#Interview By Lou with Robert McNamara @SCENATHEATRE presents a #play based on #ReportToAnAcademy by #FranzKafka @WhatsOnTheatre @EdFringe #FillYerBoots

Interview with Robert McNamara Actor and Artistic Director
Interview conducted by Louise Cannon at Bookmarks and Stages

Recently, I interviewed actor and artistic director – Robert Mcnamara at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the biggest of its kind in the world, where many people arrive with their shows or arrive with as visitors to watch them, from all around the world.
SCENA Theatre presents Report to an Academy by Franz Kafka, part of the 2023 Edinburgh Fringe Festival, showing August 4-13, 15-20, 22-27 (20:10 BST).
Robert McNamara returns to the stage in a riveting one-man show.

Robert Mcnamara and I met in a small bar at the venue – The Zoo Southside, where he is currently performing his play ‘Report to an Academy’, based on a story by Franz Kafka, where the main theme is survival. Discover what the play is about and then I will commence with the interview. I asked 7 questions and the answers are fascinating about the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, how his career in acting and directing began, Franz Kafka and his current play – Report to an Academy and what it’s like to play an ape evolving to be more human-like, the universally important themes and more… After the interview, you can find a link to where to purchase tickets.
Please note, I am not affiliated in any way.

Synopsis

Discover the missing link
An ape evolves to behave like a human and presents his story of survival and the vile details of his captivity to a scientific Academy in this wild tale by the existential master, Kafka.
Based on the classic short story by the master of existential and absurdist storytelling, Franz Kafka (author of The Metamorphosis). Acclaimed German theatre director Gabriele Jakobi has adapted the classic short story, Report to an Academy, into a powerful, provocative drama featuring actor/director Robert McNamara.
The play centres on an intelligent ape named “Red Peter” who was captured in a West Africa hunting expedition and sent to Europe on a ship. To effect his survival, Peter learns to mimic and imitate the ship’s crew from his cage. By evolving to behave like a human, he devises an escape. Ultimately, Peter presents his fascinating tale of transformation—and the horrid details of his former ape life—to a scientific Academy. McNamara’s performance brings a shocking parable to life and
compels patrons to ponder the issues of free will, animal rights, and vegetarianism. Report was first presented to sold-out houses in DC’s 2014 Capital Fringe Festival and was later staged in Europe at the Prague Fringe Festival and at the English Theatre Berlin.

Please join me in welcoming, all the way from the USA – Robert McNamara on to Bookmarks and Stages.

We spoke about the Edinburgh Fringe Festival . He has an illustrious career. I, however wanted to know what his experience was so far at the festival. He said this:

“We had a show years ago called Sister Mary Explains It All For You, performed in a technical college. I was there for 4 weeks and SOLD OUT and had a great experience. We’ve done Kafka in all kinds of places, last year was The Old Red Lion in Islington, London, Finland and then the National Theatre of Nairobi before that in Berlin, Prague and Washington.

Speaking of the festival he says:

“I think it is a wonderful worldwide address to showcase your work in and is also going to give us a lot of energy for the show. It’s The cultural event and probably globally in the month of August and you can’t really say you’ve hit all the festivals without really coming to – as they say in Iraq – “The Mother of Them All”. The Edinburgh Festival, which I believe was established in 1949 as the first beacon of hope after World War 2, culturally speaking. It has always been on my radar – London and Edinburgh.

I used to have a theatre company in Dublin called Dublin Stage One Theatre, so I’m offay with the theatre system in the UK. I was educated in Dublin in Trinity College, so it was always very close to some of my origins.”

It turns out Dublin Stage One Theatre played a vital role in Dublin and was set up by Douglas Kennedy and Robert Mcnamara. Its purpose was setting up new and eclectic shows Ireland had not seen before.

How His Career Began in the Acting and Directing Role:

“Basically I was an actor in Washington DC in student productions in Georgetown University. Then when I graduated, I ran away to France to become a writer and lived in a monastery for 5 months, L’Abbie Sénanque. I had a job there as assistant director and I had no intention to act or direct or do any of that, then I was in Trinity in Dublin and I always loved the theatre first and foremost, so I was walking through the front gates at TCD and I saw them doing some plays by William Butler Yeats called the Cuhulain Cycle, which on one ever does except for me, I did them just recently in America. I said I’d read for that. So I went in and read for it and that changed the course of my life.

I was just acting in Dublin pursuing a couple of degrees and then found that I was acting all the time, but they were running out of directors.”

He kept asking actors if they could direct this and that and they said no, so he ended up directing himself.

“I did a lot of things like ‘The Caveman Cometh’ by John Henry Jones, a play by Henry Fielding – a satire called ‘Tom Thumb the Great’, which is really funny, very rarely done and dates back to the 18th century. Then I did ‘Agamenon’ by Aeschylus, translated by Louis Mcniece. Then I performed in a company called Dublin Stage One Theatre and the rest is history.

Favourite Theatre Shows:

“At the end of your life, the middle and beginning, you’re only going to see 10 performances that you really cared for. I was fortunate enough to see A Midsummer’s Night Dream at Peterbrooke in the 70’s when I was a kid in Georgetown, Washington.

The second – a production by Samual Beckett of Waiting For Godot, which he saw in the Abbey Theatre on a Sunday night.

The third is anything directed by anything directed by his wife, Gabriele Jakobi- Berlin based German director one being – Cigarettes and Chocolate by Anthony Minghella.
Gabriele Jakobi won Best Director of the Year for “Theater Heute” Magazine for her direction of “Penthesilea” by Heinrich von Kleist,

The fourth is Rick Cluchey in Krapp’s Last Tape directed by Samuel Beckett.

Live theatre comes and goes and the things that really resonate, there aren’t that many.

Report to an Academy and the Interest in Franz Kafka’s Works

“He’s (Kafka) always writing about outsiders trying to integrate into society and being presented with insurmountable obstacles and after that, all that heaviness Kafka has, certainly, I like his humour and it appeals to me, very, very much. His humour is really off the scope. He throws adjectives and he throws around obscure outsider, alienation and existentialism. He likes people, believe it or not. The humour in his voice is shocking and his accuracy in portraying people in an existentialist crisis is shockingly accurate, absurd and funny and there’s a kind of macabre humour that you find in any Stanley Kubrick film for instance.
He has done a lot of Kafka, including in The Trial, by Kafka directed by Berkhoff. I heard him do a bit of this and it sounds fantastic! The acting ability and to perform off the cuff is outstanding!

Robert Mcnamara then went off to do workshops all the time at the Czech Embassy (the Czech-Slovak Embassy) on Spring and Freedom Street in Washington DC. He also imparted to me: “That’s what he called it after The Velvet Revolution. He went onto say: “We did an evening of Czech literature and we worked on the small pieces, the really obscure parables that are almost like Jewish religious paradigms. Then we did The Castle Das Schloss, which is really funny and I did a version of his play ‘American’.

“We did The Metamorphosis and certainly the Metamorphosis which everyone claims to have read is just like No Exit, you’ve either read it in high school or college for your leaving certs. People say I’ve read it, but of course they’ve never seen it. The thing is with The Metamorphosis is the the tale of Gregor Samsa waking up one morning and finding out he’s a dung beetle or a cockroach and this is of course the inhumanity that comes from his family. This is a paradigm for the holocaust that Kafka foresaw because of wisdom and insight and vision.

The play Report to an Academy or in German is Bericht en eine Akademie, is the companion piece to The Metamorphasis, where Gregor Samsa becomes a non-human, a bug. In Report to An Academy, the ape becomes a human-being to survive.”

Playing the Central Character in Report To An Academy

The central character, as you say, is an ape called Red Peter becomes human like to survive. He is a survivor and philosopher. I asked him about his research and experience to convey the emotions and what did he bring of himself to do this. Interestingly he imparted that he doesn’t usually talk too much about himself, but would be honest about his answer, so it was an honour to hear what he had to say. He said this:

“Usually when I’m acting and directing at the same time… This isn’t my direction, this is my wife’s direction – Gabriele Jakobi.” – Award winning director mentioned previously.

Basically it’s a short story, so when we sat down at a table in the early readings (much like how we were sitting at a table). He discussed playing this guy like a broken down vaudevillian and felt how it could be played differently, instead in a tuxedo or tails and waistcoat to reach the truth of the piece.

“Red Peter is performing in a circus or a shabby vaudeville, so is taking a leaf from the page of the entertainer John Osbourne. Basically the point of view is turning off what I know in my mind and trying to be almost like a child, like an ape, a person comes from another environment and being tossed into another environment, where it’s life and death and if he gets it right or wrong or he could stop eating or stop willing to live. I had to explore this whole range of emotions about what’s not – what’s not possible, also when you have to accommodate yourself in a situation where you have no power to control things. Normally in rehearsals I want to be solving the problems and to have to open up as an actor to be vulnerable again, to also be conscious of very small things, almost like a child. You have to go back in time, when you were unformed and it was your parents fighting or your mum yelling at you or something that blew your mind. The ape is walking on dynamite sometimes because he’s doing a balancing act. If he shows he understands the whole thing is rigged, they’re going to put him in a cage in a zoo, but if he gets out…

Originally it wasn’t a play, so the adaptation was by Gabriele Jakobi , who made it into a play, with music with underscores, voyage… it is a voyage. The ape is kidnapped in the west coast of Africa, he’s shot twice. So, in the movement category he took a leaf out of midnight cowboy by Dustin Hoffman, who plays Ratso Rizzo (at which point he imitates him to show he’s quite in your face.) ” The ape has an attitude, but he’s also king of the jungle.

Themes

Going into themes of survival, animal rights, free will, the ape has a choice between going between going to the Zoological Garden or the Music Hall and of course he goes to the music hall, I wondered what was thought of the ape’s choices and decisions made.

Matter-of-factly, Robert said: “Survival! Survival because he figures he would die inside the cage, because your heart would be broken you know. They always have these ASPCA ads (equivalent to RSPCA and SSPCA in the UK) with poor dogs or cats in a cage, can you imagine an ape in a cage? It was a small cage. His face is turned towards the locker. The locker and made up the fourth side and the whole construction was too small for me to stand up in and to narrow to sit down in, so I had to squat, with my knees bent and trembling All…The…Time!
He’s being tortured all along the way and he’s smart and he’s “playing the system”, but he also makes the decision, and this is the crux of the piece, not to be free. He’s not “Borne Free”, He’s Borne Free on his terms and he doesn’t want human freedom. Again, it is Kafka being sharp, saying this is freedom in society, and you get to run around in some sub-standard job until the day you die and when you’re dead you pay for it and they bury you and that’s it.

He had a PHD in law, has a legal mind and is a German speaking Jewish, Czech and a citizen of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and basically he had different identities; so the ape, following in his master’s footsteps has different identities, so I’m a shape-changer in the play, while I’m trying to communicate his story. There’s a moment of self-realisation passes about the emotions, where he realises he’s living a lie, he’s a ‘freak’. He’s not human, he’s not an ape anymore. He’s taken away to a place called No Way Out! He’s in No Man’s Land and he’s trapped! He got out of one trap and into another trap. That’s like people in life, they think: I’ll do this job for a while and they end up staying for 40 or 50 years, or I’ll just stay in this relationship for a while because I won’t bluff for anything better because I don’t want it. I’m comforted by the level of misery that I’m operating in. So, the ape is a thinker. He’s like your primeval philosopher King of the Jungle, but he’s also a lot of fun.

Franz Kafka is relevant for today’s audiences, so I gave space to allow Robert to say what he hoped people would take away from the play. Instantly, he answered – Pathos, Understanding, A Love of Kafka and hopefully A Love of The Play.
To Think of Other People. To realise in the times we live in, close to post-apoloyptic, with Covid, shut down theatres for two years, people dying, but hope they would take away a Sense of Compassion, To Think of Other People. To realise in the times we live in, close to post-apoloyptic, with Covid, shut down theatres for two years, people dying, but hope they would take away a Sense of Compassion and FUN!

The problem is, you’re also laughing whilst disapproving, so if I’ve done my job, it’s to make you think about things. People are loving the show and says there are generous audiences in Scotland. I used to live in Scotland in Prestwick”.

He then injected even more humour by saying “my family was here (in Scotland), my brother got put back a grade in America for having a Scottish accent award, they couldn’t understand a damn word he was saying. Robert then went onto live in Ireland for 8 years and says “Your rain here in Scotland doesn’t fool me. I’m used to it.”

He divulged that by the time he’s finished at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, he would have performed this play close to 100 times.

After Edinburgh, he is taking the play to Ukraine.

He would like to return to Scotland with a bigger show.

SCENA Theatre – Washington DC’s International Theatre over 35 years producing 100’s of plays around the world and we’d love to make Edinburgh one of our temporary homes, having performed in Denmark, Poland, Germany, Bahrain, Vienna, Former Yugoslavia, Zahrib and many, many other places in Europe and he would love to be here in Scotland again.