William Rowsey: "Actors tend to be fanciful."

He could be a Viking, but his first name is William and he is actor, director, community theatre worker and open-eyed traveller. 
"Well William, tell me if you are related to William Tell?"
"Not that I know of, but since I was adopted as a child, you never know…" 
William Rowsey, an English actor, director and former student of the Moscow Art Theatre Drama School, is in the La Paz bar in Buenos Aires trying to put together the bits and pieces of his artistic jigsaw puzzle. 
William's eyes bounce around with the curiosity of a newcomer, still trying to 'read' the sounds, smells, objects and faces that surround him. The super correct waiter smiles out of the corner of his mouth as he takes the order for coffee. Except William seems to drink Cachemai tea…
"Well, here we are! What do you think of Argentina?" 
"It's all a bit confusing, since my recent point of reference is Russia, where I recently lived for six and a half years. Naturally people here ask me about London and how it compares with Buenos Aires (people always want to compare everything, it's fascinating). But I find myself with Russia on my mind, because it is the one place outside of England - 'abroad' - that I know very well. But that ends up being even more confusing. Some parts of Buenos Aires remind you of Europe, but others don't. Moscow is physically 'within' Europe, yet many Russian are psychologically and culturally miles away from their European colleagues, somewhere between Europe and Asia… Then you have all those surreal remnants of Communism in Russia, mixed up with a desperate form of capitalism. You think you have landed on the moon... "
"As an actor, do you tend to see things with an actor's eyes?" 
"Actors tend to be fanciful. I can't see things in a clearly sociological way, nor a journalistic one. But as an actor you 'read' what you see. Perhaps it is a lie, but a nice one, like a fable. And sometimes, it stumbles on a wider truth. I find the mix of people here very exciting, the history of the immigration to South America, how they all ended up here. The twists that must have followed since. And the possible desire to emigrate back again! I suppose the hatred felt towards Menem for what he did here is akin to the hatred felt towards Yeltsin in Russia, when Yeltsin allowed State companies to be sold off in totally outrageous manner. The corruption. The ambivalent feeling to some of the United States' foreign and economic policies. And for good reason - even in England the disgust is growing..." 
"In what ways is Argentina different from Russia?" 
"There is more evidence on the surface in Russia: years of neglect, things broken, lack of infrastructure, especially outside of Moscow. But there is also a generosity in Russia, a communal tradition, part cultural, part spiritual, perhaps ironically a partial response to years of enforced communal living and repression under Communism. As in Argentina, there is a strong emphasis on the family. I suppose that is natural. It is in many of the so-called 'First World' consumer societies where the family traditions have been completely eroded. 
"I think in Argentina the problems are less superficially visible. The transport system still works. There is an infrastructure (although having said that - the transport system in London is falling apart, so you see how difficult it is to understand anything in this world!) - I suppose if a tourist comes to Buenos Aires, if they manage to avoid the poor districts, if they don't notice the impoverished middle class - they may not realize that there is a crisis going on. Everything seems to be working. In Russia - it sometimes seems to be engraved on every face. 
"What led you to Russia?" 
"I was offered a place on a course at the State Film Institute in Moscow, but I got side-tracked." 
"Side-tracked?" 
"A director-choreographer from Venezuela offered me work on an art cabaret she was devising in a small studio theatre. I had to make a choice whether to continue at the film institute or work in the theatre." 
"What did you do?" 
"I left the course, I was too excited." 
"You worked in English?" 
"At that time, yes. I also began to play comedy foreigner roles on various Russian TV comedy programs, a kind of Russian 'Saturday Night Live'. I worked part time in a Mexican restaurant, assisted with English editing, got a job in Kazakhstan for 6 months…. The theatre gave me accommodation in a communal flat with other actors, in keeping with a Soviet tradition. It allowed me to learn Russian properly and a lot more besides! Two years later, when I had learnt Russian sufficiently well, I was accepted into the Moscow Art Theatre Drama School and continued my training there." 
"What does it feel like to act in Russian?"
"Difficult. It's a painful language to learn, like being a child again when nobody understands you. Then you learn how to say things you would probably never get away with in your own language! How to make people laugh, all sorts of verbal games. But if it becomes an obsession, that learning, then… But for the actor the problem is not just the words. You can always learn words and repeat them in such a way that the audience will hear them and understand the words themselves. The difficulty is the expression. If you can't express the intention behind the words, if you end up with a flattened or confusing intonation - the drama falls apart. The audience don't understand what you mean." 
"Do any traces of Meyerhold remain in Russian training? 
"Somewhere, yes. The difficulty with Meyerhold is that while people may claim to be his 'heirs', not many people really know how he worked. There's very little evidence. In fact that's a problem with people claiming directors' legacies in general. The director's work was often a changing product of a time, of a particular mind, not a rule-book system. The same with Grotowski or Stanislavski - however many books there are available to read. The truth was in the rehearsal room with them. Then in the live performance with the audiences of that time. It's not like watching a film. But yes, amongst certain Russian directors and teachers, Meyerhold is present, as well as Mikhail Chekhov, Stanislavsky, Tairov, Vakhtangov… 
"Russian actors sometimes have little experience of more free forms of theatre, of improvisation. There is a tendency to feel they have to know why they are doing something before they try it. What their objective is. Maybe it's just a question of fear - clinging to what they know best, what they were taught. Yet they are wonderfully free and truthful within rigid structures. 
"British actors have a wonderful ability to come into a room without knowing anything about what they are doing and just experiment. To enjoy exploring the process, to discover. They don't need to have anything explained. Maybe we have been helped by the recent influx of disciplines outside theatre: tai-chi, yoga, concentration exercises, meditation, things we already taken for granted over the last decade. But then again, Meyerhold , Mikhail Chekhov and even Stanislavsky were all into experimenting with Eastern practices well before all that, before the Soviets crushed that kind of experimentation. So there you go, things turn a full circle… 
"When you left Russia you went back to England?"
"I set up a theatre company. It was difficult because by the time I came back from Russia, I didn't know anyone in London. I took any acting jobs I could get, and they didn't come quickly. I worked part time in other jobs - hotels, kitchens, deliveries. That's one big advantage of London - there is work there and people from all over the world know it. Eventually, though, I ended up getting work on a touring Shakespeare project, playing Hamlet. The director running the theatre company wasn't originally trained in theatre. He was a land agent who took a course in psychology late on in life and fell into theatre. He had been influenced by some of the ideas of Jerzy Grotowski, of Kantor, of psychologist Melanie Klein - and I learned how not to work the way I had been taught in Russia. That destroyed my confidence a bit - as well as my habits! But it had a very positive effect. Above all else - I met my future wife, Natalia Geci, who was working as set designer on the project!"
"Natalia is from Argentina?" 
"That's right. She was trained in Buenos Aires as an architect, but moved into set and film design and went on to study in Paris, where she bumped into someone who invited her to the project in Ireland. She always found the role of obliging set designer restricting, I suppose in the same way that I was always interested in wider theatrical creativity beyond acting. 
Natalia and I returned to London after the project and I found a group of actors, with the intention just to do direct one show, to do something my own way. It ended up being something completely different than I had originally planned and the company is still going! Natalia and I frequently work together, as well as separately, outside the company. We complement each other well, with her background in visual art and architecture, my own background firmly in the world of the actor and action. Some of our work has been site-specific, some shows have resulted from working with people's night time dreams. I have been influenced a lot from working with Process Psychology and from projects with other companies, like Improbable Theatre. We have begun to make short films at the same time… 
"What are your plans for the future?" 
"Well we decided to come to Argentina to have our first baby, close to Natalia's family. The baby was born on November 2nd! Her name is Valentina! 
"Congratulations! Getting back to our conversation, did you ever have to confront a situation on stage or off that was incomprehensible?" 
"Yes, Frequently. Here, now - sitting in this café. Life is incomprehensible. I guess that's what makes it so compelling, or so frustrating. But I think the attraction of learning news things - that's what keeps you going. Whether it's learning new things about the external world or about yourself…." 

Contact William Rowsey at [e-mail]