‘It must be by his death’: Unicorn Theatre’s I, Cinna (The Poet) @ Zoom
Tim Crouch has become well known for his I, Shakespeare series: one-man takes on Shakespeare, which tell the story of a play from the perspective of a character not usually afforded the limelight. His fifth — I, Cinna (The Poet) — was performed at the Unicorn Theatre in London in February, directed by Naomi Wirthner and starring Crouch as his version of the ill-fated poet from Julius Caesar. With the run ending only weeks before theatres closed indefinitely due to COVID-19, a Zoom-facilitated revival of the Unicorn’s most recent production is a logical move by the theatre. It’s also an incredibly shrewd one: with very little adaptation or transformation, Crouch’s 2012 play fits eerily perfectly into both the virtual theatre model and the current sociopolitical circumstances of the Western world.
Talking about the initial Unicorn revival, Crouch expressed a desire to bring the play back because it felt more relevant than it had when he first wrote it:
2012 was the year after the riots in London, so there was a connection to that in the original production, but the riots feel piecemeal, small-scale compared to what’s happening globally now.¹
By moving the play online and performing it during lockdown, there are moments throughout I, Cinna which take on even greater relevance. In the opening moments, Cinna talks about ‘standing in a queue for bread. Feeling not all there. Watching it all go on, but feeling not quite part of it’.² It’s inevitable that virtually everyone watching the performance will have experienced something similar whilst standing two metres apart from their fellow shoppers, waiting in line to enter their local supermarket or grocery. That Caesar’s assassination takes place on the Ides of March is another coincidental detail which lends I, Cinna a further chilling resonance. When Cinna told us to remember the date, that we were living through history, it was hard not to reflect on the lockdown that was in either imminent or already in place across much of the globe in mid-March this year.
Although I haven’t seen I, Cinna in a theatre to be able to make the comparison, after watching the play as a virtual theatre performance on Zoom I’m convinced that the online medium can only have enhanced Crouch’s one-man show. Video footage is an intrinsic aspect of the play’s staging: during the Unicorn’s February production, ‘a great sheet of crumpled paper form[ed] a backdrop on which words and images of what is going [were] projected’.³ Whereas this formed an abstract backdrop to Cinna’s monologue on stage, on Zoom the footage was transmitted directly onto the screens of the audience’s devices, blurring the lines between the production’s status as a piece of theatre and a moving image adaptation. In line with Crouch’s desire to place the play alongside ‘what’s happening globally now’, at least some of the footage used was recognisably that of recent Black Lives Matter protests, giving an uncanny quality to the idea that Cinna’s unstable Rome was in fact a place within our world right now. Visual effects were also used at several points throughout, giving the sense of Cinna’s Zoom feed becoming unstable or even of being ‘hacked’. Wirthner’s clever shift from the main camera to ‘Cinna’s phone’ for the play’s finale was also a neat touch, lending the production a further sense of cinematic realism. Where Wirthner’s stage version of the play was likely able to sharply reflect our current moment, her online adaptation felt fully immersed in it, and as a result fully immersive for its audience.
Whilst Wirthner’s online version of I, Cinna isn’t interactive in the same way as Creation Theatre’s Tempest — arguably the progenitor of virtual theatre in lockdown — the director deftly translates the play’s participatory elements to Zoom. Throughout the play, Cinna invites the audience to write with him — suggesting words, completing sentences, and ultimately putting together their own poem. The pre-show instructions tell those watching to have a pen and paper ready, allowing them to join in at points where Cinna instructs them to write words, phrases and names in the same way as they would in the theatre auditorium.
Where the online production excelled, however, was in its manipulation of Zoom’s ‘webinar’ format. The ‘Q&A’ function allows participants to send messages to the host — in this case Crouch as Cinna — without them being visible to other participants. At one point, Cinna asked for word suggestions; audience members typed them into the Q&A, and Cinna read as many of them out as possible, allowing those watching to influence the performance they were watching. At another, Cinna gave audience members the time it took for him to boil his kettle to make a cup of tea to finish two sentences. Those who wanted to share what they’d written were told to use the Zoom webinar’s ‘Raise Hand’ function. Cinna then called upon a couple of participants with raised hands, allowing them to be briefly unmuted to read their sentences. The effect reminded me of Saturday morning live TV phone-ins — especially as Cinna, in the spirit of his play being aimed primarily at children and teenagers, encouraged the younger members of the audience in particular to share their sentences.
In comparison to the more intentionally raucous interactivity of Creation’s Tempest, the virtual theatre of I, Cinna felt more controlled, a choice equally as intentional and just as effective. Creation’s main agent of interaction was Ariel, leading those in the audience to embrace and join in with the character’s magical misrule. In contrast, Cinna came across as a kindly tutor, who chose when he wanted his young audience to interact and praised them when they did so positively. Wirthner’s slick use of the Zoom webinar format enabled this; but Crouch’s brilliant and impassioned performance as Cinna, and his flawless command of the webcam performance space, was also central to the success of I, Cinna as a piece of virtual theatre. With four more plays in his I, Shakespeare series, we can only hope that Crouch transfers more of his one-man shows to Zoom whilst theatres remain closed.
Unicorn Theatre’s online production of I, Cinna (The Poet) runs until Wednesday 22nd July. For more information and to book tickets, visit the theatre’s website.
Production Details:
I, Cinna (The Poet)
Presented by Unicorn Theatre via Zoom, 10–22 July, 2020. Directed by Naomi Wirthner. Written by Tim Crouch. With Tim Crouch (Cinna).
¹ I, Cinna (The Poet) Teacher Resource Pack, p. 9
https://issuu.com/unicorn_theatre/docs/i__cinna__the_poet__teacher_resourc
² Tim Crouch (2012) I, Cinna (The Poet), London: Oberon Books Ltd.
³ Howard Loxton (2020) ‘I, Cinna (The Poet)’ [review], British Theatre Guide.
https://www.britishtheatreguide.info/reviews/i-cinna-the-p-unicorn-theatre-18761
