We sat down for a quick chat with Tommaso Giacomin, Italian theatre-maker and director based in Brighton and Artistic Director of tgworkstheatre. Has has recently been nominated for a Stage Debut Award.
1. What differences and similarities have you noticed between English and French theatrical cultures, and even between London and Brighton?
It’s interesting because, despite training in Paris, I actually found that the kind of physical and experimental theatre associated with Lecoq, clown and devised work feels much more prominent in the UK. There’s a reason why so many British theatre makers go to Paris to train at Lecoq, and that was actually one of the things that eventually attracted me to the UK.
Obviously I can only speak from my own experience of France, which was mainly Paris and a little bit of the south, but I sometimes felt there was more resistance to challenging traditional ideas of what theatre should be. In the UK, I was struck by how central theatre is to the culture and how enormous the fringe world is.
Brighton feels different again. It’s smaller and much more community led. There’s a real commitment to championing local artists and using theatre to engage with and support communities. I’ve experienced that through working with Brighton Dome and Brighton People’s Theatre. I suppose what I’d love to see is some of the risk taking I’ve encountered in London finding its way more into Brighton’s mainstream programming too.
2. How has studying and training with both Jacques Lecoq and at RADA influenced your work?
I feel incredibly lucky to have trained at both Lecoq and RADA. When I make theatre, I often think about it like constructing a building. I think about structure, what works and what doesn’t, how the building stands, but also how people are going to enter it and interact with it. In that sense, Lecoq taught me the craftsmanship. It taught me how to build the walls and make the building stand. It gave me a really strong understanding of theatrical forms, structure and the relationship with the audience.
RADA, on the other hand, taught me how to be an architect. It pushed me to question those structures and create one of those buildings you look at and think, “Oh my God, how does that even stand?”
Lecoq gave me an incredibly strong foundation in what makes theatre work, while RADA pushed me to think outside the box, take risks, not be afraid of getting it wrong, and really develop my own voice.
3. What impact- positive and negative- has building a career and finding your place in theatre without industry connections had on you and your work?
It has been hard coming into the theatre world with no connections whatsoever. Sometimes you feel like you’re constantly fighting just to get through the door, before you’ve even had the chance to show your work. Being a migrant and working class adds further challenges, and sometimes so much energy goes into simply accessing opportunities that you have less space to focus on the work itself.
The positive side is that, because I didn’t have one clear route into the industry, I had to try lots of different ones. I’ve acted, made my own shows, done scratch nights, approached venues and collaborated with people from very different disciplines. That has exposed me to different ways of making theatre and made my own practice richer.
It also meant building a network very organically. After almost ten years, I sometimes walk into a theatre space and suddenly realise, “Oh, I know half the people here!” So not having an obvious route has ultimately given me a really eclectic community of people and practices around me, and that has definitely shaped the artist I am today.
4. What advice do you have for working class theatre makers for surviving the class-based pressures of society today?
I think my advice would be to really focus on yourself. Focus on what you want to say and how you want to say it!
Something that has helped me is accepting that, because I’m working class, and I’ve had to work two or three different jobs just to sustain myself and pay my rent, it has taken me longer to develop the kind of theatre I want to make. That can be incredibly frustrating, and I don’t want to romanticise struggle at all, but I’ve had to accept that taking longer doesn’t mean I won’t eventually get to where I want to be!
It’s a marathon, not a sprint. Try not to measure your progress against someone who might have completely different circumstances from yours.
Ultimately, keep focusing on your art. There is only one of you, so your artistic voice is inherently yours. Try to find clarity in that, shut out some of the noise around you, and keep working.
5. What were your aims when building your migrant-led, cross-disciplinary, highly physical experimental theatre company, TG WORKS? Have they been fulfilled?
Honestly, TG WORKS was born slightly out of anger. After one of the hundreds of rejections that we face as actors and theatre makers, I just thought, “F***k it. Let’s create our own space.”
I wanted to create something that could bring together the collaborators I’d met over the years and allow us to focus on what we actually care about, which is the work, rather than all the noise surrounding it. I created the company alongside my collaborators, company manager Manuela Pierri, Stephanie Bruckner and producer Heather Ralph, with this idea of continuing to push forward, make theatre, and ultimately let the work speak for itself.
It was also about moving away from everything being generated by one person. I wanted to cherish collaboration and build something with an identity of its own, something that could support not only me but the people I work with, help us make our mark in the industry and, hopefully, eventually allow us to make a living from this art form.
Have those aims been fulfilled? Not yet, but we’ve only been going for a year. There’s so much more we want to achieve, but we’re moving in the right direction!
6. What effect do the absurd or surreal have on an audience in theatrical explorations of contemporary issues?
Most of the shows I make are absurd or surreal because making theatre is, in some ways, how I try to digest the world around me. And right now, the world itself feels incredibly absurd. Some of the things we’re witnessing almost feel beyond reality.
So there’s an interesting paradox there. Sometimes starting from the absurd can actually bring you closer to reality. Life can feel so strange that portraying it through absurdism onstage can somehow feel incredibly truthful.
That doesn’t mean that naturalistic theatre can’t achieve the same thing, of course, but I think absurdity allows you to create different layers within a piece. The audience isn’t necessarily being given one story or one interpretation. There’s more space for them to enter the work themselves, make connections and find their own meaning within it.
Some of the audience responses to our latest show have been incredible in that sense. People have taken very different things from the same piece, and I find that really exciting.
So I think I’ll probably always be drawn to the absurd and the surreal. And from what I’ve experienced, audiences are very much up for it.