Doctor Who Live Info

Will Brenton director

When and how did you become involved with Doctor Who Live?

“I was asked to come on board by BBC Worldwide around about Christmas time. The reason that I was brought in was because I’ve got quite a lot of experience doing these sort of shows in arenas, working with all the various sources we have the show. Because obviously we have live music, things happening on stage, things happening through the auditorium, a lot of video stuff, specially shot scenes with Matt Smith. Bringing all these strands together is, well, I  wouldn’t call it a unique skill but it’s a fairly rare skill, in the sense that arenas are quite interesting spaces. They’re brilliant for rock concerts and stuff like that – when you’re looking at the big overall picture of the lighting show, and listening to the music – but adding into that any kind of narrative or any kind of focussing element, is something that you need to have worked in an arena to know how to do it. So that was why Worldwide brought me in.

“And also because of my own background, I’ve got a sense of family audiences as well, so I think that all added to the mix.”

Oh yeah, you created The Tweenies! Bet you love the BBC for mentioning that in the press release…

“Oh god, yes The Tweenies. You know when you’ve created something that’s gone worldwide and which everybody knows… It’s quite nice that anybody in the country, if you say Tweenies they know what it is. That’s something to be proud of, I think.”

So is the action in Doctor Who Live in the main arena area or on a stage at one end?

“It’s not in the round. It’s on what we call a thrust stage. So the audience are on three sides of the stage, and the stages are brought slightly forward into the arena so they are not right at the back wall which they would be for a rock concert.

“And we’re bringing a lot of action into the auditorium as well, so again it’s very different to a rock concert where everyone is sitting in the auditorium looking at the stage. We do have a couple of cameras giving a live feed of some of the stage action, again akin to a rock concert, but it’s not just what you’ve got traditionally, two side screens. We’ve got a huge screen at the back of the stage. And a 16-piece rock band, which is very exciting.”

Wasn’t it tempting to prerecord all the music, so that there was one less thing to worry about “on the night”?

“No. Part of the live experience is seeing the stuff played live. And also, a lot of people don’t get the chance to see this done in the way that we’re going to be doing it. You either go and see a gig, which is a band doing their thing, or you might go to a movie, or watch TV, or a play. But seeing all these elements together is actually a unique experience. And I think when you’re listening to a cello solo, or a guitar solo or a drum solo, or a piece of music that has that element to it, actually seeing someone sitting there play in front of you is a totally different experience to just hearing it on a soundtrack.”

How did the script come together? Presumably it’s not all just Steven Moffat?

“It’s a collaboration. I need to bring to the table my knowledge of what does and doesn’t work in an arena. And also my knowledge of what I think the expectation of our audience is in an arena. Steven obviously knows the landscape of Doctor Who inside out and he brings to the table an absolute knowledge of how this show must fit in with the mythology of Doctor Who. And we’ve got another writer, Gareth Roberts, whose job it is to make sure everything that the characters are physically saying is absolutely entrenched in the Doctor Who way of speaking.

“So it’s a collaboration of those three minds, if you like, to make sure this works in this environment.

“When I first came on board with the project, it was a project that was very akin to the Prom offering. But I thought what we needed to do was bring the space alive a lot more, with a narrative that comes alive in that arena at that moment. So we’ve created a brand new Doctor Who character – called Vorgenson [to be played by Nigel Planer], but it is a character who grows out of previous Doctor Who story, called ‘Carnival Of Monsters’. All of its genealogy grows out of that episode. And the fans who spotted that reference will enjoy how it happens. It’s taken what happened in that episode and moved it on, and updated it and had some fun with it as well.

“And that’s the kind of collaboration that we’ve been having. I sat down with Steven and said, ‘I’ve got this Jurassic Park kind of feel, with a character who’s reeling out these characters,’ and he immediately said, ‘Well, “Carnival Of Monsters”! Let’s let it grow out of that.’”

How many people are involved in Doctor Who Live?

“It’s a big old scale. Let’s see. Apart from all the backstage crew, we’ve got 16 people in the cast, a 16-piece band, three sound desks, our lighting is being done by a guy who’s just come off the Stevie Wonder tour, our musical director, Ben Foster, has just come off the Peter Gabriel tour. And then there’s the huge team of people behind it who are making sure everything we do really does fit in with the world of Doctor Who. Touring it, I couldn’t tell you how many trucks it is, but it’s a fair few. It’s a big old scale.”

How big does the experience need to be to fill an arena?

“That’s been an interesting part of the conversations that we’ve been having. How do you take something that people are used to watching on their 42-inch plasma screen TVs at home, and turn it something where they’ll be sitting 50 metres away? The whole thing for me is about creating big pictures. And we create big pictures by really making everything work together. So the screen and the stage action and what the band are playing have to constantly work together. And it’s my job as director of that to make sure that we are drawing the audience’s attention to watch what they should be watching at any given time.

“I’ve said to the editors putting together the stuff for the screen, ‘You’ll be sitting in your edit suite and it’ll feel quite counter-intuitive. Because you’ll be looking at the screen thinking, “Not much is happening now,” and that’s because it’s happening on the stage, or it’s happening in the auditorium. But what you’re putting on screen there, gives a backdrop to what’s happening in the auditorium.’

“But then those scenes in the auditorium may throw the action back up to the screen, and then something may be happening on the screen which the live cast has to interact with. I’ve used the analogy that it’s like flying three kites simultaneously.”

Will it be structured like a TV episode? Teaser then theme tune, etc?

“I suppose there is an element of that. But it has to be structured really to be a live show first and foremost. You can’t fight the venue. There’s no point in us going into an arena and saying, ‘Let’s pretend we’re on Gallifrey,’ because everybody knows they’re not on Gallifrey. The element of suspending your disbelief works to an extent in the theatre, but in an arena I think you just have to say you’re in the here and now. So the way that we’ve structured the narrative of the show is that the show is being brought to the arena in the here and now. And that is what I think is a nice twist in the way the story works. It’s not trying to be an episode, it is its own thing, but we wanted to make sure it felt Doctor Who through and through.”

Is there an intermission?

“Yes there is.”

So is there a cliffhanger?

“Yes there is.”

How long is the show?

“It’s about 80 minutes plus an interval. We’ve got a lot of costume changes, characters, surprises about where things are coming from.”

Is there any room for the actors to ad-lib, taking advantage of the live audience?

“There’ll be a little bit. Our lead character, which Nigel Planer is playing, is a showman, and his job is to engage the audience. And I think one of the joys of doing live stuff is that it’s live and you can comment on something in the local area, or something that’s been happening in the news.”

Have all the costumes been provided by the production office?

“It’s a combination. Some of them we have remade, but it’s all being done by Millennium who do the monsters for the TV show, so it’s coming out of the same moulds. Some of them have been made in a slightly different way to allow for quick costume changes. They all come in flight cases to tour with. It’s very rock and roll.”

How much of Karen and Matt is there in it?

“There’s a lot of Matt. We’ve been filming some special sequences with Matt for the show. We were originally hoping to have five or six minutes with him. We’ve ended up with a lot more than that. He’s intrinsic to the way the whole show unfolds. And we’ve got a neat little gizmo for how he appears at one point as well.

“Karen’s in there in that there’s a specific Amy section of the show where we pay homage to her, and then she appears in various other of the clips sections. It’s very series five focused, I think it’s fair to say, in terms of the content and the monsters that we’ve got.”

Can you compare it to anything that’s been done before?

“Not that I’ve seen. It’s not a gig, it’s different to that Star Wars show that went around, with the orchestra and the clips from the films. It’s much more immersive and engaging and interactive than that, and deliberately so. And it’s not a musical despite those rumours going around about the Cybermen doing the cancan.

“So much relies on things happening specifically at the right time. In the script it’s literally saying things like, ‘At one minute 43 into the track this happens.’ And it’s that precise. It’s a bit like when a band plays. When they’re tight and they’re on the beat it’s a completely different experience. And this show has to be tight and on the beat, so that all the explosions, should there be any explosions, happen right at the right time.”

Surely there are explosions?

“There might be.”

I’ll demand my money back if there aren’t!

“In that case, we’ll be keeping your money.”

Doctor Who Live is on tour across the UK from Friday 8 October.

For ticket information, visit www.doctorwholive.com

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