Sneakyville

Following his success at the Melbourne and Adelaide Fringe Festivals, award-winning playwright Christopher Bryant is back with long-time collaborator, director Daniel Lammin, for a new and uncompromising take on the life and times of Charles Manson. The culmination of several years of development, Sneakyville envisions the final days of an imprisoned Manson, reflecting on his path to infamy as Bryant and Lammin interrogate the lasting legacy of this cult figure.

Milk Bar Mag sat down with Christopher Bryant prior to Sneakyville’s premiere and discussed just why our culture is so captivated by violent men committing violent acts.

You first began writing Sneakyville as part of your Master’s degree at NIDA in 2015. How has the play changed or evolved in your eyes since then? How have you evolved as a playwright?
In terms of structure, it’s stayed pretty much the same – if anything it’s just become much tighter, much clearer. I was lucky enough to participate in a development with Sydney company US-A-UM and director Imara Savage a few years back, and she definitely challenged me (and the play) to be as bold as possible. In terms of own playwriting practice, I find it difficult to pinpoint if I’ve evolved or what I’ve evolved into, and I think if anything I’m young enough that I’m still ‘evolving’. I just continue to write work that appeals to me and that has something worthwhile to say.

The tale of Charles Manson and his family has attained its own mythology through fiction and pop-culture. How does your take on Manson and his story differ to what we’ve seen before?
Sneakyville explores the Manson mythology with the knowledge that that’s exactly what it is: a mythology. At the end of the day, it’s not as much about the “Manson story” as it is about the effect of the Manson story.

Before you conceived of Sneakyville, you had your own fascination with the subject. What was that fascination born of?
I mean; it’s an engaging story that beggars belief in a lot of respects. There are parts of the play that I almost wanted to have a projection: “THIS IS WHAT THE MANSON FAMILY ACTUALLY BELIEVED”, or alternately, “THIS IS WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED.” I read Helter Skelter and thought, “how can this possibly be true?” – it was only when I began further research that I realised that a lot of it wasn’t. This realisation only drew me in further as I tried to discover the truth.

Why do you think the myth of Manson endures close to 50 years after the murder of Sharon Tate? Why do you think we, as a society, are so enthralled by infamy?
I think both questions are intrinsically entwined. Our society made him famous: he enjoyed being the first mass murderer to have graced the cover of TIME magazine. Helter Skelter further cemented Manson as a societal devil, as much as it tried to cement the author himself, Vincent Bugliosi, as Manson’s noble foil. The image of Manson presented in Helter Skelter has become iconic, regardless of truth. I think our societal obsession with violence comes from an attempt to understand that violence: but that something along the way has gone wrong. The way that violence is mythologised by our media – in the news, but in television, cinema, and books too – has conditioned us to be fascinated and to venerate people who do horrible things.

You say that you see Sneakyville as a critique of Manson’s legacy, rather than a celebration. Do you worry that, despite your intentions, your work will contribute to and further that legacy in some way? How do you work to avoid that?
I worried that at the start, some four years ago, when I wasn’t sure what I was saying with the play, but I don’t so much worry now. (The way we were encouraged to write our graduate scripts at NIDA was to plan nothing and to simply write, so it took a few drafts for me to pinpoint what the point of the narrative was.) Without giving too much away, there’s enough in the play that very drastically critiques the Manson legacy and opens it up to the world at large. If any audience members walk away from this play thinking what an interesting guy he was, it’ll more be a reflection on them, rather than the play.

How did the death of Charles Manson last November impact the development of Sneakyville?
If anything it’s made the play more interesting. The play itself isn’t a piece of documentary theatre and doesn’t purport to be, and although there are elements drawn from real life, the play holds an immense amount of fiction, and uses Manson’s fame as a lens with which to address the way the world views violent acts more broadly. Just because Manson is a character in the play doesn’t mean it’s about him, if that makes sense. Given the real Charles Manson is dead, hopefully it will force the audience to avoid questions of whether what they’re being presented is real and engage with the wider material.

You have collaborated with director Daniel Lammin on a number of projects now. What role did he play in the development of Sneakyville?
Daniel wasn’t drastically involved with Sneakyville’s development, but he’s read each new draft as it’s come along, and was the first person to read its very first draft back in 2014. He’s offered dramaturgical feedback, of course, and engaged with the ideas I’ve been trying to grapple with as they began to appear in the text, but he has predominantly left me to my own devices, which is how I write best.

What is it about him as a collaborator that sees you returning to work with him time and again?
First and foremost, Daniel is my friend. We share very similar ideas about what makes engaging theatre, but we also have a shared working language, which is a wonderful thing – and something I’m realising is quite rare, the more directors I work with. Daniel is a director who often works with new writing, too, and therefore he knows how to bring out the best in any new play. Basically, he’s someone who challenges both me and my writing to be better, while at the same time remaining fiercely in my corner.

Sneakyville runs till Sunday, 12 August. Tickets are available now at the link below.

Sneakyville 
fortyfivedownstairs, 45 Flinders Lane, Melbourne CBD
Till Sunday, 12 August 2018,
fortyfivedownstairs.com/wp2016/event/sneakyville