Max Stafford Clark

Max Stafford-Clark was born in 19 94 . He attended Trinity College Dublin and his directing career began when he graduated in 966. He became Associate Director and then Artistic Director at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh.

Max has been a keen supporter and user of verbatim theatre. Verbatim theatre involves interviewing many people connected with the idea and then perform their actions and works in verbatim. Max directed his first verbatim play with Joint Stock, The Permanent Way, Talking to Terrorists, A State Affair and Mixed Up North.

Taken from "The Permanent Way" 

The Permanent way is a play about the privatisation of Britain’s railways. He read the book, ‘The Crash That Stopped Britain’ by Ian Jack, that talked about the Hatfield train crash of 2000 in which four people died. Max approached David Hare about making it into a play.
A workshop was organised with Max, David, and a group of actors. They interviewed people related to the train crash including union bosses, a survivors group, a victim support group, relations of people who died in the crash, the head of Rail Track Gerald Corbett, and Richard Branson. Actors also went out and interviewed people in pairs or groups. Instead of recording the interviews they returned to the rehearsal room and assumed the role of the interviewee while the rest of the group asked them questions. "Using this Stanislavskian technique of observation, improvisations would emerge and characters were developed. Two of the actors went so far as to get jobs in the railway for a few months to immerse themselves in the industry."

"A workshop isn't exactly rehearsal, nor is it journalistic investigation, nor is it academic research and yet it contains elements of all three of these.”