School for sceptics

Tempers frayed and tears welled when delegates collided over Chekhov, culture and their craft at the first European directors' workshop. By Clare Bayley

In her opening address to the first European Directors' School, held at the West Yorkshire Playhouse earlier this month, Jude Kelly brought up the question of the Single European Currency. "It's something all of us, on the Left and on the Right, are terrified of for different reasons. But there is another single currency we can explore, which is culture," she said. As a prerequisite of attending the school, the 26 delegates from 18 different European countries were all English-speakers, but their differences in background and approach were such that culture, and specifically theatre, was the only common link. The three-week-long school was, in many ways, like a microcosm of the new Europe.

It makes one wonder what the European Parliament is like, when the various representatives have nothing specific in common and wildly conflicting interests. Even among a bunch of cultured individuals like theatre directors, there were "incidents". When Philippe Gaulier, the French mime guru, tried to get the directors to "play" with Chekhov, he met with fury from some of the Eastern European delegates. "It is unpardonable to 'play' with Chekhov," stormed one Hungarian, and several others joined him in refusing to participate in the session. Never having encountered such hostility and disrespect, Gaulier, it is rumoured, was reduced to tears.

When Peter Sellars cruised in in a haze of Californian openness and tolerance, he further shocked the delegates. "Hey, guys," he said, "I'm just like any of you. I'm not, like, the leader or anything in this session." And he proceeded to give out his telephone number so that anyone could call him, at any time. Working from the principle that you can't teach people how to make art any more than you can teach them to make friends, his masterclass consisted of a question-and-answer session. "Ask any questions you like," he said. And then, prompted by random queries, delivered a seamless dissertation on culture, democracy and the responsibility of the artist.

"Theatre is a microcosm of society, and all we're trying to do is sustain democratic structures," he began. "It's about reminding you that other people exist. The task is to get out of the thing where one voice prevails. My voice is not more important than yours. As a director, I'm only there to ensure that all the voices are heard, so that we can have an authentic dialogue."

To the Western Europeans, it seemed like a simple and humane expression of idealistic commonality. But the Easterners were glowering, shuffling in their seats, muttering under their breath. "All my life I have been told that art is politics, everything is politics," said an anguished Polish delegate, Jaroslaw Kilian afterwards. "I can see that Peter Sellars is a very sincere and charismatic person, but I am sick of politics. If you want to help people, isn't it better that you join Amnesty International or train to be a doctor or a lawyer? Isn't that more honest?"

The notion that a director should be open to the influences around him or her is an alien concept to directors whose work, under Communism, had to actively resist the dominant state ideology and deliberately obscure its motives. The Georgian delegate "Doi" Doiashoili was one of four directors invited for the first week to come and work on a chosen text with British actors. When he read the translation of Arthur Miller's The Crucible, sent to him by the Playhouse (he was the only one who broke the edict and turned up speaking barely a word of English), he realised for the first time what the play was about. He had never seen an uncensored version before.

Another Georgian, Robert Sturua, was a mentor for Doiashoili and many of the Easterners. A smilingly grizzled, rotund and bear-like character, he was the exact opposite of the Westerners' guru, Peter Sellars. He had watched Sellars's masterclass and, smiling evasively, he declined to comment, other than to say that it reminded him of the Socialist times. "A director is like a wolf from the Steppes - a loner. He doesn't want to be influenced by other people's thoughts," he declared through an interpreter. "Directors will never open up to each other. In order to learn your craft, it's not enough to talk. Maybe it is something very elusive, basic, simple - something that cannot be put into words," he opined.

But when asked what he was planning for his own practical masterclass the following day, Sturua shrugged evasively. "I am a fatalist," he said. "I will see what fate tells me to do." Playing the enigmatic artist was clearly an efficient way of evading the prying questions of the authorities in the bad old days.

One of three British delegates, Sita Ramamurthy, who was born and brought up in India, was the only non-white person in the school, and encountered multiple levels of culture gap. She runs the Asian Theatre initiative for the Leicester Playhouse and her special project in the first week was to attempt a combination of classical Greek drama (Medea) with the similarly ancient Indian traditions outlined by Bharata in his book Natya Shastra (literally, "book of dance/ drama). Her efforts were met with incomprehension. "I honestly got to the point where I was sitting on the floor in front of the actors, crying, and thinking, 'What is theatre? What's the point of it?' When I'm in rehearsal I could never have allowed myself to reach that point, but it's desperately important to do that. You have to clarify and reclarify to find out why you're there and what you're doing."

It was universally agreed that the chance to get down to basics, to discover divergent views and to discuss them late into the night was one of the most illuminating and useful aspects of the school. This sense of cultural exchange was particularly pertinent to Borna Baletic, who ran the National Theatre of Croatia in Varazdin throughout the war. "I was often in touch with my colleagues in Belgrade. The day the war started, the telephone lines weren't cut but communication stopped. I'm still waiting for the phone to ring," he confesses sadly. "But it's fantastic how, here, we think more or less the same way, even though we come from different cultures. Somehow that strengthens your own work in your own country," he asserts. "We have to start to use the culture not as a touristic thing or propaganda on our own nations, but to start really to exchange fears, ideas, problems."

Several more tangible things also came out of the school. Jaroslaw Kilian entered discussions with Mykola Shkaraban from the Ukraine about a joint project to explore the histories of their countries, which are so close and yet so ignorant of each other. Peter Bensted from Copenhagen is busy setting up co-productions with colleagues in Romania, Hungary and Malta. The West Yorkshire Playhouse is now firmly established at the centre of a valuable network of European theatre talent. And when they want to step out beyond Europe, everybody has Peter Sellars's phone number in LA.