AHDS Collections

Designing Shakespeare Collection - Audio Interview Clip

- Designing 'Dream

QuickTime and the QuickTime Logo are trademarks of Apple Computer Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries. The Get QuickTime Badge is a trademark of Apple Computer Inc., used with permission.

Designing Shakespeare Collection - Designing 'Dream
Filename	:	DS_SJ_au09.mov
Description	:	Question: I want to talk about some of the specific Shakespeare productions that you've worked on and I think it's hard not to start with the Peter Brook Dream is in terms doing things in a new way that certainly had an enormous impact. Where did the did the seed for that idea come from? Answer: Well it came in two different directions. One was I was living in Los Angeles at the time and I had completely cut myself off from the traditional world of Shakespeare production which was still going along in the John Bury mode. I mean all the other designers that were coming along were still you know working in that, not in that way but in there own way... still finding those sorts of solutions. So there's a special light in California, as everybody tells you and you loose your boundries and your traditions and coming from Europe where you know exactly who you are, it's very releasing and freeing and you do live off the different, you sort of, you get free of your context and you look at everything in a different way because there isn't anything there. There's just nothing there. So that's why Europeans love going there so much because we come from such a rich history that encloses us and suffocates us sometimes. They, it just isn't there. You're suddenly free of it and you're open. And I didn't know this was happening to me. I knew I was enjoying it. And then Peter started to talk to me about doing the Dream and I thought what on earth does he want to do that for? This awful play with fairies and stuff. And he said 'no I don't want to do it that way I want to strip it of everything that's traditionally associated with this play. I do not want to pictorialise it' and so the click went off in my head. And I realised that I should reread the play, that I wasn't seeing it the way he was seeing it. So I read the play trying not to visualise all the stuff that I'd been brain-washed with for that play and just read the play. And of course I fell in love with the play all over again. And... then we had a meeting. He is was in Paris and I was in Los Angeles and we met in New York and we started to fiddle around but mostly he'd already, we had we'd written to each other about it you see and so I came prepared with a few things that I that just seemed like something that mattered from what he'd been saying and we put them all together and it became immediately, we got it immediately.
Source	:	DS_10_05_02 (mini DV tape)
Format	:	Quicktime Progressive (audio)
Type	:	Resource Audio
Rights	:	This clip may be used for educational purposes only, any commercial use of this material requires permission from the copyright holders. Misuse or misrepresentation may result in legal action. Copyright holder: Christie Carson, COMPH, Royal Holloway University of London.
Length	:	2 minutes 18.16 seconds