Content Warning: mention of suicide, discussion of terminal illness and death 

In preparation for their show, Dead Good, coming to the Midlands Arts Centre in Birmingham on Tuesday 8th at 7:30pm and Wednesday 9th of February at 11am, Redbrick spoke to Artistic Director of Vamos Theatre, Rachael Savage about the importance of the show and what audiences can expect.

Tickets are available here, with more information on their website here.

You’re coming to Birmingham on Tuesday and Wednesday. How has it been going so far?

We just opened at the Swan Theatre in Worcester which is our home, so we’re the resident theatre company there and we’ve done two nights there. This is us, at the beginning of the tour.

How did it go?

Really good. Amazing really. Really really big audiences. We’re worried that at this time, with COVID that the audiences will be bad. It’s almost like cinema now, when people aren’t booking beforehand, but we had really really good audiences, we had about 250 people over the two nights. Before COVID we’d have had nearly 600 people over the two nights but to be even at 50% it’s pretty good. I think it’ll sell really well tomorrow night too.

How did you first get involved in Vamos Theatre?

I founded the company in 2006. I’d worked nationally and internationally for about 15 years before that as an actor and as a director and I’d worked all over the world. Then I moved to Worcester and people kept asking for my company name, so I just thought, give them a name which in the end was the best thing I ever did because it meant that I really focused on my work. As a freelancer, you often don’t get the credit that you’re due for the amount of work that you put into a project. And the rest is history.

How do you come up with a project you want to do?

So I research and write the shows as well. I find a subject, it’s always something that’s close to my heart so we’ve done shows before about living with dementia, living with post-traumatic stress and suicide in the military, about forced adoption in the 1960s and this one is about end of life. For me, they’re subjects that need speaking about, they’re stories that need to be told and I research them for about two years.

For example, on this one, I had a meeting with someone who emailed me and said ‘I’ve got a great idea for your next show’ and she was a huge fan of Vamos Theatre. When she said it was end of life I was thinking, absolutely no way am I going to do a show about end of life, why would I be interested, but actually once we got talking she was so passionate and persuasive about people having choice. For me, the show is more about learning to live well, and to die well and also to live until the final breath which is a much easier subject to talk about when you’re older.

For me, the show is more about learning to live well, and to die well and also to live until the final breath which is a much easier subject to talk about when you’re older

I started by going to hospices and I went to Mary Stevens Hospice in Stourbridge which is an utterly phenomenal place and I was really nervous and shy, thinking that hospices are where you go to die. Yet I was completely and utterly wrong. Because I went in and it was noisy, and it was full of laughter, and music, and people mucking about and having a really good time and I was so shocked. I got talking to a patient there who spoke to me about how having cancer had completely changed him as a human being. Then I went to another hospice in Worcester where I was welcomed into this group called the Men’s Space Group for men who are terminally ill. At the end this man came up to me called Nick Moss and he said ‘I’m really interested in this project and I’d really like to be involved in it.’ He read every script, came to every rehearsal room or was sent rehearsals on Vimeo and he fed back on everything and he had a mate there, Pete. They were so similar to the characters I’d already started to write about that it was bizarre.

There’s a catheter scene in the show and Pete came in and just talked to us all about having a catheter fitted; where the injection has to go into your penis, how far the tube goes up and it was so shocking and he was laughing about it, saying ‘you love the nurse so much when she’s done it…and you feel so devoted to them’ so we thought ‘God let’s make a comedy routine out of this’ because he was so funny. That’s how that scene came about and the rest of it was based on their friendship. They really liked to shock and they loved to challenge the idea that we don’t like to talk about death, especially in this country because we’re embarrassed by it; we’re embarrassed by our emotions. They ripped us apart and made us laugh but when I did stuff that was too farcical they’d email to say it was too far. 

This was all in 2019 and 2020 because the show opened in March 2020 but got cancelled because of COVID. Nick, Pete and Dave died during lockdown which of course was incredibly sad, because Nick especially didn’t get the death he wanted, nor the one he deserved. This time, I couldn’t face making friends with terminally ill men because it felt like my mates had bailed on me, and that’d be their words, because they always asked if we’d have two chairs in the rehearsal room for them when we went back in. This time, instead, we had two widows in the rehearsal room (Shefali and Leslie) and Shefali I’d worked with before because she was living with post-traumatic stress and she told me about her husband who died of a terminal illness, so I named one of the characters after her as a tribute. They call themselves the silent sufferers: the people who get ignored, who felt like a widow before they even were widowed because of the friendships that her husband Terry made at the hospice men’s space.

There is a film called Nothing About Us, Without Us which I made so you can find out a lot about the making of the shows and the research so within that there are a lot of quotes from Nick and the sort of things he used to say about living and dying.

What was the decision behind the masks?

Trestle were established in the early 1980s and I worked for them in the 90s for about 8/9 years and they then changed their artistic director who hated masks. I saw Trestle when I was 13 and was hooked and finally became an actor with them before becoming director of Trestle Young People’s Theatre. When they changed their director, I moved to Worcester and there was this huge gaping whole where the genre I’d fallen in love with didn’t exist anymore, so I essentially filled the gap.

Both Alan and James are the two most experienced mask actors in this country, probably the world, in terms of this style of full-mask theatre. Alan founded Trestle so between us we have about 90 years experience of this form of theatre, but this is the first time that Alan and James have done a tour together; usually they’re interchangeable in their roles. It’s been hysterical because they’ve always been good mates and I’ve made a show especially for them and they’re just having a ball. The characters on stage are so similar to what they’re like in real life, it’s an absolute joy, I’ve loved working with them together.

There’s no dialogue in the show, instead it’s told through music. How do you feel the theatre community could be more accessible and why is it so important in your productions?

What was amazing about our two nights at the Swan was that on the second night, the two front rows were full of adults with Learning Disabilities. Over the years, we’ve built up such a relationship with different kinds of communities where they feel our theatre is accessible. We used to have relaxed, or chilled, performances which are especially for people who don’t usually want to go to a full theatre e.g. when the sound is lower, when the lights are still on, when there’s fewer people but the aim for me was to get to the point where every show was open and accessible to every single different kind of audience imaginable.

The aim for me was to get to the point where every show was open and accessible to every single different kind of audience imaginable

I was wondering the other night – sometimes they were noisy, sometimes they got up and walked around and I wondered who it was pissing off – then I realised I don’t actually care. There were a lot of Deaf people in the audience too, and because there are no words we have got a massive following in the Deaf community because there is no need for a BSL interpreter so Deaf people can experience our shows at exactly the same time. Our theatre feels like a real human equaliser, without that sounding too pretentious.

We do a lot of work at the National Star College in Cheltenham which is an adult’s FE college for adults with Learning Disabilities, Physical Disabilities, any Disability actually and I’ve worked with them for about the last 15-20 years. They’ve had young students who adults say can’t stay engaged, yet when they see our show they watch the entire thing. I think it’s because it speaks to people on really different levels. It’s the best kind of accessible, emotional, engaging, poignant, funny theatre. I love it.

On a national tour too I imagine it would be difficult to provide an interpreter at every stop so the lack of dialogue really helps that.

There’s just no need for it and we work with Deaf consultants to make sure that there are no elements that a Deaf person wouldn’t understand. We have a Deaf ambassador, Mary Jane, who will be on a post-show panel to talk about her perspective as Vamos Theatre’s Deaf ambassador. It’s a style of theatre that is clever on lots of different levels. It can also tour internationally – we’ve toured from China, to Norway, to around Europe because there’s no language barriers.

What do you hope audiences will learn specifically from this play?

Exactly what I’ve learnt, which is how to live. Nick and Dave and Pete all taught me how to understand what’s really important, what to let go of, how precious life is. And it sounds really simplistic, but how precious a starry sky is, how precious friendship and love and family and all those things that are priceless are. I think for most people it makes you want to go out and live life.

That’s really great, especially post-pandemic when a lot of media can be very sombre, it’s good to have something on the other side of that.

That doesn’t mean the show isn’t difficult to watch, at points it is a tough watch but it doesn’t end tough. I just think it’s got more depth to it – it is funny in places but it’s also sad. For me, that’s what theatre should do: it should make you laugh, it should make you cry and it should make you think.

For me, that’s what theatre should do: it should make you laugh, it should make you cry and it should make you think

Was there anything you wanted to add that you feel would enhance people’s experience watching it?

As a touring theatre company, we’re also really interested in our relationship with the environment and our impact on the environment. We do lots of things, from trying to offset our tours by planting trees through working out exactly how much mileage and everything we use and we invest in a really great company in Scotland. All of our print is on recycled paper with vegetable ink. This time, for the first time, we have tried to have a much smaller programme. All of our programmes are free, because it’s also not about whether you have enough money to afford a programme.

This year, instead of a booklet, it’s one piece of A3 paper with a QR code for feedback to avoid wasting paper (there are paper forms if people can’t access QR codes) and there’s also a QR code to a digital programme. The digital programme is full of films and interviews and behind the scenes of the footage of how the show was made. There’s interviews with Alan and James, and with the lighting designer, the theatre designer, the sound engineer, the projection filmmaker, and the composer. There are so many more ways for people to find out about the making of the show. Eventually we want to do away with paper programmes but to start with we’re cutting back and educating in a new, more interesting, way.

How can people get involved with the theatre company?

Join the mailing list. We’ve got things from mask making to mask acting for different community groups. We’ve got an emerging artist scheme and we do training courses all over the country to then pull together a team of artists who will then be trained up in the company and be involved in future projects, both professional and community based.

Even on this one, we’ve met the most amazing emerging artist from our first training course and she is our production assistant on this tour.

Before I go, was there anything you wanted to add?

There is another show on Wednesday at 11am in order for schools, colleges, and university students to come and see it. We always say that word of mouth is our best friend. On opening night, someone in the audience asked how they can get people to see it since it’s such an important show, and I just said ‘that’s your job.’ We can do so much social media, but it’s only word of mouth that truly has any impact. 

---

Enjoyed this? Read more on Redbrick Culture!

Theatre Review: Dead Good – A Double Perspective

The Reality of Working in the Arts: An Interview with Writer Ross Smith

Dance Review: ‘Nobody’ by Motionhouse