The Selfish Gene nears the end of its run here at Zoo Roxy, but I don’t believe it will be the last we hear of this new and innovative work of musical theatre. For posterity I caught up with the creative team, Jonathan Salway (writer), Dino Kazamia (director/co-writer) and Richard Macklin (composer) to find out what it’s all about, and put the world to right.
Part I – The Evolution of the Selfish Gene
Antony: “First off, so how did you guys come to collaborate?”
Jonathan: "We met at Eastbourne College. I came in as a freelance drama teacher and these two guys were very active in the drama department, Dino with the acting and Richard had done some incidental music originally that was just spot on, he could see a scene and get the music."
Dino: "We were studying but we tended to work more on our own projects."
Jonathan: "In fact I'd had the idea for the musical before seeing Dino and Richard do their own show."
Dino: "We'd worked with Jon before when we did an adaptation of The Picture of Dorian Gray. Richard did the music, I acted and Jon directed it. We knew we wanted to do a bigger project. Richard and I wrote a musical, almost a comedy pastiche of musical theatre…"
Richard: "Gently mocking the whole genre."
Dino: "It turned out we were actually quite enjoying it as a musical. We put it on with students and that went down quite well. Then we got Jon in…"
Jon: "…to help a bit with the directing and I thought - ah, just a minute, we have to do this again sometime on a bigger scale."
Antony: “The Selfish Gene musical explores the themes raised by Dawkins’ book using an analogy of the nuclear family. Can you comment on how that idea came about?”
Jon: "It was quite early on. I'd read the book, it just seemed to raise some fascinating questions. I said to Dino we should turn this into a musical, but it will sound like a lecture if we don't have a narrative, so that's what we chose."
Dino: "With a nuclear family you can cover so many dynamics. The Married Couple, parenthood, adults and younger people as well. It opens up all the doors as well as playing into the fun clichés we jumped upon."
Antony: "How did the music and lyrics come together?"
Richard: "John and Dino wrote the lyrics having read the book, identified the bits they wanted to turn into musical numbers and then sent them over to me, I fashioned them into songs."
Dino: "It was mostly Jon early on, wrote them in straight onto the page without knowing what the music was going to be like. The when Richard came on board he adapted them."
Jon: "I think initially I wasn't putting much rhythm into them,"
Dino: "As time went on the more emotional songs we could almost give to Richard and say, this is the kind of thing that needs to be said."
Antony: “So the relationship developed into more of a dialogue?”
Dino: “Yeah, you could say it evolved.”
Everyone laughs.
Antony: "I loved the verbosity of the lyrics, and the fact that despite the wordiness they weren’t alienating, you understood what you were hearing"
Jon: "I didn't want it to sound like a lecture. So we developed a genetic” stumbling over his words “Sorry generic biologist” everyone laughs “Professor character as a sort of narrator.”
Antony: “I like it, I’m going to use that.”
Dino: "It was more a sort of Greek chorus that comments on the action and question rather than explaining what is happening.”
Antony: “I felt like you were born to play that part. Did you always know you were going to play him yourself Jon?”
Jon: “ummm….”
Dino: “I knew.”
Antony: “When did you know for sure you wanted to play him?”
Dino: “I’m not sure that you wanted to. I decided…”
Jon: “I suppose when I… um… Dino persuaded me. Also I wanted to use quite a young cast on it and thought…”
Dino: “We had to have someone who knew the thing well. Like you said he was born to play the part, he looked right, I knew he could play that kind of role.”
Jon: “And fortunately I didn’t have to have my hair cut.”
Laughs.
Part II – Putting the World to Right
Antony: “Onto more philosophical questions! In the play even altruism is presented as selfish. ‘Well you have the inclination to protect her, because you share genes…’ What are your positions on that theory?”
laughs
Dino: “Well… it’s a difficult question, but one thing I have learned from the book is that though it is possible to reduce our altruism to biological terms, there could be a form of true altruism that we as conscious being can achieve, but that is only through rejecting the selfish gene motivations, the base desires that drive us. Humans have a certain morality that we have evolved.”
Jon: “Dawkins says in his book that in the gene view of the world altruistic acts can result from selfish-gene motivations.”
Antony: “In philosophy, the theory that everything you do is necessarily selfish is termed psychological egotism. The problem is that you can always reinterpret motives. Say I do something kind for Dino, and Rich says ‘That was just to endear yourself to Dino, or make you feel good about yourself.’ Freud has been criticised for finding sex in everything, similarly I could say that everything you do is motivated by wanting to be a gardener Jon, and when you brought over this glass of water before the interview it was symbolic of you wanting to water the plants.”
Laughs.
Jon: “That’s very true and people will probably argue that Dawkins starts his book with this theory and you can make everything squeeze into it. But never do I feel the book in cynically saying ‘that’s just selfish that you’re being altruistic.’ “
Dino: “He’s even coined the term meme as a suggestion for mankind to take up in opposition to being self-seeking.”
(A meme [pronounced: meem] is defined as cultural item that is transmitted by repetition in a manner analogous to the biological transmission of genes. So for example a political ideology, religious belief, artistic concept or general viewpoint.)
Antony: “To Richard - is love just a genetic calculation?
Richard: “You can probably trace everything back to that but we’ve also developed certain genetic overrides and you could argue that love is one of them.”
Antony: “Interesting, love could be a meme rather than gene-motivated.”
Jon: “I don’t know if Dawkins says that, he suggests psychological faculties evolved as sensors so you could be predicting this and love was one of those to hook you in, but then that brain that was evolved through those emotions and then became mimetic.”
Dino: “Love tends to make people behave very irrationally and not necessarily in a biologically sensible way so as for it being a selfish gene, it does seem to go against…”
Antony: “It could be a combination. “
Dino: “Yeah.”
Antony: “In general the idea of being motivated by genes, and even memes to an extent, goes against our ideas of agency. So next philosophical question; do we have any free will or only the illusion of free will?”
Everyone Laughs.
Antony: “Any takers?”
Dino: “Well that’s kind of getting into your definitions of free will…”
Jon: “We steered back from that one… because I’m not sure that’s ever an issue that Dawkins addresses. We do imply at the end that we can make our own choices and decisions.”
Dino: “Free will implies more than one will battling against each other. I don’t believe there is another will, although our genes may be trying to survive it’s not a conscious thing.”
Antony: “It’s programmed.”
Dino: “Even programmed implies a programmer, we don’t really have the language to put it across.”
Antony: “There’s no purpose without a purposer as my 2nd year philosophy tutor put it.”
Dino: “Exactly.”
Jon: “But we do make decisions against our selfish gene, such as contraception! Maybe we can include something about that in a future incarnation of the show.”
Antony: “Ultimately your show is very life affirming because in the end you bad guy gets a shock, his selfishness has turned his life upside down and has to rethink his strategy. They tyranny of the selfish genes gives way to the possibilities offered by memes.”
Jon: “If you’re going to play the game once you’re probably better off cheating. But long term you’re better off cooperating.”
Dino: “If you cheat you win more, each only wins a little bit when you cooperate, but if you always cheat everyone will constantly defect and everyone will lose.”
Jon: “Overall nice guys finish first.”
fin
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