AHDS Collections

Designing Shakespeare Collection - Audio Interview Clip

- John Bury

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Designing Shakespeare Collection - John Bury
Filename	:	DS_SJ_au07.mov
Description	:	Question: Are there other designers who's work has particularly influenced you or who's work you admire? Answer: Well there are a lot of designers I admire but in terms of influence I'd have to go right back to when I first started. I don't feel I'm influenced by other designers now. But when I first started I guess it was it was people like John Bury. He was very important to me. He started to put reality on the stage in a very strong and theatrical way. It wasn't, sort of, you know, just realism. But he used materials and metaphors out of materials, which gave us a whole new way, especially at looking at Shakespeare. His Histories, the productions he did, you know, the designs he did for the histories were astonishing at the time. There was real, you know, there was mud on the boots, there were real swords and these wars became real and the emotion that one felt for the for the for these people going through the wars was incredible because it directly related to a world that we felt we knew. It was at that time when we were just going from what we called fancy dress from Shakespeare, I know that's, it's a terrible sort of discredit to the great old designers who did wonderful fancy dress but I mean in my arrogance as a young designer I called it fancy dress, you know, into the world that was influenced more by Brecht. Where these were not costumes they were clothes and John was a wonderful beginning point for that I think. Question: And did you see that reflected in your own work? Answer: Not reflected directly. But I felt that he is was on the same, he was on the frontier of looking at things in a new way that I wanted to be on. So it was influence, it gave me the courage to look at my work in in a new way, you know, that there was a new way, not necessarily his way but one could look in a new way at everything.
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	:	1 minute 50.01 seconds