Scar Theatre are an Oxford based theatre company who strive to tell honest, and hard-hitting stories, shining a lens on inclusivity and accessibility. Scar Theatre brings their modern retelling of The Great Gatsby to the Cockpit Theatre until 14th December. We spoke to the team to tell us more.
Q) Before we begin, please could you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit more about Scar Theatre?
We’re a small theatre company that started out in 2021, with an aim to tell honest, hard hitting stories. As a company, we’ve developed a host of original scripts on chronic illness, grief, masculinity and queerness (SKIN, Jack Studio, 2023; Bury Me, Riverside Studios, 2024; Straddle: a fantasia on gay rage, Hen and Chickens & Bread and Roses, 2024). We first adapted Gatsby for the stage at the Oxford Playhouse in 2023 and we’ve refined and revamped it for this stunning iteration at The Cockpit. Our goal is to make theatre about the messy and ugly parts of being human and, since our inception, we’ve worked hard to champion inclusivity and accessibility with our productions.
Q) Scar Theatre will be bringing The Great Gatsby to stages with a modern twist - why do you think it is important for these stories to be adapted and told through a new lens?
Gatsby taps into base human desires and the impossibility of dreams. It’s such fertile ground for any artist. We’ve been turning over these ideas for centuries and we will continue to do so for as long as we can because the truth is that there are no concrete answers or definitive meanings behind it all. And that’s what makes it such a beautiful playground to explore. For us, it was about finding our own sense of meaning from it and then making that into a juicy offering for audiences this winter.
We discovered a distinct sense of longing in each and every character onstage. It manifests in different ways, but we’ve captured that essence through movement by taking inspiration from the text. Fitzgerald’s prose frequently references nature and the elements: earth, water, air, and fire. We’ve explored these elements and the qualities they possess: in the gaze, in the body. The motif we keep coming back to is waves in the ocean, how longing ebbs and flows like the tide. We can’t wait for you to feel it in motion.
Q) The Great Gatsby is such a classic - what was it about this story that resonated with you and what themes did you take away from this story and want to focus on in this retelling?
Part of the reason that Gatsby has endured for so long already is because its themes are so well-crafted and readily translate onto the human experience today. Filled with the glamour of 1920s New York, the classic tells a heartbreaking tale of love, loss and social stratification, revealing the hard-hitting truth behind the ‘American Dream’. Love and loss are such universal experiences and, with the ever-increasing wealth gap, limited social mobility, and cost of living crisis, the themes of social stratification are still strikingly relevant today. Need we start on the state of the ‘American Dream’ and the political landscape of America?
Our thrilling new adaptation remains faithful to the text and its original themes while breathing new life and new meaning into the story, reminding us simultaneously how far we’ve come and how much further we have to go to achieve true equality.
Q) How have you found the process of adapting this classic story? From taking the classic story and digging deeper into its context, have you found theme from the 20’s that are still relevant today?
We knew we wanted to reinvent a classic, but didn’t want to just do it for the sake of it. We wanted to make sure we had something new to say. And when we were looking at plays that we knew, novels that we liked, The Great Gatsby came up and suddenly our concept fell into place. After a little more research, we realised that no one had explored Gatsby from this perspective and we knew we had to scratch that itch!
Queering the central love story of The Great Gatsby beautifully warps the metaphor about the American Dream into a broader longing for equality. It also pays homage to the silenced queer experience of the 1920s and the long list of incredible women who did extraordinary things to push back against the limits of society. Looking at the novel this way brought about nuances in the text that we hadn’t noticed before and it imbues our adaptation with a whole new set of layers to explore.
Adapting well-known novels always proves challenging: people want to see a story they already know and love so deeply. We wanted to strike a balance between the iconic quotes and events of the book, and give audiences something fresh to sink their teeth into. We’ve added scenes, fleshed out characters, and spun the book’s intricate web into a whole new beast for the stage while paying homage to the original novel.
Q) What can audiences expect from this modern re-telling? And why should audiences come along?
It’s the Gatsby we all know and love, with all the grandeur and opulence that comes with it - just with a little twist! The most exciting part is that we’re staging it in the round, which immediately pulls us into a very intimate setting. The novel is known for its opulence and decadence which we have preserved, but this new level of intimacy invites us into the larger than-life world of Gatsby - you’ll want to get up and start dancing with the cast!
We discovered a distinct sense of longing in each and every character onstage. It manifests in different ways, but we’ve captured that essence through movement by taking inspiration from the text. Fitzgerald’s prose frequently references nature and the elements: earth, water, air, and fire. We’ve explored these elements and the qualities they possess: in the gaze, in the body. The motif we keep coming back to is waves in the ocean, how longing ebbs and flows like the tide. We can’t wait for you to feel it in motion.
And it would be remiss of us to not mention the fashion! Our costumes have been meticulously curated by our designer, Eleanor Dunlop, to reflect the dazzling 1920s flair we all know and love. We’ve got beads, sequins, feathers galore, and even a set of human molar cufflinks (if you know, you know)! It’s Gatsby in all the splendour of its original setting, with a juicy new twist. In addition, our jazzy rearrangements of many well-known songs peppered throughout the show will keep your toes tapping with a little extra spice!
Photography by Freddie Houlahan
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