PLYMOUTH’S DRUM THEATRE HOSTS MOVING PLAY IVAN AND THE DOGS
Audiences of The Drum theatre in Plymouth are being invited to experience the very different real life childhood of Ivan Mishukov. At four years of age, Ivan walked out of his Moscow apartment and spent the following two years living on the streets where he was adopted by a pack of wild dogs.
247 spoke to the show’s writer, Hattie Naylor, about how influences from her background, in painting, mime and radio drama, equipped her to deal with the challenge of conveying Ivan’s story to a theatre audience.
Hi Hattie, Ivan and the Dogs is not the first time that Ivan’s story has been presented on The Drum stage. In October 2009, the NIE Company dealt with the same story in My Life with the Dogs. Are you familiar with the piece?
Not really, no I’m afraid; I haven’t managed to see it yet but my understanding of the piece is that it’s very physical theatre with members of the company playing dogs while one takes the role of Ivan. It’s very different to the way in which I approached the story.
Was your approached determined more by your diverse background? Mime and radio writing seems to provide you with quite a range of approaches that you could adopt – allowing for either the physical or the textual depending on what you feel would work best.
Definitely, when working on this story I kept going back in my mind to the story of Mowgli in Kipling’s The Jungle Book and how that story worked because Kipling could provide us with the narrative that was going on inside Mowgli’s head. It seemed to me that physical theatre could only show you some aspects of Ivan’s life but couldn’t show you what that really meant to him or how it affected him. This became particularly clear when considering the story for a radio play. That genre only contains text and, if you really want to allow the audience inside, a monologue can be the most effective means.
So this story is presented in the form of a monologue?
Yes, the play is spoken by Ivan to the audience. I felt the only way for us to understand what the experience meant to Ivan was to put him in a position where he could tell us. So, actor takes the part of Ivan later in his lifetime. Looking back on his time with the dogs and relating to the audience how that shaped him. I seemed to me to be the only logical way to present the audience with whole story.
And Plymouth and The Drum are providing the officially launch for the tour?
Yes I’m so excited about it. We’ve been working with an incredible composer and sound designer to create a really filmic feel to the piece. The words will be really supplemented through the music and also the stage itself. We’ve a wonderful set designer who’s come up with really special ways of incorporating projections into the action to really make the story come alive for the audience – particular those who are used to this type of medium.
So you feel the subject matter is something that will connect with a younger audience of theatre goers?
I really do. Ivan’s crazy childhood gives us all a different way of looking at our own childhood and it really connects the audience to their own experiences. It’s not been unusual up to now to find members of the audience crying and I’m really touched that people are finding it that relevant to their own lives. I can’t wait to see how it’s received by the Drum audience.
Ivan and the Dogs is running at the Drum Theatre from Wednesday Sept 29 to Saturday Oct 2.
Words: Alan Butler
