Shot in just 11 days, Acting is a real passion project for filmmaker Sophie Fiennes, best known for her Grace Jones documentary Bloodlight And Bami and for her popular Pervert’s Guide To… series (another instalment is currently in production). Back in the summer of 2021, Fiennes documented the rehearsal process of theatre company Cheek By Jowl, namely artistic director Declan Donnellan alongside designer Nick Ormerod, as they workshopped Macbeth with eight young actors. The end result gets a world premiere at this year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival. 

‘I first saw Macbeth when I was 11, with Dorothy Tutin and Albert Finney; it was amazing,’ recalls Fiennes. ‘I was stunned at the end when I saw his head carried on a spike around the stage, and I thought “what grown-ups watch is so weird”. I have a fascination for how Declan and Cheek By Jowl work with actors and I’d read their book, The Actor And The Target. My brother Ralph had one of his first gigs for them, playing Romeo in Regent’s Park Theatre, which I saw when I was 18, and I’d sat in on rehearsals for Othello. Their process really fascinated me.’

That creative process is usually a fiercely protected thing; Fiennes’ first task was to get permission to capture the workshops on film with the staging taking place in Twyford Abbey, a derelict gothic mansion outside London. ‘I initially approached them in 1999 and Declan said it was too fragile; there’s no way there could be a camera there, he would be paralysed,’ states Fiennes. ‘But I think he wanted to make a document or record of his work, and I like to make documentaries that capture the way things are before they disappear. Lots of people don’t understand how actors work, it’s a mystery. I think Cheek By Jowl would say that they evolved by working with actors, having experience gathered over 70 years so it’s an accumulation. And they’re so good at cutting through crap. The vulnerability and weakness of Macbeth is so intriguing to me, the assumption that he’s fuelled by ambition; what Declan says in the film is that what people say about themselves is not necessarily the same as how they actually are.’ 

Fiennes acted as her own self-shooter camera-person to capture 64 hours of footage: ‘I wanted the actors to realise it’s not a camera, it’s Sophie, and to find a way of making them feel confident about your presence.’ As producer and editor, Fiennes then reduced that raw material to a two-hour documentary film. ‘My job is to create an illusion which destroys delusion,’ Donnellan says at one point, and the same might be said for Fiennes’ illuminating film. 

‘You might think that acting is about language, meaning and character, but all of that is so less important than where you are in the space,’ notes Fiennes. ‘He’s very concerned with what he calls being horizontal: putting the actors at ease and setting up the groundwork for his relationship with them . . . actors are often keen to please the director, but Declan is very keen to dissolve that.’

The final part of the process for Fiennes is getting the result in front of an audience. ‘I like that immediacy. The emphasis is on showing the process and not just talking about it; there’s something fantastic about seeing that process, about seeing that emergence. It has to be a vocational thing to make these types of films, in the tradition of observational documentary.’ 

Acting, Summerhall, 18 August, 7.15pm; Cameo Picturehouse, 20 August, 3.15pm; 50 George Square, 21 August, 6pm.