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An Interview with Chaz Oldham: writer, producer and lead actor of 'Morris - A Life With Bells On'

 

 

 

by Jeneane Hobby

 

Morris dancers have become hardened to a cynical media that wonders for instance, why they turn up at every public event and who invites them.  The people who invite them - organisers of fairs, gala openings, film premieres - know a good thing when they see it, and the Public, here in New Zealand has matured in its appreciation of street theatre in general.  All the same I’m sure a lot of us are feeling rather dazed at the benevolent, even admiring, critical response to Morris.  Did you anticipate this reaction when you began writing the script?

 

Absolutely! One of the attractions of morris dancing as a subject matter for a film is that it has a huge amount of goodwill built into it; it is a pastime that instinctively makes people smile. Now, I grant you that that goodwill will be greater where people are familiar with the genre, but even when they aren’t – and I’ve seen this in the US when we’ve screened the film there to the uninitiated – there still seems to be an overwhelming appreciation that the people at morris’ core are good and that even though one might not quite get what they do, they are still to be celebrated for doing it.

 

The film, under Lucy Akhurst’ direction, is a wonderfully sensitive observation of what it is to be a Morris dancer: the business of stray bells, the pathetic sticking that comes with uncertainty, the diverse personalities and their clashing, the warmth of fellowship and beer … or cider.  Yet you are not, yourself, a Morris dancer. Tell me about your introduction to the Morris scene.

 

When I was 16, my parents went to live in Australia. I had a choice: I could either follow them (my Dad’s company would have happily educated me and the like) or stay where I was. I was happy so I stayed. The sticking point was where I was going to live. One morning on the train into Waterloo, Dad was wondering out loud to our next door neighbour what he was going to do with me. It was then that Don Campbell - the man to whom the film is dedicated and until then whom we didn’t really know – said, why doesn’t he come and live with us? And so it was with that extraordinary act of generosity that I went from a Telegraph reading, conservative household to live with a Guardian reading, folksy, card carrying members of the Labour party household. And if that weren’t exotic enough, they were also an avid morris family. So, in some ways, I was born into the Morris.

 

You are it seems what I call a Morris Child albeit a fostered one. I notice that my daughter, who declines to dance, has absorbed the Morris so well over 15 years, that when everyone hands her their cameras during dance-outs, she not only composes lovely shots, but has an unerring sense of timing for hankies-up, or the peak of a caper.  Maybe the film’s success is due to loving observation by artists at the edge of the action?

 

I have tremendous affection for The Morris and that’s one of the reasons – there are many others – why we never laugh at or sneer at it. Not only would that make for a very boring - and short – film, but it would also miss the point about why people do it; indeed this is a central point we try and make: that whether you fly model aeroplanes on Wormwood scrubs, chase an inflated pigs bladder round Hackney Marshes on a Sunday morning (and call it football or rugby) or merely dance a bit of a mad dance at a pub May Day, we all have something that helps us make sense of the world. The Morris is merely part of that great panoply. So, in that sense, I really get it and why people do it; “just havin’ a dance and a couple of beers with your mates,” as it was described to me once.

 

I can imagine that Morris may have ruffled a few feathers.  It would be nice to think that everyone in the Morris world has been able to laugh at themselves, rather than take umbrage.  After all the Morris sense of humour is one of its distinguishing characteristics, no matter which circles one moves in. Have you had any negative feedback?

 

Not really. There will always be people totally devoid of a sense of humour and who can’t laugh at themselves. You can never legislate for them and they will always nitpick and find fault. Apart from those clinically insane individuals, the morris world’s reaction is best summed up by an experience I had at the Wimborne Folk Festival where we shot the film’s final scenes. We had just finished our dance and were slumped in a heap at the side of the stage when this enormous morris man – straight out of central casting: big beard, bigger beer gut, hankies – walked over to me with an expression on his face that might be best described as thunderous. “I seen you dance”, he said, with a formidable West Country burr. There was then a long pause as he leant in close to me and fixed me with a hard stare. “I seen worse,” he said equably before walking off. You can’t get more of a rubber stamp than that…

 

At the beginning of this year the Morris Ring made international headlines with its concern over the future of Morris dancing, while debate raged over the validity of including Morris dancing in the 2012 Olympic Games opening ceremony.  As the year closes you have presented Morris dancing to the world as a living tradition, and like the palimpsest beauty of rural England, something worth celebrating.

 

I think it is. We’re not very good at celebrating what we’ve got in England: we get a bit embarrassed about waving our own flags, as it were. What’s more, we’re constantly assaulted in the media by ideas, programmes, whatever, that say to us you’re a bit crap and everywhere else is better. And I simply don’t agree. We have plenty to celebrate in England and morris dancing is merely one element of it. One of the best things about The Morris is that in some ways it epitomises the best of what the countryside and the people who live in it have to offer: warmth, generosity and an endless capacity to have a good time. We did look at trying to do a piece at the opening of London 2012 but were told we couldn’t on the grounds of health and safety.