Q&A with Nicolas Pérez Costa Ahead of Richard III at The Cockpit Theatre

The production was a success in Madrid before transferring to London. How has the journey of this production surprised you? Whenever you create a theatre production, you always hope that the journey will be a long one. We spend months rehearsing, and I often compare theatre to cooking and eating: sometimes the relationship between those two things feels unfair. You cook for a very long time, only to consume the result in a very short space of time. Yet when something truly works, the flavours remain within you and the experience becomes almost sublime.

As Richard III continues its journey, I feel that its long period of “cooking” makes more and more sense, and that fills me with pride. Arriving in London and meeting this new cast has completed the production in unexpected ways. The bodies are different, the understanding of the play has gained new depth, and Shakespeare’s poetry returns in its original language. All of this has surprised me enormously. I have learned a great deal from the process and I feel deeply grateful to the cast accompanying us on this journey.

You've spent more than twenty-five years working in theatre. What keeps drawing you back to Shakespeare? After more than twenty-five years, theatre ceases to be a job or even a way of making a living: it becomes a way of life. The boundary between reality and fiction begins to dissolve. Treating literature as something that truly exists becomes part of one’s way of being in the world. Many times, I even feel that characters are more pleasant than people. What I find again and again in Shakespeare is an architecture of humanity of inexhaustible complexity and beauty. The depth with which he observes human beings, their contradictions, their miseries and their greatness continues to astonish me every time I return to his texts. And perhaps most importantly, I always leave transformed. Every time I perform or direct Shakespeare, I feel that I understand others, and myself, a little better. In some way, it makes me a better person.

As an Argentine artist working internationally, how has your own background shaped your approach to classical texts? Argentina is a profoundly surreal country, with everything that word implies. We are, I believe, an extraordinarily resilient people and, now that I have lived abroad for several years, I admire that resilience even more. When I was sixteen, I saw a performance by the great Argentine artist Nacha Guevara. The show ended with a line that stayed with me forever: “When I see that in Argentina, with a piece of wire and a stick, artists create immense worlds, I take my hat off.” That sentence changed my life. I understood that, in order to build a world, the only truly indispensable thing is imagination. In Argentina, with very little, we have to achieve a great deal. That experience inevitably shapes the way one approaches classical texts. When I encounter Shakespeare, I feel the need to return him to what is essential: imagination, the actor and the body.

Is there a particular moment in the play that still affects you every time you perform it? The entire play continues to affect me profoundly every time I perform it. But I think the essence of that experience appears at the very end, when Richard falls dead on the battlefield. The energy that my fellow actors and I place on stage, the visceral nature of the work, and the force of the music and percussion mean that, when the lights finally go out, I can do nothing but empty myself into tears that no one sees, neither the audience nor the rest of the cast. They are only five seconds in darkness, lying on the floor, but in those moments I feel deeply grateful to be able to perform this work. I feel that I cannot possibly be the same person who began the performance. There is something in that emptiness that transforms me. And it is precisely in that emptiness that I feel I can fill myself again with better things.

Finally, if Richard III were alive today, what sort of person do you think he would be? Regardless of the historical truth behind Shakespeare’s portrait, the play makes one thing very clear: the world is still full of Richard IIIs. I do not know exactly what profession he would have today, but I often find myself wondering: if this person had more power, would they abuse it? It is relatively easy to be good when one has no power. What is truly difficult is to remain a good person when one has the ability to decide over the lives of others. And I am not only speaking about presidents or ministers. Power exists in every human relationship: at work, within families, in couples, in communities. That is what Richard III continues to ask of us. Not simply who Richard is, but what we ourselves would do in his place.

RICHARD III will open at London's Cockpit Theatre from Wednesday 8th to Saturday 11th July. For more information visit: https://www.thecockpit.org.uk/show/richard_III