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Interviews
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Ivan Cutting - Acute Angles East Anglia is home to one of the best regional theatre companies in the country. Jill Sharp talks to Eastern Angles' artistic director, Ivan Cutting, to find out what makes the Suffolk-based touring company uniquely successful.. At a time when West End productions like Acorn Antiques the Musical are closing from lack of interest, Eastern Angles Theatre Company is so popular, it's looking for a larger venue. But if an old theatre was offered to them, the company's founder and artistic director Ivan Cutting would have to turn it down. He also considers churches, the favoured location for so many arts centres these days, to be 'uncongenial to drama.' Ideally, he'd like an old warehouse or large space away from residential and commercial areas, but he's not hopeful. Ivan Cutting was one of a group of five who founded Eastern Angles nearly twenty years ago, establishing the Sir John Mills Theatre in a section of the converted Ipswich Record Office. Since then, the company have performed 17 of their enormously popular Christmas shows in the theatre, as well as touring the region's barns and village halls with a wide variety of locally-based dramas. Cutting was greatly influenced by the work of Peter Cheeseman, who produced innovative stage documentaries on local subjects at Stoke's Victoria Theatre in the 1960s and 70s. 'I did drama at Bristol and acted for a while, but realised I wasn't going to be a great actor,' he admits. So he returned to his native Suffolk with the aim of setting up a company that would work along similar lines. 'Pat (Whymark - one of the original 'gang of five') is still with us. She does all our music.' In fact, music has played a significant role in some of the documentary dramas, as well as in the Christmas shows; most recently in Margaret Down Under - the sequel to Margaret Catchpole, about the Ipswich horsethief transported to Australia. In these plays, rousing harmonic singing is a powerful way of shifting the dramatic mood, though Cutting's modest claim is that it 'helps with scene changes.' Cutting writes, adapts and directs plays for the company, but he also commissions other writers (the Margaret plays were written by Alastair Cording), and auditions actors specifically for each new production. The wonderful Another Three Sisters, his adaptation of Chekhov's play, arose from a fortuitous combination of circumstances. Cutting was reluctant to accept when three actresses asked him to direct them in the original Chekhov. 'There's no point us trying to do what the West End or National Theatre already do. We can't hope to come up to their production standards with our budget and resources.' But suggestions about using the 1980s closure of Garrett's at Leiston as a subject offered thematic links with Chekhov's play as did the story of three of the Garrett sisters, the most famous of whom is Elizabeth Garrett Anderson. The play that resulted was an absorbing East Anglian drama that also managed to feel convincingly Chekhovian. Along with their brief of presenting drama that is relevant to the region, the company also travels across the whole of East Anglia from Sheringham to Saxmundham and Loddon to Lowestoft, taking with them a few rows of comfy seating and a simple set, so that they can conveniently perform in venues as diverse as tithe barns and village halls. Their team of volunteer front-of-house 'angels' travels with them, providing audiences with a good cup of interval coffee. Surprisingly, the company attracts little attention from London. 'They rarely make their way out here,' smiles Cutting, 'and when they do, it tends to be patronising: "a surprisingly good production considering the circumstances".' Cutting is unconcerned by this, and his commitment to regional touring theatre includes working as the current chair of the Pride of Place consortium, planning the next biannual festival due to take place in Ipswich and Woodbridge from March 28 - April 2, 2006. Taking on this role in addition to directing, commissioning and writing, Cutting not unreasonably describes himself as 'too busy'. He'd like to do more writing, and has a dozen or so ideas lined up waiting to land, but he'd like to have the luxury of time to polish his work. 'Usually there's only enough time to photocopy the second draft and get it out to the actors.' Cutting admits that his workshop, collaborative method of scripting and directing is a very demanding way to work, but the company's loyal audiences evidently consider it worthwhile. The tour of their current production, Beyond the Breakers, has been extended for several weeks. But it's the great popularity of Eastern Angles' Christmas shows - the run was completely sold out weeks ahead last year - that finally prompted a search for that elusive larger premises. 'I don't think we'll find one in time,' says Cutting, 'but we've got a plan… This year, instead of our usual seven weeks, we'll be running the show for eight.' For details of current and forthcoming productions contact Eastern Angles at:
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