Who are the new characters in Institute, the feature film?
You may have noticed some extra performers in the production shots for Institute, the feature film. While the roles of Martin, Daniel, Karl and Louis are played by the same four devising performers that first toured with the show in 2013, there are a few fresh faces in the film. We asked the film and stage production’s writer and director, Amit, about his decision to include these characters.
Why did you decide to include the three nurses' roles?
"I think the way that they emerged was when I started to have my very first feeling about how the show was going to evolve and translate into a cinematic, filmic experience. One of the things that works on stage is that everyone can play numerous roles, numerous parts, and fulfil many things - it’s almost part of the accepted language of theatre that that’s what works. You almost never see that in film, people playing lots of different characters, the rules of film don’t provide for that and fair enough - that makes sense to me.
"When I started to think about the film I thought; ‘This isn’t going to work for Daniel to be in Martin’s treatment world as he is in the show, why is he there?’. Daniel should be solely fixated on his intimate conditioning, and the carers should be focused on Daniel likewise when he’s having treatment, Martin shouldn’t be there. So that was the genesis of the idea as to how we were going to manage Daniel and Martin’s treatment. We have two big sequences, one around Martin’s treatment and one around Daniel’s treatment, where the carers fulfil the operating and manipulating of the world around them in the show. That’s how it all began, the feeling that Martin and Daniel needed to be removed from each other’s treatment.
"Then I started to think about other carers that might be there, that was my first thought about it. It excited me practically speaking because I thought; ‘This means I can, as director of the film, remove myself from sequences bit by bit and let the carers be there, allowing me more time to be behind the camera rather than in front of it’. As soon as those nurses became real then I had to make sense of them – as soon as you bring characters into something like that you think where have they come from, what is their role, where do they sit in the status of an institute like this? And so you have to follow that through and make sense of it – what is their exit point from the film? The full arc of the whole piece starts to have meaning, and as a writer you have to make sense of it all."
How did you cast them?
“In casting the nurses, the absolute first consideration was that they needed to be fulfilled by Gecko performers - it’s going to be Gecko language, there’s going to be the complication of Gecko choreography fused with object manipulation, and all the things we’re used to doing all the time. It was purely a case of wondering how a collage of characters could fit together, and Miguel, Vanessa and Kenny came to mind pretty quickly. They’re three people that I’ve worked with in various ways – Kenny was in The Wedding, Vanessa came into The Wedding more recently and so I was keen to spend a bit more time with her and develop that relationship, and Miguel had recently become part of the Missing cast so he was another performer that I was keen to spend more time with. Looking at the whole cast you always try to get a balance of characters and energy, and I think Kenny, Miguel and Vanessa have a quality of care and attention that I was attracted to.”
In the stage production of Institute the fleeting moment we see of Margaret has always been played by the touring stage manager. Can you talk about your casting of Margaret for the film, and why we might see more of her?
"The great thing about film is the control that you have, in terms of time, the play of focus that you can have, which means that you can really just have the nearest flavour of a character being there and not being there – cutting away to someone who is out of focus, momentarily, and then they’re gone. These sorts of things are really attractive ideas when you’re thinking about a film. Especially with Martin who imagines that he’s having a number of different interactions with someone who isn’t there, namely his ex-partner Margaret, it becomes a really exciting proposition that you would see fleeting moments of her. And the absence of that person tells a story that, probably in cinema language, is something that we understand and know even more. Margaret being there and not being there can be a really powerful way to tell that story.
"It’s also lovely for Martin, and for me as a performer, to have the presence of. Playing out a relationship to ‘no one’ is what I’m used to doing with Martin in the show, but it’s really lovely to have Katie there to play with even if it’s momentary. It was an opportunity not to be missed.
'Usually it’s a totally practical issue to have a stage manager playing Margaret, again it’s one of those odd conditions of being a touring theatre company. You just want a fleeting moment of a character, but are you going to tour with a performer to do that tiny little moment for 5 years around the world? – You’re not. It’s worked really well having a stage manager sat in total stillness in reaction to Martin’s explosive energy, but I was always going to need to fulfil that with a performer on screen. It leads again to questions of how far can we take this, what’s going to be interesting about this relationship? It starts to become a much more interesting proposition to see where the character sits in the piece. It was an obvious and inevitable development."
In the stage production of Institute we only ever see the ghost of Karl's father in the background. How did you translate and cast this role for the screen?
"Karl’s father, the Ghost, was the most complicated transition in a way, because that was such a theatrical idea in the show – the falling father – for that to become a person was a really important transition. It was one of the hardest images to fulfil for the camera.
"I wanted there to be some sort of connection in terms of likeness with Ryen, who plays Karl, but also just wanted a really alive, emotional face, a character face. These were going to be quite fleeting moments with, essentially, a ghost. I wanted to give Ryen something to play against and to play off, I thought that was really important to get right. I also imagined a lot of mid shots and close ups, so getting the face right was really important. And it also had to be someone we could make look very sick and very ill as a ghost!"