The standard routine in theatre goes something like this: an actor is cast in a play; they read, learn and rehearse it; and then, at last, they perform it to an audience, who will hopefully soak up their hard work. But for Tim Crouch, one of the industry’s chief experimenters, this exercise began to feel reductive. “A lot of actor training is about holding focus within the stage and putting the audience into a receiving role,” says Crouch. “I used to go to pubs and bitch about it.”
An Oak Tree – his 2005 play that is now seen as a landmark work – was born directly from these frustrations. The script, which is written to be performed by Crouch and a new actor each night, celebrates its changeability. “It is a finished piece, but it contains an unfinished element,” Crouch says. An Oak Tree’s story concerns a meeting between two men: a father who has lost his 12-year-old daughter in a car crash (played by the actor), and the person behind the wheel (played by Crouch). The one basic requirement is that the actor arrives at the theatre oblivious. They must have never seen the play, nor read the script, and be willing to stand on stage with no idea what will happen over the course of the evening. Frances McDormand, Peter Dinklage, Mike Myers and David Harewood are some of the many names to have played Crouch’s unwitting castmate over the years.
