JOC: We went partly for tales which worked well dramatically - there are a number which are very difficult to dramatise - and partly for the famous ones, like the Miller's Tale. The Nun's Priests' Tale came about [as an short opera] not in the least because there's something about the Nun's Priest being a singer.

RS: Yes, I'm very interested in Janacek and his use of animals, so I thought it would be nice to follow a style like The Cunning Little Vixen, and that was in my head.

RS: That's what we've tried to do all the way through, not like the stage version of Canterbury Tales way back in the 60's where they tried to make it all the same. What we've gone for in this one is to make everything different: you switch from something that's very funny to something that's very serious.

JOC: When we originally did it [at Wheatley], it was a very big show in the round, so staging it for the Playhouse has been very hard.

RS: Yes, with a huge cast [at Wheatley].

JOC: So in fact something like this afternoon's rehearsal didn't happen, because people could be anywhere around the edge of the auditorium when they weren't involved. So it's been a major difference placing it on a proscenium stage.

GN: So the original production had a cast large enough for one person per character?

RS: There was hardly any duplication at all - everyone had just one part to do...

JOC: ...but the value of making it more compact than it was - although 27 plus 10 musicians is hardly compact - is that with people doubling you get much more the sense of the tales coming out of the pilgrims' heads. For example, when the Pardoner starts his tale at the beginning [of the show], the Miller ceases to be the Miller, takes off his costume and puts on the gangster costume for his part in the tale. So there's that sense of the stories coming out of the tellers' heads, but they're imagining the people around them on the pilgrimage being part of their story.

RS: The little world of the story grows and gathers people from around.

JOC: It was difficult today to see how everyone was "disposed", because a lot of people were standing around who aren't actually on stage. You don't get the sense of seeing a number of mediaeval pilgrims up there [on the upper levels], watching a tale being performed in a different period down below; but people are obviously dressed as, say, gangsters down here [on the main stage], and I hope it will work visually.

RS: I thought the different worlds were coming through very well today, even without costumes, props, etc. I think that the particular world that each one creates was coming through very strongly.

JOC: That's what you've got to aim for, a different world and a different style. Belinda [Beasley] is directing the Wife of Bath's tale as a fairy tale, from Chaucer's original [In th'olde dayes of the king Arthour ... al was this land fulfild of fayerye]. Whereas the tale set in the Raj [the Franklin's Tale] starts off with photographic tableaux - it's as though he characters have picture frames around them. So that's the idea - you get the sense of a different period and a different style for each tale.

RS: The thing is to go very quickly into another world, and that's the difficulty.

JOC: It's a combination of acting, music, sound, lighting.

JOC: There was one which was purely narrated by three villagers, which I removed because I didn't feel it was sufficiently interesting to look at.

RS: And Chaucer gave a lesson...

JOC: We cut to a modern classroom where children were reading Chaucer. And there were loads of moments with minor pilgrims talking amongst themselves. All that went. But one new tale here is the Wife of Bath's, which wasn't in the original production but which I'd written for another publication a couple of years ago.

GN: So having got the sense of each of the scenes, what comes next? Music or words?

JOC: First, I went home and wrote the Pardoner's Tale, and Roger went off and wrote the Nun's Priest's Tale.

RS: Yes - that was the biggest work for me.

JOC: And we added from there.

RS: Not at all. It was completely different, and it was part of a festival, so it didn't matter if it moved slowly - we had the audience coming in as part of the market, as part of the production, and it moved at a much more leisurely pace. This is much snappier.

JOC: We had goats in a mediaeval market which people came into - we sold a lot of produce! But that was designed as the be-all and end-all of it, until I saw it put on in a couple of schools, and especially by a very skilled group of sixth-formers.

RS: It was wonderful to see the Miller and Cook and all the thugs being acted by girls, because they did it so well!

JOC: But seeing it performed again made it clear which bits had to go.

JOC: A massive number. The whole business of changing from in-the-round to a proscenium stage is very difficult. There are things you can't do - for example, I like traverse [staging] with all sorts of angles, where people don't have to face front and you have much more flexibility. In this one you have to think - it's a major constraint.

RS: It's presentation all the time.

JOC: And the major thing about planning over the last couple of days for this afternoon is how to show a tale and have people watching it [on stage] but not visually cluttering the set. That's a real challenge.

JOC: Yes, but we don't have as many as I originally envisaged. If you sit at the top of the balcony [in the Playhouse], you can only see about 10 or 11 feet of the back wall, and anyone on a raised level would become a pair of feet. That's been a major difficulty. The Miller's Tale at the end needs the upper level on one side and the arcade on the other - I couldn't put any watchers there, but it's a tale that needs watchers, it needs people cheering. And one of the interesting things is for the audience to see another [onstage] audience responding. But we now have a terrific set design which offers us great possibilities.

GN: In a way, you've brought the traverse back in and created a little pocket of reality - "it's only theatre".

JOC: We wanted to underline this from the outset. People are coming on out of costume at the very beginning - it's a bunch of actors who are performing the whole thing. It never ceases to be that but you hope that people will be so drawn in that [the reality] begins to disappear. Certainly, for the almost final moment in the cathedral, we want people to believe that it's a group of pilgrims from the 14th century in Canterbury, and only when they turn back for the final song does it bring us back to reality. Although it was fairly tedious stopping and starting this afternoon, the whole thing rattles along reasonably quickly - it's only about a hour and a half - and you do get the sense of going in and out of different realities.

GN: With the different make up of scenes, have you rehearsed by parts or "holistically"?

RS: Chauntecleer [the Nun's Priest's Tale] had to start early because there's a lot of very difficult music there, so we've been working on that quite hard for a long time, and now we can start to bring it in with the others. The other music can grow a bit more, and I think we'll go on to fine tune it to the last.

JOC: There's a lot of work still to do - it's a very tough show to get together. RS: That really came home to me today - it has this feeling of spontaneity, but it's all so meticulous!

GN: So you've been rehearsing for a month - you have six weeks to go - are you on schedule?

JOC: Yes. The only thing that worries me it the short time we have for getting into the Playhouse on Sunday morning, building the set, doing the tech, doing one dress on Monday and then presenting it on Tuesday. And only six performances. I'd feel more relaxed if we had an extra day in the Playhouse, or two dresses.

Bill Moulford

Webmaster Stephen Whitaker