We sat down for an exclusive interview with Tim Crouch, whose landmark play An Oak Tree is returning to the stage following two decades as one of the most influential works of 21st-century theatre, with a different guest performer joining Crouch for every performance without prior rehearsal or knowledge of the play.
This show runs until 15th November at The Other Palace Theatre – Tickets here
Playing a father who has to trust the man who killed his daughter, how do you find real trust for someone you’re meant to despise?
I’m hesitant to talk too much about the story in case a future second actor might be reading this… It’s the grieving Father in An Oak Tree who’s played by a different actor every time, not me. I play the man responsible for his daughter’s death. My character has bereaved the Father of his world in the same way that the playwright has bereaved the second actor of their ‘world’ – the world of rehearsal, preparation, lines learnt, etc. The big theme in both form and content in An Oak Tree is loss. The Father is lost and they are played by an actor who is also ‘lost’. In the story no one despises anyone. Both characters turn to each other for help. ‘Will you help? I need help.’ A core of absolute trust runs through this play. It’s trust from the second actor towards me. Trust that it is my duty each time to honour and celebrate.
The second actor has no idea what’s coming, how do you decide when to protect them and when to let them flounder?
I think it’s a big enough ask of anyone to walk on stage with no knowledge of what’s coming. All my subsequent actions are therefore about protecting the second actor in that vulnerable state. The play is not an exercise in cruelty. I want the actor to feel supported and successful at every moment. Supported to the degree that enables them to feel free on the journey. Remember that every word we both speak in the play is scripted. That script tells a story. A story that leads both characters to flounder at times – in the fiction. What isn’t scripted is the relationship between me and the second actor which is played out live each performance – and which is profoundly different each time.
Has a co-star’s raw, unrehearsed reaction ever changed the scene for you too?
Yes. Every time. The deal with An Oak Tree is that I go into each performance genuinely open to what’s coming. In many respects the second actor leads me – not that they’ll feel it’s like that. They’re doing whatever their instinct prompts them to do – in terms of pace, rhythm, emotion, energy, physicality. etc – and I’m responding in return. The second actor in performance is different every time, so I have to be different every time. There have been moments where the second actor has moved the play to places I’ve never been to on stage. They go and I go with them. They don’t know the ‘right’ way to do the show – as there is NO right way to do they show. How they do that performance is the right way and my job is to honour it.
Is handing a stranger the script live every night your own way of surrendering to suggestion or not?
Both. In the past with this show people have accused me of being a control freak. Certainly there is the optic of control on the stage (and in the story), but I’m inviting someone into my play who doesn’t know it. Someone who will never deliver the lines in the way i might have imagined the lines would be delivered. Someone who hasn’t spent six weeks in a rehearsal room making everything look spontaneous. In that respect, I’m absolutely surrendering the play to what that actor brings in the moment. The play was written to never be perfect. And then that word ‘suggestion’. All art is a suggestion. I suggest I’m Hamlet. I suggest this is Elsinore. What else can we do? And then it’s down to the audience to accept the suggestion. (Here’s me talking about suggestion https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pb11GYJ7wY&t=2s) With An Oak Tree the concept of suggestion is uppermost because the character I play is a stage hypnotist. And hypnotism, like art, is all about the suggestion.
Has any co-star’s interpretation genuinely changed how you play your half of the story?
An Oak Tree operates on countless different registers. Sometimes the play vibrates with the playfulness of the game. Sometimes it vibrates with the heartbreak of the story. Everything is influenced by everything – by the gender of the second actor, the size of the second actor, the soul of the second actor, the fire in them, the fear in them, the fun in them. Just think of the difference between David Threlfall (An Oak Tree alumnus 2023), say, and Laurie Anderson (An Oak Tree alumna 2007). I want them to be true to themselves in this play and every actor is as different as every human is different. I’ve had actors who have laughed their way through it. Actors who have cried their way through it. No response is wrong. I know the show has gone well when I’m also laughing and crying.