Breathe Truth

One Sunday morning, having a coffee after church, I was approached by a member of the congregation who knew I was a recent arrival in the neighbourhood. I had just begun training as a theatre director, I told him. “We have someone else in the parish who does drama,” he said. “Let me introduce you.” He took me over to a tall, distinguished man who looked vaguely familiar. “Have you been in anything I might have seen?” I asked tentatively searching for firmer ground in the conversation. “I was in Godfather II, The Sopranos, Boardwalk Empire…” he replied. Suddenly the years dropped away from the 93-year-old before me and I realised I was talking to Uncle Junior himself, Dominic Chianese.

Dominic asked me what directing I had done to date. I told him that at university I’d made a short film but in the main I had directed theatre – musical comedies, new writing, and Shakespeare.

“I’ve always wanted to do Shakespeare,” he said, and then added six words I’ll never forget: “We should make a film together”.

A LIFELONG AMBITION

Over the days that followed I began to turn ideas over in my mind. But two weeks later his dear wife Jane died very suddenly and I naturally assumed our Shakespeare project would be off. At the funeral, however, Dominic introduced me to his daughter Rebecca Scarpati, a novelist from New York. He pointed to a side room and told us to go off to discuss some options.

What about Prospero’s farewell speech from The Tempest, I suggested. He’s always hankered after playing John of Gaunt from Richard II, Rebecca remembered. As Dominic later told me, he had been apprehensive of Shakespeare’s text for many years. But now, having fully studied that text, understood it, and appreciated the beauty within it, he felt ready. The intervening years also offered Dominic insight into Gaunt himself. He finally had the age and experience to match his fictional counterpart. Now was his chance to fulfil his dream and tackle the English canon’s greatest classic. I told Rebecca, that sounds just right.

THIS SCEPTRED ISLE

John of Gaunt’s famous speech, ‘This Sceptred Isle’, speaks to people who don’t know much Shakespeare as well as those who do. In it, the great English aristocrat on his deathbed prophesies the downfall of the England of his youth under the rule of a new weak, corrupt, self-serving king, Richard II. Only a dying man, it suggests, can truly speak truth to power “for they breathe truth that breathe their words in pain”. Dominic firmly believes “truth is the technique” – that the core of acting is truthful inhabitation of the character and the text, ignoring everything extraneous. Having an American speak these quintessentially English lines unlocks new parallels between our increasingly chaotic world and Shakespeare’s own. It translates the particular into the universal. It offers an opportunity to examine what people today believe about themselves. And the best way to do that would be through the juxtapositions of comedy. An hour later Rebecca and I left our cloistered side room with an exciting idea.

Two days later Rebecca’s brilliant script – a hilarious study of truth in acting – landed in my inbox with the invitation that she was happy for me to suggest changes. I made some, adding to the drama with an opening scene in which King Richard pokes fun at the dying Gaunt. It is done through a voiceover which might be actors overheard in an adjacent rehearsal room or might be the play running through Dominic’s mind as, aged 93, the veteran actor awaits his first Shakespeare audition. To accentuate the universality of the politics, lines like “Do you think America has never had bad rulers?” were added to bring resonances from our modern political era.

NECESSITY AND INVENTION

Making this film during my theatre directing training, without external support or funding, was challenging. I had no budget but depended on fundraising from family and friends. And I have been greatly helped by a team of extraordinary professionals, cast and crew, who generously chose to take part in it without any fee.

Originally I had hoped to film the opening scene on the stage of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London, or in the extraordinary replica of Inigo Jones Cockpit theatre which has been built at the Shakespeare Playhouse North at Prescot in the north of England. Permissions and logistics did not allow this. But necessity was the mother of invention and, though I lamented having to film it in the upper room of the Packhorse Pub on Egham Hill, the focused interiority of that setting now adds a greater intensity to the opening which takes place in our ancient actor’s mind rather than in Shakespeare’s Wooden-O.

Thanks to the editing skills of Neil Fergusson the film creates, I hope, an engaging balance between satiric comedy and a serious reflection about truth in art.

In "Breathe Truth' an old man emboldened by having nothing left to lose, delivers some home truths to an arrogant ruler who badly needs to hear them. It is a timely reminder - and a call to action - to tell the truth, no matter how difficult it may be to do so.