Can you tell us about the Elevator Repair Service company, and about the genesis of Baldwin and Buckley at Cambridge?
John Collins: I founded the company in 1991. I’m its artistic director, and our offices are located in La Mama, a theatre in New York. That’s where we rehearse most of our shows. The company includes a director, designers, technicians, and performers. Collaboration is therefore a given for every show, and actors are usually not cast right away when we start working on a new project. We’d rather have everyone read the text, without a particular casting in mind. Casting happens over the course of those collective readings, based on the ensemble’s revelations or desires. Baldwin and Buckley at Cambridge was supposed to premiere in May 2020. It was postponed because of the pandemic, and finally happened in 2021. The story behind the company’s name is pretty funny: it comes from a questionnaire I answered when I was 11 years old. The idea was to figure out which career would fit us best, and the results included elevator repairman. What I liked about this name, beside the reference to that unfulfilled calling, is the fact that there’s nothing meta about it: it doesn’t say anything at all about our work – quite the opposite!
Greig Sargeant: I work with John Collins. We met working on a project with the theatre company Target Margin – John was the sound designer and I was an actor. That led to fifteen years of artistic collaboration and to the creation of Baldwin and Buckley at Cambridge. The idea of working on the character of James Baldwin came to me a few years ago, as John Collins was directing Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull. He asked me to play a great character, but for the first time in my career I had to say no. I didn’t feel any connection to that role at all. John then asked me what I’d like to play. I realized I’d never thought about it that way, never listened to what I wanted to do and been the one to come up with a role. I’d always worked for a project but had never conceived of a role for myself. I really had to think about it. Then I thought of James Baldwin. I’d read his books as a student, I felt a kinship with his work and his story. He was immensely interested in France, where he lived for a while, and he used his life as a Black, gay American artist as a basis to denounce some things and explore certain questions. That’s when I came across his debate with conservative thinker William F. Buckley, Jr., which took place at Cambridge in 1965, and whose arguments still echo today. Discussions about the idea of race in the United States haven’t much evolved since, unfortunately.
Would you say you’re doing documentary theatre?
John Collins: The scenography recreates a space close to that of the actual debate which took place at the Cambridge Union in 1965, in a relatively narrow room. We place the audience in the position of the students. They’re visible and in the light throughout the show, and as such are an integral part of the performance. It sometimes encourages the audience to react to the arguments put forth, even though theatregoers tend to be much less likely to talk to one another or to interrupt what’s being said. But we’re open to potential comments and responses from the audience. The dramaturgy is similar to that of the original debate, with Baldwin and Buckley introduced by student debaters and standing at a pulpit, surrounded by students. We used the transcript of the debate without changing a word, or almost. Yet we don’t see it as documentary theatre, strictly speaking, because we don’t want this work to be a re-enactment of a past event but rather for it to become a gateway to rethink our present. How does this text and the event of the debate resonate in 2023? How are the same problems and injustices still continuing? Our goal is to cause a sort of clash between past and present. How can we interpret today the ideas discussed in 1965? We paid particularly close attention to the intellectual level of this debate in particular. It’s not any random speech on the subject. This event elevates and heightens the debate, the ideas discussed are so fundamental on each side… The arguments are incredibly modern and topical, they’re still being used by political and intellectual groups and associations. As for James Baldwin’s words, they’re universal and timeless, almost prophetic. It may even seem surprising that they first appeared 50 years ago, because they are still being argued today.
Greig Sargeant: The debate asks the question “Is the American Dream at the expense of the American Negro?”, which James Baldwin of course tries to prove. First and foremost, you have to define those big words, because the concept of the American Dream is extremely ambiguous. For William F. Buckley, Jr. and his followers, the American Dream is achievable by all, opportunities are available without restriction, and if a community or group does not achieve success, it is entirely its own fault… The argument is that the laws and the constitution of the United States give everyone access to the same opportunities. Seen from this angle, the frustration of the African-American community would be its own responsibility. The other point of view in the debate urges us to think about history, as the past tells us a lot about contemporary society. Brilliantly, James Baldwin explains American prosperity and the concept of the American Dream. All rests on the free labour of slaves… This text is essential to remind us that we still have a long way to go.
Would you say you are updating this historical document?
John Collins: No, as we only made minute modifications to the text of the debate. The few changes we made aim to shift the text to the present as much as possible, to set it in the here and now of the audience, in particular when the spectators first enter the room and when the debaters are introduced. It allows us to play with the ambiguity between the present of the show and the historical document, with its vocabulary inherited from the 1960s, which carries very strong connotations. We decided not to change the text, in spite of the presence of words whose use would be controversial, or even “banned” today, for being extremely racist or discriminatory. We wanted to show this thing as it was and as it still is. Without filter, without political correctness. It’s much more impactful to preserve the way those two men debated. It’s incredible, the quality of the debate is very high. You couldn’t expect the same level from a debate today.
More than a historical re-enactment, your goal is also to offer us a very intimate portrait of James Baldwin.
John Collins: Beyond the topics of discrimination, race, and the place of African-Americans in American society, it’s the character and language of James Baldwin we wanted to bring to the stage. We added a final scene to the show that has nothing to do with the debate but which shows the author in private conversation with his great friend Lorraine Hansberry. She was the first Black female author to have a play performed on Broadway with A Raisin in the Sun in 1959. By adding this scene, we give the last word to James Baldwin—because in the debate, William F. Buckley, Jr. speaks last—and offer the audience a more personal and rarely seen point of view on the writer. A more complete portrait of the man. We built this conversation based on the letters James and Lorraine to wrote each other in the 1960s, but also on interviews they both gave. The debate continues in a way in this final scene. Lorraine Hansberry’s ideas were often radical. She inspired and sometimes challenged Baldwin. In a way, we hope that the conversation will continue after the show, that by reusing this political debate and turning it into art, we can continue the debate in a new way. The question of the debate is far from settled, it’s universal.
Interview conducted by Moïra Dalant and translated to English by Gaël Schmidt-Cléach