ANDY DRACHENBERG: Congratulations on your most recent Olivier Award for Enron! In 2008, after winning an Olivier for Macbeth, you said you “felt quite comfortable with the realization that nothing could get better after this.” With three Olivier nominations for Oliver! and winning Best Director for Enron all in the same year, it seems like your ride isn’t slowing down yet…
RUPERT GOOLD: It was very moving for me working on Macbeth because I was working with my wife on Broadway, and then add in all the nominations and awards… it feels a bit different with Enronbecause it’s a much more collaborative piece then when I did Macbeth. In terms of theatre being a collaborative art form, and my company Headlong Theatre and what we try to do, Enron has been such a great journey. I never thought we’d have the life we’ve had. It’s a blessing!
AD: Your work has been described as “dramatically exhilarating,” “electrifying in every sense,” “an incredible achievement.” What has your experience been with hearing people describe your work this way?
RG: It’s very flattering. The truth is, as a person I’m quite low key…a lot of people are always surprised how unlike my work I am. Maybe in my work there’s a varied personality coming out that’s more “showy…” In theatre, I believe the artists I really admire take risks. I will always make the choice that excites me over the one I think is safely the right choice. So, my work gets a lot of lovely things said about it, but there have also been negative things said about it. I love theatre and theatre making, and I think there’s too much pomposity about it and seriousness. And of course, art is serious, but we’re there to please an audience. I love to be around talent as well. If someone can tap dance, I’ll put it in the show whether it’s right or whether it’s Hedda Gabbler, heh…because I like virtuousity. And not just in performance, but also creative teams.
AD: Enron is a very heavy tale – a complicated intersection of scandal, mathematics, technology, and business theory. What about this piece first caught your attention as an artist?
RG: Well, we commissioned and nurtured it from the beginning. It was trying to do something that ‘s really important in theater: look at a world that is important, and fascinating, and central to our lives, yet we don’t often find it in the dramatic arts. The world of finance has a huge bearing on everyone’s life, and yet it can seem dry and dusty and intimidating. And so, the kind of Stoppardian challenge of that really appealed to me. I thought Lucy was a terrific writer. She has brilliant dialogue, and she never stops being curious or trying to perfect things.
AD: A big conversation topic on this piece deals with nationality, with yourself and Lucy both being from the UK. How do you think your perspective has shaped or influenced your working on such a sensitive moment in recent American memory?
RG: I was recently talking about a line from the play “This case is going to the Supreme Court.” If you say the words Supreme Court in England, it just sounds cool! We love Americans, and we love American language! Americans use language in a more vigorous way than the English do. I think that sort of energy in the language was really important and that’s what we admired. Lucy and I were [American] groupies.
RG: Actually, we always felt we were doing a piece about international finance. The way Enron behaved is no different than what has happened to governments and banks and companies across the world. But I think America remains a place that is a paradigm for the rest of the world.
AD: Enron plays with the concept of “power” in almost every sense of the term. From electricity to the board of directors, to light-sabres forced against each other – does any one of these versions particularly fascinate you?
RG: There’s a movement sequence where we see the company developing through time in a pure dance sequence, and Skilling is in the middle of it all. I suppose the way big buildings or corporations hum around… and there are parallels in directing as well – we always felt the piece is a study in power in a way, but it’s also a study of the abuse of power in different forms. And each of the principle characters represents something different in that world – I’m very interested in that as well.
AD: As director of a play, you’re the one with the “power” of the rehearsal room, the storytelling, and the imagery of a production. Does your rehearsal room parallel corporate structure, or is it much freer?
RG: Ha! No – I’m not Skilling at all (…I hope not anyway). The only power I think I have is enthusiasm. Artists need to feel supported to take risks, and you’re not going to get very far if you fire people on the second day like Skilling was doing.
AD: Enron depicts America in a decade heading further and further towards recession. As we see the world economies back on track, what role/impact do you think/feel art has in relation to its surrounding environment?
RG: I’m not antique! Sure, when I went to college we didn’t have cell phones, but…today it feels like the rise of social networking and how the internet has facilitated that has given a huge energy to theatre, because we now have a greater idea of what community response is. There’s a greater preciousness about it being live, because we have so much digital media available. And I think the screen is in some ways in trouble that way. Live arts are in a good place because of it. I think a lot of the artists I know today have a newer sense of the eclectic – a stronger sense of tone, atmosphere, and playfulness, moving away from conventional grand narrative.
AD: …and Enron?
RG: I remember a conversation I was having about how Jeff Skilling and Barack Obama are two sides of the same coin. One represents freedom of opportunity and liberty and the other represents pioneer spirits, desire to conquer and be strong, and a different kind of liberty. I think America is founded on both those qualities. Clearly, what Enron did was terrible for thousands of people, but there’s a lot in Skilling (certainly in the play) that is virtuous. And that’s part of the challenge of the play. Just as with Obama there are things that are soft. I think the play speaks very strongly about leadership, and particularly when you feel it slipping…how you revive that.
Rupert Goold is artistic director of Headlong Theatre and an associate director of the Royal Shakespeare Company. Credits for Headlong include Earthquakes in London (National Theatre); Enron (winner, Best Director Olivier Award and Evening Standard Award 2010); Six Characters in Search of an Author (West End); The Last Days of Judas Iscariot (Almeida); King Lear(Young Vic); Rough Crossings, Faustus, Restoration and Paradise Lost (national tour). Other credits include Time and the Conways (National Theatre); Oliver! (Theatre Royal Drury Lane); No Man’s Land (Gate Theatre Dublin/West End; winner, Best Director, Irish Times); Macbeth (Chichester/West End/Broadway; winner, Best Director, Evening Standard, Critics’ Circle and Olivier Awards); The Glass Menagerie (West End); Speaking Like Magpies, The Tempest, Romeo and Juliet(RSC); Scaramouche Jones(Dublin/world tour); Sunday Father, Gone to L.A.(Hampstead); The Colonel Bird (Gate). Opera includes Turandot (English National Opera); Le Comte Ory(Garsington Opera); L’Opera Seria, Gli Equivoci and Il Pomo d’Oro (Batignano). From 2002-5 Rupert was artistic director of the Royal and Derngate theatres in Northampton, where he directed Arcadia, Summer Lightning, The Weir, Waiting for Godot, Othello and Hamlet. He was associate artist at Salisbury Playhouse from 1996-97 during its reopening under Jonathan Church, directing Travels With My Aunt and The End of the Affair. This year his film of Macbethwith Patrick Stewart will be broadcast on PBS.