theatreVOICE - The Archive - Alphabetical Directory of all Recordings: I

The Archive

Recordings under the letter I

Total Number of Recordings under this letter: 264

I.D. Jane Edwardes, Aleks Sierz and John Nathan express reservations about Antony Sher's first play at the Almeida. David Benedict hosts.: “Antony Sher is known as the king of the sweaty actors. But this really was a much quieter Sher.”; Play: ID; Theatre: Almeida Theatre; Recording Date: 12-Sep-2003; Listen to this discussion NOW!
IN REHEARSAL In another behind-the-scenes installment from the Mercury Theatre, Colchester, actors Gina Isaac and Nadia Morgan talk about playing in Dee Evans's all-female revival of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar.: “We really didn't approach it from the angle of 'Right we're women playing men' - it was, what was the character, the story?”; Recording Date: 14-Nov-2007; Listen to this discussion NOW!
IN REHEARSAL: CRAVE Nearly five years after her death, Sarah Kane's penultimate play Crave is getting a radical revival. Director Matt Peover talks to David Benedict.: 1 recommendation; “People are going to have to confront what they think about Sarah Kane when they see this.”; Play: Crave; Theatre: Battersea Arts Centre; Recording Date: 30-Jan-2004; Listen to this discussion NOW!
IN REHEARSAL: JULIUS CAESAR In the run-up to Dee Evans' all-female version of Shakespeare's play at the Mercury Theatre, Colchester, members of the creative team talk about the production. Here, Ansuman Biswas speaks to Luke O'Loughin about composing the score.: “It is based around certain rhythm structures that are using odd time signatures - signatures that are slightly unbalancing... ”; Recording Date: 06-Nov-2007; Listen to this discussion NOW!
IN REHEARSAL: ON BLINDNESS Vicky Featherstone, Steven Hoggett and Glyn Cannon talk to Dominic Cavendish about working together to create On Blindness, on tour and coming to the Soho Theatre.: “The tag is that of a worthy piece of theatre, but I think this show's far too sexy to be worthy.”; Play: On Blindness; Theatre: Soho Theatre; Recording Date: 06-Feb-2004; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INSTITUTE OF IDEAS DEBATE: THE RIGHT TO BE OFFENSIVE (1/2) Dominic Cavendish, Nick Cohen, Johann Hari, Munira Mirza, Ben Payne and Rachel Wagstaff discuss the issues. Chair: Dolan Cummings. Excerpt.: “Theatre justifies its position on the basis of being inclusive of communities... it's difficult to be robust.”; Recording Date: 30-Mar-2005; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INSTITUTE OF IDEAS DEBATE: THE RIGHT TO BE OFFENSIVE (2/2) Dominic Cavendish, Nick Cohen, Johann Hari, Munira Mirza, Ben Payne and Rachel Wagstaff continue the discussion. Chair: Dolan Cummings. Excerpt.: “The plays that have rejuvenated theatre have enraged and perplexed and appalled lots of people.”; Recording Date: 30-Mar-2005; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INSTITUTE OF IDEAS DEBATE: WHERE IS THE REAL OPPOSITION? (1/4) Van Badham, Dolan Cummings, David Edgar, Andrew Gilligan and Blake Morrison consider the proposition. Chair: Claire Fox.: “The question is: What's going on - is the theatre, is media, or is journalism the new opposition?”; Recording Date: 14-Apr-2005; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INSTITUTE OF IDEAS DEBATE: WHERE IS THE REAL OPPOSITION? (2/4) Van Badham, Dolan Cummings, David Edgar, Andrew Gilligan and Blake Morrison continue to think boldly aloud. Chair: Claire Fox: “The election is the worst time to talk about politics - the media slavishly follows the government agenda.”; Recording Date: 14-Apr-2005; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INSTITUTE OF IDEAS DEBATE: WHERE IS THE REAL OPPOSITION? (3/4) Van Badham, Dolan Cummings, David Edgar, Andrew Gilligan and Blake Morrison answer questions from the floor. Chair: Claire Fox.: “There isn't any sort of immigration issue now - it's been totally invented.”; Recording Date: 14-Apr-2005; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INSTITUTE OF IDEAS DEBATE: WHERE IS THE REAL OPPOSITION? (4/4) Van Badham, Dolan Cummings, David Edgar, Andrew Gilligan and Blake Morrison voice their final thoughts. Chair: Claire Fox.: “As political opposition has fallen away, the utopianism in art seems pointless.”; Recording Date: 14-Apr-2005; Listen to this discussion NOW!
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; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERNATIONAL THEATRE Actor Jon-Koldo Vazquez of the Spanish physical-theatre company Markeline talks to Ziortza Fernandez about its UK-debut show, Carbon Club (National Theatre Square 2), a tale of Basque miners told using mime, music, dance and pyrotechnics. Recorded at the National Theatre.: “Markeline started by making street theatre. The first show involved dressing as policemen and evacuating a beach, but we got arrested.”; Recording Date: 16-Aug-2009; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERNATIONAL THEATRE Director Helena Kaut-Howson talks to Heather Neill about Dea Loher's Innocence (Arcola), a series of loosely connected symbolic stories from one of Germany's leading contemporary playwrights. Recorded at the Arcola.: “Dea Loher doesn't look for stories; she doesn't look for narratives. In fact she mistrusts narrative as something which enslaves us.”; Recording Date: 12-Jan-2010; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERNATIONAL THEATRE Director Teunkie van der Sluijs tells Aleks Sierz about his production of Abdelkader Benali's Yasser (Arcola), a monologue about a Palestinian actor who is performing Shakespeare's Shylock. It is staged by Double Agent, an Anglo-Dutch theatre company. Recorded at the Arcola Theatre, London.: “The real task was to translate a piece that was originally written in a very beautiful way, in a heightened stream-of-consciousness style.”; Recording Date: 21-Oct-2009; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERNATIONAL THEATRE German academic Alex Mangold talks to Norwegian director Christopher Sivertsen about his Awake project, a devised piece by artists from Australia, Japan, Europe and the UK. A former member of the Teatr Piesn Kozla (Song of the Goat), Sivertsen has recently directed a physical theatre version of Antigone at RADA in London, and his Awake youth project has been developed in Glasgow and Sweden. Recorded at CuLTUREN theatre in Vasteras, Sweden.: “You're probably never as awake as you are when you feel you are going to die - which is a contradiction in itself.”; Recording Date: 13-Sep-2009; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERNATIONAL THEATRE Heather Neill reports from the Ninth Augenblick Mal! Festival of Theatre for Children, held in Berlin, and asks organiser and director Henning Fangauf about theatre for kids and young people in Germany, and how it compares to Britain.: 1 recommendation; “We have more than 150 theatre companies for children, each of which has an ensemble of actors and a repertoire.”; Recording Date: 04-May-2007; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERNATIONAL THEATRE Penny Black, founder-member of the Middle East Dramatic Arts Forum, reports on its recent symposium, which included contributions from Lenin El-Ramly (Egypt), Sawsan Darwaza (Jordan), Ziad Adwan (Syria), Sulayman al-Bassam (Kuwait) and Grid Iron. Aleks Sierz quizzes.: “The East-West situation is obviously explored a lot, and the feeling in Cairo and across the region is one of uncertainty.”; Recording Date: 27-Feb-2008; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERNATIONAL THEATRE South African poet and playwright Kobus Moolman discusses his play Full Circle, staged by the Blue Hug theatre company, at a postshow event held at the Oval House.: “I am not writing just for a South African audience - I feel that would be too much of a limitation.”; Recording Date: 09-Nov-2006; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERNATIONAL THEATRE Thea Sharrock, new artistic director of the Gate, Notting Hill, and Lara Foot Newton, author of Tshepang, talk about theatre in the new South Africa. Dominic Cavendish quizzes.: 1 recommendation; “It's so authentic that if you don't come and see it now, you ain't going to see it ever again.”; Play: Tshepang; Theatre: The Gate, Notting Hill; Recording Date: 24-Sep-2004; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERNATIONAL THEATRE: BERLIN (1/2) Elyse Dodgson of the Royal Court talks to Alexander Menden, Peter Michalzik and Johanna Freiburg about German theatre. Recorded live.: “In terms of experimental theatre, you lead the way, Germany has influenced our companies here.”; Recording Date: 26-May-2005; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERNATIONAL THEATRE: BERLIN (2/2) Elyse Dodgson talks to Alexander Menden, Peter Michalzik and Johanna Freiburg about German theatre. Recorded live.: “There was this burst of energy from German playwrights, and that now seems to have faded.”; Recording Date: 26-May-2005; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERNATIONAL THEATRE: ELYSE DODGSON The head of the Royal Court's international department talks to Aleks Sierz about that theatre's upcoming season, which features foreign classics on the main stage as well as overseas new writers in the studio.: 8 recommendations; “We don't do 'versions' - it's important to have a translator who can get as close as possible to the play's original language.”; Recording Date: 03-Sep-2007; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVEW: ALEXIS ZEGERMAN The actor and playwright chats to Aleks Sierz about her full-length debut, Lucky Seven (Hampstead), which was inspired by the 1963 Seven Up! television documentary series, as well as about working as a theatre and film actor with director Mike Leigh.: “I do think that we have this weird fetish for looking at celebrities, and at ordinary people in general, on reality TV.”; Recording Date: 06-Nov-2008; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: ADAM BRACE The playwright talks to Aleks Sierz about his debut, Stovepipe (West 12), which is currently being performed as a promenade production under a shopping centre in Shepherd's Bush, after being part of the HighTide festival last year.: “The soldiers get paid fantastically well, and they know it. When they complain about their pay, it's a typical soldier's joke.”; Recording Date: 13-Mar-2009; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: ADAM GARCIA Philip Fisher catches up with the Australian Saturday Night Fever heartthrob in Paris, where he is starring in director Jude Kelly's 2005 ENO revival of Leonard Bernstein's On the Town (Theatre du Chatelet).: “It was the first musical that the ENO was performing and so there was the hype and the controversy that came with that.”; Recording Date: 27-Dec-2008; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: ADRIAN KOHLER The designer who created the horses in the National Theatre's spectacular adaptation of Michael Morpurgo's War Horse speaks to Heather Neill about the show and his work for Handspring, the South African puppetry company.: 1 comment; “The look of the horses is determined by the movement room of two puppeteers, plus flexibility and expressiveness.”; Recording Date: 25-Oct-2007; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: ADRIANO SHAPLIN The American playwright and director talks about his first commission for the Royal Shakespeare Company: The Tragedy of Thomas Hobbes (currently at Wilton's Music Hall). Mark Brown quizzes.: “I make the claim that 85 per cent of the play is true. When you make art you shouldn't write about what you know, but about what you don't know.”; Recording Date: 23-Nov-2008; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: ALAN CUMMING The award-winning actor talks to Carrie Dunn about his new one-man musical show, I Bought a Blue Car Today (Vaudeville), a collaboration with Lance Horne, following acclaim in New York and Sydney. He also gives insights into his career. Recording quality: poor.: “I got the list of songs together first, and then the stories came along - all of them actually happened to me.”; Recording Date: 26-Aug-2009; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: ALAN PLATER The legendary playwright and screenwriter talks to Aleks Sierz about Blonde Bombshells of 1943 (Hampstead Theatre), his current play with songs, and gives a career overview. Recorded at the Theatre Museum.: “Peggy Ramsay used to say: We are surrounded by vulgar people - and now the world is run by vulgar people.”; Recording Date: 03-Aug-2006; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: ALECKY BLYTHE The theatre-maker talks to Aleks Sierz about her current verbatim piece, The Girlfriend Experience (Royal Court), which is set in a seaside brothel, and about how her company, Recorded Delivery, developed its unique techniques.: “The woman who owned the parlour said, Yeah, put our story out - we're sick of being seen as junkies or Belle de Jour types.”; Recording Date: 25-Sep-2008; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: ALISON CHITTY The head of school at the Motley Theatre Design Course talks to Dominic Cavendish about this unique training establishment and its 2004 exhibition.: “There are lots of complicated skills that you need in order to develop as a theatre designer.”; Recording Date: 02-Jul-2004; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: ALISTAIR BEATON The award-winning satirist and playwright talks to Aleks Sierz about King of Hearts (Out of Joint at the Hampstead Theatre) and about his previous hits, such as Feelgood, and political comedy.: “I had the script looked at by a couple of Muslims because I wanted to be sure that I was offending responsibly and not just out of ignorance.”; Recording Date: 28-Mar-2007; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: ANDY ARNOLD The artistic director of the Tron, in Glasgow, talks to Mark Brown about his ambitions for the theatre, his long stewardship of The Arches and thoughts on the Scottish theatre scene.: “It's not 'out of the woods' in terms of there being a more secure base for the development of Scottish arts. It's got a long way to go.”; Recording Date: 09-Jun-2008; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: ANGUS JACKSON The director chats to Philip Fisher about the creation of the Blondie musical, Desperately Seeking Susan (Novello), and about directing Kwame Kwei-Armah in that writer and actor's own play, Elmina's Kitchen (National).: “A lot can be achieved through confrontation, but people don't go to the theatre in order to be offended.”; Recording Date: 21-Nov-2007; Listen to this discussion NOW!
Interview: Angus MacKechnie. The producer of the National Theatre's Watch This Space events tells Carole Woddis about this 14-week free festival, the longest open-air theatre programme in the land, now in its 12th and most ambitious year. Recorded at the National.: “We call the Theatre Square our fourth auditorium - and it has a distinctive tone to its work, which usually has a strong narrative thread.”; Recording Date: 03-Aug-2010; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: ANNA MADELEY The actress, currently starring in Coram Boy at the National, talks about an extraordinary year and the challenges of cross-dressing to Philip Fisher.: “It's really quite funny being a boy with a crush on a girl - when you're a girl.”; Play: Coram Boy; Theatre: National Theatre, Olivier; Recording Date: 22-Nov-2005; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: ANTHONY CLARK The artistic director of Hampstead Theatre talks to Aleks Sierz about his most recent production, Taking Care of Baby by Dennis Kelly, and reveals the highs and lows of running a new writing theatre in London.: 6 recommendations | 1 comment; “What I think is ridiculous is that where we have gone out on a limb, we have not necessarily had support critically.”; Recording Date: 22-Jun-2007; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: ANTHONY NEILSON The controversial playwright tells Aleks Sierz about the National Theatre of Scotland's revival of his 2004 play, The Wonderful World of Dissocia (Royal Court), plus his ideas on how the mind works and why theatre should be more popular.: 1 recommendation | 1 comment; “Because mental disturbance is not a matter of choice, you can't glamorise it - it's not as if people will choose to become mentally disturbed.”; Recording Date: 13-Apr-2007; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: APRIL DE ANGELIS The playwright talks to Aleks Sierz about her latest black comedy, Amongst Friends (currently at the Hampstead), set in a gated community, and about her career, which started in acting and in the feminist theatre of the 1980s.: “When you have a competitive society what you create is a resentment of other people's success - and fear.”; Recording Date: 29-May-2009; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: ARNOLD WESKER Now 72, the internationally renowned playwright discusses his life, work and current neglect in the UK with Rachel Halliburton.: “If I have any talent at all it's for recognising the metaphors that life throws up to explain itself.”; Recording Date: 18-Feb-2004; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: BARBARA BAKER The author of Backstage Stories (Continuum) chats to Aleks Sierz about her new book of interviews, which is a behind-the-scenes look at the many different professions, from directors to wig-makers, that are needed in order to create a show. Recorded at Dewynters, London.: “Most of these unsung heroes of the theatre were very keen to be interviewed and to tell their own stories.”; Recording Date: 25-Jan-2008; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: BENJI REID As part of Steven Luckie's Black Voices special, recorded at the 2009 Decibel showcase in Manchester, acclaimed cross-arts performer Benji Reid explains how he got into physical theatre and discusses key projects, including his attempt to stage A Clockwork Orange at the National Theatre.: “Whenever you work as an artist, if you're not engaged with the artform, then eventually that artform will kill you, because you're selling your soul.”; Recording Date: 17-Sep-2009; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: BETH TRACHTENBERG The tyro producer tells Philip Fisher how she raised £4.5million to put on a new West End musical, Imagine This (New London Theatre), set in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1942, and why she thinks it is an important show.: “I believe that this is a show that screams to be exposed to the public - and I don't see it as a holocaust musical.”; Recording Date: 12-Nov-2008; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: BIJAN SHEIBANI The new head of the ATC (Actors Touring Company) talks to Aleks Sierz about his imaginative staging of Tarell Alvin McCraney's The Brothers Size, a hit for the Young Vic, and explains some of the Yoruba cosmology that underpins the play.: “Because of Tarell's background in street theatre, the play has a simplicity that we knew we had to achieve.”; Recording Date: 19-Nov-2007; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: BLANCHE MARVIN The founder of the Peter Brook Empty Space Award explains what it's for, and reminisces about her life in the theatre with Dominic Cavendish.: “I said to Peter Brook: We're not doing it for a gimmick... And then he said: How can I refuse?”; Recording Date: 16-Dec-2004; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: BOBBY LOPEZ and JEFF MARX The creators of the American cult 'adult puppet' show, Avenue Q, talk to Philip Fisher on the eve of its premiere in London's West End.: “We wanted to give the audience a hug... wherever they were in their struggles, it was going to be OK.”; Recording Date: 22-Jun-2006; Listen to this discussion NOW!
Interview: Bryony Lavery. The playwright talks about her critically acclaimed boxing play (Frantic Assembly/National Theatre of Scotland) to Carole Woddis, and also gives insights into her long and prolific career. Recorded at the National Theatre. More info: www.nationaltheatrescotland.com.: “The gym was vibrating with good energy, with about fifty boys and three girls all training - I think it was the safest possible environment.”; Recording Date: 27-Aug-2010; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: BUDDY DALTON The alternative theatre impresario, who set up the New End fringe theatre in an abandoned morgue in 1974, talks to her grand-daughter Polly Pearson about the shows, finances and audiences of the 1970s.: “My main aim was to create a really comfortable fringe theatre, and to do exceptional work - which we did.”; Recording Date: 23-Jan-2008; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: CAROLINE CLEGG The director and producer talks on the telephone to Aleks Sierz about Eloquent Protest, an annual Remembrance Sunday event that both commemorates the victims of war and protests against conflict, and her work with Feelgood site-specific company in Manchester. Sound quality: variable.: “We finished off with 'Let the Sun Shine in' from Hair, on its 40th anniversary, and as our message of hope to Obama.”; Recording Date: 11-Nov-2008; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: CAROLINE PARKER The deaf actress talks about her cabaret show Signs of a Star Shaped Diva, written by Nona Shepphard and co-produced by Graeae Theatre Company and Theatre Royal Stratford East, which tours the UK through April. Carole Woddis quizzes. Recorded at Graeae.: “We still get the odd disgrunted audience-member complaining that the sign-language distracts them. But I think interpreters add to the show.”; Recording Date: 15-Mar-2010; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: CATHERINE JOHNSON The mega-successful playwright/ creative force behind the international smash-hit Abba musical Mamma Mia! talks to Philip Fisher ahead of the show's big-screen release.: “As I read along with the lyrics I could feel the story somehow coming to life - if it hadn't been for the lyrics, the story wouldn't have that shape.”; Recording Date: 05-Jun-2008; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: CHE WALKER The playwright-turned-lyricist and director talks to Aleks Sierz about his new version of Been So Long, a raunchy play with music by Arthur Darvill (Young Vic), and about his The Frontline, which was the first contemporary story to be staged at Shakespeare's Globe.: “The theme is love, and the chaos that love can bring, and the risks that love puts you in, particularly erotic love: it is quite a horny play.”; Recording Date: 24-Jun-2009; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: CHRIS GOODE The innovative theatre-maker chats to Culture Wars critic Andrew Haydon about his latest non-verbal piece, Longwave, past Signal to Noise productions and his upcoming Edinburgh shows, Hippo World Guest Book, and Henry & Elizabeth.: 10 recommendations; “What was interesting to me was two people who were just not able to speak to each other at all.”; Recording Date: 21-Jun-2007; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: CHRIS GRADY The founder of Musical Theatre Matters (MTM: UK), which champions new musicals in Britain, talks to Peter Huntley about the state of new work in the UK, and about the George Square Theatre, a venue dedicated to musicals at the Edinburgh Festival.: “I think it is very sad that there are so many projects involving US writers, and so few still for UK writers of new musicals.”; Recording Date: 17-Jul-2008; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: CHRISTOPHER SHINN The playwright discusses his latest play, Dying City, at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs - about America, Iraq and New York now - with Aleks Sierz.: “We have the Vietnam syndrome all over again, and that's what I wanted to dramatise psychologically.”; Recording Date: 18-May-2006; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: CLARE HIGGINS Currently starring as Countess Rossillion in All's Well That Ends Well at the National, the award-winning actress tells Philip Fisher about her life and work, including Vincent in Brixton, and reveals her designs on Macbeth. Recorded at the National Theatre.: “I'm really gobsmacked about how fortunate I am. Every time you do a play you think that 'nobody will ever ask me again'. Judi Dench once told me that she still feels that.”; Recording Date: 01-Jul-2009; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: COLIN TEEVAN The playwright talks to Dominic Cavendish about his controversial new Iraq play, How Many Miles to Basra?, at the West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds.: “I don't think a single one of the last 10 pieces I've had on would have been produced in Ireland.”; Recording Date: 14-Sep-2006; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: DAEL ORLANDERSMITH The actor, poet and author of Yellowman joins director Indhu Rubasingham to talk about her acclaimed play, internal racism and George W Bush.: “There's a lot of shame, and people think it's airing dirty laundry, but maybe it's time for it to be aired.”; Play: Yellowman; Theatre: Hampstead Theatre; Recording Date: 07-May-2004; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: DANIEL KRAMER The rising young American director talks to Philip Fisher about reviving and reshaping Hair for the Iraq War era, at the Gate Theatre, Notting Hill, London.: “Hair is unique - it's not like doing Oklahoma! or The Woman in White. It's abstract, it's young.”; Recording Date: 19-Sep-2005; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: DAVID BABANI Artistic director and co-founder of the Menier Chocolate Factory, a unique fringe venue, talks to Philip Fisher about his triumph in winning five Olivier awards for Sunday in the Park with George, and about his current revivals, Little Shop of Horrors and Christopher Hampton's Total Eclipse.: “Sunday in the Park with George was the first time that live actors could have fun with the animation on stage.”; Recording Date: 23-Feb-2007; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: DAVID EDGAR The playwright talks to Aleks Sierz about his new book, How Plays Work (Nick Hern), which discusses the role of the audience and the importance of genre, as well as examining the elements that make up a piece of written theatre. Plus: the insider view of the All Together Now? British Theatre after Multiculturalism conference at Warwick University.: “Knowledge should never be damaging. The book is like a toolkit - and how you use the tools is up to you.”; Recording Date: 06-Jul-2009; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: DAVID EDGAR The political playwright talks to Aleks Sierz about his two-play cycle, Continental Divide, which boldly takes the measure of US politics.: “In America you have a libertarian suspicion of the federal government which goes way to the right.”; Play: Continental Divide; Theatre: Barbican Centre; Recording Date: 13-Feb-2004; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: DAVID ELDRIDGE (1/2) The playwright talks to Dominic Cavendish about how he has adapted the 1998 Dogme classic Festen (Celebration) for the stage.: “I suspect that very few people who come to see the show at the Almeida have actually seen the film.”; Play: Festen; Theatre: Almeida Theatre; Recording Date: 19-Mar-2004; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: DAVID ELDRIDGE (1/2) The playwright talks to Heather Neill about the West End revival of his 2000 drama, Under the Blue Sky (Duke of York's), and about his background and career.: “By the time I'd finished writing the play, I had different interests and wanted to write about middle-class experiences.”; Recording Date: 30-Jul-2008; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: DAVID ELDRIDGE (2/2) The playwright talks to Dominic Cavendish about how he came to be a playwright after starting out as a Romford street-trader, and looks back on his work as a whole.: “I was very angry about what was happening to Britain at the end of the Thatcher years.”; Play: Festen; Theatre: Almeida Theatre; Recording Date: 19-Mar-2004; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: DAVID ELDRIDGE (2/2) The playwright talks to Heather Neill about the West End revival of his 2000 drama, Under the Blue Sky (Duke of York's), and about what's wrong with the new writing scene in Britain today.: “Whether you are writing naturalistically or non-naturalistically, you are always trying to write at the speed of an actor's thought.”; Recording Date: 30-Jul-2008; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: DAVID ELDRIDGE The playwright talks to Aleks Sierz about Market Boy, his raucous tribute to Romford Market and the 1980s, a monster play that lights up the National's biggest stage.: “It's saying something about the way your whole life becomes commodified.”; Recording Date: 09-Jun-2006; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: DAVID FARR The artistic director of the Lyric, Hammersmith, talks to Dominic Cavendish about his staging of the fiftieth anniversary production of Harold Pinter's The Birthday Party, and about the play's personal significance for its author.: “I was beautifully aware of the irony of the fact that a play that had been deemed an utter failure is now a classic.”; Recording Date: 21-May-2008; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: DAVID GLASS The visual and physical theatre pioneer talks about his new work, Disembodied, and his mission to help dispossessed children around the world.: “With the Lost Child Project, we facilitate young people in 22 countries to express their ideas.”; Play: Disembodied; Theatre: Battersea Arts Centre; Recording Date: 18-Feb-2005; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: DAVID GREIG The Scottish playwright talks to Dominic Cavendish about Damascus (Traverse), one of his three Edinburgh Festival plays this year, and about his other explorations of the imaginary borderlands between fact and fiction.: 13 recommendations | 1 comment; “We have a problem with authenticity in British theatre. We value writing about what we know so we distrust writing about foreign characters.”; Recording Date: 30-Jul-2007; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: DAVID GRINDLEY Philip Fisher talks to the up-and-coming director about working on Dennis McIntyre's National Anthems at the Old Vic with Kevin Spacey.: “[Spacey] hasn't done a play since The Iceman Cometh and he's delighted to be back on the stage.”; Play: National Anthems; Theatre: Old Vic; Recording Date: 20-Jan-2005; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: DAVID HAIG The actor chats to Philip Fisher about his role as Pinchwife in William Wycherley's Restoration comedy, The Country Wife, as well as upcoming productions in Jonathan Kent's new company at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket.: “The Country Wife is the only piece of drama in the English language which is exclusively about sex.”; Recording Date: 19-Oct-2007; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: DAVID JUBB The artistic director designate of Battersea Arts Centre (BAC) talks to Rachel Halliburton about his plans for the South London experimental powerhouse.: “It's about making BAC a national and international centre for the development of new theatre.”; Recording Date: 25-Oct-2003; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: DAVID JUBB The artistic director of BAC - the Battersea Arts Centre - talks to Dominic Cavendish about the dire threat of closure hanging over this south London creative powerhouse in the wake of a proposed funding cut by Wandsworth Council.: “Because we're in this funny old, faintly awkward Victorian town hall, it's created this enormous energy.”; Recording Date: 23-Jan-2007; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: DAVID KRAMER The co-creator and director of the hit musical about 1950s Apartheid, Kat and the Kings, talks about the show to Rachel Halliburton.: “Now the musical is so much more gritty than it was when it first came over.”; Play: Kat and the Kings; Theatre: Tricycle Theatre; Recording Date: 12-Dec-2003; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: DAVID LAN The Artistic Director of the Young Vic talks to Philip Fisher about reviving legendary American playwright August Wilson's Joe Turner's Come and Gone (1984), which is currently at this venue, as well as about his career, and the mission and future of the Young Vic. Recorded at the Young Vic.: “I'm particularly keen to reintroduce to the mainstream, plays which have been left on the side for one reason or another, especially the black repertoire.”; Recording Date: 20-May-2010; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: DAVID LAN With the Young Vic coming to the end of an era this summer, Heather Neill hears about the theatre's past, present and future from its artistic director.: “It's tremendously important that the soul - the spirit - of this place is retained.”; Recording Date: 14-May-2004; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: DAVID PUGH The top West End producer, who has been responsible for hits such as Art, The Play What I Wrote, Equus and now Yasmina Reza's The God of Carnage (Gielgud), chats frankly to Philip Fisher about the art of being a theatre impresario.: “A lot of producers are rich before they start - I wasn't. And without being able to raise money, you can't do the job.”; Recording Date: 21-Mar-2008; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: DAVID STOREY The playwright is joined by director Sean Holmes to talk about the Oxford Stage Company's tour of Home (1970).: “Richardson and Gielgud had grave misgivings about doing it... but it revivified their careers.”; Recording Date: 18-Oct-2004; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: DAVID TROUGHTON The actor chats to Philip Fisher about his starring role, opposite Kevin Spacey, in Trevor Nunn's production of Jerome Lawrence and Robert E Lee's courtroom drama, Inherit the Wind (Old Vic), which revisits the Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925, and about how acting runs in the blood. Recorded at the Old Vic, London.: “My character is a larger-than-life figure who had attempted to become President three times, and this was his last attempt to galvanise the public.”; Recording Date: 21-Oct-2009; Listen to this discussion NOW!
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; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: DECLAN DONNELLAN (1/2) The artistic director of the legendary Cheek by Jowl theatre company - back with a vengeance with Othello - has a cup of tea with Dominic Cavendish.: 1 recommendation; “There's an extraordinary period of perestroika in British theatre - a new generation is taking over.”; Recording Date: 27-May-2004; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: DECLAN DONNELLAN (2/2) The artistic director of Cheek by Jowl continues to muse on the company's fortunes, and outlines current projects and future plans. Dominic Cavendish listens.: 1 recommendation; “I need change. So I'd love to direct a horror film, or a thriller, and I'd certainly love to put on a circus.”; Recording Date: 27-May-2004; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: DECYPHER Steven Luckie wraps up his Black Voices special, recorded at the 2009 Decibel showcase in Manchester, by chatting to the Decypher Collective, spoken-word artists who officially opened the event: Evoke, RT, LCB and the Nutty Professor are currently working at the Birmingham Rep.: “It comes down to having a professional mind - 'I'm here to do what I love and get paid for it' - you're not just going in there to start jumping about the place. You have to be professional with it as well.”; Recording Date: 16-Sep-2009; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: DENNIS KELLY AND MARIA ABERG The playwright and director of The Gods Weep, a Royal Shakespeare Company production at the Hampstead Theatre, starring Jeremy Irons, talk to Aleks Sierz about this epic play, which depicts the descent into an apocalyptic nightmare of Colm, its turbo-charged capitalist protagonist. Recorded at the RSC.: “I wanted the play to be messy and crazy - I didn't want it to be too clean and too neat. Which is good, because it isn't!”; Recording Date: 19-Mar-2010; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: DES McANUFF The celebrated director of the London-bound Broadway hit, Jersey Boys (Prince Edward Theatre), tells Philip Fisher about the show, as well as his time at the La Jolla Playhouse, the Shakespeare Festival at Stratford, Ontario, and Aaron Sorkin's The Farnsworth Invention. Recording quality: variable.: “When you have a big success, it comes to you in dribs and drabs - you never dare expect it will be a tremendous success.”; Recording Date: 28-Jan-2008; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: DOMINIC COOPER The actor, starring in The History Boys at the National, talks to Rachel Halliburton about his blossoming career and the perils of youth appeal.: “It's great - we've all turned into a bunch of kids, behaving terribly in rehearsals and learning lots too.”; Play: The History Boys; Theatre: National Theatre, Lyttelton; Recording Date: 12-May-2004; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: DOMINIC DROMGOOLE (1/2) The director drops in to talk about his revival of The Shadow of a Gunman, at the Tricycle. Dominic Cavendish quizzes.: “It's really a play about a new society that is caught between an imperalist power and terrorists...”; Play: The Shadow of a Gunman; Theatre: Tricycle Theatre; Recording Date: 08-Oct-2004; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: DOMINIC DROMGOOLE (2/2) The new writing explosion of the early 1990s recalled, the reception to 'The Full Room', his contentious book on playwrights, revisited. Dominic Cavendish hosts.: “That very reserved, very dry, laconic, cool, critical voice simply drives me completely insane...”; Play: The Shadow of a Gunman; Theatre: Tricycle Theatre; Recording Date: 08-Oct-2004; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: DOMINIC HILL The new artistic director of Edinburgh's Traverse talks to Aleks Sierz about his revival of Thomas Babe's 1978 psycho-thriller, A Prayer for My Daughter (Young Vic), and about his plans for new writing at the Traverse.: “The cops are really deeply flawed human beings - they are as emotionally dysfunctional as the criminals.”; Recording Date: 05-Feb-2008; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: DOROTA MASLOWSKA The cult 24-year-old Polish novelist, whose play A Couple of Poor, Polish-Speaking Romanians gets its UK premiere at Soho Theatre, chats to Dominic Cavendish. In Polish and English; Agnieszka Blonska translates.: 1 comment; “It's about modern man - who stops seeing other people as people and just sees the surface.”; Recording Date: 29-Feb-2008; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: DOUG LUCIE The playwright talks to Aleks Sierz about his contribution to the 2006 NT Shell Connections season, Pass It On, and four decades of hardhitting drama.: “I have spend a lot of time pointing out that the emperor has no clothes - it can get quite lonely.”; Recording Date: 27-Jul-2006; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: DREW PAUTZ The Canadian-born playwright talks to Aleks Sierz about his latest play, Love the Sinner (National), which examines the relationship between personal belief and emotional experiences, as well as the tensions between the West and Africa. Recorded at the National.: “The question is what is Michael's wife Shelly willing to swap in exchange for putting up with his lies? The answer is the chance to have a child.”; Recording Date: 17-May-2010; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: EDWARD KEMP (1/2) The playwright and dramaturg talks to Dominic Cavendish about adapting Nathan the Wise (1779), now at Hampstead Theatre.: “Faith is one of the issues that fascinates me most, it's one of the itches I have to scratch.”; Recording Date: 19-Sep-2005; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: EDWARD KEMP (2/2) The playwright and dramaturg continues to talk to Dominic Cavendish about adapting Gottold Ephraim Lessing's Nathan the Wise.: “It goes back to the debate about which is greater: Look Back in Anger or Waiting for Godot?”; Recording Date: 19-Sep-2005; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: EMMA RICE The artistic director of Kneehigh theatre company talks to Rachel Halliburton about staging the Angela Carter classic, Nights at the Circus, at the Lyric, Hammersmith.: “Because it's such a huge haystack of a book, I've been focusing on my own needle at the centre of it.”; Recording Date: 15-Jan-2006; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: ENDA WALSH (1/2) The playwright talks to Aleks Sierz about his scintillating 2006 play for Druid, The Walworth Farce (now at the National), and about the mechanics of keeping a farce moving. Expletives not deleted.: “When it's blood, and your family history, sometimes you hear a version of a story that's completely not the way you saw it.”; Recording Date: 03-Nov-2008; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: ENDA WALSH (2/2) The playwright talks to Aleks Sierz about his career, from the classic Disco Pigs (Corcadorca, 1996) through to his current film, Hunger (Steve McQueen) and his Dostoyevsky adaptation for Theatre O, Delirium (Barbican, 2008). Expletives not deleted.: “I'm interested in very small, claustrophobic situations and the effects that the outside world has on them.”; Recording Date: 03-Nov-2008; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: FELIX CROSS The Artistic Director of NITRO (formerly the Black Theatre Co-operative) talks to Suman Bhuchar about composing the score for Tamasha's new Bollywood version of Wuthering Heights.: “What's coming in are musical adaptations of big movies - it is natural that people are looking to the popular movie industry for stories.”; Recording Date: 02-May-2009; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: FIN KENNEDY (1/2) The playwright discusses his 2007 award-winning play, How To Disappear Completely and Never Be Found (currently at the Southwark), and the research behind his ideas. Aleks Sierz asks the questions. Recorded at Dewynters, London.: “The protagonist is alive and dead at the same time so reality is split into two: the last 48 hours of his life alongside him waking up in the morgue.”; Recording Date: 16-Oct-2008; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: FIN KENNEDY (2/2) The playwright discusses the new writing scene, as well as his work with young people, especially Mehndi Night (Mulberry School) and Locked In (Half Moon). Aleks Sierz asks the questions. Recorded at Dewynters, London.: “The education sector creates a lot of new work, most of which is invisible, and so it is one of the largest employers of creative artists.”; Recording Date: 16-Oct-2008; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: FIONA EVANS The author of the controversial play, Scarborough (Royal Court), tells Philip Fisher about her background in community theatre in Newcastle, and about how her play, which was an Edinburgh hit, was developed.: “We originally wanted to do Scarborough as a site-specific piece in a real b&b, but it would have cost an absolute fortune.”; Recording Date: 14-Feb-2008; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: FRANK McGUINNESS The Irish playwright talks about his adaptation of Euripides' Hecuba - the successor to his acclaimed rendition of Electra. Dominic Cavendish quizzes.: “Euripides takes the ground from under our feet by showing what this grieving mother is capable of.”; Play: Hecuba; Theatre: Donmar Warehouse; Recording Date: 13-Aug-2004; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: FRASER GRACE The playwright speaks to Aleks Sierz about his latest, The Lifesavers (Theatre 503), as well as about his previous hit, Breakfast with Mugabe (RSC, 2005) and his work with Menagerie, the Cambridge-based new writing company. Recorded at Dewynters, London.: “It's relatively easy to invest financially in the technology to 'keep us safe', but it's much harder to build community.”; Recording Date: 06-Feb-2009; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: GLYN MAXWELL The poet and novelist talks to Heather Neill about his latest play, Liberty (Shakespeare's Globe), a verse adaptation of Anatole France’s 1912 novel Les Dieux Ont Soif (The Gods Are Thirsty), set during the Terror in the French Revolution.: “I was shocked after 9/11 by the reflex knee-jerk anti-Americanism, because that can easily turn into tacit support for what was attacking western civilisation.”; Recording Date: 08-Sep-2008; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: GORDON ANDERSON The director talks to Aleks Sierz about Rainald Goetz's Jeff Koons, as well as his early days with comedy phenomenon The League of Gentlemen. Sound quality: moderate.: “This is written in a theatre culture where ensemble companies have months to work on a play and get it right... ”; Play: Jeff Koons; Theatre: ICA; Recording Date: 05-Nov-2004; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: GREGORY BURKE The playwright talks to Philip Fisher about his mega-hit Black Watch (National Theatre of Scotland, 2006), which has just marched triumphantly into London's Barbican theatre, on its world tour.: 1 comment; “The show has been to some unconventional venues, such as an old industrial shed in Pitlochry and a school gym in Aberdeen.”; Recording Date: 01-Jul-2008; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: HARRIET WALTER The star talks to Dominic Cavendish about the West End revival of Moira Buffini's Dinner and her book on acting, Other People's Shoes.: 1 comment; “I've never lost that sense of why you do theatre - not just to entertain those rich enough to buy tickets.”; Play: Dinner; Theatre: Wyndhams Theatre; Recording Date: 26-Nov-2003; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: HAYLEY CARMICHAEL The actress, part of acclaimed theatre company Told by an Idiot talks to David Benedict about shows past, present and future.: “We wanted to make very big stories out of things that are very small... our daily lives.”; Play: I'm a Fool to Want You; Theatre: Battersea Arts Centre; Recording Date: 30-Jan-2004; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: HENRY GOODMAN The actor talks to Dominic Cavendish about playing Richard III for the RSC in Sean Holmes' controversial revival at Stratford-upon-Avon.: 1 recommendation; “This is the first time that I've been able to say this, but I really didn't intend it as a vaudeville thing at all.”; Play: Richard III; Theatre: Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon; Recording Date: 10-Sep-2003; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: HOIPOLLOI Shon Dale-Jones and 'Hugh Hughes' of Hoipolloi talk to Philip Fisher about their fringe hit Floating, as it arrives in London at the Barbican Pit. It's about the year 'the Isle of Anglesey broke free from the Welsh mainland and drifted into the North Atlantic...': 5 recommendations; “We use a lot of philosophy: people who've made theatre say 'It's like theatre' but they don't say 'It is theatre'.”; Recording Date: 08-Jun-2007; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: HOWARD BARKER (1/2) With a new play, Dead Hands, in the offing, one of Britain's most prolific and underrated writers talks to Aleks Sierz about his work.: “For me the statement 'I recognise that' is a futile one and of no value to me as a writer.”; Recording Date: 11-Oct-2004; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: HOWARD BARKER (2/2) His status abroad and neglect at home discussed and forthcoming projects with The Wrestling School outlined. Aleks Sierz quizzes.: “In some way my work continually infringes the liberal humanist tradition.”; Recording Date: 11-Oct-2004; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: HOWARD BRENTON On the eve of a major revival of Romans in Britain at Sheffield Crucible, Aleks Sierz talks to the playwright about his notorious work.: “I came out of the experimental theatre of the 1960s - it was shocking to see actors with clothes on!”; Recording Date: 19-Jan-2006; Listen to this discussion NOW!
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; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: HOWARD DAVIES The director talks to Carole Woddis about his current production of Mikhail Bulgakov's The White Guard (National), a play about Russia during the revolution which was Stalin's favourite drama and is now staged in a new version by Andrew Upton. Recorded at the National.: “Russian plays have the same scale as the best American drama, and the same social commitment. I want to do plays about politics.”; Recording Date: 05-May-2010; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: IAN RICKSON The director of Jez Butterworth's smash-hit, mythic extravaganza Jerusalem (currently at the Apollo Theatre) talks to Aleks Sierz about his long relationship with the work of this playwright, including The Night Heron, The Winterling and Parlour Song. Recorded at the Young Vic.: “Jez accords articulacy and eloquence to each and every character of his plays, regardless of class, gender or empowerment.”; Recording Date: 22-Feb-2010; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: IDINA MENZEL The American Tony Award-winning actress, singer and songwriter, and star of Wicked and Rent, is on the way to becoming a pop diva. She talks to Philip Fisher about her career to date.: “I used to be so ambitious and meticulous about every choice - as you get older you realise you've got to let go.”; Recording Date: 24-Sep-2008; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: ISAAC ROBERT HURWITZ The Executive Director and Producer of the New York Festival of Musical Theatre talks to Peter Huntley about the event, which since 2004 has resulted in some 100 new stagings, such as Next to Normal, The Great American Trailer Park Musical, Shout! and Austentatious, and discovered much new talent. Recorded in New York.: “If we put all of our heads together to create one large event we could make a real splash, and get more media attention.”; Recording Date: 08-May-2009; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: JACK THORNE The playwright, whose Fanny and Faggot (Finborough) and Stacy (Arcola) deal with the controversial issues of child murderers and paedophiles, talks to Culture Wars critic Andrew Haydon about sexual violence and his experiments with form.: “I got annoyed with a spate of plays about sex offenders which didn't deal with the sex - they were about sex offenders from the waist up.”; Recording Date: 16-Feb-2007; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: JAMES KNOWLSON (1/2) Samuel Beckett's biographer and friend talks to Dominic Cavendish about writing the biography, Damned to Fame.: 4 comments; “It was a curious experience talking to the man who'd never really talked about his life before.”; Recording Date: 18-Nov-2003; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: JAMES KNOWLSON (2/2) Samuel Beckett's biographer talks in detail to Dominic Cavendish about his latest book, Images of Beckett, published by Cambridge University Press.: 1 recommendation; “Several things had emerged which made me realise how much art had influenced his stage imagery.”; Recording Date: 18-Nov-2003; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: JAMES MACDONALD (1/2) The director talks to Aleks Sierz about Peter Handke's 1992 classic The Hour We Knew Nothing of Each Other (National), a 100-minute play in which not a word is spoken.: “For a theatre audience, silence is difficult, really quite disturbing, but the piece itself is very easy.”; Recording Date: 23-May-2008; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: JAMES MACDONALD (2/2) The director talks to Aleks Sierz about Sarah Kane's posthumous 4.48 Psychosis (Royal Court) and about his recent production of Caryl Churchill's Drunk Enough To Say I Love You. Excerpt.: “Having just one actor felt totally wrong for the first production, when we were making the case for this being a play.”; Recording Date: 23-May-2008; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: JAMES ROOSE-EVANS (1/2) The director, writer and actor talks to Aleks Sierz about his memoirs, Opening Doors and Windows (History Press) and Finding Silence (a volume of meditations), with anecdotes about the founding of Hampstead Theatre, and the avant-garde of the 1950s and 1960s. Recorded at Chalk Farm Library, London.: “Hampstead Theatre was founded on a vision of a theatre for local people, and created with passion and conviction.”; Recording Date: 05-Oct-2009; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: JAMES ROOSE-EVANS (2/2) The director, writer and actor continues his reminiscences of his long career, with anecdotes about his greatest hit, 84 Charing Cross Road, Martha Graham, Kenneth Williams, the Bleddfa Centre, and his interest in psychotherapy and spirituality. Recorded at Chalk Farm Library, London.: “Theatre directors, unless they happen to be Trevor Nunn, don't make very much money, and there have been many occasions when I was broke.”; Recording Date: 05-Oct-2009; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: JANIE DEE The actress, currently playing Joy Gresham to Charles Dance's CS Lewis in William Nicholson's Shadowlands at Wyndham's Theatre, talks frankly to Philip Fisher about the challenge of the role - and her Olivier-winning career.: “I sought a singing teacher in Rome, learnt to sing - and came back to England with a 'voice'. ”; Recording Date: 11-Oct-2007; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: JEANIE O'HARE The Royal Shakespeare Company Dramaturg gives a quick curtain-raiser overview of the new Revolutions season at the RSC in Stratford-upon-Avon. Dominic Cavendish quizzes, with a competing chorus of swans, ducks and geese in attendance by the waterside too.: “There is a big debate on all sorts of levels about writing big plays, about ensemble aesthetics, about international politics.”; Recording Date: 20-Sep-2009; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: JESSICA BLANK The co-writer of The Exonerated, the verbatim drama about six innocent survivors of death row, talks to Philip Fisher in London.: “A lot of wonderful actors are scheduled to come on. Brian Dennehy, Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins...”; Play: The Exonerated; Theatre: Riverside Studios; Recording Date: 25-Feb-2006; Listen to this discussion NOW!
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; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: JOE PENHALL (1/2) As the Sheffield Crucible revives his Blue/Orange (2000), the playwright discusses his controversial hit about mental health and racial identity. Aleks Sierz quizzes.: “A lot of the people you see around on the streets in London have suffered from mental illness.”; Recording Date: 31-Jan-2005; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: JOE PENHALL (2/2) The playwright talks to Aleks Sierz about his career as a whole and the divided reactions to his latest piece, Dumb Show, which is about tabloid journalism.: “Some people found Dumb Show grubby and simplistic - that's because it's a grubby, simplistic subject.”; Recording Date: 31-Jan-2005; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: JOHN GODBER Cited as the third most performed British playwright after Shakespeare and Ayckbourn, he talks to Dominic Cavendish about the 30th anniversary revival of his mega-hit Bouncers, the past and future of Hull Truck Theatre, and the recent floods.: 5 recommendations; “If there is that sense of visceral adrenalin, the theatre can say to the club next door, we have as much right to be here as you.”; Recording Date: 17-Jul-2007; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: JOHN RETALLACK The artistic director of Company of Angels talks to Heather Neill about staging work for young people, as well as the European dimension to his dramaturgical and educational activities.: “It's young people who are on the street, in the evening. They're like the infantry - they take the first hit.”; Recording Date: 05-Nov-2007; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: JON HARRIS The multi-million pound arts centre at Stratford East closed within two years of opening. Its former artistic director revisits the Lottery fiasco. Dominic Cavendish hosts.: “It wasn't the first Lottery disaster - and presumably it won't be the last.”; Recording Date: 16-Jan-2004; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: JONATHAN HARVEY The playwright talks to Aleks Sierz about his latest play, Canary, an epic which charts gay history over 50 years, in an ambitious co-production between the Liverpool Playhouse, Hampstead Theatre and the English Touring Theatre. Recorded at the ETT.: “Historically, gay people don’t have children to pass stories down to, so what happens to those stories when you’re dead and don’t have kids?”; Recording Date: 12-Apr-2010; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: JOSIE ROURKE The artistic director of the Bush theatre chats to Dominic Cavendish about the multi-authored Fifty Ways To Leave Your Lover, which hits London after wowing festivalgoers in Suffolk. Recorded at the Latitude festival.: “It's about loving and losing - or loving and repelling. Lots of dumping by text, which we are generally against - are we not people?”; Recording Date: 18-Jul-2008; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: KATE DORNEY The V&A's curator of modern and contemporary performance talks to Aleks Sierz about the newly opened Theatre and Performance Galleries at the museum, which display all things theatrical from historical posters to recent video recordings, and from Dame Edna Everage's costume to Mick Jagger's jumpsuit.: “Theatre is always seen as some kind of poor, illegitimate relation, but it's actually the most successful creative industry by a long way.”; Recording Date: 30-Mar-2009; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: KAY ADSHEAD The political playwright talks to Aleks Sierz about her new play, Bones, and argues that theatre is a great place for poetry and dreaming, as well as issues and debates.: “It's a political piece, but it's also a psychological thriller and a really chilling ghost story.”; Recording Date: 20-Oct-2006; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: KEN CAMPBELL (1/2) The unrivalled master of the ingenious monologue reminisces about shows past, including the infamous Ken Campbell Road Show... Dominic Cavendish quizzes.: “The killer that we had was putting ferrets down your trousers for world-record lengths of time.”; Recording Date: 10-Dec-2004; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: KEN CAMPBELL (2/2) The raconteur extraordinaire ponders the genesis of the Science Fiction Theatre of Liverpool... Dominic Cavendish holds the mic.: 1 comment; “To me, the Warp is the best play of the 20th century but because I put it on, no one else ever has.”; Recording Date: 10-Dec-2004; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: LAURA WADE The winner of the Critics' Circle Most Promising Playwright Award, talks to Aleks Sierz about her Breathing Corpses, Colder than Here and Other Hands.: “I hadn't quite grasped that you could know things that you hadn't directly experienced.”; Recording Date: 16-Feb-2006; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: LEANNE JONES The 22-year-old star of the hit musical, Hairspray (Shaftesbury Theatre), chats to Philip Fisher about her amazing leap into the limelight and about life behind the scenes of this surprising West End hit.: “I got the phone call while I was working at the Halifax - in my lunch hour. I was sick and just started crying, with joy.”; Recording Date: 05-Feb-2008; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: LEE HALL Best known as the creator of Billy Elliot, the playwright joins Max Roberts, artistic director of Live Theatre, Newcastle, to talk about his new play. The Pitmen Painters revisits the story of the Ashington Group - a 1930s society of miners who discovered they had a talent to paint.: 2 recommendations; “Theatre is a metaphor for community - the theme of the collective and the individual emerged during its making.”; Recording Date: 27-Sep-2007; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: LEMN SISSAY The acclaimed performance poet talks to Dominic Cavendish about his disturbing autobiographical one-man-show, Something Dark.: 1 recommendation; “One of the reasons why a lot of people fear theatre - and poetry as well - is because it deals with truths.”; Play: Something Dark; Theatre: Battersea Arts Centre; Recording Date: 21-Mar-2004; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: LEO BUTLER The playwright talks to Aleks Sierz about his powerful new work, I'll Be the Devil (Tricycle), an RSC-commissioned response to Shakespeare's The Tempest, and about the state of new writing in Britain today.: “The first image I had was of a redcoat leaning over the shoulder of a woman in rags while all around a storm rages.”; Recording Date: 04-Mar-2008; Listen to this discussion NOW!
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; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: LISA GOLDMAN The new artistic director of London's Soho Theatre outlines her first season, which kicks off with a new play by Philip Ridley, and tells Aleks Sierz about young writers, new writing and politics.: “Our policy is to create exhilarating and dissenting new work, and to create theatre as an event, and which connects with our changing times.”; Recording Date: 30-Mar-2007; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: LYN HAILL The Head of Print and Publications at the National Theatre talks to Carole Woddis about how the flagship's programmes have evolved from simple cast lists into the lavish publications that have proved so popular today. Recorded at the National Theatre.: “The programmes now make more of a profit because they are part of the theatregoing experience - one in three audience members buy them.”; Recording Date: 28-May-2010; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: 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; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: MARK ROSENBLATT The director unveils The Last Waltz Season - Wedekind's Musik, Hauptmann's Rose Bernd and Schnitzler's Professor Bernhardi at the Arcola. Dominic Cavendish quizzes.: “I wanted to find plays that hadn't been seen by three great writers and these three knew each other.”; Recording Date: 17-Mar-2005; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: MARK RYLANCE (1/2) Prior to the 2004 season at Shakespeare's Globe, 'Star-Crossed Lovers', Heather Neill talks to its tireless artistic director.: “There's a lot of reverence and fearful stuff around Shakespeare.”; Recording Date: 16-Apr-2004; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: MARK RYLANCE (2/2) Heather Neill continues her conversation with the artistic director of Shakespeare's Globe, looking at original pronunciation productions.: “We'll see what it sounds like.. it's part of the experiment.”; Recording Date: 16-Apr-2004; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: MARTIN CRIMP (1/2) The playwright talks to Dominic Cavendish about Cruel and Tender, his radical reworking of Sophocles' Trachiniae.: “It was a desperate concern of mine not to reduce the play to some sort of anti-war diatribe... ”; Play: Cruel and Tender; Theatre: Young Vic; Recording Date: 11-May-2004; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: MARTIN CRIMP (2/2) The conversation shifts to translating Marivaux's The False Servant and Crimp's work in general. Dominic Cavendish quizzes.: “I'm looking for constraints all the time, some rules which will let the material be created by me.”; Play: Cruel and Tender; Theatre: Young Vic; Recording Date: 11-May-2004; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: MATT CHARMAN The award-winning playwright talks to Aleks Sierz about his current show, The Observer (National Theatre), which is directed by Richard Eyre and looks at the transition to democracy in a fictional West African state. Recorded at the National.: “For me, the entire play is about language - it is about the fine letter of documents. Countries are built on little documents and tiny words.”; Recording Date: 04-Jun-2009; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: MATTHEW BOURNE The adventurous choreographer chats to Philip Fisher about the current revival of his 2000 'dancicle' show, The Car Man, and about his career, which also includes Swan Lake, The Nutcracker and Edward Scissorhands.: 2 recommendations; “The Car Man was the first time I used the music as a film score - I wrote the story first and then fitted the music in.”; Recording Date: 07-Jun-2007; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: MATTHEW DUNSTER The playwright, director and actor talks to Philip Fisher about the return to the Young Vic of his 2008 play, You Can See the Hills (Royal Exchange, Manchester), and his Globe productions of Troilus and Cressida and Che Walker's The Frontline (which also returns this summer).: “I wanted to write about sex and violence, but it was really an emotional response to the way young people get written off.”; Recording Date: 24-Mar-2009; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: MAX STAFFORD-CLARK The artistic director of Out of Joint talks to David Benedict about The Permanent Way by David Hare and the genre of documentary theatre.: “What we are trying to present in verbatim theatre is a closer encounter with the truth.”; Play: The Permanent Way; Theatre: National Theatre, Lyttelton; Recording Date: 09-Jan-2004; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: MAX STAFFORD-CLARK The artistic director of Out of Joint theatre company talks to Suman Bhuchar about his latest project, Mixed Up North, which explores the difficulties of uniting divided racial communities in the Lancashire mill town of Burnley. Recorded at the Bolton Octagon.: “I think education is a word we're scared of in the theatre. 'Education' is a bad word, and 'entertainment' is a good word.”; Recording Date: 12-Sep-2009; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: MELLY STILL The award-winning director and designer talks to Heather Neill in detail about Thomas Middleton's The Revenger's Tragedy, currently being revived at the National Theatre with Rory Kinnear as Vindice.: “He is satirising male-assumed supremacy. You get the feeling with Middleton that he thinks justice is a woman.”; Recording Date: 13-Jun-2008; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: MICHAEL ATTENBOROUGH (1/2) The artistic director of the Almeida Theatre in north London talks to Aleks Sierz about directing Neil LaBute's latest, In a Dark Dark House, which opens in November, as well as about the importance of American drama.: “Neil is fearless: he writes with a piercing frankness and directness, and I find his plays very accurate and believable.”; Recording Date: 21-Oct-2008; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: MICHAEL ATTENBOROUGH (2/2) The artistic director of the Almeida Theatre in north London talks to Aleks Sierz about the running of the theatre and previews its upcoming 2009 season, which features a mix of rarely performed classics, better-known plays and new work.: “The Almeida is very much an actor's space - it makes them look good, so I'm constantly looking for plays that are written fabulously for actors.”; Recording Date: 21-Oct-2008; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: MICHAEL BILLINGTON The venerated Guardian theatre critic talks to Aleks Sierz about the lifetime of reviewing packed into his newly published survey of British post-war theatre, State of the Nation (Faber and Faber). Substantial excerpt.: “The more plays I read, the more I was struck by this notion of theatre as a mirror of the nation.”; Recording Date: 23-Nov-2007; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: MICHAEL GRANDAGE The director talks to David Benedict about his first year at the helm of the Donmar Warehouse and discusses his plans for the future.: “I'm really very keen that we get our work out to be seen by as many people as possible.”; Play: After Miss Julie; Theatre: Donmar Warehouse; Recording Date: 10-Dec-2003; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: MICHAEL PUNTER The playwright talks to Aleks Sierz about his sensational ghost story, Darker Shores (Hampstead), a seasonal Victorian tale featuring spiritualism, seances and haunting, which raises questions about belief and about Darwinism. Recorded at Hampstead Theatre.: “There are still 300 spiritualist churches in the UK - it was a bizarre movement sparked off by a pair of sisters in New York state.”; Recording Date: 16-Dec-2009; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: MICHAEL SIMKINS The actor, writer and cricketer talks to Philip Fisher about returning to the part of Billy Flynn in Chicago (Cambridge Theatre), highlights of his career, and his latest book, Fatty Batter (Ebury).: “I did nine shows at the York Theatre Royal, in a three-week rep turnaround: today, a young actor would need ten years to get that experience.”; Recording Date: 25-Apr-2007; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: MICHAEL WYNNE The playwright chats to Aleks Sierz about his latest comedy, The Priory (Royal Court), which depicts a group of old friends who gather to celebrate New Year's Eve, and about one of his previous hits, The People Are Friendly (2002). Recorded at the Royal Court.: “It's about the thirtysomething generation who used to party a lot and who now see themselves as still being very young.”; Recording Date: 09-Dec-2009; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: MICK GORDON The former artistic director of the Gate, Notting Hill, talks to Dominic Cavendish about his latest 'theatre essay', On Religion, written in conjunction with philosopher AC Grayling.: “This is a provocative piece and it's not didactic, but if Anthony Grayling were to be asked his opinion, in his view religion is only a bad thing.”; Recording Date: 17-Nov-2006; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: MIKE ALFREDS (1/2) The legendary director talks to Aleks Sierz about his new book on acting, Different Every Night (Nick Hern), and remembers his experiences of heading Shared Experience from 1975 until 1988.: 1 comment; “Without actors, there is no theatre - the actors are what give theatre life, and my big thing is that theatre is live.”; Recording Date: 27-Jun-2008; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: MIKE ALFREDS (2/2) The legendary director talks to Aleks Sierz about his new book on acting, Different Every Night (Nick Hern), and remembers his experiences of heading Shared Experience from 1975 until 1988.: “In rehearsal, instead of asking, what is that actor doing?, you should ask, what is that character doing?”; Recording Date: 27-Jun-2008; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: MIKE BARTLETT The playwright talks frankly to Aleks Sierz about his new play, Cock (Royal Court). It stars Ben Whishaw, tackles sexual confusion and has been staged in an experimental production by James Macdonald. Recorded at the Royal Court.: “We were talking in the bar last night about how few people we knew would label themselves bisexual, compared to gay or straight.”; Recording Date: 20-Nov-2009; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: MIKE BARTLETT The playwright talks to Andrew Haydon, theatre editor of Culture Wars, about his 40-minute debut, My Child (Royal Court), and about life at the Royal Court under Dominic Cooke's new regime.: 4 recommendations; “The family is the place where you find unconditional love, but it's also a place of maximum danger and violence.”; Recording Date: 25-May-2007; Listen to this discussion NOW!
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; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: MIKE BRADWELL (1/2) The director 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; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: MIKE BRADWELL (2/2) The director 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; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: MIKE BRADWELL The artistic director of the Bush theatre in West London looks back on 10 years at the helm of London's small but mighty new writing venue with Philip Fisher. He also gives a thumbnail sketch of his 40-year career.: “Theatre has to be a nuisance but it also has to be entertaining... I like our plays to have jokes.”; Recording Date: 05-May-2006; Listen to this discussion NOW!
Interview: Moira Buffini. The playwright talks to Heather Neill about her latest play, Welcome to Thebes (National), which takes the stories of Antigone, Theseus and Eurydice and sets them in a contemporary war-torn African state. Recorded at the National Theatre.: “Greek myths are essentially war stories, and lots of war stories are told in this play, as they are in countries where there has just been a war.”; Recording Date: 03-Sep-2010; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: MURRAY MELVIN The veteran actor and member of Joan Littlewood's legendary Theatre Workshop at the Theatre Royal Stratford East talks to Aleks Sierz about classic stagings such as A Taste of Honey, The Hostage and Oh What a Lovely War, as well as his new book, The Art of the Theatre Workshop (Oberon).: 5 comments; “Their credo was to present the best of European and world theatre, and they did it all on tuppence ha'penny - they had so little money.”; Recording Date: 16-Feb-2007; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: MUSTAPHA MATURA At the 20th anniversary revival of his Trinidadian rewrite of The Playboy of the Western World, the playwright reminisces with Nicolas Kent, artistic director of the Tricycle Theatre. Dominic Cavendish quizzes.: “I think a lot of attitudes to black theatre have changed - it's not black theatre anymore, it's theatre.”; Play: Playboy of the West Indies; Theatre: Tricycle Theatre; Recording Date: 29-Nov-2004; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: NEIL LABUTE The top American playwright and director talks to Philip Fisher about his controversial new play, Fat Pig (Trafalgar Studios), his career in film, the joys and perils of New York theatre, and his upcoming Reasons To Be Pretty on Broadway.: “I go where the wind blows me: when I have a story that I'm happy with, I write it and hope it will be a good night out.”; Recording Date: 28-May-2008; Listen to this discussion NOW!
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; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: NICHOLAS HYTNER The National Theatre's artistic director talks to David Benedict about the job, his success so far and plans for the future.: “There's a whole raft of stuff that we haven't achieved yet. It's never any good relying on what's around.”; Recording Date: 15-Dec-2004; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: NICHOLAS HYTNER The National’s artistic director talks to Heather Neill about his modern-dress version of Jonson's The Alchemist, and also has a punchy message for Shakespeare-deniers.: 1 recommendation; “The notion that Shakespeare didn't write his own plays is just as absurd as Holocaust Denial.”; Recording Date: 29-Sep-2006; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: NICK GROSSO The playwright talks to Philip Fisher about Ingredient X (Royal Court), his new play about the nature of addiction, and also about his close relationship with this new writing venue. Recorded at the Royal Court.: “I really wanted to show how addiction also impacts on those around the addict and how they leave a trail of destruction in their wake.”; Recording Date: 29-May-2010; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: NICOLAS KENT The artistic director of the Tricycle Theatre talks to Rachel Hallibuton about Justifying War, a staging of the Hutton Inquiry transcripts.: “It seems extraordinary that the only way we can take a view on the inquiry is to read the newspapers.”; Play: Justifying War; Theatre: Tricycle Theatre; Recording Date: 30-Oct-2003; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: NONSO ANOZIE The actor who plays Othello in Declan Donnellan's latest Cheek by Jowl staging, talks to Dominic Cavendish about the part, and his career. Recorded live.: “You have to think about what you do as a black actor more than you have to do as a white actor.”; Play: Othello; Theatre: Riverside Studios; Recording Date: 23-Oct-2004; Listen to this discussion NOW!
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; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: OSCAR WATSON Continuing his Black Voices special, recorded at the 2009 Decibel showcase in Manchester, Steven Luckie talks to Oscar Watson about the Sustained Theatre network, aimed at 'keeping issues relating to Black, Asian and minority ethnic theatre artists and practitioners alive and in the national debate'.: “One of the things I'm very keen to do is open the door to venues that want to get involved in what we want to do. A lot of venues understand they need to diversify their audiences.”; Recording Date: 17-Sep-2009; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: PAM GEMS Now 80, the author of Piaf talks about her career and her latest biodrama, Mrs Pat, about the actress Mrs Patrick Campbell, to Dominic Cavendish.: “I walk out of plays nowadays. When you've been round the block, you can't be fooled anymore.”; Recording Date: 17-Feb-2006; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: PATERSON JOSEPH The actor talks to Heather Neill about starring in Eugene O'Neill's The Emperor Jones and George Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan at the National, and the use of the n-word on stage, as well as about his acting career.: 2 recommendations | 1 comment; “People who read the play find it racist - they see the phonetics and then say that it is minstrel-speak.”; Recording Date: 11-Sep-2007; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: PAUL HIGGINS The director talks to Philip Fisher about his early career in TV and film, his experience of new writing on the London Fringe, and his time as supremo at Theatre 503. Plus: assisting on Neil Bartlett's Twelfth Night at the RSC.: 1 comment; “Theatre 503 became an important stepping stone between getting first plays on and more established venues.”; Recording Date: 26-Nov-2007; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: PAUL ROBINSON and TIM ROSEMAN The new artistic directors of Theatre 503 in Battersea talk to Culture Wars critic Andrew Haydon about life on the London fringe, and how the search for new political plays might lead to a questioning of the liberal consensus.: 2 recommendations; “We don't want dogmatic, preachy or worthy agitprop, and we don't want something we've all seen before.”; Recording Date: 19-Jan-2007; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: PAULETTE RANDALL The artistic director of black theatre company Talawa talks to Dominic Cavendish about Urban Afro Saxons (Stratford East).: “I really wanted a platform where we could have all of these different voices being heard.”; Play: Urban Afro Saxons; Theatre: Theatre Royal Stratford East; Recording Date: 29-Oct-2003; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: PAULETTE RANDALL The artistic director of Talawa Theatre Company talks to David Benedict about her current revival of James Baldwin's play, Blues for Mr Charlie. Recorded live.: “Young black men are still being murdered, whether it's here or in America - racism is still a big issue.”; Play: Blues for Mr Charlie; Theatre: Tricycle Theatre; Recording Date: 25-Jun-2004; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: PETER BROOK (1/2) Dominic Cavendish talks to the legendary director in Paris about his religious trilogy, Le Grand Inquisiteur, La Mort de Krishna and Tierno Bokar.: 1 recommendation; “Looking back I can only say that I've done my best to broaden what is permissible in the theatre.”; Recording Date: 15-Jan-2005; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: PETER BROOK (2/2) The legendary director talks about the differences between the French and English theatre traditions, the simplicity of his style and his thoughts on turning 80.: 2 recommendations; “When I read that 'Peter Brook's hallmark is simplicity' my first reaction is 'I must now go and do a musical'.”; Recording Date: 15-Jan-2005; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: PETER GILL (1/2) The veteran director and playwright speaks to Aleks Sierz about his own production of his 1976 play, Small Change (currently revived at the Donmar), and about his early career at the Royal Court in the late 1950s and 1960s.: “The thing I noticed this time is that Gerard and Mrs Driscoll never meet - which must mean something...”; Recording Date: 23-Apr-2008; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: PETER GILL (2/2) The veteran director and playwright speaks some more to Aleks Sierz about his own production of his 1976 play, Small Change (currently revived at the Donmar), and about his early career at the Royal Court in the late 1950s and 1960s.: “Joan Littlewood's Stratford East was the place to go to see things - there was never a dud show there ever.”; Recording Date: 23-Apr-2008; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: PETER GILL The playwright and director talks to Heather Neill about Apprenticeship (Oberon), a new book reflecting on a long-lost diary that documented the RSC's pioneering 1962 production of Brecht's The Caucasian Chalk Circle - in which Gill acted.: “To have just a 'directorial theatre' is boring. I keep seeing things where the production gets in your way.”; Recording Date: 01-Nov-2008; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: PETER NICHOLS The veteran playwright, now 81, chats to Dominic Cavendish about the autobiographical basis for Privates on Parade, revived by Ian Brown at West Yorkshire Playhouse and Birmingham Rep, and reminisces about comedians Kenneth Williams and Stanley Baxter, with whom he served in the Combined Services Entertainment concert party in Singapore in 1947.: “I all the time felt with television that I wanted input from the audience - what are we doing talking to each other when we could be talking to them?”; Recording Date: 13-Oct-2008; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: PHILIP HEDLEY (1/2) The departing artistic director of the Theatre Royal Stratford East looks back on 25 years of constant experiment and multicultural change. Carole Woddis quizzes.: “I appointed myself artistic director and then championed equal opportunities for everyone else.”; Recording Date: 18-Feb-2004; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: PHILIP HEDLEY (2/2) Carole Woddis hears some final thoughts on the ever-evolving East End theatre's past, present and future.: “You have to hand over to young talent, you must not be secure.”; Recording Date: 18-Feb-2004; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: PHILIP RIDLEY The controversial writer's latest, Mercury Fur (Menier), has been described as the most shocking British play since Sarah Kane's Blasted, and has been lambasted accordingly. He talks to Rachel Halliburton.: 5 recommendations | 1 comment; “I'm being judged by people who really shouldn't be judging this play... they are blinder than a bag-full of moles in a cellar.”; Play: Mercury Fur; Theatre: Menier Chocolate Factory; Recording Date: 04-Mar-2005; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: PHILIP RIDLEY The playwright talks to Aleks Sierz about his latest play, Leaves of Glass (Soho), a work which explores family relationships, memories of the past and hidden secrets. He also outlines his career and discusses the political resonances of his plays.: 1 recommendation; “The two brothers play this political game in which they talk in this metaphorical language in order to provoke each other.”; Recording Date: 16-May-2007; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: POL HEYVAERT The director and writer talks about Aalst, the National Theatre of Scotland/Victoria touring co-production which examines the murder of two children by their parents in the Belgian town of Aalst in 1999. Excerpt.: “I didn't want to do a straight investigation - it would have made the show too confusing.”; Recording Date: 05-Mar-2007; Listen to this discussion NOW!
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; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: RALPH KOLTAI (1/2) With a retrospective exhibition running at the National Theatre, the 80-year-old designer looks back on his career with David Benedict.: “Whatever talent I may have, it lies in recognising the accident when it happens.”; Recording Date: 03-Sep-2004; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: RALPH KOLTAI (2/2) The renowned designer continues his conversation with David Benedict, with a special focus on his work in opera.: “What is sad is that this quality of British theatre is appreciated everywhere except for in Britain itself.”; Recording Date: 03-Sep-2004; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: REBECCA LENKIEWICZ The playwright talks to Philip Fisher about her history-making debut at the National's Oliver theatre with Her Naked Skin, a new history play all about the Suffragettes.: “The acting fed into the writing - it felt like a very natural progression of working with words.”; Recording Date: 23-Jul-2008; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: RICHARD CORDERY The classical actor talks to Philip Fisher about his role in the West-End transfer of the teen-punk musical, Spring Awakening (Novello), which was a massive Broadway hit and is based on Frank Wedekind's 1891 stage play.: “The financial thing that people say about televison is bollocks: on sitcoms, the money is poor. But the RSC look after you very well.”; Recording Date: 25-Mar-2009; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: RICHARD JORDAN (1/2) The producer talks to Philip Fisher about Edinburgh 2009, including his two Fringe First Winners, one of which, Internal (Traverse), is the most talked about show in town, and his other favourites, including musicals.: “Edinburgh looked exciting and forbidden and dangerous. So I bent the ears of my poor parents and they let me come at the age of 15.”; Recording Date: 17-Aug-2009; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: RICHARD JORDAN (2/2) The producer tells Philip Fisher how he fulfilled a childhood ambition to become a theatre impresario and talks through a career in the regions, the West End, at the National, and nowadays touring his own productions around the globe.: “My philosophy is simple. If you do not feel passionate about what you are doing, then it is never going to work.”; Recording Date: 17-Aug-2009; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: ROBERT TANITCH The critic and writer talks to Philip Fisher about his latest, lavishly illustrated book, The London Stage in the Twentieth Century (Haus Publishing), his other publications about the stars of screen and stage, and his own plays.: “I sometimes chose to quote two critics who disagreed - especially when they represented two extremes.”; Recording Date: 23-Oct-2007; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: ROBIN SOANS The actor and writer talks to Philip Fisher about his verbatim theatre piece, Life after Scandal, at the Hampstead Theatre. Celebrities discussed include Neil and Christine Hamilton, Charles and Diana Ingram, Jonathan Aitken and Edwina Currie. Plus: Soans' acting career and the birth of 'in-yer-face' theatre...: 4 recommendations; “People tend to think verbatim theatre should be strictly regulated, but it's not a restricted form, it's malleable.”; Recording Date: 19-Sep-2007; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: ROGER ALLAM The actor who plays German impressario Max Reinhardt in Michael Frayn's Afterlife (National Theatre) talks to Philip Fisher about the role, and about his career, in which he has played other historical figures, from Adolf Hitler to Willy Brandt.: “Playing a real person does have its challenges - we only have other people's accounts of what Reinhardt was like.”; Recording Date: 09-Jul-2008; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: ROGER REES The Welsh actor, who has made his return to the London stage as Vladimir in Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot (Haymarket) opposite Ian McKellen's Estragon, talks about the role, his days at the RSC and his more recent work. Dominic Cavendish quizzes.: “I think Vladimir gets very near the point of giving into the anarchy. He holds himself back but he knows it's there and he's changed forever.”; Recording Date: 11-Feb-2010; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: ROXANA SILBERT The artistic director of Paines Plough new writing combo talks to Philip Fisher about Mark Ravenhill's epic 16-play cycle, Shoot/Get Treasure/Repeat, and about the challenges and opportunities of running a touring company.: “We took a complete risk because we had no idea about what Mark would write - but the work is of a consistently high quality.”; Recording Date: 14-May-2008; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: RUPERT GOOLD (1/2) The director and chief of Headlong theatre company talks to Aleks Sierz about Lucy Prebble's Enron (Royal Court), the mega-hit show about the collapse of the American energy giant, and about plans for its West End and Broadway transfers. Recorded at Headlong, London.: “There's nothing worse than a script being script-doctored to death, but with Enron we were more interested in stimulating feedback.”; Recording Date: 09-Oct-2009; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: RUPERT GOOLD (2/2) The director and chief of Headlong theatre company talks to Aleks Sierz about his programme of shows for next year, which include new plays from Anthony Neilson and Mike Bartlett, plus new versions of Brecht and Swift. Recorded at Headlong, London.: “I've really enjoyed collaborating with Ben Power - Faustus and Six Characters in Search of an Author are two of the things I'm proudest of.”; Recording Date: 09-Oct-2009; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: RYAN CRAIG The playwright talks to Aleks Sierz about his new Holocaust denial play, The Glass Room, now at the Hampstead Theatre, and discusses whether there is such a thing as 'a Jewish play'.: “As regards the paradox of free speech, my point is this: confront the Holocaust denier, but do not gag them.”; Recording Date: 11-Dec-2006; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: SACHA WARES The director talks to Aleks Sierz about her production of debbie tucker green's latest, Random (Royal Court), and about her other stagings of this innovative and provocative playwright's work.: “It's very detailed, very funny, very observant writing - and you absolutely don't expect the turn that the play takes.”; Recording Date: 20-Mar-2008; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: SAM WALTERS The founding artistic director of the Orange Tree, London's sole dedicated in-the-round theatre, talks to Philip Fisher about 33 years on the fringe.: “We were part of what happened at the beginning of the 70s, this growth of small theatres in London.”; Recording Date: 15-Apr-2005; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: SAMUEL WEST Heather Neill talks to the actor and director about his career, his passion for verse drama and his approach to playing the part of Harry in The Family Reunion, the centrepiece of the Donmar Warehouse's current TS Eliot festival.: “What is fascinating and difficult for a non-believer is to trust the idea of redemption that lies behind this play - because that's what Eliot adds to the Greek story.”; Recording Date: 11-Nov-2008; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: SCOTT GRAHAM AND STEVEN HOGGETT The joint-artistic directors of Frantic Assembly, talk to Philip Fisher about their radical new vision of Shakespeare's Othello (currently playing at the Lyric, Hammersmith), and about the path from dance theatre that has led them to it.: “He said, 'It's full of violence, revenge, hatred, nastiness and sexual intrigue, jealousy. It's all the things that you're obsessed with.'”; Recording Date: 14-Nov-2008; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: SEAN HOLMES The director talks to Heather Neill about staging Brecht's The Caucasian Chalk Circle as the National Theatre's 2007 touring show, in a new version by Frank McGuinness, produced in collaboration with Filter theatre company.: “If you release everyone's imagination in the room, it leads to argument but also to a stronger, more vivid language.”; Recording Date: 20-Dec-2006; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: SHUNT (1/3) The acclaimed theatre collective have moved into 70,000 sq ft of space under London Bridge Station. Shunt member David Rosenberg gives a sneak preview. Dominic Cavendish marvels.: 1 recommendation; “We never really believed it was going to happen because it's so insane... but we're here now!”; Play: Tropicana; Theatre: Shunt Vaults; Recording Date: 10-May-2004; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: SHUNT (2/3) Who are Shunt? Where do they belong? What are they about? Everything you wanted to know but were afraid to ask, as revealed by Shunt member David Rosenberg.: “I don't like the term 'fringe'. For us, it tends to mean cheap or bad, or performed in a pokey space.”; Play: Tropicana; Theatre: Shunt Vaults; Recording Date: 10-May-2004; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: SHUNT (3/3) Five members of the innovative Shunt collective talk to Dominic Cavendish about their working process, and whether or not their work has any meaning.: “In Dance bear Dance we were dealing with completely current ideas within the war against terrorism.”; Play: Tropicana; Theatre: Shunt Vaults; Recording Date: 10-May-2004; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: SIMON MCBURNEY (1/2) Complicite's artistic director recalls early days on the Edinburgh Fringe and offers a fewsurvival tips. Dominic Cavendish quizzes.: 1 recommendation; “Ive always felt that going to Edinburgh is like going into battle - you have to prepare it incredibly well.”; Recording Date: 30-Jul-2004; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: SIMON McBURNEY (2/2) The artistic director of Complicite talks to Dominic Cavendish about the genesis of The Elephant Vanishes, which returns to the Barbican as part of a world tour.: 1 recommendation; “We decided that we would make it absolutely plastic - everything in Tokyo appears to be artificial.”; Play: The Elephant Vanishes; Theatre: Barbican Centre; Recording Date: 30-Jul-2004; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: SIMON RUSSELL BEALE The ever-popular British actor chats to Philip Fisher about his early career, appearing as Face in The Alchemist and starring in Spamalot.: “I've come to regard the National as my second home: it's the most amazingly creative place.”; Recording Date: 25-Sep-2006; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: SIMON STEPHENS (1/2) The playwright talks to Aleks Sierz about his latest play, Pornography (Birmingham Rep/Traverse), which was a major hit at this year's Edinburgh Festival, but had its first production in Germany, directed by Sebastian Nubling.: “Surrounding me was a culture that was struggling to sustain itself - and people were transgressing. There was a tear in the fabric.”; Recording Date: 20-Oct-2008; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: SIMON STEPHENS (2/2) The playwright talks to Aleks Sierz about the genesis, theme and form of his other 2008 play, Harper Regan (National), which was directed by Marianne Elliott and starred Lesley Sharp.: “It's a deliberately grey area: whether the photographs he took in the park of children were made with sexual intent.”; Recording Date: 20-Oct-2008; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: SIMON STEPHENS The Olivier Award-winning playwright, whose complex 'moral chaos of England' drama, Motortown, is on at the Royal Court, talks to Aleks Sierz.: “The starting point for me here was the question: why don't I want to go on that great big anti-war march?”; Recording Date: 28-Apr-2006; Listen to this discussion NOW!
Interview: Simon Usher. The director talks to Aleks Sierz about his production of If So, Then Yes (Jermyn Street Theatre), his first new play for decades, and about the playwright's other work, such as A Resounding Tinkle (1957). Recorded at Dewynters, London.: “When I saw Simpson recently he quoted a line from Henri Bergson about comedy being a momentary anaesthetic of the heart - but only momentary.”; Recording Date: 20-Aug-2010; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: SIR RICHARD EYRE (1/2) The director talks to journalist Al Senter about his new book, Talking Theatre (Nick Hern), made up of interviews with theatre-makers, gathered during the making of his Changing Stages BBC television series. Introduced by Jo Banham, Head of Adult Learning at the V&A. Recorded at the V&A.: “Having thought that transcribing and editing interviews was money for old rope, it turned out that it was a lot of hard work, but very enjoyable.”; Recording Date: 16-Oct-2009; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: SIR RICHARD EYRE (2/2) The director talks to journalist Al Senter about his book, Talking Theatre (Nick Hern), made up of interviews with significant theatre-makers, gathered during the making of his Changing Stages BBC television series. Recorded at the V&A.: “I've always been interested in the strong division between the Brechtians and the Beckettians: both had a profound influence on theatre today.”; Recording Date: 16-Oct-2009; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: SIR RICHARD EYRE The director tells Philip Fisher about directing Kim Cattrall and Matthew MacFadyen in Noel Coward's Private Lives (Vaudeville), a triumphant debut at New York’s Met with George Bizet's Carmen, and his ongoing relationship with the National Theatre. Recorded at the National.: “If you put a celebrity actress in a very celebrated part, she has to achieve something remarkable, so it's all credit to her that she's pulled it off in such a convincing way.”; Recording Date: 11-Mar-2010; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: STELLA FEEHILY (1/2) The playwright talks to Aleks Sierz about her current play, Dreams of Violence (Out of Joint/Soho), a comedy about family life and the politics of the banking crisis, directed by Max Stafford-Clark. Recorded at Out of Joint, London.: “The only thing that I think about when I am writing is that I want to surprise myself as much as I want to surprise the audience.”; Recording Date: 29-Jul-2009; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: STELLA FEEHILY (2/2) The playwright talks to Aleks Sierz about her 2003 debut, Duck (Out of Joint/Royal Court), a play about two teenagers in Dublin, and about her plans for the future. Recorded at Out of Joint, London.: “It is about young women finding their power in the world, whether through education or through sex.”; Recording Date: 29-Jul-2009; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: STEPHEN SEWELL The Australian playwright talks to Philip Fisher about his acclaimed war-on-terror thriller, Myth, Progaganda and Disaster in Nazi Germany... and Contemporary America.: “The circumstances are now so dire that we really have to squawk as loudly as we possibly can.”; Play: Myth, Propaganda and Disaster...; Theatre: Orange Tree; Recording Date: 12-Nov-2004; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: STEPHEN UNWIN The artistic director of the new Rose Theatre in Kingston-upon-Thames talks to Heather Neill about the opportunities and challenges of running this unique space with no public funding.: “It's a very good approximation of an Elizabethan playhouse, but it's brand new and doesn't have any olde worlde bits.”; Recording Date: 05-Feb-2008; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: STEVE WATERS (1/2) The playwright tells Aleks Sierz about his new play, Fast Labour (Hampstead/West Yorks Playhouse), which is about Victor, a migrant worker from the Ukraine.: “If the play is seen as being just about East Europeans in Britain, it's failed - it's about how we now live and work.”; Recording Date: 03-Jun-2008; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: STEVE WATERS (2/2) The playwright tells Aleks Sierz about his running of the MPhil in Playwriting at Birmingham University, and discusses the state of new writing in Britain today.: “There is an eclecticism and diversity, and a real desire to tell quite big stories, which I find particularly refreshing.”; Recording Date: 03-Jun-2008; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: STEVEN BERKOFF The maverick playwright talks to Rachel Halliburton about his controversial Messiah, the critics he reviles and what he'd do if he ran the National Theatre.: “You go to the theatre and you see the same boring, dreary directors - the general standard is really bad.”; Play: Messiah - Scenes From a Crucifixion; Theatre: Old Vic; Recording Date: 26-Nov-2003; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: TERRENCE McNALLY The US playwright talks to Suman Bhuchar about A Perfect Ganesh, nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1994 and now revived for a UK tour by Phizzical Productions. He also discusses other work including his controversial play about Christ, Corpus Christi.: “Intuitively I was dealing with my own racism - it's hard to grow up in society and be impervious to things like racism.”; Recording Date: 13-Mar-2008; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: THEA SHARROCK The director offers a few thoughts about playwright Terence Rattigan and his so-called lost 1939 play, After the Dance, which she is reviving successfully now at the National Theatre. Dominic Cavendish quizzes.: “There are moments when I think the older generation look at the younger generation and for a split second they realise: 'That was me'.”; Recording Date: 24-May-2010; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: THELMA RUBY The 84-year-old actress, current appearing in Stewart Permutt's Many Roads to Paradise at the Jermyn Street Theatre, talks to the show's director Anthony Biggs about a glorious career that has spanned seven decades.: “Perhaps another exciting one was Orson Welles, because I played Mistress Quickly to his Falstaff in Chimes at Midnight. He disappeared for two weeks of the three weeks rehearsal...”; Recording Date: 22-Oct-2009; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: TIM CROUCH The writer and actor talks to Aleks Sierz about his innovative play, An Oak Tree (Soho), in which he is joined on stage by a different actor every night, and about his first play, My Arm, which also explored the theatricality of theatre.: “There is a responsibility that I put in the audience's lap, and sometimes they are not remotely interested in accepting it.”; Recording Date: 23-Feb-2007; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: TIM ETCHELLS (1/2) A major interview with the artistic director of leading experimentalists Forced Entertainment to mark the company's 20th anniversary.: “We want to make work where it's acknowledged that the audience are there...”; Play: Bloody Mess; Theatre: Forced Entertainment touring; Recording Date: 05-Nov-2004; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: TIM ETCHELLS (2/2) The director considers Forced Entertainment's troubled relation with UK critics, and assesses its differing reputation at home and abroad. Dominic Cavendish quizzes.: “I think reports of how boring we are are a bit exaggerated!”; Play: Bloody Mess; Theatre: Forced Entertainment touring; Recording Date: 05-Nov-2004; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: TIM FOUNTAIN The playwright talks to Aleks Sierz about his latest book, So You Want To Be a Playwright? (Nick Hern), creative writing, literary management and his plays, from Resident Alien to Sex Addict. Recorded at the Soho Theatre.: 1 comment; “The best stories are the ones we tell against ourselves - no one wants to hear about the great shag you had last week.”; Recording Date: 12-Feb-2008; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: TOM MORRIS AND FELIX BARRETT The associate director of the National Theatre and the Punchdrunk director chat during rehearsals for Tom Stoppard's Every Good Boy Deserves Favour about their co-directed National Theatre revival - and how they met. Dominic Cavendish quizzes. Excerpt.: “The received wisdom is that if you want to do any work with classically trained musicians, you just run into a brick wall of custom and practise.”; Recording Date: 18-Dec-2008; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: TOM MORRIS The innovative director has turned the Battersea Arts Centre (BAC) into a theatrical powerhouse. As he steps down as artistic director, he looks back on eight dynamic years with Dominic Cavendish.: “At the same time as being the most exciting job in theatre, it's also very exhausting.”; Recording Date: 12-Dec-2003; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: TRACY LETTS The American writer and actor talks to Philip Fisher about the inspiration behind his multi-award-winning Broadway hit, August: Osage County, now at the National, and his career in the theatre.: “We became aware that we’ve tapped into a need on the audience’s part and when you do that it’s very gratifying.”; Recording Date: 28-Nov-2008; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: TREVOR GRIFFITHS (1/2) The political playwright tells Aleks Sierz about his latest play, A New World (currently at Shakespeare's Globe), which portrays the life and tumultuous times of the 18th-century radical Tom Paine. Recorded at Shakespeare's Globe.: “Paine's Common Sense sold 150,000 copies - that's a whack. But there was a formidable machine that was selling it.”; Recording Date: 03-Oct-2009; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: TREVOR GRIFFITHS (2/2) The political playwright tells Aleks Sierz about the revival of his 1975 play, Comedians (currently at the Lyric, Hammersmith), which is about an evening class of working lads who are learning to be comics. Recorded at Shakespeare's Globe.: “When I first conceived of the play I didn't reckon with the emergence of this strange, anarchic, graceful, witty, damaged person: Gethin Price!”; Recording Date: 03-Oct-2009; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: TREVOR GRIFFITHS The radical playwright talks to Aleks Sierz about his past work and three short plays - Thermidor, Apricots and Camel Station - now being staged at the Theatre Museum.: 1 recommendation; “Nearly everything I did in the 1970s was meant to resonate with stuff that was going on at the time.”; Recording Date: 21-Feb-2006; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: URSULA MARTINEZ Ahead of a new show at the Barbican Centre, My Stories Your Emails, Ursula Martinez, best-known now for her involvement in cabaret sensation La Clique, talks to Carole Woddis about her work and why she was dismayed to find her subversive strip-tease act laid bare on the web.: “I started receiving emails from fans from all over the world, mostly innocuous and charming, some of them not so charming...”; Recording Date: 25-Jan-2010; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: WILLY RUSSELL The legendary playwright talks to Dominic Cavendish about his rewritten classic Stags and Hens (Royal Court Liverpool), and mulls over thoughts about living in Liverpool, working-class experience, and his smash hit Blood Brothers.: “I abhor theatre that panders to the lowest common denominator, but I equally abhor theatre that offers bad art.”; Recording Date: 06-Feb-2008; Listen to this discussion NOW!
INTERVIEW: YASMIN WHITTAKER-KHAN The author of Bells, which attracted controversy at its Birmingham Rep premiere, talks to Dominic Cavendish about the play.: 1 recommendation; “I'm not trying to cushion anything - I write because I really enjoy delving into things in my mind.”; Recording Date: 08-Apr-2005; Listen to this discussion NOW!
IPHIGENIA AT AULIS Euripides - as directed by Katie Mitchell. David Benedict, Heather Neill and Charles Spencer pass judgment. Kate Bassett hosts. Recorded live.: “It could be anything between the 30s, 40s and 50s... either do it timelessly or set it now.”; Play: Iphigenia at Aulis; Theatre: National Theatre, Lyttelton; Recording Date: 25-Jun-2004; Listen to this discussion NOW!

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