You are currently working on Silence with the RSC at the Hampstead Theatre. How did Filter end up working with the Royal Shakespeare Company?

[RSC Artistic Director] Michael Boyd really loved our 2007 show Water and asked us to come and make a show with him. We were interested in Russia and artists, so Silence is based on those ideas.

Put incredibly simply, at its heart is a love triangle. No matter how enchanting or interesting you can be, you need a very simple, truthful story.

You say that you started with the idea of Russia and artists. But how you turn those two words into this mix of music, design and choreography?

The short answer is through time and trial and error.

We would start with a character. For instance, in this play, Kate is a sort of representation of the UK and we want her to go on a voyage of self-discovery. So we send her to Russia to look up an old boyfriend. It’s through that character that we start to make a whole load of decisions.

Once you have a character, you then go back to reading and researching. You’ll get inspired by something, so you add that to your character – say, a husband. Someone else will say that they’re really interested in documentary, so maybe you make that husband a documentarian. Then you decide what the documentary could be about and that takes you in a new direction.

The whole thing builds and builds.

So, are you building this up in a rehearsal room? Via e-mail? In an office?

Well this project is created by me, Ferdy and Tim, along with David Farr. We will do the legwork: decide what subjects we want to write out, what characters we want, what our source material is, what books we want people to be reading. Then we meet up with the cast and spent a month trying characters, scenes and ideas out.

When a story starts to emerge you can put the narrative to the side and start to experiment with the form by trying out different ways of doing a scene. Sometimes that mix of form and narrative works and sometimes it doesn’t. You gradually try to bring the two together.

When I interviewed David Farr about directing King Lear, he said that Filter had the secret to making Shakespeare attractive to young people. In fact, he said you were like a rock band.

We are kind of are a rock band – only two of us don’t play instruments! That live aesthetic is very much part of the shows. Tim is always on stage with us; the actors are taking things from him and he is taking things from us.

Is the way you approach an existing text different to a devised piece?

Some days we have a very clear structured methodology; some days we don’t. With something like Twelfth Night we approached the text by thinking: let’s not get too hamstrung by what 400,000 intellectuals have said about this text over 400 years because we’re not interested in that. We’re interested in what it actually says to us right now.

With the devising thing there is a little bit more yo-yo between form and story.

What advice would you give to young theatremakers?

If you’re trying to make a piece, start by sitting around a table, talking about themes and characters that interest you. Keep persevering. There will be a lot of meetings and it becomes very easy to just keep talking and intellectualising. So, get up on your feet and try things. Gradually a story will start to emerge.

The secret to what we do is that we’d kill each other if we didn’t have a director. We need someone in the room who’s pushing things in one direction. At the same time, directors aren’t geniuses and actors aren’t cattle. We just try to free up the process.

It’s bloody hard work though. You are swimming through a perpetual sea of uncertainty. When you’re used to having a script and a character that can be quite bewildering. We’re bewildered sometimes. 

Silence is at Hampstead Theatre for just 18 performances from 12 to 28 May. To find out more and watch a rehearsal video, see the RSC website. To book tickets, visit the Hampstead Theatre website.

Photo by Simon Kane