Harry Treadaway: Why You Should Come & See … Tribes
Actor Harry Treadaway, who opens in the Royal Court’s production of Nina Raine‘s Tribes on 20 October, is best known for his appearance in Ibsen’s Ghosts which played the Duchess Theatre earlier this year. His second professional stage role, Treadaway had already made a name for himself in Mark Ravenhill‘s Over There which he starred in with his twin brother at the Royal Court.
We spoke to Harry, who plays Billy’s older brother, about why theatregoers should come and see Tribes.
Tribes has been written by Nina Raine. I think she’s an incredibly intelligent and honest writer. It all surrounds this middle-class London family and the literary world. There are three children – I’m the oldest – and then there’s a sister and a brother, who’s deafplayed by Jacob Casselden.
We’ve brought him up in a world that’s very much not a part of the deaf community, trying to keep him a part of the hearing world. So we taught him lip-reading and synching, rather than sign language. Tribes is a fascinating dissection of language and how we speak to each other, and the importance of communication and how often we don’t within the very close knit, tribes of a family.
My character is a 26 year-old young man who’s living at home still and he’s trying to finish his thesis. He starts hearing voices. The parents are desperate for him to leave home and get a job. Me and my sister are both stuck in the trap which a lot of kids are now, they end up living back at home. He’s very close with his brother. The brother starts to get a girlfriend… I don’t want to give it all away.
Jacob Casselden is a fantastic young actor who is himself deaf. He’s our fountain of knowledge really, from a very personal point of view of life not hearing. So it’s been absolutely fascinating, a complete honour to learn about it all. Another moment in my life when I realise what a lucky and fascinating job this can be, when you get to be in close quarters with experiences and people that you wouldn’t necessarily spend time with. The whole world of knowing what it’s like not to hear through someone’s eyes who doesn’t, has been fascinating. We’re really lucky to have gone down that route, as opposed to casting an actor who is playing deaf.
I always feel more comfortable doing more preparation for a role rather than less. So for this, a major part of it has been speaking to Jacob. A lot of what it’s like to be in a family I’ve learnt through him.
In terms of the hearing voices aspect, there are different therapists – psychotherapists – spoken to them. I have met some people who have experienced, or are experiencing it. Just these are things that are very difficult aspects of some people’s lives. It’s all serving the ambition to try and represent it as honestly and truthfully as possible.
I think what’s great about the play it that it deals with some really difficult issues – family issues, family love, mental illness, hearing or not hearing. But she does it in a good, unsentimental way. I think it’s easy when you’re tackling difficult subjects like this, to be too careful about it in a way, and somehow patronising of it. Nina cracks it down the middle and people say things that, as humans – we’re not perfect – do come out with. Just trying to represent what’s in the play as truthfully as possible.
I’ve been very lucky with the roles I have been able to play. Something like Ghosts and that part, there was a film that I was supposed to doing, but I turned it down because I can’t miss this opportunity to do it. It’s too much of a challenge, and therefore too tempting to turn my back on. Choosing roles is about what grabs your heart.
Tribes is a brilliant play. Roger Michell’s directing it, who’s just brilliant. I just think family dynamics are really interesting and we all relate. Brilliantly written family arguments and debates, and when you think, that’s exactly like a moment that could have happened in our family, the temptation to somehow do the weird thing of getting into that, feeling it and then putting that into a public place, is why I do it.
Tribes opens in the Jerwood Theatre Downstairs at the Royal Court on 20 October (previews from 14 October) where it runs until 13 November 2010.
