David Farmer interviewed John Wright during rehearsals for his show, The Evocation of Papa Mas which opened at the Theatre Royal Plymouth on May 4th 2006.

David: Could you tell me a little about your new book?

John: It's a book which puts physical comedy into a context. I didn't want to write a manual, a book that was just about how to do it, and I didn't want to write a dry academic book either. So what we have is something which is full of ideas, full of games and exercises - there are over a hundred games in this book. It's really designed for people who are interested in the role of physical comedy in theatre and how it works in a broader acting context. I'm trying to make it personal, because it all comes from my practice.

Where do all the ideas come from? What are the influences that have fed into the book?

I've been strongly influenced by my training with Philippe Gaulier, Monica Pagneux and Jacques Lecoq. Those are the three architects of my thinking. But the detail, the exercises have come through working with generations of actors and students. The ideas are tried and tested in my practice, in the way I organise rehearsals and the way I try to inspire actors. The book has a lot of direct references - for example I might take a scene from a play and analyse how different laughs could be achieved in the scene or how a particular game informed the scene and how the actors used it. Sometimes I'm using games which were invented by actors during the rehearsal. So it's very much a practitioner's book. It's full of ideas certainly, but its also full of anecdotes - not just for the sake of entertaining you but for making a point and putting things into a context. Everything is entirely from the vocabulary of exercises which I've drawn up and the approaches which I try to use.

What tips might you give visitors to our website about devising theatre with or for young people?

One is not to be too reverent. The last chapter is really about parody, which is generally quite disparaged. A lot of people are very mistrustful about sending things up and of mocking things. But there's an energy in mockery which can be a tremendous creative release. So the thesis behind that is to say, here is an area which is normally discouraged - you don't mock, you don't ridicule things. I'm saying, yes, let's ridicule things, let's look at this energy behind the ridicule and let's use that energy to become a more creative thing so that mockery can give you a way of looking at something, which is bolder, which is bigger, which is more about risk-taking and more audacious and something which you are not reverential about.

One thing I've heard you talk about before is the written text and the performance text. Could you tell us a bit more about that?

In every theatre piece there are always two texts going on. The written text is the thing that is written down that can only be expressed in words. It could be a series of stage directions, or it could be written dialogue. In that sense, it's inviolate. There is a certain amount of meaning which is only there in the text. Now, as soon as you start casting that text, as soon as you bring in a designer who says, "you'll wear this, and you'll move in this space", as soon as you bring in a group of actors who have personalities and ideas about how they are going to play that text and a director who also has a clear idea about how that text should be played, then you're into an area which isn't written down - and this is the performance text. The performance text is the sum of all the creative imaginations in the room at the time - they all contribute.

The first modern theatre to really bite in this country was The Royal Court. After the war the idea of a text-based theatre - and I'm not in any way saying this is wrong - I'm saying there's an imbalance here. If you are an entirely text-based driven company where you sit round and negotiate the action of every line, it's the text that is put forward. We live in a culture where playwrights are really at the zenith of this triangle. Now what I'm proposing is that there is another way of looking at it where the playwright is part of a circle as another contributor, another creative voice in the room. The more you acknowledge a performance text, the more this sacred position of the playwright is changed - not necessarily for the better - I'm not saying this is an easier way of doing it, it's just different. I'm in a strange position now, because I've written text - and I've got to acknowledge the performance text within it, which is really interesting and I think a really healthy thing to do.

Well, thanks, very much John and I look forward to seeing the show. Good luck with the rest of the sessions.

Thank you.