AHDS Collections

Designing Shakespeare Collection - Audio Interview Clip

- Early Career

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Designing Shakespeare Collection - Early Career
Filename	:	DS_JT_au02.mov
Description	:	Question: Can you give us a sort of a key stages in your career? Answer: The first play I did after leaving college was a new play by Roger Howard about Mao Tse Tung that I did with my ex-director tutor Malcolm Griffiths at the ICA. I then went to Dundee Rep, I got, I wrote round to reps leaving college and I got a job as assistant designer there for a year, but after six months, even though they were giving me things to design, I wasn?t really happy with the, the kind of ethos of Dundee Rep at the time, which was to do a lot of English plays and get very good Scottish actors to do English accents all the time in Oscar Wilde and things and really, I thought that was dreadful, I thought that Scottish actors should be allowed to be Scottish, in particular [laughs], so I moved and I was very idealistic and still am about the politics of theatre and I got a job then as designer with a T.I.E. company in Sunderland, called ?We?re about?, who really didn?t have an audience it seemed to me, so they were doing community theatre but not really reaching an audience and that was very depressing, so I left there after three weeks [laughs] and went to Stratford East as Assistant Designer to Ultz when Claire Venables was director and that was 1977, and the minute I walked in the foyer for my interview at Stratford East, even though I?d never been there during the Joan Littlewood years, I?d unfortunately never seen a production there when Theatre Workshop were there, but I walked in the building and I just thought I was home. And I have been working there off and on and I mean I did a play there in March and I did their last pantomime, Aladdin, and I was associate designer there for something like seventeen years, so I have worked there since 1977 and to me, you know, that?s one of, I?ve got a couple of homes now, but I?ve never been truly freelance, as some designers are, I?ve tended to work within four organisations and Stratford East was the first of those kind of homes that I made. And I think most of the work at Stratford East has been new writing, but it?s not so much that it?s been new writing, I could well have done a much more mixed repertory there and been equally happy, it?s because it?s a theatre for everybody, it?s a theatre in a community which happens to be in the East End, but it is a genuinely popular theatre, and that?s what I?m interested in. I have no time for sort of exclusive kind of theatre, if you like, and that might be one of the reasons that I?ve never worked in one of the large institutions, however much they claim to be for everybody, but there you go. 'Answer contd: So, so I stayed at Stratford full-time for nearly a year, but after that went back to work as a freelance designer. I then, as I say, picked up with John McGragh, first working with 784 England and then going up to Scotland to work with the Scottish company and, let me think, so through the sort of 1980?s, the late seventies and eighties, I suppose I was more freelance than I?ve been since and I think I did four productions at the Royal Court Theatre, for example, all written by women, it seemed to me that they only ever asked me to do, you know, people in different theatres pigeon-hole you, so to some people I just design Shakespeare and that?s why I think people were surprised to see me at the John McGragh conference here. It was like ?oh what are you doing here, you do Shakespeare? whereas, you know, other people, people from Stratford East that?s, that?s what they know me for doing is lots of work at Stratford East, but the Royal Court, I think they thought I did women?s writing [laughs] and I did a series of productions at the Lyric Hammersmith because, I did something there as an assistant of Ultz, one of his pantomimes and then the director there, Peter James, asked me to come back and do designs of my own, so you sort of, in terms of development it?s, it?s really, it is to do with who you meet, who I?ve met and when, which people you meet that you find are soul mates and those people you generally carry on working with ?till one of you dies, I hope, you know, that?s certainly been true so far and other people, as a freelance, you do one, maybe two productions with some directors and by the second, you know, you might have done a successful first production together, but by the second, sometimes I?ve found that there?s nothing much more there, that you?ve sort of done all you can do together and it?s getting repetitive and there?s nowhere else to go with the work really, so that?s sort of a lot of freelance work, mainly around London. I?ve always been based in London and geographically that?s where I like to work, so, and I have a family, so, that?s kind of been a criteria, if you like. Then when did, let me think, through the Lyric Hammersmith, through meeting up with Kenneth Branagh at the Lyric when they were producing one of his plays and him and David Parfitt asking me to join Renaissance, I then spent three years really working almost exclusively with them on Shakespeare productions and several other new pieces by John Sessions, and we did start, you know, doing World touring, so I got around a bit then to Japan and America because I haven?t done a lot abroad, but I did start then. Let me think, I was still working at Stratford East during that period actually, and I think I did a play at The Court, but, but yeah, very intense period with Renaissance, and a very, very happy time and really the first sort of, you know, Shakespeare that I?d done in any amount since I?d started working in the theatre and I think it?s interesting that all the Shakespeare I?ve done has been with actor/directors actually, but that was the start of it. 'Answer contd: But then, Ken really started concentrating on films, you know, and soon after that, Renaissance stopped functioning as a theatre company as such and we all sort of fragmented, but at that same period, I think it was eighty nine, eighty eight, eighty nine, ninety, I also hooked up with Mark Rylance who I?d know when he, I?d first met him when he?d left drama school and I?m made him a dress for a friend, for Ultz, who was designing a production of The Maids and he was playing Madame by Jean Genet, so I knew him, and I knew him a bit socially, but he had this project, he was talking about doing a production of The Tempest taking it to sacred sites around the country, and I said I?d be really interested in doing that actually, because I?d just had this period with Renaissance, and although it had been very enjoyable, there was something that I felt, you know, I wasn?t really getting to the bottom of the text, if you like, I wanted to work with someone that I knew would be very intense about studying the plays themselves, and I liked the idea of doing Shakespeare outside it just seemed to make a lot of sense. So I did that, that was the first production I did with him and he played Prospero and directed it and his wife, Claire Van Kampen wrote the music and the three of us then spent the next four or five years doing Shakespeare projects, which was before he got involved at The Globe, so we did, we did that Tempest, we did an As You Like It in New York off Broadway and we did a Macbeth at Greenwich Theatre, and we had a project to dramatise Venus and Adonis which was cancelled by the Young Vic because they ran out of money at that point in their season unfortunately, and that?s something we still haven?t done yet. And then the following year Mark got The Globe, Mark was appointed as Director of The Globe and that was the end of ninety five, ninety six, and I have been there ever since, really, as his associate designer and collaborator, while still working elsewhere now and again.
Source	:	DS_06_06_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	:	8 minutes 31.12 seconds