tattoos and industrial music. |
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Tarkovskii and Stalker
Tarkovskii’s film Stalker depicts another journey through a ruined and (partially) urban landscape during which characters debate the role of art and meaning of life. We drew inspiration from this for the artistic journey in the second act of the play and created a bit of an homage to Tarkovskii’s famous pool sequence, depicting the ruined symbols of an exhausted culture. |
William Blake
Where does the threshold between creative genius and madness lie? How far should the artist risk alienating his audience in being loyal to his vision? These were issues we wanted to explore both within the journey of the main character and in the form and content of the play itself. William Blake seemed an obvious role model here, and we drew on his ideas (rejection of the material universe and time as a linear experience, his destabilising of the meaning of symbols, his reconfiguration of characters’ roles and significance) as our Orpheus’ journey reached its climax. |
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David Lynch
David Lynch’s recent films provided some parallels to Blake with their teetering into incomprehensibility (Inland Empire), their abrupt reconfiguration of performers’ roles (Mulholland Drive) and their rejection of time as a linear experience (Lost Highway). We drew on all of these ideas in our Orpheus’ psychological journey as well as looking to replace the tone of Cocteau’s original film with something closer to Lynch’s darker style. |