I'm Letizia Treves, I'm Curator of Later Italian Paintings here at the
National Gallery and I'm here with the Breach Theatre Company who have put on a
play on Artemisia called 'It's True, It's True, It's True'.
I'm Billy Barrett, I'm the director of 'It's True, It's True, It's True' and the co-writer.
I'm Ellice, I play Artemisia in the production and I'm a co-divisor and co-writer.
Do you want to say a little bit about your role in the play and perhaps
how the play actually came about?
Yeah, so I'm the director and co-writer of the piece
which is based, primarily, on the trial transcripts of the rape trial but
also explores the ways in which her art relates to her life, related to that trial.
- So you went back to the transcripts and reread them?
Yes so the starting point for the show was revisiting these court transcripts which
are translated in a very, kind of, literal academic tone and so we sort of reworked
them in quite a contemporary way, mixing together some archaic and
contemporary language and also sort of exploding some of Artemisia's
paintings into the trial itself so we have the historical figures of Artemisia,
Agostino Tassi, who is the accused, and a neighbor called Tutsia but we also
meet some of the biblical figures that Artemisia was painting
and with whom she identified.
- So why did you pick on Artemisia? How did you first, sort of, meet Artemisia?
- So it was actually via the exhibition here, 'Beyond Caravaggio', or
through reading about it, particularly in an article that was focusing on
Artemisia and why she's been so overlooked in art history, or mainstream
art history, and through that article we heard about the existence of these court
transcripts and we're a company that has, before, restaged
testimonies but also battles: we're quite interested in re-performing history and
how we engage with history as performers. So we took those transcripts as, kind of,
a theatrical invitation to restage them: so what would it mean to restage a trial
that happened four centuries ago where even the words that are written down are
already unreliable because they've been translated and patched
together?
So we were excited by the invitation
that they presented as, in some ways, an already written script. Although
it takes a lot of work to make that dramatically compelling because, although
some of the testimonies are very visceral and vivid, some of them,
particularly the wording, gets a little bit confusing
- And some are very dry and not very factual and some are incorrect.
- Yeah, I mean, you get these whole
passages about "We went in a carriage to Santa Giovanni" and then you try and follow it
and it's very confusing.
But, yeah, so we read about the transcripts, we read about
the way in which, although it was Agostino who was on trial, it was,
in a way, Artemisia and her sexual reputation that was on trial.
She's the one who was tortured, she's the one who was
the subject of scandal, of all
these different voices in Rome saying "I saw her stood shamelessly at her window".
- And reputation is actually the key here because actually Orazio had a lot to lose
reputationally because he's the established painter and she,
by the time this happens, has been painting independently but within his house for
maybe two, three years.
We know from the transcripts that she's already
teaching a young boy to paint whose grinding colours for her
but Orazio also had a lot to lose.
So, playing Artemisia, that's quite a tall order!
So, how did you prepare for the role? Did you, for example, go and look at
her pictures? Did you, obviously, read about her?
- Well, before I knew that I was going to play her
and it was when it was just Billy, myself,
and our other company member Dorothy, we all took a research trip to
Florence and we went to the Uffizi and we saw 'Judith and Holofernes' and I wasn't
expecting myself to get so emotional and actually I think that reaction, that we
all had to the paintings, that really carried through the process and kind of
freaked me out in playing her actually because I felt so moved I suddenly felt
like I wasn't going to do her justice.
- It's such a powerful picture though
and it's not the only one that's powerful. I mean there is such a strength in her paintings.
- But when you see it...because we'd only seen it on Google Images so
we'd seen it tiny on our screens to suddenly see it so huge and see all
these things that we hadn't noticed before like the blood splatters on
the breasts and the hands and just the way the sleeves were rolled up, things
that we just hadn't noticed when they were on a screen...
- And they're life-sized
so it just feels so real and right up in the picture plane, I mean a bit like this
picture, she crops it and because they're life-sized you feel like you're in the
picture, you're witnessing the event, you feel like you're in the tent with them.
And, of course, Florence is a really key moment in her life: she moves to Florence
after the rape trial and it's sort of where she really finds kind of both
personal but also professional independence; she moves away from her
father's workshop and sets up on her own and it's also the period from which our
self-portrait is painted and it's interesting because in this period she
portrays herself quite a lot and I think that's very much tied up in
her promotion of herself. It's a self propaganda thing as well
and here she is Saint Catherine but the wheel, you know, the crown,
the martyr's palm, they all feel slightly incidental,
almost after-thoughts and it's almost like she's dressing up. There's a kind of
play-acting as well in this dressing up rather like Rembrandt does or even Cindy
Sherman now, you know.
I think there's a real theatre in these self-portraits.
The transcripts are very real, I think.
You get a real sense of her, of her determination. She's very prepared
by the time she sits down in that witness box.
- I think that was the thing
that really, in terms of character and portraying her, when I think the
break came for us: we'd compiled all these transcripts after reading through
them and laboriously structuring them and making them make narrative sense
for an hour-long production. When we got to looking at her as a character we
became quite preoccupied with her age and the idea of her being a woman on
trial at the time.
So we were like 'Oh she must be nervous, she would be so
aware she was in a room full of men, she's probably really...
I don't know, shy and overwhelmed' and we just couldn't do that. We couldn't put
that on top of it because actually her words are so bold and she's so strong in
her opinions and she obviously just wants to tell the truth and I think
there's a fatigue to her as well of maybe not wanting to be there but having
to say that and just wanting to get the truth out there that, actually, all the things
we tried to put on her, we had to push away because her voice is so strong
that it had to just be that.
- Of course the trial happens actually quite
a few months after the rape itself because she continues sexual relations,
she's hoping that Tassi will ask her to marry him; he doesn't and it's actually
Orazio, it's her father, who brings him to trial and I think rereading those
documents and sort of more recent interpretations of them, I think it's
very clear that she's still very passionate in her voice but they're very
well prepared responses. I mean she realises both her but really have
father's reputation is very much at risk here so you've actually feel the
pressure of her having to go through this for her father.
One of the most moving moments is, of course,
when the judge says to her... well you get the impression
that they believe she's right but they can't prove she's right:
it's her word against Tassi and he says "Is it alright for us to talk to you
to prove that you're telling the truth?"
and she says yes so, of course,
they used the sibille, which is this rope that was
tightened around the fingers which are, of course for an artist, your hands are
you're work, they're your profession so it's particularly moving for someone like
that and while it's happening she says the words 'It's true, it's true, it's true'
which is, of course, the title of your play and then she throws out this remark:
"These are the rings, the wedding ring you've given me" to Tassi so she's got
real fire you know. I mean she hasn't prepared an answer like that but you can
see there's so much anger there.
Artemisia is an artist who just really
sort of engages people today, not people necessarily who that interested in art,
just in her life story. I mean when you started working on this play,
started developing the project, did you really get a sense that... did you know as
you stood on stage for the first time in Edinburgh that people would
love this, that there was a real hunger to know more?
- I mean we hoped so.
As we've said before, I think
Artemisia is having a bit of a moment right now: there's been quite a few
exhibitions and I know that quite a few people have dramatised her life
sometimes more or less successfully...
So actually part of what we wanted to do was act as a
counter-argument to some of those representations.
So there's a film in which as she's being tortured she says "I love you, I love you" about Tassi
and so we partly wanted to...
- And that's utter fiction...she doesn't... so to go back to the facts?
- Yeh, correct, some of the ways in which she's been represented and I guess argue for
her as a woman who has a lot to say to us today. Obviously in a climate in which
people are coming forward with stories about abuses of power, particularly
within the creative industries, which is obviously a big link but across
different institutions everywhere, it feels like Artemisia could serve as a
bit of an inspiration to us right now and I think that's what people were
connecting with in Edinburgh which was really exciting.
- In the trial she wins or, I suppose, Orazio wins
and Tassi's not just found guilty
of the sexual assault but he's found guilty of perjury, of bringing false
witnesses, found guilty of slander, so damaging Orazio's reputation so it's kind
of a triple win for Orazio but of course three days after the trial
Artemisia is married off and sent to Florence with her new husband so you
still feel slightly like she's this... not pawn in the whole thing...
I do think the whole thing must have been, sort of, in a way orchestrated
by Orazio but she's won through...you know, Tassi now is a far less famous
painter than Artemisia and I think his fame largely rests on what he
did to her which obviously isn't a great reputational legacy.
Also her art, whether it's because she's painting general female experience or her female
experience and she's painting about her own story, it just resonates in such a
way that I just don't think his would because it is such an incredible insight
and it is so potent. Like the fact that modern women can look at her paintings
now and look at these transcripts and find such a resonance with them is
incredible and that that was being painted in 1612, she was always going to
be the victor.
I think what we found exciting as well was...so there's one
narrative which is the court and this procedural legal drama that
plays out in this 400 year old document but there's also all the stories
she's telling through her art and, whether or not you want to read those
autobiographically, she clearly identifies with a lot of the women that
she's painting, in the scenes that she's painting and as much as anything they're
really fun to put on stage. You know, you've got people in a witness box
arguing over the truth of what happened and then suddenly you can cut to a woman
holding a head and a sword and so all of that was...
- dramatic potential!
- Yeah exactly!
- Well a lot of her pictures are theatrical in that sense.
I think you're right. I think a lot has been read in autobiographical
terms in her pictures, almost too much actually, and I think there's definitely
a sort of shift now in looking at her pictures slightly more...someone very
cleverly wrote quite recently: 'If none of the transcripts survived none
of us would read 'Judith and Holofernes' as sort of pictorial revenge on her rapist',
you know, and I think that is important to bear in mind but I think with
Artemisia given that she's... Germaine Greer called her a magnificent
exception...she's so exceptional in her time you can't help but look at
her pictures and understand that there is a sense of self
in that moment. Obviously here it's a self-portrait but her life is
intrinsically linked with her art - it's got to be, it's part of her
artistic and personal journey.
- Yeah I think also this idea of dressing
up that you mentioned and playing a character was really exciting to us in
terms of how to stage it. So our staging is half court room/
half artist studio so instead of an historically accurate witness box and
judge's bench, we've got easels and painters' benches and a paint trolley
actually that comes out because we wanted it to be a real
historical and legal space but also an imaginative space where suddenly an
actor can go and grab a cloak and throw it on and a beard and be the elder in
'Susanna and the Elders'.
It was also really important to us to have that
sense of play that runs throughout it because it is a very...you know the
subject matter is very serious and so many people have experiences of it and
will be bringing things to it and I think, especially as female audience
members watching it, you want to give something different other than just
traumatising and what she does in her other paintings that we were really
struck by, obviously this is a self-portrait, but by
bringing women together to carry out actions like Aber and Judith against
Holofernes, we wanted to create that sense of play amongst three women which
is why it's an all-female production even though there's a lot of men that
are represented on the stage. It just felt very important to us that there was
play amongst females because that's also really supportive in the subject matter
that we're talking about and in representing her and we felt like that was
something that she wanted to represent so we could give it.
- And I think there's something about the way in which
these painters would have models and dress
them up and set them up in painting positions that was exciting to us in
terms of dramatising it.
- Yes, actually as a as a female artist that would
have been quite tricky. It would have been very difficult to...well we know
from her letters later on in her life she's complaining about how
costly models are, how expensive they are
and then from these transcripts you know that Orazio
had male models coming in, no female models, but for Artemisia if she's
painting a woman she's got herself, she doesn't need a model, she need a mirror
so it's interesting looking at these self-portraits because there are quite a
number from these years when she's in Florence where she's wearing...
So there's a picture very closely related to ours where she's playing the lute and
she's wearing a turban and she has an earring and she looks like a gypsy
and we know it's a self-portrait because it's mentioned in an inventory very early
on and described as such but it's in exactly the same pose and you
can see it's just sort of dressing up in different guises, the sort of theater of
it and, like I said before, the play-acting and sort of using her own
image for two reasons: 1) it's practical, doesn't cost you
anything and she was renowned to be quite beautiful so you've
got a beautiful face to use and inexpensive but also it is
your mark, in a way, so someone buying a picture like this,
someone for whom this picture would have been painted would
have known they were getting a picture by Artemisia but also of Artemisia and it would
have had an extra kind of cachet of having her face in it.
- So the play is about to open here in London?
- Yes it's on at The New Diorama Theatre
from 16 October - 10 of November with matinees on Saturdays.