Interview with Julian Crouch and Vicky Featherstone about making The Wolves in the Walls

National Theatre of Scotland Director Vicky Featherstone and Improbable Co-Founder/Co-Artistic Director Julian Crouch are the co-directors of The Wolves in the Walls. They spoke to Susannah Jeffries about the book, the show, directing, scary things and what might be hiding under their beds...

What is special about this book? As parents you must have come across hundreds of children’s books, why this one?

VF: For me the moment when I thought it would be really exciting to turn into a piece of theatre was when I opened the page when the wolves come out of the walls and it’s the mixture of how the words interact with the pictures that made it feel really magical and made you feel that there was stuff there to play with and turn into a piece of theatre.

JC: For me it was the fact that it was scary. So when I am reading it to my children there is already a kind of atmosphere of ‘are they old enough for this?’ ‘how are they going to feel about this?’ which I found quite exciting and I think children find quite exciting – ‘am I old enough for this?’

When adapting a book, do you begin at the beginning? Where do you start?

JC: With this one, it started with the music really, I think you start in a lot of places at the same time. But we kind of started with the music.

VF: The first thing we actually did was ask Nick Powell, who is the composer, to read the book and he wrote a piece of music in response to it. The response piece made us realise that the story is really aural. There is the tuba-playing dad, the mum makes jam so there is the noise of the jam-jars, and the brother plays video games. So he created a soundscape that had music as part of it.

JC: And I suppose on the design I started very simply with the idea of wolves and the idea of walls and actually that is still what’s there - there are a lot of walls and a lot of wolves in the design! We also talked to Neil Gaiman and he wrote some more words for the songs.

VF: And the other thing that we talked about was the story. And how simple the story is – there is a little girl called Lucy, she lives in a house with her family, they do lots of other things, she gets bored and then the wolves come out of the walls. So we looked at the simplicity of that and tried to tell that story really clearly so that everything else could happen around it

JC: Generally I think you start in a lot of different directions and you slowly walk everything in until the show comes together, and everything is very close now isn’t it?

VF: …or very far away!

How did you come to collaborate on this project?

JC: She asked me! It was her idea!

VF: Julian and I have worked together before, twice, and we also used to share offices together so we have known each other for a long time. And we had worked with the other people who are making the project. Like Steven Hoggett who is the choreographer and Nick Powell who is the composer and Natasha Chivers the lighting designer in various ways before and it just seemed that whilst we were doing this it would be really exciting to bring those people back together again

JC: We haven’t done anything like this before though.

VF: No, none of us have

JC: It is very different from what we were doing before.

VF: I have never made anything like this before and its really exciting to be creating a piece of theatre that comes absolutely from what the book is rather than anything that I think I know or that Julian thinks he knows.

How did you get to be a director?

VF: I’m still trying to get to be a director! I used to want to be a director - what happened was, when I went university I did acting and I wasn’t very good, and the thing I am clever about was knowing that there is no point doing something if you are not going to do it well. So I realised I was never going to be a very good actress and a friend of mine wrote a play, he was from Newcastle and he was the only person who could do the accent, so he had to be in the play and he asked me to direct it and when I directed it I thought ‘ah ha – I am not a very good actress but I am very bossy’ so that is how I came to be a director!

JC: I am not sure I ever would quite claim to be a director I am often a co-director, never the only director.

VF: That’s because Julian doesn’t like making decisions!

JC: Actually it’s interesting – in tech week I do like making decisions! I like making decisions at the last possible moment. I would say that I am a designer who sometimes directs and I think I would say it’s because I started off always designing puppets or masks where there is some form of interaction, so from the beginning I was working closely with performers which designers don’t often do. Often the designer is a separate thing in a different room, whereas I have always been around actors so I guess that is how I ended up directing. I learned very early not to finish my work in the studio before rehearsals start and I guess that is what lured me into directing as that is really the only way to do that.

How does co-directing work?

VF: I think it is probably always different according to who the people are and what the project is and it takes a while to get the hang of how to make it work in a rehearsal room. So part of the rehearsal process is about getting into the swing of what it is to be co-directing, and it’s about finding the right balance between having enough time to discuss the ideas together and separately to everything that is going on, but also the challenges of how do you respond as half of another person to something that is happening in the moment in rehearsal.

JC: And in some ways I think it goes even wider because actually, Steven has almost a director role as well, and Nick has an input and actually we don’t know until we open the show we won’t know what that means…

VF: …whether we have made it work or not…

JC: At the moment for me Vicky is the main director but then I am handling a lot of the design stuff…

VF: …but then if it’s any good!…

JC: …yes of course, then I will say it was all me! I think different parts of the process are led by different people.

VF: I am somebody who likes to know quite clearly where we are going and I quite like the actors at the end of the day to feel they have achieved something and they know what they are going home with but Julian is a much bigger risk taker in that respect than me. He doesn’t feel the need to do that. So it is quite a good partnership because it is really important for me that whilst we are able to create things and be really risk-taking we are also able to make quite clear steps towards where we are going. So it is really good I am really enjoying it.

JC: It works well. What we are both aiming for, what everyone is aiming for is a kind of seamlessness across the different disciplines of music, design, directing, acting and so we have a team of actors who have been making puppets and learning new things and I think each of us is working, leaning towards our specialist subject.

VF: There are some people I couldn’t co-direct with because I would think that our way of working would be too similar – we wouldn’t bring anything different to the project. Whereas when I co-directed with Frantic Assembly I learned masses, and I have learned masses working with Julian.

JC: I think it’s interesting – as I was saying I am more of a co-director whereas you are a director – I think what I normally do when I have been working like this is I try to fit myself round where I think there might be gaps and actually you don’t leave many gaps which is great, but there is a lot of design to do, so sometimes when I have worked with other people there have been far bigger gaps and I have had to do a lot more directing. I think the tech will be interesting.

VF: The tech is the bit before the show opens to the public when you first get into the theatre, so you have been in a rehearsal room up to that time and you get into the theatre and the lighting happens and the set is all there and the actors are in their costumes and you try and put the show together at the pace and the order that its going to take place so it is about making big decisions.

JC: That will be interesting because I think a lot of the time us two and Steven Hoggett will be on stage. I might be talking to the stage manager about how they might be able to bring something on or how they could make something easier, I suppose my interest is in stage transformations so I will be leaning towards that side.

What did you see when you were young that inspired you?

JC: I saw the pantomime at the Ayr Gaeity and as a special treat for me this show gets to go to the Ayr Gaeity.

VF: Julian said he would only do this show if we took it to Ayr!
I saw a review that my dad was in when I was about six– it was a works review that he was doing. And I sat at the back whilst they rehearsed it and they had all these scr ipts that they had typed up on really old typewriters with yellowy paper and my dad was doing really bad comedy acting a bit like Peter Sellers and I watched this thing and I thought it was really exciting.

JC: My dad was a drama lecturer and he did a production of Benjamin Brittens Noyes Fludde at this college in Ayr. It was when I was about five and my dad was playing God and I remember asking my mum ‘is dad really God?’ and everyone laughed and I remember being aware I had said the wrong thing!

VF: When I was young it was definitely pantomime.

JC: Also a TV programme called the Singing Ringing Tree was partly responsible. Probably Doctor Who a bit aswell with all the rubbery costumes!

If I wanted to be a director what advice would you give me?

VF: One of the things that I read when I was a student was I think in a book called The Empty Space by Peter Brook, it was about being a director and the first line of it says the first stage of becoming a director is saying that you are one. I think that is a really important thing. When I went to university I thought that other people were directors and that they had to have something special or know something special to be a director and it was only by chance when I had to direct this play for a friend that I thought actually there is nothing special about it, anybody can do it, you just have to say you want to. So that is a really important thing for me.

JC: Can I answer as a designer – I think if you want to be a designer I would say don’t think it’s about having lots and lots and lots of ideas. Actually, have maybe one idea or two ideas and really see that idea through. So in a way, find an obsession and see how far that can take you. So try and do a show just with cardboard boxes or do a show just with shoes and see how far you can push that.

VF:I think that is really true of a director too. I think the best directors are people who have taken the time to become specialist in something. I think find something you are really fascinated with and specialise.

What are you scared of?

VF: I am scared of being forced to play ball games. I realised that in rehearsals. I am also scared of birds. And I am really scared of this show not being exciting enough!

JC: I am scared of becoming more boring as I grow up, and I am scared that I might make safe choices.

And finally - are there wolves in your walls?

VF: I hope so. I hope my life is exciting enough to have things like wolves in my walls.

JC: I have just moved house – I haven’t had a chance to find out. It is an old local authority house which has really solid, concrete-type walls. When you drill, weird coloured stuff comes out so you probably can’t really have anything in my walls. I think I’ve probably got some stuff hiding under the bed or in cupboards.

VF: I would love our wolves to live in the walls of my house, I think they are gorgeous!