Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Founder of the groundbreaking theatre company Complicite, known for its physical deftness and numerous awards.
On the island
Eight records
Well, in the seventies I suddenly encountered a whole new world of music, amongst which were um voices who were not only extraordinarily musical, but who always had things to say. And one of uh those people for me who immediately not only had something to say but made me laugh like a drain, uh was Frank Zapper.
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
Well, I suppose as well as becoming musically educated in the nineteen seventies, I also began my political education. Part of my education was through music. This particular song opened up a whole world for me.
I was fortunate enough to meet The Love of My Life in the street, and it so happens that she's Cassie is a concert pianist, and she is working on this piece at the moment.
For me one of the things that my discovery of soul music in the seventies gave me was always this uh extraordinary sense of resistance and hope and continuity. And so I can't imagine being on a desert island without Aretha Franklin.
Concerto Grosso No. 1: V. Rondo
around about nineteen eighty five, eighty six, he was studying the Tchaikovsky Conservatoire in Moscow, and it's through him and my journeys to the Soviet Union at that time that I really became exposed to the wealth of Russian music. Uh and this piece Became incredibly important to me
we sang a song in an unknown Macedonian dialect. And the final Show of several after several years of touring took us to Macedonia. And we asked some Macedonians where does this si song come from? But they took us to the gypsy town on the edge of Skopje... You're singing in Roma, and I know the person. Who composed it? We were taken to her house.
String Quartet No. 15 in E-Flat Minor, Op. 144: I. Elegy
It's written right at the end of his life, so it contains an extraordinary delicacy which I associate now with the end of life, but it never ceases to offer new possibilities.
I Light the FireFavourite
On the edges of this world, I think we can still hear something of our deep past. I understood through my father that in Neolithic times human beings felt that they were part of the world of animals, and the echoes of that time, the vestiges, can still be heard today
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:11You do enjoy chaos, [don't you]?
Well, that's yes, I do enjoy my brother calls me constitutionally disobedient, so um I d like doing things, I I like breaking the rules, yes, that's true.
Presenter asks
1:33How does that work when it comes to the day to day?
Of course. But I am lucky enough to be in a profession where I make up my own day. So famously I do cancel certain things because suddenly it's a sunny day and I wish to be with my children and … everything about your days is extraordinarily precious and life is an i a a constant improvisation. It's a creative act.
Presenter asks
7:07Didn't you have to audition for Al Pacino though? He auditioned you as a director, did he not?
I mean, I thought, I can't direct Al Pacino, that's ridiculous. And then everybody around me, my loved ones and friends, said, you're crazy, you've got to at least go to New York and meet him. So I did. And going up in the lift, I suddenly found I was absolutely terrified because he was a man whose films I'd admired from Dog Day Afternoon through to The Godfather. And he was a fictitious character for me. He wasn't real, and I didn't know what to expect. But then within ten minutes, he's like any other actor. He's farting around, he's playing, you're cracking jokes. And that's not to say that he was easy. We had a couple of run-ins on the show which were very difficult.
The keepsakes
The book
And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos
John Berger
I would like to take a very small, slim volume written by my great friend John Berger, which is one of the most poetic meditations I know on love and the world, and it's called And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos.
The luxury
what I would take is the pillow from my family bed, and on the pillow is the smell of my family. And I remember when my father died and his body was removed from his bedroom, my sister and I ran down... we both buried our faces in his pillow, and uh we smelt him for the last time. So I would like to carry the smell of my family with me.
Presenter asks
10:39What was [your father] like?
Well, he died in nineteen seventy nine, so it's curious thinking about him now, that he was an extraordinarily gentleman. He was an American, and he was passionate about his subject. … Now he has become, of course, in my mind yet another story, another mythic figure, because I need to tell his story to my children, who are very young, so that they feel somehow connected to him.
Presenter asks
15:47Were you aware at that time that [your father] was unwell?
Yes, uh I remember the day that we discovered that he was unwell. We were in Scotland and … I remember him coming downstairs and s saying There's a little bit of blood in my pee, and then a year later, um, he left us. Uh I feel incredibly lucky to have participated in his death, although at the time I found it very, very difficult to be there
Presenter asks
32:32Does [your OBE] matter to you? Do you like that?
Um my initial instinct was to turn it down because I didn't like the idea of the order of the British Empire with everything that the those words stand for. But I feel that it is a recognition of a collective effort rather than my Anything I've done individually. Perhaps if I'd refused it, that would have been... Just simply. Another example of my own petulant disobedience, and for once I towed the line.
“I've always had a sense of that, that that we are somehow living in a story. First there is a story, and story is a way of making sense of the world.”
“There's nothing funnier than death. You know, we've always had this feeling that somehow tragedy is more serious, you know, and more profound about human life, and comedy is somehow light, artificial, and escapist. And I tend to think that the opposite is true”
“I understood through my father that in Neolithic times human beings felt that they were part of the world of animals, and the echoes of that time, the vestiges, can still be heard today”