INTERVIEW: A Digital Pint with… Josh Dodds, on Campfire Songs, Legacy, Imperialism, and Poverty

We’re counting down to Prague Fringe by shining a light on a number of shows headed to the festival next week. Josh Dodds is the writer-director of Heart of the Country, a theatre show which aims to chart a path from Lyndon B. Johnson’s impoverished childhood in the Texas Hill Country to the lives of those riding the coattails of history. We caught up with Josh for a pixelated pint to find out more about what inspired the show.

You can catch Heart of the Country as part of Prague Fringe from the 28th-31st May at Café Club Míšenská across various times (60mins). Tickets are available through the Prague Fringe Online Box Office.

Jake: Hi Josh! Can you start by telling us about Figurehead Theatre and your co-collaborators there.

Josh: I started Figurehead Theatre with the playwright Sìne Harris in 2017 when we were still at university. We’d seen how the official student theatre companies went about holding auditions, running rehearsals and booking shows and applied it to the kind of work we wanted to make – talky, research-driven theatre that revolves around technology, history and music.

As time’s gone on, Figurehead Theatre has become a loose cohort of performers, actors and musicians who come together for one show or several and put their mark on the way we work going forward. Our work has become more political, more rooted in Scottish identity and is generally collectively devised by the company. The group who will be performing in Prague consists of myself, the actor/writer Lucy Stewart, performer/maker Julia Darrouy and the performance artist Sean McGarvey.

Jake: Heart of the Country is a story about the life and times of Lyndon B. Johnson – what inspired the piece and what have you learned in the process of developing it?

Josh: I spent the pandemic working my way through Robert Caro’s monumental biography of Johnson, something I don’t think I would have done under any other circumstance, and became pretty fascinated with him. Johnson is interesting because he was full of contradictions, brash and imposing but pathologically afraid of humiliation. He was a master of negotiation and passed some of the most sweeping civil rights and anti-poverty legislation of the 20th century but he was also responsible for the devastating escalation of the Vietnam War.

I knew that no-one could match Caro in terms of scope and depth so I went the opposite way. I became interested in how speculation, about Johnson’s life and the people around him, might give a new angle on Johnson and the times he helped shape. What’s been interesting is that the more we’ve performed and developed the show the more these fictional people around Johnson have come to the fore, brought alive by the performers telling their stories. They’ve started to shape the tone and feel of the performance, giving it a warmth and vulnerability that’s revealed to me what’s at the heart of any person’s story, real or fictional, renowned or forgotten.

Jake: What are you hoping the audience might take away from the experience, if anything?

Josh: I’m hoping the audience will enjoy the atmosphere we’ll be bringing to Prague and that they’ll be singing our campfire songs long after the fire goes out. Heart of the Country is fun and warm and it gets everyone together around the campfire.

There’s a lot to mull over of course, the show is about legacy, imperialism, poverty and what makes a person who they are but these themes glint and glimmer in the glow of the fire and hopefully act on the audience subtly over the course of the show, letting them sit with them and reflect on them in their own time.

Jake: Tell us about how the show has ended up being performed at Prague Fringe, and what you’re most excited for about the festival.

Josh: I came to the Prague Fringe years ago when I was visiting my friend Tomáš and really enjoyed the feel of it. I’m from Edinburgh so I wasn’t expecting a fringe festival to be so intimate and relaxed! I saw some great shows and had been planning on coming back to perform for years and it all finally came together.

Jake: Given the themes of Binge Fringe, if your show was a beverage of any kind (alcoholic, non-alcoholic – be as creative as you like!), what would it be and why?

Josh: I reckon it’d be a Hot Toddy, its got that cosy warmth combined with a restorative jolt of fiery whisky, either a Springbank Campbeltown Malt or a Weller 107 Kentucky Bourbon.

A reminder, you can catch Heart of the Country as part of Prague Fringe from the 28th-31st May at Café Club Míšenská across various times (60mins). Tickets are available through the Prague Fringe Online Box Office.