AHDS Collections

Designing Shakespeare Collection - Audio Interview Clip

- Career Path

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 - Career Path
Filename	:	DS_SK_au01.mov
Description	:	Question: What would you say were the key stages of development for your career? Where did you start, where did you end up? Answer: I started making props at Coventry and I think that gave me the first taste of the kind of team values in theatre and how you all work to this common goal which is to get the play on no matter what. It's quite shocking at first, you know, that you are this tiny little spoke in this huge wheel, but it's all for this one very important thing which is to get the play on. Then I went on to being an assistant designer at Coventry, same place, and then assistant designer in Wales and then I worked as, I travelled in Canada and lived in Canada for two years assisting where I could in various theatres. I can't remember his name, Art Penson, who is head of design at Coventry was over there and I went over to see him and he gave me some names of people and worked from one theatre to another doing props making really because it was in the days when you could get paid under the table a bit. I don't think you can now. So that was, and then I went on to being a head of design which was huge for me because it was throwing myself in at the deep end and I was head of design, costume maker, props maker. I did everything. It was at Milford Haven in Wales when I came back to this country and stayed there for three years with a director called Graham Watkins, who was a bit of an old so-and-so really, but well, a young so-and-so, but what I didn't learn there was, you know, it was incredible really in terms of, you know, a really good grounding. And I think that's what's sad today, that designers don't get that chance to work in Reps and learn their craft from the bottom up really. I think you've got to go in as a assistant I think, it seems to me these days, as assistant to another designer and that's not the same I don't think. And then I went on to doing Head of Design at The Duke's Playhouse and met David and the rest is history, you know, kind of The Young Vic, head of design and then freelance when I'd had children and then when I'd had enough I gave up. 'Question: When you start on a design project, what is your first starting point, do you work on the text? Answer: Reading the text, making copious notes, reading the text and I think that came more from David than from anybody else I'd worked previously with and I ought to say I had done no Shakespeare until I met David at all, I had never even read a Shakespeare play. I think I'd seen one dreadful play with, film at school with Lawrence Olivier. I went to a dreadful secondary modern school, same one Tracy Emin went to, that's my claim to fame. I had no idea what Shakespeare was and to my dying day I will always be grateful to David because he sat down I can remember, I think we were doing a production of Hamlet and he sat down and he went through it page by page with me and told me to get the Arden Shakespeare copies and read the notes at the end and he taught me how to read Shakespeare. And what was wonderful about him was because I had never read Shakespeare before and he was very much into the whole intellectual side of Shakespeare as well, because he had done it at University and everything, he really valued my opinion about coming at it from a completely kind of non-intellectual way and in a way that I might make an assumption about a play which perhaps somebody who had read the play before might not. And he really valued that and it gave me immense confidence which I don't think I would have had with other directors perhaps. And he was incredibly patient with me and I learnt enormously from him as much as from Shakespeare.
Source	:	DS_18_06_02 INT-06 (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 09.07 seconds