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Interviews
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Adriano Shaplin Philip Fisher meets Adriano Shaplin, writer and director for the First of the Firsts winner, The Pugilist Specialist (the Riot Group). Very few playwrights have even written their first play by the age of 24. Adriano Shaplin has three Fringe Firsts from Edinburgh, the first when he was 20. His play, The Pugilist Specialist has just been awarded the coveted First of the Firsts for the very best play in town. It is also attracting some interesting audiences: Sir Sean Connery attended the show the night before this interview. Whilst a smile is never far from his face and he has great charm, this is a young man with very strong opinions. He has recently been quoted in the press in a debate about playwriting and unlike many, is only too willing to point out the weaknesses of some other playwrights. He is also keen to praise and singles out White Cabin at St Stephen's as the pick of the shows that he has seen in Edinburgh. Towards the end of the festival, the young man admits that he is very tired. Performing every day for four solid weeks is clearly an effort. He has been buoyed by the response of the critics to his latest play. This has been universally positive and his only regret is that the sell-out audiences have included a lot of tourists who have been drawn in by the hype but were never likely to understand and fully enjoy the play. The amazing thing about The Riot Group is that, despite the fact that they are one of the top companies to perform in Edinburgh each year and regularly have an English tour thereafter, they are almost unknown in United States. They are forced to play in tiny theatres or even to pay to put their plays on. This means that even though the company has been together for six and a half years and seven plays, each of the four members of the company has to support themselves by other means. Shaplin himself teaches acting at Berkeley, which is ironic, since he lasted only one semester on a theatre studies degree, which he found ineffectual, before turning to anthropology. The others paint houses and teach and Stephanie Viola had to give up her job to undertake the current tour. There is a plaintive note in his voice as he makes it abundantly clear that each member of the company would much rather be working in theatre full-time. Despite his change of degree course, he has a real sense of theatrical history and regards the ancient Greeks as his greatest influences. "Their stories are recognisable and familiar. The style of writing is explicitly theatrical and they know how to tell a story that people have access to". He draws parallels with his own writing when he says that "the Greeks chose subjects that people really knew about so that they would write plays about war. The Greek plays use the best drama ever created and they use stories that people recognise". In America at the beginning of the 21st century, the subject of war is once again one that everyone will recognise. It has formed the basis for much of The Riot Group's work, as has "the way in which personal reactions are harnessed by government and media to make a political point to a malleable audience" - political spin. These are the prime motivators behind their reworking of King Lear, Victory at the Dirt Palace, and even more so, The Pugilist Specialist which takes an oblique look at the way in which America has pursued "the war on terror". It is inevitable that in the current climate, Shaplin's plays will be seen as deeply political and in America at least, potentially very provocative. He has no problem with this as he feels strongly that "we are a political company and I am a political writer". He has strong views on the way in which governments operate "Democracy should be based on reason, not emotion - theatre should be based on this. It is right that 9/11 is regarded as a tragedy but everybody still had to go to work the next day. It is just a fact and its real meaning will never see daylight". Shaplin's career in theatre started when he was 14, living in a small town in America. He joined a vibrant local community theatre and trying out a lot of different jobs. "There were no boundaries between roles and everybody swapped over. I didn't think you needed a special talent to be a writer ". When he started university aged 17, he got together with Stephanie Viola and Drew Friedman and formed The Riot Group. As he puts it, "we weren't actors but we started to produce plays". The work is all written specifically for the company and the roles are tailored to each of the individuals' personalities. This explains why Shaplin gets to play the witty sardonic ones! Six and a half years on, he still doesn't work with anyone else, although he now accepts that financially it may be necessary to accept outside commissions. Despite the very filmic nature of his work, his real love is theatre and can't imagine deriving as much pleasure from working in any other medium. "Theatre needs to be an end in itself, not just a stepping stone to other media". Adriano Shaplin is a very sharp cookie and it should only be a matter of time before his ambition to become a full-time writer and actor is fulfilled. The first step is a London transfer for The Pugilist Specialist. The Riot Group is one of the most exciting companies around at the moment and following their First of the Firsts their name will be on far more lips than ever before. Shaplin's kind of political writing is all too rare and demands to be seen by a much wider audience than even a four-week sell-out in Edinburgh can provide.
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