Sitting in my room with Skype open and some prepared questions written down in front of me, I was looking forward to getting to cyber-meet Nina Raine. Rehearsals have been running smoothly over the past four weeks and we are looking forward to getting the show in front of an audience. But here was an exciting opportunity to get some insights into the creator’s conceptualisations of the play. Raine is also a successful director, so I was hoping to have the chance to get some helpful hints about breaking into the intimidating world of professional directing.

When the Skype video-call came through, and after an initial chat, I was ready to blaze straight in with my questions so as to not waste too much of her time. Instead, she was immediately asking questions about me and how the show was going. I was pleasantly surprised to find that throughout our conversation she showed a real interest in our production and our thoughts about the play. “It’s so exciting for me to have a production of the play in England again,” she tells me. “There’s been another one, in Scotland, and it’s been a huge hit all over America. But in England, despite lovely reviews of the premiere, it hasn’t had a regional life. But that means this Cambridge production is exciting because you’re the second English one since the original at the Royal Court.”

We discuss the global success of the play and how it has spanned many cultures and translations. “When I wrote it, I thought that it could really travel well because it could work in different languages, because it’s about language,” she explains. “Sure, there’s lines about Sainsbury’s, but the bigger messages are quite universal.” She told me about many different countries’ interpretations of the script and vastly varying productions of Tribes. The first foreign production was in Budapest, where she noted a significant difference in their perception of deafness; then it was in the USA, where they were determined to keep the family British. “I told them that no one would understand ‘Tesco’s Finest’, but they were religious about keeping stuff like that.” She told me about a show in Germany that seemed to shy away from any sentimentality, and she has now just finished directing the play herself, in Stockholm.

“I’d been watching The Bridge, so was keen to see what made Scandinavian actors so wonderful. It’s been so interesting. You come up against the theatrical conventions of a different culture. In Swedish theatre they are very slow in their rhythm in relation to English theatre. In the first act of Tribes, the rhythm is very musical, the tempo is fast. They think fast, speak fast. I gave the note to ‘think on the line’ - have the thought during the line, not before - and they didn’t know what I meant. It revolutionised their performance. The comedy doesn’t happen if you’re pausing all the time. They were all great with the second act with all its emotional depth though, they could access it immediately.”

I was curious to hear how her perception of the play has changed since it opened at the Royal Court in 2010, especially now that she was getting her teeth into it as a director. “It has been strange coming back to the play,” Raine admits. “You have the chance to change things. But I thought, this is the play I wrote. I never wanted to change it. I remember reading Arthur Miller saying: ‘Let it fail the way I wrote it, rather than the way I rewrote it’. I would always listen, if you came to me and said: ‘We have problems with this line’, as long as you’ve asked, you can always tweak stuff. You have to be pragmatic about theatre.”

Interested in the process of how the characters came to life, we discussed the development of the character of Sylvia. She is dating Billy, who is deaf, and is going deaf herself, plus she is fluent in BSL (British Sign Language). “Basically, I met this girl who wasn't going deaf but was a child of deaf adults, therefore bilingual in sign and speech,” Raine tells me. “She was so useful to me as she could tell me, in a way someone who only signed couldn’t, what the merits of the different languages were. That was fascinating to me. But then I met someone who was going deaf, and realised that what I wanted was like a graph. I wanted someone who's very pro the deaf community while they're not deaf. As soon as they haven’t got the say in it anymore they become much more ambivalent about the deaf community because they haven’t got the luxury of the choice. It’s a human thing, isn’t it?”

We go on to discuss how this confusing sense of wanting to belong and subscribe to, or ignore and reject, certain groups happens to most of us. I mention the LGBT community, for example, and how individuals can enjoy getting heavily involved in LGBT socials and political groups, or feel alienated and want distance from them. Tribes explores belonging in a sense that is not limited to the deaf community. 

Before we sign off of Skype, I ask if she has any pearls of wisdom that she could give to aspiring directors trying to start their career. “Writing is a good way in, there are fewer good writers than good directors,” Raine suggests. “Assist any directors you admire. You can see what their bag of tricks is, and you can borrow or steal, without having to deliver a show. I assisted Nick Hytner when he’d just started running the National Theatre, and there were actors having strops. It made me feel confident that you can be at any level and that’s still there. It wasn’t just me having to deal with that.”

Encouraging to know that sometimes Nick Hytner and Nina Raine struggle just like the rest of us.

Nina Raine’s Tribes runs from November 3rd-7th at 7.45pm at the ADC Theatre. The November 6th performance will be British Sign Language interpreted.