The starting point for Fergus Blair’s debut play was the Milgram experiment. Conducted at Yale University from 1961-2, it tested the extent of human obedience to authority, beginning three months into the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann. The set-up for the experiment involved a doctor and two subjects, who would adopt the positions of teacher and learner. The learner was in fact an actor. The teacher was told that if the learner got a question wrong, they were to use the electric shock generator as a punishment, increasing the voltage each time. Around two-thirds of the volunteers continued up to the maximum of 450 volts. 

Blair wanted to explore the same issues as Milgram within a theatrical context, using the experiment as a framing device: “I’m interested in the relationship between science and art, and what one tells us about the other”. He explains that Obedience/Authority is not a dramatisation of the Milgram experiment, but rather “an artistic mirror” to examine the way that the two different approaches can be used to reach the same understanding. 

Acting itself is examined by the play: in a meta-theatrical strand of the plot, Morley (Andrew Room) forces the other two characters to convey a story about experiences he had in Mexico, a story that was inspired by Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano. This creates an extra layer of performance in a play that begins with Bohlen (Matt Clayton) as the actor within the Milgram framework. Blair says: “As the play goes on, various questions get raised about what the exact configuration of the experiment is and the audience becomes increasingly uncertain of who’s actually experimenting on whom, what’s being tested, what their role in the whole thing is.” 

The Doctor, played by Chloe France, starts as the figure of authority. Blair initially had in mind an all-male cast but thought during the auditioning process that a female doctor would allow the play to move in an interesting direction. When discussing her role,France tells me that she asked Blair: “Where do you think her authority comes from?” While Blair says that he did not necessarily want it to be a play about gender, casting a female doctor clearly adds another dimension to the power struggle that takes place between the three characters. 

Although the play is evidently very sinister and the production promises to be shocking, there are also moments of dark humour. Clayton, who appeared as comic doctor in the recent production of A Doll’s House and comic soldier in A Clear Road, jokes: “I am definitely above all else a comic actor. […] I would definitely be a success if I got no laughs; that would be a great success.” 

Blair and his cast members seem to be very much on the same wavelength. At one point during the interview, Clayton asks: “It’s quite a Greek thing, the introduction of the third character?” Blair, who directed The Bacchae last term, agrees with this suggestion: “I love Greek tragedy. I really love the idea of the simplicity of three characters. It’s almost dance-like, the ways that you can have interaction here and movement around here, […] and one observer role”. There is also an interesting exchange of ideas about Pinter’s The Birthday Party, a play that heavily influenced Blair. He talks about the overlap between the naturalistic and the surrealist that is explored in Obedience/Authority: “It starts out as a naturalistic piece of drama, but from there […] it spirals down to this surreal, dream-like performance.” 

Discussion of the Theatre of the Absurd and the play as absurdist leads to jokes about competing with Waiting for Godot, which is also running in Cambridge next week. Although Blair is highly modest, he is plainly a very talented writer – he was one of the winners of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award in 2010. One hopes that the Godot fans will make their way to see Obedience/Authority as well.

 

Obedience/Authority will be showing from Tuesday 22nd May – Saturday 26th May at Corpus Playroom.