We sat down for an exclusive interview with Joy Nesbitt whose shows JULIUS CAESAR VARIETY SHOW and The King of All Birds comes to Edinburgh Fringe.
JULIUS CAESAR VARIETY SHOW runs at Red Lecture Theatre at Summerhall – Tickets here
The King of All Birds runs at Former Gent’s Locker Room – Tickets here.
Do you think the intentions of writers matter at all in terms of how their work should be received?
I think theatre is a conversation between audience and artist. As a writer, your intentions definitely do matter. Intentions are the center of the effectiveness of your play, and you can feel when a writer’s intention isn’t clear. That said, just like any conversation, there’s always a danger that things get lost in translation, and I think as a writer if your intention is clear, you’ve done your job. Now you have to accept the consequences of the conversation you started with your clear intention in mind.
How does your work change when you take it from script to play?
Because I’m both a writer and director, I treat all of my scripts as a blueprint for my team and my cast. For this play especially, we have made a true ensemble piece, and the script is meant to be shifted and morphed based on who is playing these roles. So in that way, I’m not precious at all about what’s on the page, and we play a lot of games and improvisation in rehearsal to make a piece that feels specific to this team. I love collaboration like that!
Do you think there’s a pressure or expectation for artists to only explore their own identity or identities in their work? Should this be the case?
As a Black artist, I have often felt the pressure to create work that encapsulates the whole Black experience from my perspective. I think that’s a burden that is placed on too many artists who are not straight white wealthy men. I can’t listen to that pressure. I think the most free that I’ve ever felt was when I decided that I could only write from my own experiences and research. We shouldn’t be asking artists to explain minority experiences to the majority, we should be asking artists to create work about specific experiences. In that specificity, we can actually find connection despite our differences.
There’s an idea that the more an artist- writer, actor, musician- suffers or pushes themselves to their limits or even beyond, the better their work ends up being. Do you think that’s true at all?
I think that’s totally not true. I think that’s a capitalist pressure that we create to make our work sound more interesting. You don’t have to suffer for your art, you have to be able to feel the feelings you have and articulate them in a way that feels clear. That’s what’s hard about theatre currently, we’re constantly at war with our budgets.
What research did you do into the 2023 Dublin riots and how or in what form did it make its way into the finished piece?
I wrote this play in response to an experience I had during the riots myself. I was directing a play with a fully Black cast and it was our one night only performance. During the show, the riot broke out and as the curtain went down, we had to scramble to get out of the theatre. We had to shelter in place for a bit and hide from the glass doors of the theatre. It was so serious and, retrospectively, hilarious to see a group of theatre people navigating a riot. I wrote this play in response to the way that the politics of our play was in direct conflict with the politics of the riot outside, and I think it makes the play this absurdist commentary of how our world and art are in constant conversation with each other.
Is it important for writers to explore political events in their work?
Yes, I think all good art, in one way or another, is in conversation with politics. This is not to say that it is political, it is to say that your work is talking about the context within which it is being made, which is inherently political because politics inform the way we live our real lives.