Interview with Florian Zeller - Shannon Theumer
Today we are speaking with Shannon Theumer, a current student on the Contemporary Performance Practice – Writing for Performance, BA course about her experience interviewing Florian Zeller about his BAFTA and Academy Award-winning directorial debut The Father. The Father opens in cinemas and is available on demand from today.
Tell us more about your recent interview with Florian Zeller
I interviewed Florian Zeller about his BAFTA and Academy Award-winning directorial debut The Father. He talked about creating an immersive experience - the experience of what it could mean to lose everything, including your own bearings - for audiences around the world rather than just a story, and cinema was the only right medium for it.
The main character was written explicitly for Sir Anthony Hopkins. For Florian Zeller he is the greatest living actor, who, in his performances, is always so in control of the situation, that seeing his performance in The Father, as the character slowly succumbs to dementia, makes the experience even more devastating and disturbing.
The Father was filmed in his hometown, Paris, where they built a set in order to be able to play with the different layers of disorientation and use the full potential of the space to tell the story.
And finally, Florian Zeller told me that the most important lesson he has learned while making his debut feature film is to trust his intuition and never give up, because filmmaking is hard and your own truth is the only thing you want to tell.
What made you want to take part in the interview?
The chance to talk to Florian about his work! I had already seen The Father when the email about this interview opportunity popped up and I immediately threw my name in the hat.
Were you familiar with Florian Zeller’s work?
He is my favourite playwright — seeing his play The Son was a life-changing experience for me. After that I really got into his work and read all the plays that had already been translated. Florian Zeller writes so devastatingly, achingly beautiful about the complexity of family, the mess of it and the love within.
What were your impressions of the film, The Father?
It just rips your heart out. Usually in stories about dementia we get an outside perspective of the person suffering from the illness. But The Father feels like a first-hand experience of what it’s like to live with dementia, while it’s simultaneously capturing the horror and frustration of the ones who have to see it happen. It’s a fairly exhausting watch and this feeling of inevitability that worse and worse things are going to happen really makes it a more devastating watch the further we get into the story. It’s brilliantly adapted and directed and everyone in the cast delivers absolutely stellar work.
What was your favourite part of this experience?
It’s cheesy and cliché, but I am so genuinely happy to have had this grand opportunity to talk to my favourite playwright and listen to him talk about his art. His work has saved me in so many ways and inspires every little bit of my own writing.
What has surprised you most about the experience?
He answered every question in so much detail with passion and enthusiasm, these ten minutes flew by so swiftly. I had quite an amount of questions prepared and understood rather quickly that I’ll only get to three or four of them.
How has this experience influenced you as a writer?
I think this experience will have a bigger and more significant influence on me later in life and in my career. When he talked about the lessons he has learned from adapting and directing The Father, it felt more like advice — trust your intuition, don’t give up and tell your truth. And that’s going to stay with me.
How did you find out about Central and decide to study with us?
It was impossible for me to pursue writing or attend university in Germany, where I am originally from. So I researched drama schools in the UK and writing courses in higher education and just hoped someone would give me a chance. The Contemporary Performance Practice – Writing for Performance, BA course is all of the things I hoped to study combined and I am happy I got the opportunity to study at Central.
What are you planning to do after graduation?
This question is a little bit unsettling; I want to stay in London and work as a writer and director in both stage and screen. After graduation I will try to get and use as many writing opportunities as I can while I’ll keep writing and submitting my own work.
If you want to keep up with Shannon, you can follow her on Instagram @ceremonialsinmylungs or Twitter, @ShannonTheumer.
Don’t miss Florian Zeller’s award-winning film The Father, which is playing in cinemas and on demand from 11 June 2021.
