We sat down for a quick chat with Callum Pardoe, writer and director of CHANNEL SURFING AT THE END OF DAYS, which runs at the Hen & Chickens Theatre, Islington from 20 – 25 April. Tickets and info at https://unrestrictedview.co.uk/events/channel-surfing-at-the-end-of-days/#prettyPhoto
How do you balance the different moods throughout the anthology?
I think it’s all about having a knack for sensing degrees of intensity. Channel Surfing is a fairly bleak affair overall, but it’s still essentially about life. Life, to me, is a lot of mundanity and struggle, but there are crucial moments of joy, beauty, and love scattered throughout. The rarity of these brighter moments makes them all the more special, and I wanted to reflect that in the play. You have a lot of discomfort going on, but here and there are these little pockets of light and strangeness. I think the big challenge with judging the mood of the various vignettes in the show was seeing how much heaviness I could trust the audience with before things got too much, my intuition has been my barometer in this case.
How do you translate the cinematic and theatrical work of Lynch and Joy Division into a theatrical setting?
I don’t think I’m looking for translation in this case so much as channelling an essence. I have huge respect for both Lynch and Joy Division, but ultimately my work has to stand alone. We can’t keep recycling things. We must take with us the essence of the past and use it to reach a new future. With Lynch, I was inspired by his work ethic and approach to an uncompromising body of work, and Eraserhead has a particularly thematic resonance with Channel Surfing. To me it always reads as an exploration of a kind of apocalyptic anxiety. Joy Division’s dour, foreboding sound was also helpful. I wanted the mood of Channel Surfing to evoke how I felt listening to Unknown Pleasures for the first time.
What drew you to the anthology format for this piece?
When I started the first draft of the play during the first COVID lockdown, I really wanted to experiment with writing dialogue. It was more of an exercise for me, so I decided not to restrict myself to unity of place, time, and character. It was really liberating to be able to work like that, piecing all of these fragments together in real time. I’m sure it’s not the most conventional way to make and do a play, but it worked for me. When it comes to making art, I don’t really think there are any rules worth paying attention to aside from the ones you give yourself.
The characters don’t know the world is ending – what impact does this have on their behaviour and the tone of the piece more generally?
As far as the characters’ behaviour, I would say it’s been impacted pretty much not at all. Aside from a few outliers, all of them are too deep in the moment of their own lives, and that’s why they’re beautiful. The end times are hurtling towards them, and they’re worried about the book they’re reading, their jobs, or whether the person they love loves them back in return. It’s all so insignificant in the grand scheme of things, and yet, at the same time, unfathomably complex. I think it’s quite a moving thing to see life’s fleeting, individual splendour writ large against something that will subsume it entirely.
Why do you think the apocalypse is so important to us?
Have you seen the news lately?
How do you explore the ‘fleeting beauty, silliness, and heartache’ of humanity in both your writing and directing?
Humanity, as an extension of life, is an inherently chaotic thing. Writing-wise, I’m always on the lookout in the real world for fragments of strangeness, of resonance. They come in all different shapes and sizes, and you come to understand that they last for exactly as long as they’re supposed to. A glimpse of a child on crutches laughing with her mother can last half a second, yet it’s a moment that says so much, exactly what it needs to. You don’t need to turn a moment like that into a full scene to get it across, it just works. In the rehearsal room, I’m chasing those moments again, this time in collaboration with my cast to recapture the feel of the fragment once more. It’s a conjuring trick.