Alec Tiffou is a student playwright for Matchbox Productions. His past two plays, Daddy Longlegs and Moth, have ran sold-out shows at the Michael Pilch Studio.
Cherwell: Where does your writing process start? Where do you generally get inspiration for your plays?
Alec: I think itโs difficult to say it comes from one place. So far, itโs probably come from people that I shouldnโt like, but I do โ meeting a person whoโs a bit strange, that I feel suspicious of but interested in, and then forming a life that I imagine around them.ย
Iโm not Christian, but for the first play, Daddy Longlegs, I lived in a monastery for a while. Every day I would go to confession, and one of the monks I would confess to would always want to know a little bit too much about my personal life. I think heโd always lived in the monastery and saw me as a peephole into the outside world, in a strange way. It made me feel really uncomfortable, and at the same time, I completely understood him.
So in my own time, I built a life around him, and I imagined what his childhood would be like, and thatโs basically how the play started. It was similar for the next play, where I would meet someone, who I knew I shouldnโt like, but I did empathise with, and then I somehow created a world around them.
Also, in terms of inspiration: in my parentโs car, we have one disc, and thatโs Lou Reedโs Berlin. Everything about that album is how I wish I wrote โ he says really demented things in such a composed, casual way. You almost want to replay it because you think you must have heard it wrong. Thereโs a song called โThe Kidsโ, and itโs basically about the police taking away a womanโs children, only he sings it like itโs a bed-time lullaby. Itโs a complete severance between the tone of the song and the content, and I love it when plays do that.
In terms of playwrights that inspire: Alexander Zeldin. His first three plays are amazing, and I think he devises the dialogue, but it feels like itโs a conversation you overheard on the bus. Itโs completely vulnerable, but never confessional.
Cherwell: With that idea of picking out specific people that are outside of our norms, what do you think draws you to those kinds of characters, and do you think plays as a medium are particularly suited to those kinds of characters?
Alec: I think so. I just like to give an audience a character that youโll see โย maybe theyโre narcissistic, maybe theyโre hyper-masculine, or something like that โย and you feel like you should immediately hate them, but then the layers are peeled back a bit, and then thereโs something loveable about them. You kind of hate yourself for loving them, but you do, and then you kind of feel uncomfortable with yourself as a result. I love going to a play and feeling guilty that I liked someone that I shouldnโt. Maybe thatโs because that person lives a completely different life to me, but at the same time there are small aspects that are relevant to my life, or relatable, so I canโt help feeling empathy.ย
Cherwell: I know that with a lot of Matchboxโs productions before Moth, thereโs been a lot of technical innovation. What informed the decision to strip back those elements for Moth, and have it as something thatโs โjust a playโ?
Alec: It was scary, but thereโs something about just seeing raw events happening that I really like. I love technical innovation in theatre, but thereโs something really nice when itโs just stripped back and itโs just events as you see them. I think it allows for a more direct interaction between audience and story.
I remember being in Arkansas, and for some reason, I decided to go into a Pentecostal service. Again, Iโm not Christian, but there was a pastor just screaming and yelling, and the audience was just going wild โ speaking in tongues, falling on the floor, dancing, foaming at the mouth. I think if a play can have even a fraction of the effect on the audience as a Pentecostal service, then I think itโs worth it. Thereโs something about having a play without technical innovation, that just has that directness with the audience.
Another thing is, for some reason, Iโve really been into WWE videos recently, and seeing those completely oiled-up, spandex-ed men, and how happy it makes an audience member โ thatโs somehow exactly what I want to do. I think thereโs something about how thereโs no veil of technical innovation when itโs just the audience and the action happening, that allows for that a bit better. Thereโs this amazing thing when you see a really good play, and you know that itโs good just because of the action โ itโs bodily and unintellectual, and I love when I see a play and itโs like that.
Cherwell: A lot of the articles on Daddy Longlegs and Moth have pointed out that both are your first forays into playwriting. How do you hone that skill in writing?
Alec: The thing is, I have no idea really how narrative works, or how exposition should be done, or how to time a beginning, middle and end. I bought a book on it, and I got half a page through, and they had this diagram, and I got scared so I closed the book.
A few things helped. Iโve always written, just before, it was really bad poetry, and I wrote an awful book when I was 12 that Iโm not going to say the name of, itโs just too embarrassing. But more than anything, when I was a kid, I was a really good liar. I lied all the time to my friends. I would tell them that after school, I had this amazing life where my dad was a gun-slinging cowboy who travelled around the world robbing banks. The lies would get more and more complex, and youโd have to expand your narrative out, so that when a friend came over to your house and saw that your dad was a normal guy, youโd have to be like โOh, thatโs because my actual dad has hired a stand-in while heโs on the run from the police who are searching for himโ.
I think that meant that actually starting playwriting felt quite natural. My parents definitely sat me down and the whole pathological liar thing was drawn out of me, but thereโs still that tendency in a play where it feels like a complexifying web of lies that you have to detail more and more and more. So even though Iโd never written a play before Daddy Longlegs, it felt like quite a natural thing to do, despite not really knowing all the infrastructure that goes into it.
Cherwell: Did you feel like things like pacing, those elements you mentioned, were things that you were conscious of as you were writing? Or did it just feel like a much more natural process?
Alec: In terms of pacing, a lot of it happens in the rehearsal rooms. In the first read-through, youโre all reading, and it goes on for two hours, and youโre melting in embarrassment, because you can clearly see that everyone thinks itโs too long, or that things should be cut, or things should be added, and itโs not a nice process. But I love editing the script through rehearsing by asking what the actors want to keep and donโt want to keep. I would love to work on a play just by not having written anything, and just devising it from that.ย
A lot of the pacing came from just seeing how the actors interacted with the work. But in terms of trying to get the pacing right when itโs on the page, I attribute it to people like Lou Reed. His music is this kind of monologue, but at the same time it has this rhythm to it. I think my pacing probably comes from wanting to recreate those musical influences that I have.
Cherwell: That also links in with the idea of a collaborative process. I know that throughout Matchbox, youโre developed quite a close relationship with Sonya Luchanskaya and Orli Wilkins โย what does that kind of collaborative process look like for you guys?
Alec: First of all, I love them, theyโre some of my closest friends. Our collaborative process is basically us meeting up with the pretense of it being play-related, then we do that for about five minutes and then basically just talk about everything else. Itโs pretty un-work related โย the amount of work that we do happens in very small, intense bursts.ย
In those bursts, a large part of the process is disagreeing on a lot of things. On casting, on blocking, if some of the lines work, if some donโt. Weโve had actual arguments in front of the whole cast about decisions, and everyone quietens down, and itโs like weโre the actors for a second, being watched by the cast. But itโs so nice, because we care about each other, so much more than we care about a play. And itโs always funny in hindsight.
Also just in terms of them individually, Sonya and Orli can just see a play being performed in ways that I can never understand. Like with Moth, I really wanted the play to end by releasing real-life moths into the theatre, which would spin around the light, and I had this idea of catching moths and training them so they would do that. I was convinced it would work, and they just shut that idea down, and thank god, because there would have just been hundreds of moths running wild.
I think itโs a lot of that โ a lot of having ideas, and then, because weโre close enough to feel comfortable with each other shutting down the ideas, it doesnโt feel awkward or cruel or anything.
Cherwell: Is it more of an artistic collaboration, or do you think you three are drawn together by your friendship and closeness to each other?
Alec: In terms of taste, our taste in art is quite dissimilar. From what I understand, Sonya quite likes Sarah Kane and those kinds of plays, which I love, but I donโt think are my favourite. Orli and I donโt exactly have the same taste in films, or plays, or things like that, but I think we have a closeness in our relationship that means any criticism thatโs play-related will never feel personal. Because itโs not one person making decisions, nothing is tyrannical, or just one personโs perspective, and we can just feed off each other in a really nice way. At the end of every show, the three of us just hug, and itโs the nicest part of the show, because we just understood each otherโs stress. So to answer your question, I think itโs more personally-driven than artistic-vision-driven.ย
Cherwell: Is there any interaction between what you study and your more creative pursuits? Does one feed into the other, or do you see them as very distinct?
Alec: I studied MathsPhil in first year, then I realised I was really bad at maths, so I changed to Philosophy and Theology. I find philosophy sometimes difficult, because youโll read a paper, and I find that it uses really big words to cover up quite small ideas, whereas plays can use really small words to uncover big ideas. Thatโs what I see as their difference, and why I kind of struggle sometimes in my philosophy degree. The truth is, Iโve never read a philosophy paper and been like oh damn, maybe I need to change my life based on that, whereas I have come out of plays and just felt I experienced an epileptic shock โย that Iโm just so overwhelmed, and that it has affected the length of my life. So I donโt know if theyโre that inter-related, but I think I see them as quite separate spheres in my life.
But I do love the philosophy in my life, I donโt want to hate on it. Occasionally you do get someone whoโs not ultra-dogmatic in their views, and thatโs much nicer โ like I studied Wittgenstein recently, and I think he has a tendency to articulate a thought experiment, and not necessarily derive some kind of dogmatic conclusion at the end of it, and I think thatโs more in line with theatre. Whereas you have someone like Plato, who might hide behind the fact itโs a dialogue, when really itโs just Socrates being like โah, justice is thisโ, and his interactor being like โyouโre so clever, Socrates, of course it isโ.
Cherwell: Theology, or religion, seems to have a big through-line in your life. Do you think thereโs something in particular that draws you to those ideas?
Alec: I always think about this, and I feel like itโs a lot of coincidences. Like I always go to Quaker meetings, because I love Quaker meetings, and they have the best tea and biscuits at the end of it. And thereโs also something just really dramatic about a Quaker meeting, that itโs 95% silence, but then in one moment someone can say something which has such weight, that it has all the emotional intensity of a two-hour play. I feel like if there is a relationship between theatre and theology, in the context where Iโve been in a religious environment โย in a monastery, or a Pentecostal service, or a Quaker meeting โย I think thereโs just an inherent drama to it. I donโt like the words โreligious experienceโ, but in a really good play, you can have an experience which is somewhat similar to a religious experience. So maybe itโs that. And maybe Iโm a little bit jealous that Iโm maybe too atheistic in my views โย maybe thatโs what draws me.