Features Q&A and Interviews Published 11 September 2012

Game of Life

Russell Bender studied physics at Cambridge and Rose Lewenstein studied performance art at the Central School of Speech and Drama. Taking John Conway’s 1970s mathematical model, The Game of Life, as its starting point, the play uses interlinking stories to investigate how the concept of emergence shapes our lives. The show is currently playing at the Yard Theatre, Hackney Wick.
Carmel Doohan

CD:Why did you choose to take your idea to The Yard?

RB: I knew Jay (Artistic Director of the Yard) and Tarek (Associate Artistic Director). I was at drama school with Jay and in a directors group thing with Tarek. I’d just done six months at the National Theatre as a staff director and at the end of November last year I had a week hanging out there, knowing I was about to become unemployed again, wondering what I wanted to do next.

I mentioned these vague ideas to Mark Rosenblatt, who manages the staff directors. He is a great mentor and interesting provocateur. He gave me a kick up the arse and said, “You’ve got to do something with this. You should be talking to the Yard”. I don’t think there are many venues where artists at this stage in our careers could take a big risk like this. Lots of venues are very good at supporting risks, but they do it with artists they know and we are not there yet.

RL: When we spoke to the Yard, we didn’t even have a story yet. We just knew going to work together on something.

Human stories. Photo: Katherine Leedale

CD: How did the two of you end up working together on this piece? (Bender directed Lewenstein’s previous play, Entries on Love, at Rich Mix, earlier in the year and she has worked with the Royal Courts New Writers programme.)

RD: I was mulling on all these ideas and we went for drink. After a few glasses of wine I said, “Why don’t we do something along these lines?

RL: I was totally ignorant about these scientific ideas, but the more I drank, the more I said, “Yeah, cool”, as if I knew what he was talking about! I don’t have a science background, but at one point when I asked Russell, “Why have you asked me to do this?’ He said, “It’s because you don’t have a science background that I need you to do it. Otherwise it will become a science lecture”.

RB: If two scientists collaborated it would risk ending up with something very scientific. I knew Rose was brilliant at people and stories and was interested in writing stuff that tackled complicated issues.

RL: I was learning a lot about structure and form. I wanted to write about human stories and I felt we should try to connect these ideas to something human. The script couldn’t be emergent itself, because that would mean not having a writer – but I wanted to create a snow ball effect, of the stories colliding with one another and leading to something inevitable. I wanted to pose a question about faith – faith with a small ‘f’ – faith in the world and in human nature.

There were a series of Eureka moments for me. One was a Radiolab podcast about Emergence. Halfway through it the presenters have a debate about whether or not it’s depressing that there isn’t a top down system or leader in life; if it all comes from chance, is this depressing and meaningless or is it magical and amazing? This tied in with a lot of things I was exploring in the early scenes to do with faith. I knew that wanted to write something that involved interconnected stories and in same way as Russell was doing, I wanted the structure to emulate the concept of emergence. A language of patterns and rules is deeply ingrained in both the movement and script itself. It really ties it all together.

The ideas explored in the play seem to have infiltrated through the entire process of its creation, and there is an impressive rigour to the way the form expresses the content and the content plays with the form. Making complex ideas emotionally engaging and allowing philosophical concepts to be looked at in fresh and subtle ways, Game of Life is a fascinating play.

Despite the apparent precision of the opening night, Bender and Lewenstein still see piece as work in progress. Hurrying off, full of excitement, for another day of rehearsal, they are definitely two to watch out for in the future.

Game of Life plays at the Yard Theatre, Hackney Wick until 22 September 2012. For more information and tickets, visit the website.


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Carmel Doohan

Carmel is an arts journalist and writer who lives in Hackney, London.

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