Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Theatre director best known as artistic director of the West Yorkshire Playhouse, making theatre thrive at the heart of a community.
On the island
Eight records
The way that these young lads from, you know, some backwater in America turned themselves into international superstars because they had a father who was diligent and rather frightening actually, but committed to them as musicians. And the sophistication of this piece of work, I think it it's an example of how from an unlikely background people can do astonishing things and it just makes you feel great.
This idea, she says in it, you know, that everybody thinks that hell's the hippest place to go. Well, I don't think so, but I'm going to take a look around me. idea that if you don't re-emerge from somewhere, then you'll get trapped. I I found that a really important line for me.
I sang with Janet Baker, or at least I sang to her back. I was in choirs um when I was at university and she came and did The Dream of Gerontius and I'd never been that near to a voice of that scale. And the combination of poetry and the the the musicality that Elgar's weaved around the images, in particular this piece about um death. I found Comforting. Because if you're on a desert island you you know that you're alone. But then you're always alone, really.
It's a piece that was written in the mid thirties, but I used it for a play that I did about the Holocaust and about the memories of the Holocaust. There's so much fragmentation. in the piece. And I as soon as I heard it I knew it it spoke of. pain and disintegration and a sort of need to find solace somehow. And then when I looked at at the um the reason why Burke had written it, I found he'd written it in response to a young person's death.
When I was nineteen I wanted to find out a little bit more about Irish rural community drama and I wanted to explore a little bit more about my Irish origins just to find out whether it meant anything to me. And I went to the Gaeltuck areas in Ireland and found an extraordinary wealth of activity that had been activated mainly through the inspiration. of Shaunerada. revitalizing the Shalachi tradition, which is a storytelling tradition, revitalizing the song. And when you hear Shado Reida singing this song, the love of being an artist springs out. Also he you can hear the audience responding to him and really they feel that he's singing on their behalf.
Well my first boyfriend introduced me to Bob Dylan. He also wore colourful PVC Macs and that's probably why I had one. And uh he had bright red hair and he was a bit of a poet. In fact he still is a poet. And he just used to play me Bob Dylan and say this is one of the greatest poets in the world.
Lucia di Lammermoor: Mad Scene
I was introduced to opera. By an actor who asked me to listen to a piece on the headphones. And it was in the back of a touring van when I was in Michael Bogdanov's company. And I just. went straight into this piece of music with John Sutherland singing The mad scene from Lucia, and I don't think I'd ever heard the human instrument used in such a an extraordinary way.
In a LandscapeFavourite
Well, that's probably why I've chosen this too, because In a Landscape is a piece by John Cage, and it never resolves musically. It keeps turning around and thinking about itself and coming back in on itself, like the sea. And it doesn't answer anything. There's no climax. There's no catharsis. It leaves you. to have to balance out all the imponderables. And That seems a good thing to do.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:03How do you feel about moving on from the West Yorkshire Playhouse?
I think when you've built something from the beginning, you are very aware that what's made it work is passion and drive and a sort of sense that risk was everything because there wasn't a history to preserve, so everything was about the future. And that's why it's been so successful, because you were building a future. If you ever feel that you're resting in the present tense, then you're not going to be giving the same energy. And you can't be about artistic bravery and then stay somewhere forever.
Presenter asks
4:27What did you do that was beyond normal teenage rebellion?
Well, I think between the ages of 14 and 18, I was near to going off the rails a number of times. Actually, just between 14 and 17, really, because you can see that life is for living, you have all this energy, the world seems so vivid to me. And then in school, I was doing a lot of things without anybody explaining why that knowledge would be useful to me in the future. It's just it was there and it had to be done. It was done, it had to be done. And so, you know, I went and sought other pleasures, really.
Presenter asks
5:45How did you know you wanted to do drama?
I knew from when I was very young. I made up plays in the back garden. I read plays when I was 11 or 12 for English. And instead of seeing them as books, I saw them as patterns and sounds and three-dimensional objects. I saw them as people moving in space.
The keepsakes
The book
A commissioned book on the complete history of visual art
David Hockney
I'm going to commission David Hockney, who I like and admire and is a friend, to do the complete history of visual art. And then I'm going to ask a number of people to do little extracts in it, forwards. Um John Berger, Ways of Seeing, Jeanette Winterton, who I think is very interesting and various philosophers I haven't tapped the shoulder of yet, because it's not just what was created, but how other people view it and how history has viewed art that sometimes removes it from people or gives it back to them or allows them to suddenly see things in well a different way.
The luxury
I think I just need a a pencil and a book and a way of sharpening the pencil would be fine.
Presenter asks
9:49Why did you spend a year acting after university?
I wanted to find out what it was like to be directed by a professional director. I went specifically to join Michael Bogdanov and spend a year in Leicester because in theatre, on one level, you're all working colleagues, but the director is seen to be the intellectual centre. And I think it's crucial that the director understands a great deal about the language with which one needs to talk to other artists. Because at some point, of course, the director has to let go.
Presenter asks
25:20How disappointed were you not to get the top job at the National Theatre?
I think I was as disappointed as one ought to be if you put yourself up for a really big challenge like that. I mean, it would be inhuman for it not to have meant something that I didn't get it. It was great to have got to that position, though.
Presenter asks
29:25How do you feel about death, having lost friends, a sister, and a baby?
I don't find it frightening. I Feel that you should prepare yourself all the time for for an inevitable extinguishing of yourself, and you must take joy in what you're able to have while you're here. And you must take joy in the people you meet for as long as they're there, because i it is totally arbitrary and ad hoc when someone suddenly uh disappears. So you've just got to be in readiness for it. And I think that's not a sombre thing to do. It is not a melancholy thing to do. I think it's um a curious and interesting thing to do to think about death.
“I can't stand the idea that a publicly funded space isn't full of people day and night.”
“I think everybody's imagination would drive them eventually into a creative act of some sort.”
“Again and again you saw the effect, and I still see it on a daily basis, of how art strikes a chord in somebody and they feel more fearless. They feel more soulful. They find parts of themselves. It ignites parts of themselves.”