The Archive
Recordings from June 2010
Total Number of Recordings from this month: 9
- NEW WRITING: DENNIS KELLY The playwright gives a career overview to Aleks Sierz, talking about his plays, Debris (2003), Osama the Hero (2005), After the End (2005), Love and Money (2007), Taking Care of Baby (2007), and Orphans (2008). Recorded at Narrative in Drama, the 19th Annual Conference of the German Society for Contemporary Drama in English, held in Paderborn. Substantial extract. Expletives not deleted. (Edited transcript available as ‘Narrative in Contemporary Drama (Dennis Kelly in Conversation with Aleks Sierz)’, in Merle Tönnies and Christina Flotmann (eds), Narrative in Drama (CDE 18), Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2011.)
“I wanted Love and Money to shift every time you come to a new scene so that you feel that there is something different happening all the time.”
- Recording Date: 06-Jun-2010
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- NINETEENTH-CENTURY THEATRE SPECIAL While walking around the exhibition of West End Theatre in the 19th Century at the National Theatre, which features posters, playbills and costumes, Heather Neill talks to Judith Bottomley, local studies librarian at the Westminster City Archive, source of many of the exhibits, and Robert Tanitch, author of The London Stage in the Nineteenth Century (Carnegie), about the dramatic arts of the Regency and Victorian eras.
“Spoken drama was seen as a threat because it often had a political message - licences were a way of controlling theatre and preventing riots.”
- Recording Date: 07-Jun-2010
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- ASIAN VOICES: ALIA BANO The playwright talks to Suman Bhuchar about her latest play, Hens, which has had a short run at the Riverside Studios before being screened by the Sky Arts channel on 23 June in their series of contemporary televised drama. They also discuss her other work, including her debut Shades and her current Let Them Eat Cake (Royal Court), as well as Gap (National Connections season). Recorded at the Riverside.
“How can I possibly shy away from the fact that I am a woman and an Asian? I'm very proud of where I come from, and of my identity as a writer.”
- Recording Date: 17-Jun-2010
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- FOCUS ON FEMINIST THEATRE Theatre researcher and curator Susan Croft talks to Carole Woddis about the How the Vote Was Won: Art, Theatre and Women's Suffrage exhibition (Museum of Richmond), which she curated with Irene Cockroft, as well as about her book She Also Wrote Plays (Faber) and the Unfinished Histories project, which she co-founded with Jessica Higgs.
“The suffrage campaign is so contemporary in its commitment, energy and inspiration, and in its effects on all the arts.”
- Recording Date: 18-Jun-2010
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- TONY AWARDS 2010 London critics Mark Shenton (Sunday Express) and Matt Wolf (International Herald Tribune) shuttled over to New York to watch the Tony Awards, at which British-originated productions triumphed, with a total of 10 wins out of a possible 26. Here they deliver their verdicts on the whole shebang.
“I feel sorry for David (Babani) but I think they should have realised in advance that in no award do three people to the podium...”
- Recording Date: 18-Jun-2010
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- INTERVIEW: OLLIE KADERBHAL AND POPPY CORBETT The Artistic Director and Associate Director of :DELIRIUM: talk to Matt Boothman about staging their debut promenade production, Your Nation Loves You, in the Old Vic Tunnels underneath Waterloo station. Further details: www.yournationlovesyou.com.
“We had walkie talkies from the dress rehearsal - until then me and Poppy had to scream at each other and hope that the echoes carried far enough.”
- Recording Date: 18-Jun-2010
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- WEST END REVIEW Mark Shenton (Sunday Express) and his guests Kate Bassett (Independent on Sunday), Charles Spencer (Daily Telegraph) and Matt Wolf (International Herald Tribune) discuss Arthur Miller's All My Sons (Apollo), Simon Gray's The Late Middle Classes (Donmar), Terence Rattigan's After the Dance (National), Drew Pautz's Love the Sinner (National) and Ingmar Bergman's Through a Glass Darkly (Almeida). Recorded at Dewynters, London.
“The Late Middle Classes was supposed to move into the West End - instead the Gielgud theatre booked Boy Band The Musical.”
- Recording Date: 21-Jun-2010
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- INTERVIEW: LINDA BASSETT As the Arcola Theatre stages a mini-season of the South African playwright Athol Fugard's work - The Road to Mecca (1984) and Coming Home (2009) - the actress (who stars in The Road to Mecca) talks to Heather Neill about working with the playwright. Recorded at the Arcola.
“We've tried every which way of working with the accent, and we just do our best, but you do worry about the South Africans in the audience.”
- Recording Date: 22-Jun-2010
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- INTERVIEW: HOWARD BRENTON The playwright talks to Carole Woddis about his three current productions: his new play, Anne Boleyn (Shakespeare's Globe), his adaptation of Robert Tressell's The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists (Liverpool/Chichester) and his version of Georg Buchner's Danton's Death (National). Recorded at Shakespeare's Globe.
“Sartre said that some writers write for God, some writers write for themselves and some writers write for others - I'm a writer who writes for other people.”
- Recording Date: 28-Jun-2010
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