From the 13th May to the 4th June, York Theatre Royal, in conjunction with Pilot Theatre, will be staging the premiere performance of EM Forster’s short story The Machine Stops, adapted for stage by Neil Duffield. With an original score by John Foxx, electronic music pioneer and original lead singer of Ultravox, and Benge, experimental electronic musician, and direction by York Theatre Royal’s Associate Director Juliet Forster, The Machine Stops promises to be an exciting adaptation.
Best known for his novels A Passage to India and Howard’s End, both made into Oscar-winning films, EM Forster was a social and literary critic and essayist as well as celebrated novelist. He first published The Machine Stops in 1909 in which he prophetically warns of the dangers to society that technology possesses, focussing on isolation and reliance upon the machines we create. His predictions of everyday abilities we have in today’s world, such as instant messages, televisual messages and the internet and how we rely on these components is rather chilling. I went to speak to director Juliet Forster about the eerie short-story and more.
Juliet started drama at school and realised she wanted to continue it at university, so she took a degree in Theatre at the University of Birmingham. At first she was more interested in the acting side but as she continued she found “the other side of things” more intriguing with directing the most enjoyable. After university she set up her own theatre company with friends from Birmingham.
When I asked Juliet which play she most enjoyed directing she struggled, saying, “they’re like your children…you can’t have a favourite” but managed to conclude that it was her 2009 production of Twelfth Night as it allowed her to be extremely creative.
The main piece of advice that Juliet would give to aspiring directors, or anybody who would like a career in the arts, is to never wait for a job, saying you must “never be afraid to make your own work” telling me that often the best pieces of creative work come out of times when there are certain limits as you “truly have to be creative”. She also urges future directors especially to watch anything and everything, even if you believe that you won’t like it as you can always be inspired.
I asked Juliet what drew her to EM Forster’s story and she told me that she had first read the novel in 1998 and immediately thought that it would be perfect for stage adaption: “some things just read as a good play”. She initially wanted to put it on in 1999 due to the millennium bug – the confusion that occurred with the start of a new millennium due to computers being programmed to only show the last two digits of a year, ie, making 1900 and 2000 indistinguishable. She wasn’t able to though, but is now happy that this was the case as she says it is much more relevant today due to the huge increase in the advances in technology that have occurred, even in such a small space of time.
The Machine Stops is extremely descriptive, with every aspect explained in great detail, meaning that you can’t help but imagine the scene incredibly clearly. This can’t be the case in a stage play, and I wondered how this aspect of the story had been translated into the play. Juliet responded with very interesting techniques.
Firstly, in the original score by Foxx and Benge, information or emotion is almost subconsciously communicated through how the music makes one feel, this in conjunction with the set brings a lot of the visual descriptions to life. For personal descriptions a couple of different techniques are used, one being that the machine itself narrates parts of the play and another by using things like contacts, “similar to Facebook friends” giving extra information.
When asked who she would recommend go and see this play, she replied that “anyone would enjoy it, particularly if you’re interested in science-fiction or speculative-fiction, or simply physical theatre”.
Finally, I asked Juliet how she felt about our relationship with technology. She explained that it is a very difficult question to answer as technology, firstly, comes in so many different forms, eg, something so taken for granted and as ‘simple’ as contact lenses are a form.
However, if we view technology in a similar way to how it is presented in the play, Juliet takes the view that technology expands people and society. However, this also comes at a cost. Right at the start of the story we see how the main character, Kuno, lives on the other side of the world to his mother and would like to see her in person. She is more content to simply talk to him through the machine. In this way we can see how it brings people together, but can just as easily isolate them.
On a similar line, Juliet brought up the potential of search engines, how they give us the power to expand our knowledge, yet, the way they are designed reflects what we search, and so in a way, narrow what we can learn. However, in conclusion, Juliet believes that technology is a good thing and what we need to be careful with is how we interact with it.
The Machine Stops is on at York Theatre Royal from 13th May to the 4th June, from where it will do a short tour to The Point, Eastleigh, New Theatre Royal, Portsmouth and the Platform Shift + festival in Budapest.