The Archive
Recordings from July 2010
Total Number of Recordings from this month: 10
- Interview: NF Simpson. Extracts from a conversation with Dominic Cavendish at Simpson's home in Cornwall in which the 91-year-old 'absurdist' playwright ranges across his life and various topics - his 1957 debut A Resounding Tinkle, the Royal Court, the Goons, Harold Pinter - ahead of the world premiere of his latest play, If So, Then Yes, at the Jermyn Street Theatre. Conducted at teatime in the presence of the play's director Simon Usher, and Molly, Simpson's Jack Russell.
“What sort of a neurotic was I? I'm very paranoid, really. I know I'm paranoid so that's a saving grace, I suppose. If people came up after a performance and praised me I hated it, because I had this feeling that behind my back they were nudging one another - he's taking all this for granted...”
- Recording Date: 06-Jul-2010
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- LIFT SPECIAL Mark Ball, the new artistic director of the London International Festival of Theatre (LIFT), introduces Carole Woddis to this year's programme highlights, discussing site-specific theatre and new audiences, and presents his vision for the future. Recorded at the ICA.
“The theatre sector has been slow to understand the digital revolution, and the new digital culture which has transformed society over the past 15 years.”
- Recording Date: 09-Jul-2010
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- NEW WRITING SPECIAL Paul Robinson and Tim Roseman, artistic directors of Theatre 503 in London, tell Aleks Sierz about their theatre's work with new playwrights, including their contribution to the current Latitude Festival. They also discuss Nimer Rahsed's Wild Horses, Porn the Musical, and Urban Scrawl, as well as their upcoming projects. Recorded at RADA.
“Recently, there has been a feeling that writers were no longer at the heart of new writing theatres: we want to change all that.”
- Recording Date: 09-Jul-2010
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- INTERVIEW: DAVINA ELLIOTT The dresser and theatre novelist chats to Philip Fisher about her two novels, Chewing the Scenery and Climbing the Curtain (Puck Books), as well as giving insights into twenty-plus years of dressing the stars, including for Wicked (Apollo).
“There are some amazingly horrendous things that go on backstage that the audience don’t know about, and I have tried to keep everything as accurate as possible in the novels.”
- Recording Date: 09-Jul-2010
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- INTERACTIVE SPECIAL BAC's joint artistic director David Jubb talks to Matt Boothman about the venue's One-on-One Festival, the first ever of intimate theatre which plays to audiences of one person at a time, and then with practitioners Emma Benson (You Me Now) and Sheila Ghelani (Nurse Knows Best). Recorded at BAC (Battersea Arts Centre), including in the noisy foyer.
“One-on-One work is becoming increasingly important because it engages with what is central to theatre - live exchange.”
- Recording Date: 10-Jul-2010
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- Alternative theatre special (2/2): Director Mike Bradwell talks to Aleks Sierz about his new book, The Reluctant Escapologist: Adventures in Alternative Theatre (Nick Hern), which tells of his experiences of making contemporary theatre with Hull Truck, which he founded in 1971, and at the Bush, which he headed 1996-2007, and with Ken Campbell. Expletives not deleted.
“We were doing social satire, looking at our contemporaries across a wide class spectrum from public shoolboys to people on the dole.”
- Recording Date: 13-Jul-2010
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- Alternative theatre special (1/2): Director Mike Bradwell talks to Aleks Sierz about his new book, The Reluctant Escapologist: Adventures in Alternative Theatre (Nick Hern), which tells of his early experiences of making contemporary theatre, and his memories of East 15, Joan Littlewood, Living Theatre and Mike Leigh. Expletives not deleted.
“It seemed to me that what Joan Littlewood said and did just chimed with what I felt: I wanted popular entertainment that meant something.”
- Recording Date: 13-Jul-2010
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- Interview: Mike Bartlett. A series of extracts from a conversation with Dominic Cavendish about Earthquakes in London, the playwright's debut hit at the National Theatre, in which he talks about climate change, the Baby Boomer generation and why Coldplay shouldn't be given the cold shoulder in the theatre.
“We actually want to do things without a constant contextualisation in the past, a constant sense of 'You're doing what we did, but slightly worse.'”
- Recording Date: 19-Jul-2010
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- Interview: Polly Findlay. The director talks to Carole Woddis about her current revival of Caryl Churchill's Light Shining in Buckinghamshire (Arcola), her 1976 play about the radical ideas that surfaced during the English Revolution of the 1640s, as well as about the James Menzies-Kitchin Young Director Award, which she won in 2007. Recorded at the Young Vic.
“At the time, women were taking up roles that they otherwise wouldn't have done so it seemed appropriate to have female actors playing men.”
- Recording Date: 23-Jul-2010
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- Interview: Joe Hill-Gibbins. The director talks to Philip Fisher about his cracking revival of Martin McDonagh's 1996 debut, The Beauty Queen of Leenane (Young Vic). He also looks back at his controversial debut, Wallace Shawn's A Thought in Three Parts, and forwards to his upcoming production of Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie. Recorded at the Young Vic.
“What sets it out from so many plays is that the storytelling and more specifically the plotting is just magnificent. It’s what makes it really powerful in front of an audience.”
- Recording Date: 29-Jul-2010
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