We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Martin French. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Martin below.

Martin, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

I had been thinking about the German play “Woyzeck” for several years. Written by Georg Buchner about a murder in the early to mid-19th century, it is one of the first real psychological studies om theatre, investigating one of the first murder cases where the insanity of the perpetrator was taken into account. The play was also the last work of Buchner, as he died before finishing it. It remains unfinished, and with a great deal of debate about the order of the scenes, with different translators, adaptors, and productions picking and choosing the scenes and the order.
The production of the play that we eventually wound up with was called “Clash of The Woyzecks”, in parts a reference to the fact that there were two people involved, a recognition of the fact that this was not to be a faithful production of the original script, and a cheeky nod to “Clash Of The Titans:, as the play was structured around a battle between powerful gods who use mortals as a means of exploring a story, and who cannot agree with each other about the story. The first part of the play involved a Zeus like auteur creating a 2 dimensional story that emphasizes spectacle over truth, and only focuses on the man. As the play ends, his partner, a woman, finally arrives and to her disgust, he has turned what she sees as a learning opportunity for the humans into a means of showing off his directing abilities. She rewrites and restages the play to bring notice to the woman, and to the other characters, and while there is still a tragic end, the murder is avoided through the use of better processes for mental health.

I had been looking for a doorway into “Woyzeck” for a long time before I figured out how to stage this. As someone who likes to experiment with form, I passed through several ideas for how to stage it, but it was only when I understood why I needed to stage it that the questions disappeared.

The why came in two parts. The play focused almost entirely on the main character, Woyzeck, a man who kills his wife Maria: Maria got a few scenes, but like in many plays, the woman, the victim, is a side note. I felt that the play had done her an injustice. The second part of the why was the focus I had on trying to show a better way to live – what could have been done that could have averted the tragedy, at least in part.

While it seems strange to think about how it came about, all subsequent decisions seemed to be logical with these guiding concepts in place. It made sense that a reduced version of the original play would have to be performed for the audience to gain a basic level of understanding of the story in order to follow as we explored how the tragedy could have been lessened: thus the concept of a play repeating itself differently the second time around came about – the gimmick of the god/directors was a diagetic reason to do that and to keep the audience in the loop. The repeat the story to do that meant that it was necessary to do something different with the story the second time around, allowing the audience to relive scenes from Maria’s perspective rather than Woyzeck’s: for instance, where earlier we saw flirting and seduction, now we see threatened assault. The need to find a way for Maria to avoid death at Woyzeck’s hands meant we needed to get her to go to therapy – or at least to start the process, so she could love herself enough to stand up for herself. That in turn led to a psychologist on stage, and so forth.

I am fortunate to be able to work regularly with excellent local actors – years of doing high-quality, if small-scale, work has helped me to develop a reputation that means many local actors are happy to work with me, often repeatedly, in spite of risky projects like these. When you have good actors and a good story, the work is easy, and you can focus on the purpose. Typically I do not harp on about previous productions: normally I enjoy the moment, but I mentally start working on the next experiment in performance before the audiences have finished their applause. I have had my share of coups-de-theatre produced over the years, but this one stays with me because not only was it a synthesis of script and performance, but it took the audience on a journey with a message of mental health and empathy that they would long remember.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I fell into theatre by chance. Growing up in rural Ireland, I would disappear into books or films whenever I had the chance, but theatre was not something I felt was for me. It was only when I went to a small college in Dublin that I discovered it by complete chance. After a trial for the college soccer team, I was asked in the dressing room if I was going to auditions. “Why would I do that?” I asked. “You would not believe how many girls will be there”. That was enough for a teenaged me! Ironically, I never ended up dating someone who was heavily involved in theatre before I met them – the art became reason enough pretty quickly.

After years of doing a bit of everything in Dublin theatre and across Europe, I found a job working in technical theatre in London for a few years. I probably did less theatre there than I had been doing in Dublin, but I connected better with people outside of it and I think it gave me a far better perspective on life. It was the first part of a break I needed as an artist, and it gave me a sense of the art being better enriched by occasionally having distance from it.

In London, I met a woman and followed her to the US. After a year’s hiatus while I sorted my residency, I started doing theatre again. It was not easy. It felt like my theatre experience outside the US counted for nothing initially, and I was scrabbling for all kinds of anything. I realized that I needed to understand how theatre in the US worked, what it meant here, and what was the audience looking for. In time, I learned this version of the trade, and while I’ve had some success with more traditionally staged plays, I knew it wasn’t quite the right fit for me.

Myself and a fellow immigrant in Louisville, my new home, started a theatre company to create theatre in the style we wanted to, going beyond the sub-televisual realism we saw. With a strong Shakespeare scene, and a thriving trade in new and recent plays, we saw a niche in the local market: no-one was doing the 19th century classics. We stepped into that gap and made it ours. We called ourselves The Chamber Theatre, and started creating small-scale, high-quality theatre. From early on, owing to budgetary constraints, and challenges faced by the theatre we started working in, our work started to become deliberately site conscious before becoming largely site specific and moving on to new spaces. This adjustment gave way to examining and reconstructing plays to more directly approach the kind of performances we wanted to see and to be a part of. Covid hit, and we both made trips to our respective homelands. I came back and she did not. I brought on board a couple of like-minded theatre artists who had been previously involved in our earlier shows, and we continued to grow. As I type this, we are are just completing our most ambitious season to date, and it has been our most successful one too thanks to the new energy they brought.

A couple of years ago, I was approached indirectly by the Arts Alliance of Southern Indiana (where I actually live) to help develop a touring Spring Shakespeare based in Southern Indiana, with a focus on appealing to children and families. The timing on this has been magical – about two months before I was asked, my then-8 year old son had suddenly become a big Shakespeare fan. With two good people to work with, it has been exciting to be able to work with Shakespeare, and create theatre that appeals more to my son than my usual work. I would say I am principally a producer here, though I do co-direct the shows. I enjoy a lot of the production work for this, something I had slowly started to become more and more during my time with The Chamber Theatre.

Similarly, I am aware of my place of responsibility in the local community as someone with experience, reputation, connections, and some production expertise. In recent years, I have been increasingly involved in work that helps to develop directors, actors, and writers. One of the most immediate projects I am working on is aimed at helping under-appreciated actors expand their experience into playing leads, while another in the near future involves staging new short theatre work, and developing emergent directors. It is a duty I appreciate: as one who didn’t have these kinds of opportunities years ago, I know how much value expert support can bring when trying to grow as an artist.

The Covid pandemic had a profound impact on me. Coming back to theatre after lockdown, I found that while still like to do the same kind of work and I still the same kind of plays, I feel a responsibility to offer a window on how we can build beyond where we are. I truly believe that theatre can help people to do better in life. It involves re-assessing these plays and in many cases rearranging them to find the truth for today’s audience, and critiquing them from within.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

To respond to this I am going somewhat off topic, but I think it is important to note this first.

It’s easy to say “Society needs theatre and the arts, and it must support us both financially and with bums on seats.” But if we cannot prove the value of what we do, this is just arrogance in a time when many people are struggling with debt, and when they have options that are cheaper and that meet them where they are. We need to prove to the world that we have value in our endeavors, and give them a reason to leave Hulu behind for the night

I worry that one of the reasons that artists and creatives are not supported properly is because a lot of the work feels like it’s being made for people who are in those fields already. It means that whatever money people are making from their art has to immediately be pumped back into the arts to keep it going, and that does not work. It alienates people who don’t understand the scene, so we lose audience, and that feeds a cycle that isolates our art from the world. Why leave your house to see something that means nothing to you, filled with in-jokes and ultimately come home thinking you missed a chance to watch something that didn’t talk down to you?

I also worry that a lot of theatre shows are just low budget TV. I see some good work, but a lot lacks theatricality, and too much relies on some variation of stunt-casting, coat-tailing, or nostalgia baiting.

I recall the recent national tour of “To Kill A Mockingbird featured Richard Thomas, managing both stunt-casting and nostalgia baiting in the same breath. It was well produced and performed, but it didn’t add anything new to the national conversation; it wasn’t substantially something that I couldn’t have also found in the film. Similarly, the rise of “Hamilton” led to lots of revivals of the “1776” musical around the US. These were shows that you could watch and enjoy, but be thinking about something else entirely before you had got back to your car.

In short we need to target the general public, not our peers, and we need to give them something that they cannot get elsewhere if we want to prove that we are worth supporting in person and in cash. We need to make better choices about what we create.

And, yes, we need the funding, because what we do costs a lot. Affordable tickets or works do not pay artists, and a lot of money for the bigger companies goes to pay for vital staff who aren’t artists – without marketing we can’t reach an audience, while HR helps prevent dangerous work practice and helps stop predatory behavior.

But let’s be honest, “more money for the arts” is an obvious, if short-term, solution to a problem that goes beyond today’s arts workers getting paid..

So what do we need that can make a lasting difference?

The first thing that our local county, city, state, and federal governments need to do is to put as much time, money, and effort into the arts in schools as they do into sports. If we are able to have all kinds of allowances for sports teams, we need to have that made available for the arts too, and ensure that it goes beyond “dance for your school football team”, “play tuba in the band for your school basketball team”, etc. I am a kids’ soccer coach at a local club, so I am a fan of sports too, but we have a lob-sided system here where strength and might are lauded, while vulnerablity and nuance are dismissed – not always openly, but it is clear in how we spend our money and how we prioritize education. An adult who engaged with the arts in a sincere way as a kid is more open to seeing their worth beyond financial or award based ends, and is likely to live a more receptive life.

Secondly, we need to create more open arts spaces for the public. Not just the occasional amphitheatre that sits in a park unused, other than as a nice place for the local office workers to have their lunch on a sunny day. Aside from parks and churches, we are chronically short of third spaces where people can congregate together. We need places that are appropriate to local climate that are free, accessible, and filled with art. The kids moved from the mall might still be sullenly too cool for everything, but their constant proximity to music, visual art, or live performance will seep in, and instead of thinking as adults they have to spend their free time at an updated version of a shopping mall, they will be socialized instead to seek out a gallery, a concert, etc. And we need to esure that these are not places that houseless or poor people are not run off from – access to art should be a right, and a responsibility of local governments to provide for all citizens under their jurisdiction. A secondary benefit, if these spaces are properly managed and kept in good condition is that it should offer at least one additional place for disaffected and disenfranchised people, and in doing so, hopefully help reduce anti-social behaviors by providing a new outlet.

Thirdly (and this is on we the artists, but we need funding to do this right) we need to make it more possible for people with dependents (people with children, people who are carers, etc.) to participate, both in terms of being on stage and attending. I know numerous people who stepped back from theatre and other arts in order to raise children or look after older folks. We need socially to find a way to offer a way for people to continue to be involved. I know our local opera company has created a low cost service for some of their plays to allow parents to attend without the challenge of finding reliable and affordable babysitting. Being able to remove that disincentive to participate is something we need to do (and to extending that through theatre and broader arts culture too).

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?

There are two things that I feel most people who don’t work in the arts don’t understand. How hard it is, and how much of your time is preparation.

I have met a near endless stream of people who seem to think that acting is just learning lines and speaking them. Not so much in audition, I hasten to add, but there are many people who I hear saying “I could do that just as well” when watching a performance. For some reason I see similar things about graphic design all the time. This could be owing to a lack of experience at any significant level, or the ease with which we can do some things with photoshop. But you can see a big difference in the nuance, in the purpose, and in the meaning of a design when someone with experience, training, or both can do. I don’t think it is impossible for anyone to learn to be a good actor, or director, or whatever, but it does take time and it doesn’t happen without a lot of work.

I mentioned to a colleague the other day that I was frustrated at having less than a year to plan a piece I was producing and directing and she was gobsmacked. She simply could not understand why I would want to prepare something that early on. She works in law, and I know that she is used to working with cases over multiple months, if not years, but she could not see why one would do it in the arts. She isn’t alone in this. I am not certain why, but I suspect it may be either a variation on the attitude that anyone can do it, or based on the idea that the arts shouldn’t be taken seriously, that it is little more than a hobby. When one talks to someone self-employed or who owns a business, no-one bats an eye at them speaking of plans for two years time, but when someone in the arts does so, there is often surprise.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @probablymartinfrench/
• Facebook: @MartinFrenchTheatre
• Linkedin: @martin-french-theatre
• Youtube: @martinfrench4890

Image Credits

All photos taken by Martin French

Pic 1: Sami Hall as Valley Girl Ahab in “Around the World of 80 Days” (2019)
Pic 2: Jennifer Poliskie as Bella; Gerry Rose as Manningham; Stephanie Hall as Elizabeth in “Angel Street” (2020)
Pic 3: TJ Harris as Naoise; Hannah Connolly as Deirdre in “Deirdre” (2017)
Pic 4: Harrison Coffman as Gregor in “Metamorphosis” (2013)
Pic 5: Bailey Story as Dalton; Annie Bulleit as Pace in “The Trestle At Pope Lick Creek” (2022)
Pic 6: Bryce Woodard as Oberon; Michael Guarnieri as Puck in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” (2023)
Pic 7: Foreground – Jake Minton as Woyzeck; Background – Steph Hall as Hera; Jay Padilla-Hayter as Margaret; Marc McHone as Zeus in “Clash of the Woyzecks” (2024)
Pic 8: Bailey Preston as Gwendolyn; Annie Bulleit as Cecily in “It’s Earnest Y’All!” (2023)