Dead Guilty: Director Q&A with Chris Westgate
Our 2025/26 season opens with the psychological thriller ‘Dead Guilty’ by Richard Harris. We sat down with director Chris Westgate to hear what audiences can expect from this production that is sure to open our new season with a bang…
Without giving too much away, what is ‘Dead Guilty’ about?
It’s a modern psychological thriller. Well, I say modern, it’s now 30 years old, but when it was written it was an incredibly contemporary, modern piece. But I’ve had to set it very much in 1994, because if you set it in the present day, you would have to introduce a mobile phone, and that would mean there would simply be no plot! You couldn’t have this play if all the characters had mobile phones, it wouldn’t work.
But it’s about a young woman struggling to come to term with the guilt she feels having survived a car accident that killed her lover. And it’s about the people around her who are involved in her recovery. Strange things start to happen, and we’re not sure if what’s happening is in Julia’s head or that one or some of the characters are not as friendly or as on her side as they might seem…
What made you want to direct this play?
When I first read it, I did not see the end coming. And that really excited me. I didn’t see things progressing the way they do, to reach this ending. There is a point where it becomes obvious what is happening, but by that point, it’s too compelling to stop. It’s like not being able to tear your eyes away from the oncoming inevitability, you know what’s going to happen, but you can’t not look. I get chills when I think of new things for the actors to explore, as the tension builds towards the play’s conclusion.
How do you want audiences to feel watching it?
I want the audiences to have that same feeling I did when I first read the play: that when they do eventually realise what’s about to happen, they feel powerless to prevent it. But audiences can expect an evening of intrigue where both the storyline and the characters gradually reveal the truth…
How have rehearsals been?
With this particular show, where the characters are so important, it has to be completely real in order to be believable, so we’ve done a lot of table reads to get to know what the characters are thinking, what they’re feeling etc. I just wanted to get that right before we started worrying about where they move or which way they’re facing. Because for me, once you’ve got into the text, you’ve understood how people are feeling or acting, the movement around the stage develops naturally as people feel the right place to move. Intentions become internalised, rather than forced.
I don’t want to direct people to move on a certain line if it doesn’t feel comfortable to them, because that will stand out and audiences will feel it subconsciously, which will ruin their immersion. There has to be a reason and intention for everything, otherwise it feels false for the audience.
But I want people to be so immersed in the story they forget they’re watching a play. We’ve taken them on a journey, fulfilling a contract between author and audience. It is our duty to take the audience on that journey, and we shouldn’t do anything to get in the way of that, whether it’s the wrong prop or the wrong direction, which jolts the audience out of their immersion.
Tell us about your cast?
They’re just a fabulous bunch of people. We’ve got a mix of people who have done several shows down here and people who’ve only done one or two. I’m really happy with the way everyone is interpreting the characters, inhabiting things that are potentially quite alien for some of them.
We’ve been working around the summer holidays period, but we’re now entering that intensive period of rehearsals as we get closer to opening night. I don’t let myself think how many rehearsals we have left, but I am confident we will get it to the usual high WT standard! I want this play to be setting the bar for the season, and that people are still talking about it for the right reasons for a long time…
This amateur production of “Dead Guilty” is presented by arrangement with Concord Theatricals Ltd. on behalf of Samuel French Ltd. www.concordtheatricals.co.uk
Dead Guilty opens at Wokingham Theatre on Wednesday 3 September and runs until Saturday 13 September. Tickets are available now, but selling fast.