Stars Behind the Stars: Marc Atkinson Borrull '16

By
Robbie Armstrong
September 30, 2020

Stars Behind The Stars is a bi-weekly series featuring theatre makers behind the scenes.

This week, kicking off the Fall 2020 semester, we sat down with Directing Alumnus Marc Atkinson Borrull ’16. Atkinson is a Scorpio whose recent work includes directing Little Gem at Irish Repertory Theatre, Beginning at The Gate Theatre in Dublin and Associate Directing Hamlet at St. Ann's Warehouse.

Tell me about your first time in Theatre.

Marc Atkinson Borrull: I was always a theatrical kid. It doesn’t exactly run in the family but my grandfather was an amateur actor and director. It was something I knew about him but it didn't really come up often. When he was dying, though, I sat with him on several occasions and he would grab me by the wrist, and recite reams of monologues. I couldn't believe it; the man couldn't always remember what he'd eaten that day but these words from the plays he'd done in his youth were imprinted deep down. I suppose it was an early lesson in following your passion - it will be what ultimately counts. 

My primary school would always do a big show at the end of the year and I loved seeing those - the magic of transformation (literally our school hall turned into another world and other students transformed into charismatic creatures). I wasn't a shy kid but I sometimes struggled to navigate the world as it was. The theatre felt like something other, something magical, something powerful. It's what I wanted to do in life. My parents enrolled me in a children's theatre program and I remember that I desperately wanted to be cast as Pyramus in our end of year show - the play within a play from A Midsummer Night's Dream. Instead, I was cast as the non-speaking "director." My fate was sealed. 

How does being a Scorpio appear in your work?

MAB: I must admit, I’m not very versed in Astrology, but I did some googling and found that it’s a water sign that can be a bit intense but has a lot of intuition and emotional understanding. Not too far off the mark! I pride myself in being able to adjust my approach based on what I intuit a particular actor needs from me. Anne Bogart always jokes that she will teach you everything she can about directing in the first six months of the program, and that the rest is simply practice in finding your own voice, becoming the best version of you. It’s so easy to pretend as a Director, to put on a mask of authority, but much harder to allow yourself to be ‘you’—to be moved by the work, to admit when you don’t know something, to really see the possibilities the performer is bringing, not just what you had imagined. I think my emotional intelligence allows me to let the mask down. Not to be too grandiose, but it’s what makes what we do mystical. Theatre is sort of my Church, I guess.

How has your Columbia education prepared you for a career in theatre?

MAB: The thing that is so special about Columbia is the quality of the teaching. Anne (Bogart) and Brian Kulick are life-altering mentors. For me coming to Columbia was about the practice and the mentorship. I had a background in Lighting Design and was fortunate to have worked in large spaces. What I was seeking was time to practice with expert guidance. As a combo, Anne and Brian made us think about the very big (why we do what we do at all) and the very small (how to think about every gesture on the stage). They taught me to work intuitively (I learned how to make plans and ditch them) but with enough experience to make that intuition reliable. They taught me to listen and watch with rigorous attention—that an actor will do things that are better than a Director could ever imagine, if you create the right circumstances. 

I came to Columbia, deeply rooted in the European avant-garde, but I never felt quite at home with how cool, detached, and deconstructed some of that work was. I think I learned that the Catalan side of me is heavily interested in story, emotion, and fire. Columbia opened a whole world to me in which I learned to couple my aesthetic interests with a strong point of view about the material, a deep understanding of the potential power of story and the power of great acting. It’s those features combined that make the theatre that knocks me out.

What Shows did you Direct at Columbia?

MAB: I didn’t have much experience with canonical work before Columbia, but I fell in love with Chekhov in Brian’s class. I directed a tiny little production of The Seagull in the Studio at Columbia, and it gave me a hankering for those Russian plays (so epic and so tiny at the same time!) that I haven’t been able to shake. I also created a devised piece called Besieged which was a devised meditation on obsession, inspired by Request Concert by Francis Xavier Kroetz. Outlying Islands by David Greig was my thesis show. It’s a play based on a true story, set on the eve of the second world war as two young ornithologists are sent to a far outlying island off the coast of Scotland to supposedly make a study of the birds that naturally land there. They arrive on the island with its elderly caretaker and his niece. With no boat coming for weeks, the four are stuck living in close quarters. It quickly becomes clear, however, that the scientists have been duped. The British government is planning to bomb the island after they leave. They want to test new chemical weapons and see what nature survives. I was attracted to the elemental nature of the play and how it captures the vibrancy and potential of youth, in the face of societal collapse.

What kind of theatre do you think will be most important once this pandemic is over? What art does the world need right now?

MAB: It’s hard to know and a bit too early. Recently I was at the SDC semi-annual meeting. The leadership confirmed that we can’t know what is coming next. Greg Mosher, another mentor, always reminded us not to make decisions in a moment of crisis but in a moment of calm. Right now, everything is in flux and many people are in a state of true crisis. I think that those of us who are privileged enough to be able to stay home are learning something about how, perhaps, our days don’t have to be so meticulously structured and that there might be value in doing less. Maybe we’ll also realise how socially distanced our society was becoming before all of this happened. I think, in time, gathering together to watch live theatre will once again feel both necessary and special. That first night back in a full auditorium is going to crackle with energy, can you imagine that first moment when the house lights go out? We won’t know how the theatre needs to adapt to our new reality until the dust settles. But adapt it will. 

If you could be any famous child, who would you be and why?

MAB: That’s actually a hard question! One of my favourite novelists - Anne Enright - just published a novel called Actress. It’s a novel from the imagined perspective of the daughter of Irish (sort of) actress Katherine O’Dell. I’m so fascinated by actors - maybe it would be interesting (but not easy!) to be the child of one of those stars from the golden era of Hollywood. I’m fascinated by what that world was like outside of the eyes of the camera.

What’s your favorite play/musical?

MAB: I’m not one for favorites, but I saw three things before the theaters closed that profoundly reminded me of why we do this. I saw the knockout Dana H by Lucas Hnath at the Vineyard. Anatomy of a Suicide, gorgeously directed by Lileana Blain-Cruz, had a strange optimism within an incredibly dark story. And I was lucky enough to be one of the few people to see Laurie Metcalfe in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. An absolutely stunning performance and I so admire the deceptive simplicity of Joe Mantello’s work as a Director.

What’s next for you?

MAB: My next big project is a piece I've been working on for a few years now. I’ve been working with Matthew Minnicino ’15 on an adaptation of an old Russian play by Maxim Gorky (Brian Kulick, you got me with those Russians!) called Children of The Sun. Gorky wrote the original from his prison cell in 1905 on the eve of revolution while a cholera epidemic was sweeping across his native Russia. Matt and I have long been attracted to the deeply political heart of the play and have exploded it into a radically contemporary version. I’ve been dying to direct a big ensemble play like this one, and I’m finally getting the time to focus on it.