The Archive
Recordings from February 2008
Total Number of Recordings from this month: 11
- ARTS COUNCIL DEBATE Barbara Matthews, director of theatre strategy at Arts Council England, defends the controversial funding cuts, emphasises the good news in the recent review, and talks about new writing, peer review and excellence in British theatre. Aleks Sierz quizzes.
“An awful lot of people were saying to us, 'Hurray, thanks for doing this at last, but please don't quote me.'”
- Recording Date: 05-Feb-2008
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- INTERVIEW: DOMINIC HILL The new artistic director of Edinburgh's Traverse talks to Aleks Sierz about his revival of Thomas Babe's 1978 psycho-thriller, A Prayer for My Daughter (Young Vic), and about his plans for new writing at the Traverse.
“The cops are really deeply flawed human beings - they are as emotionally dysfunctional as the criminals.”
- Recording Date: 05-Feb-2008
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- INTERVIEW: LEANNE JONES The 22-year-old star of the hit musical, Hairspray (Shaftesbury Theatre), chats to Philip Fisher about her amazing leap into the limelight and about life behind the scenes of this surprising West End hit.
“I got the phone call while I was working at the Halifax - in my lunch hour. I was sick and just started crying, with joy.”
- Recording Date: 05-Feb-2008
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- INTERVIEW: STEPHEN UNWIN The artistic director of the new Rose Theatre in Kingston-upon-Thames talks to Heather Neill about the opportunities and challenges of running this unique space with no public funding.
“It's a very good approximation of an Elizabethan playhouse, but it's brand new and doesn't have any olde worlde bits.”
- Recording Date: 05-Feb-2008
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- INTERVIEW: WILLY RUSSELL The legendary playwright talks to Dominic Cavendish about his rewritten classic Stags and Hens (Royal Court Liverpool), and mulls over thoughts about living in Liverpool, working-class experience, and his smash hit Blood Brothers.
“I abhor theatre that panders to the lowest common denominator, but I equally abhor theatre that offers bad art.”
- Recording Date: 06-Feb-2008
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- SHAKESPEARE: DOMINIC DROMGOOLE The artistic director of Shakespeare's Globe tells Heather Neill about the 2008 season, directing Lear and why this unique theatre space needs to stage contemporary plays as well as classics.
“I wanted to celebrate what a category-smasher Shakespeare was. Every time he sat down to write a play he reinvented himself. ”
- Recording Date: 08-Feb-2008
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- INTERVIEW: TIM FOUNTAIN The playwright talks to Aleks Sierz about his latest book, So You Want To Be a Playwright? (Nick Hern), creative writing, literary management and his plays, from Resident Alien to Sex Addict. Recorded at the Soho Theatre.
- 1 comment
“The best stories are the ones we tell against ourselves - no one wants to hear about the great shag you had last week.”
- Recording Date: 12-Feb-2008
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- INTERVIEW: FIONA EVANS The author of the controversial play, Scarborough (Royal Court), tells Philip Fisher about her background in community theatre in Newcastle, and about how her play, which was an Edinburgh hit, was developed.
“We originally wanted to do Scarborough as a site-specific piece in a real b&b, but it would have cost an absolute fortune.”
- Recording Date: 14-Feb-2008
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- WEST END REVIEW Brief Encounter (Haymarket Cinema), The Hour We Knew Nothing of Each Other (National) and Speed the Plow (Old Vic) are assessed by Matt Wolf (International Herald Tribune), John Nathan (Jewish Chronicle) and Andrew Haydon (Time Out). David Benedict hosts. Recorded at Dewynters, London.
“Part of the strength of the 'mucking about' in Brief Encounter is the comic joie de vivre of Kneehigh's method.”
- Recording Date: 22-Feb-2008
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- INTERNATIONAL THEATRE Penny Black, founder-member of the Middle East Dramatic Arts Forum, reports on its recent symposium, which included contributions from Lenin El-Ramly (Egypt), Sawsan Darwaza (Jordan), Ziad Adwan (Syria), Sulayman al-Bassam (Kuwait) and Grid Iron. Aleks Sierz quizzes.
“The East-West situation is obviously explored a lot, and the feeling in Cairo and across the region is one of uncertainty.”
- Recording Date: 27-Feb-2008
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- INTERVIEW: DOROTA MASLOWSKA The cult 24-year-old Polish novelist, whose play A Couple of Poor, Polish-Speaking Romanians gets its UK premiere at Soho Theatre, chats to Dominic Cavendish. In Polish and English; Agnieszka Blonska translates.
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“It's about modern man - who stops seeing other people as people and just sees the surface.”
- Recording Date: 29-Feb-2008
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