How did Sound&Fury start out, and where did the idea of working with darkness come from?

We started out as a company back in 1998. My brother Mark, Dan and I all grew up together, but by that time Dan was working in sound and music, I was an actor in training and Mark was a journalist, having studied Classics. All that fed into our first show, War Music, which was a modern interpretation of The Iliad in total darkness. You couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. For an hour. It was a really visceral experience. 

But we can’t take credit for the initial idea. When Tom Morris was at Battersea Arts Centre, he was always concocting provocations. One season he turned all the performance spaces into darkrooms to see what artists made. That’s paved the way for our work ever since.

What does watching theatre in the dark do to an audience?

People often say, “Isn’t this just like radio?” But you listen to the radio when you’re ironing or driving. You’re distracted and the sound usually comes from a tinny little speaker. We plunge an audience into total darkness in a shared space, which you only get down the bottom of a mine. It’s quite an alarming experience, so you need to lead them by the hand. The benefit is that they’re sharing the same imaginative space as the performers.

Obviously, it’s quite an unusual method. Do you think a collaborative company needs something unique to call their own?

Yes and no. You need to have a raison d’etre. What started you out? What keeps you going? Once you’ve got that these things can evolve. You need a unique selling point, but you shouldn’t become enslaved to it. Always allow yourself the freedom to keep exploring and defining what those features of your company are.

How does your devising and rehearsal process accommodate such unusual conditions?

Generally our work takes quite a long time. Kursk took about five years; Going Dark, about the same. The key is to bring the technology into the rehearsal room as soon as possible. You just throw it in at the tech stage. If it’s part of the playpen, the writer can see possibilities and use it fully. With Kursk, we had all the sounds – engines, alarms, telephones, sonar – in rehearsals so the actors could build them into their performances.

You also worked as a foley artist. What does that involve and what skills do you need?

Ah, the dark art! Basically, in television, you want to connect a sound with an image. Even though a tarantula doesn’t make any noise, if you see one on television, you need to hear it. My job was to use props – sand, water, foliage, anything – to make the noises for an animal’s wings flapping or whatever. You can do it for drama too. The skills are related to acting, actually. You need good timing and a quick imagination, but it helps to have ankles that don’t click. People have their own trade secrets. If you’re keen to get into it, the best place to start is by working in post-production sound-studios.

Going Dark is at the Young Vic, London, until 24 March.