CURIOUS DIRECTIVE: JACK LOWE
Curious Directive is a theatre company which is forging an inspiring new production path. This collaboration-based arts company has helped to pave the way for multimedia science-inspired performance in a growing climate of poly-authored, post-playwright plays. Indeed, it was one of the first UK-based companies to stream its shows live, via ‘Periscope’. We spoke to their Artistic Director, CEO, and Technical Dramaturg, Jack Lowe, who explained his aim to ‘encourage the evolution of methodology, form and content’ in theatre.
A son of an actress and a science teacher, Lowe was introduced to the interplay between these seemingly disparate disciplines at an early age. Later, he trained as an actor at the reputed Parisian drama school, École Internationale de théâtre Jacques Lecoq, an institution which introduced new methods into the art of mime, physical theatre and movement-based theatre. Lecoq created the readily used ‘Seven Levels of Tension’ which describes levels of embodied tension that correspond with a particular movement style and body language. Lowe, in his first year, was encouraged once more to study the elements, and, in this case, poetry in three dimensions, drawing parallels with disciplines such as architecture.
After graduating, he gravitated towards aspects of theatre which focus on emotional truth, as featured in works by Pina Bausch and the earlier work of Complicité (founded by Annabel Arden), who both created a ‘seemingly seamless connection point between complex subject matter and having a good time’. Having been influenced by Europe’s well-funded experimental theatre, he aimed to develop a piece that was not as attached to the written word as British theatre had appeared to be to him at the time.
This starting point lead to the development of the first piece produced by his company Curious Directive, Return to The Silence (2008-2010), which took medical case notes stored in their local library in Norfolk and combined them with the complexity and power of the work of neurologist and author Oliver Sacks (e.g. 1973, 1985), whose detailed and compassionate biographies of patients have been recognised for their sensitivity and enduring impact (Stein, 1995), inspiring various stage arts including plays (e.g. Pinter, 1982), ballets (e.g. Rambert Dance Company, 2010), and operas (e.g. Nyman et al., 1996). Lowe wanted to develop the company’s artistic policy around the relationship between contemporary science and narrative storytelling, and to pose the idea of a scientist ‘who was not solely defined by [their] science’.
This then paved the way for several award-winning productions made in direct collaboration with scientific experts on the subjects they explored. In fact, though these collaborations rely on scientific study, in the writing of the pieces, they never approach playwrights. ‘We’re never going to be creating a piece like Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen (1998) that relies on brilliant performances to [satisfy] the audience … we devise the work and then our collaborator will look through it. When we worked on Pioneer (2014-2015), Dr Lewis Dartnell (consultant on Astrobiology, an author, presenter and Professor of Science Communication at the University of Westminster who has written extensively on astrobiology (Dartnell, 2007), the knowledge which underpins civilisation (Dartnell, 2015), and the impact of geology upon human evolution and history (Dartnell, 2020)) was instrumental in the narrative structures that we were coming up with.’ This sense of constant communication as a staple in the rehearsal room and in devising stages of every show, while poly-authored in nature (many creatives sitting in a circle with laptops), encourages a powerful focus on the ‘weighting’ of the story they intend to highlight. ‘The central [idea] is that it’s got to be a story that you would listen to someone tell in short form in two minutes at the pub. You’ve got to feel that the story you’re telling someone will be something they might want to tell their friend about afterwards.’ And the forward-thinking production company has also explored fringe science topics such as Quantum Biology, which was explored in their show Spindrift (2016) and in their conversations with Johnjoe McFadden and Jim Al-Khalili, (Professors of Physics and Molecular Genetics at the University of Surrey and authors of articles which include McFadden, 2000; Al-Khalili and McFadden, 2015; Al-Khalili, 2012).
Not only do Curious Directive use the tools of the stage, but they also employ those of film, sound, augmented reality and virtual reality and the inclusion of these elements posed a challenge when they came to publishing their plays. ‘It feels like a ginormous responsibility for the midwifery of this type of work, to get [the publishing] rights, so that people think differently about what we mean by collaborative art-making.’ Often the stories were formed not only by the subject or study but by the place from which they were inspired or intended to be performed in which posed another challenge in conveying that in the written word so that they may one day be re-made. With Pioneer (2014-2015), Lowe experienced a visceral reaction to the atmosphere he encountered during a debate on Mars in the Natural History Museum, and so became motivated to recreate that feeling on stage. During a solo holiday in Bali, Lowe found a new level of connection with the corals while scuba diving to pass the time, and so the virtual reality infused show Frogman (2020) was born. Gastronomic (2018-2020), again, was a recreation of his family’s passion for food and so the augmented reality of a table top became the muse for the collective’s canvas.
One way of widening access to the show’s message and its multimedia facets was to Live Stream, a tool of which Curious Directive was a early adopter. ‘The reason was that we are more [into] investigating the innovative approaches in making work when you’re restricted to the digital format.’ Responding to the limitations of lockdown, they created Science Club Digital, with support from Norwich Freeman’s Charity and Pledge Norwich, a Norwich City Council Fund. This project provided a different kind of interactive format online for people to engage with scientists and their stories and to devise possible narratives for future Curious Directive production, covering topics including bee-keeping, dendrology, forensic science, and precision engineering.
Next on the horizon for Jack Lowe and Curious Directive is a project in which they look back to look forward. A study into the mode of image-based communication used in Upper Palaeolithic cave art, which hopes to shed light on this form of proto-writing and what it reveals about human instincts at that time and what that might reveal about where we are going. ‘I love that we now have this interesting opportunity to put on this play at a time where I think people will have really done a lot of excavating, personally.’
For more information on Jack Lowe and Curious Directive, please visit: https://www.curiousdirective.com/
References
Al-Khalili, J., (2012). Pathfinders: the golden age of Arabic science, London: Penguin.
Al-Khalili, Jim, & Johnjoe McFadden. (2014) Life on the Edge : the Coming of Age of Quantum Biology. London: Bantam Press
Dartnell, L., (2007). Life in the universe: a beginner's guide, Oxford: Oneworld.
Dartnell, L., (2015). The knowledge: how to rebuild our world after an apocalypse, London: Vintage Books.
Dartnell, L., (2020). Origins: how the Earth shaped human history, London: Vintage Books.
Frayn, M., (1998). Copenhagen, London: Methuen Drama.McFadden, J., (2000). Quantum evolution, London: Harper Collins Publishers.
Nyman et al., (1996.) The man who mistook his wife for a hat: chamber opera, London: Chester Music.
Pinter, H., (1982). A kind of Alaska: a play, London: French.
Rambert Dance Company, (2010). Awakenings. Available from: https://www.rambert.org.uk/performance-database/works/awakenings/ [Accessed 19 February 2021)
Sacks, O., (1973). Awakenings, London: Duckworth.
Sacks, O., (1986). The man who mistook his wife for a hat, London: Picador.
Stein, S. M. (1995) ‘The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat,’ British Journal of Psychiatry. Cambridge University Press, 166(1), pp. 130–131.
All images shown courtesy of © 2021 Curious Directive