The Artistic Directors of Ockham’s Razor answer: why Tess?

Charlotte Moony and Alex Harvey, artistic directors of Ockham’s Razor talk about bringing the classic Thomas Hardy novel Tess of the D’Urbervilles to the stage in a ground-breaking circus adaptation at York Theatre Royal from 08-11 May.

“Since we started telling people that our next show would be an adaption of Thomas Hardy’s classic novel, Tess of the D’Urbervilles the question we have been asked more than any other is: Why Tess?

The answer to this starts with the fact that we both love the novel – in fact at times have felt a bit haunted by it. Despite being written in 1891 it still seems to speak to this moment in time as it explores questions of privilege, class, poverty, agency, the need for non-industrialised agriculture, female desire and solidarity. It also pulses with such a deep vein of beautiful pain around love and loss, heartbreak and yearning like no other novel.

Tess of the D’Urbervilles has always struck us as such a very physical and visual book. Hardy paints this story with images alongside the deep poetry of the language and at the centre of it is Tess, a character who experiences the world physically in all her journeying, labouring, desiring and battling against the fate dealt out to her. It is incredibly nuanced in its evocation of female relationships, sexual violence and female desire.

“We have long experience of working with reframing the female body with circus looking at strength, capability and agency and know there is a radical staging of this that is possible and also one where the subtlety, nuance and poetry of the novel could be captured by movement.

Tess has been adapted before for TV and film but it always struck us that the poetry of the book, the radical nature of it and the strength and heroism of Tess was often lost in translation. That she was presented as an oddly passive and bloodless character. Over time we became increasingly convinced that circus and all the physicality of it would be the perfect medium for capturing all the many elements of the novel.

So we sat in our kitchen and over three weeks read the novel to each other and sketched out chapter by chapter, phase by phase, how we would imagine this painted on the stage. Weaving together Hardy’s words with our physical storytelling.

Over time we came to write out our adaption where the story is told to the audience by an actor playing Tess – speaking to us just before her execution, looking back at the events that have led to that moment. She tells her story using Hardy’s words while an ensemble re-creates her memories onstage: the extreme physicality of the movement evoking the depth of emotion. Sometimes our actor becoming swept up by the ensemble and drawn into the action so that it is also an adaption which deals with the act of telling, of memory, of control and of fate.

As we have begun to devise the piece we are working with an actor and an ensemble of six incredibly skilled circus performers who use their strength and circus language to evoke the emotion and the physical labour of the novel. They create Hardy’s Wessex onstage wielding a series of wooden planks, shifting walls, ropes and swathes of linen to make sets that can unfold and which they balance upon, climb, carry and construct to become the vast landscapes and interior worlds of Hardy’s Wessex. Both a literal landscape and a depiction of Tess’s inner world – a parallel which is so strong in Hardy’s writing this pinning and reflection of Tess’s experiences to the very world she inhabits.

One of the surprises of the creation is how much joy and humour there is to find in the novel and the staging. Most people when they think of Tess remember how bleak and heartbreaking it is. It is a tragedy but also there is a seam of joy in there which is captured by the play and collaboration of the ensemble and there is a reading where Tess moves towards annihilation but also action.

There is also a practical answer to Why Tess? This book is part of the A Level syllabus and so is also an opportunity for us to reach new young audiences and introduce them to our art form and how it is perfectly placed to adapt this book about fate, class, struggle, heartbreak, yearning and redemption.

Finally, we have been creating shows for 18 years – with each creation learning how to evoke worlds, relationships and meaning in circus. We feel that we have been working towards the making of this show for many years and now is the time to make it.”

Tess is at York Theatre Royal from 08-11 May.

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