AHDS Collections

Designing Shakespeare Collection - Audio Interview Clip

- Approaching the Text

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Designing Shakespeare Collection - Approaching the Text
Filename	:	DS_FT_au03.mov
Description	:	Question: When you first approach a new design assignment, where do you start? What is your route into it? Answer: The way it has evolved now is that I spend a lot of time on the text, say it's a Shakespeare, the more complex a text, obviously the more, the more work I do on the actual text itself. So I will spend a lot of time going through it and working in a way that an actor would actually, that was the one thing that working in a very ensemble and collaborative way at The Young Vic, I was in rehearsal a lot, read-throughs and in the initial stages working on the text. So I really began and evolved my way, a personal way of analysing the text in a sort of Stanislavskian way, I know it sounds a little pretentious, but in fact it's in units, because he analyses text into units and things, so that's how I do it and I call the units by my own name so I kind of begin to own it. And once I feel I've really got a grip on the text and I've really begun to understand the point of view of the writer, I then begin to think about how I might interpret it. 'Cos I do think as a designer I'm a bit like a musician playing an instrument, that it's an interpretive job and that that's where the creativity lies and for me relevance is all important and the relevance to the audience. So how is this text going to be relevant, is the big question I ask myself at the start. And then I start working in a journal and I do lots of writing in a journal and I put pictures and things in it that occur to me and it goes from there really.
Source	:	Resource Audio
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 31.01 seconds