- published: 27 Jul 2017
- views: 3181
-
remove the playlistPeter Hall Pauses Are As Important As The Lines (28 40)
- remove the playlistPeter Hall Pauses Are As Important As The Lines (28 40)
Peter Hall
Peter Hall may refer to:
This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - https://wn.com/Peter_Hall
Peter Hall (diplomat)
Sir Peter Edward Hall (born 26 July 1938) is a British former diplomat. He was educated at Portsmouth Grammar School and Pembroke College, Cambridge. He was British Ambassador to Yugoslavia from 1989 to 1992 and Ambassador to Argentina from 1993 to 1997.
References
External links
This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - https://wn.com/Peter_Hall_(diplomat)
Peter Hall (financier)
Peter Hall is a London-based Australian financier, media proprietor and philanthropist. He is the Founder, Executive Chairman and Chief Investment Officer of Hunter Hall Investment Management, an investment firm. He formerly owned stakes in Prospect and Monocle, two London-based magazines. He has donated millions of dollars to animal conservation charitable causes.
Early life
Peter Hall was born in 1960 in Bangkok, Thailand. His father was a journalist and diplomat from New Zealand. As a result, he lived in Pakistan with his family when he was five years old. He also lived in Canada, France and England. His uncle Edwin Arnold Earnshaw worked for the [[News Corporation] from 1964].
He was educated at Bedales School, a boarding school in Hampshire, England. He graduated from the University of Sydney, where he received an Arts degree.
Career
Hall started his career as a journalist for Fairfax Media.
He embarked upon a career in finance, and served as "Investment Manager at HGL Limited, Portfolio Manager and Analyst at Mercantile Mutual Holdings Limited, Industrial Analyst at Pembroke Securities Limited, Investment Analyst at New Zealand South British Insurance Limited." He credits Warren Buffett's writings as an inspiration for his career path.
This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - https://wn.com/Peter_Hall_(financier)
Podcasts:
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Peter Hall - Pauses are as important as the lines (28/40)
To listen to more of Peter Hall’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxvFwDL5JP8tHveaKSdsiiB British-born theatre director, Sir Peter Hall (1930-2017), ran the Arts Theatre, founded the Royal Shakespeare Company when he was only 29, and directed the National Theatre. In 1977 he was knighted for his contribution to the theatre. [Listener: John Goodwin; date recorded: 2006] TRANSCRIPT: You can then really start microscopic work. I mean, you know… you can spend half a day on two pages, actually getting right to the nitty gritty. Now it will depend on the play… what you're doing. I mean, if it's Shakespeare, much of your concern will be when Shakespeare indicates a half line, a gap… in the text. What is that there for? Does it indicate a move, a pie...
published: 27 Jul 2017 -
Peter Hall - My expectation of actors before rehearsals (27/40)
To listen to more of Peter Hall’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxvFwDL5JP8tHveaKSdsiiB British-born theatre director, Sir Peter Hall (1930-2017), ran the Arts Theatre, founded the Royal Shakespeare Company when he was only 29, and directed the National Theatre. In 1977 he was knighted for his contribution to the theatre. [Listener: John Goodwin; date recorded: 2006; date recorded: 2006] TRANSCRIPT: If he's read the play lots and lots of times and he's talked to the author — if living — and he's studied the author — if dead — then he might be in a position to enter the rehearsal room. I don't myself believe that you should design the play before you've discovered the play and I don't believe you can discover the play without the actors. Now...
published: 27 Jul 2017 -
Peter Hall - Remaining true to the classics (29/40)
To listen to more of Peter Hall’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxvFwDL5JP8tHveaKSdsiiB British-born theatre director, Sir Peter Hall (1930-2017), ran the Arts Theatre, founded the Royal Shakespeare Company when he was only 29, and directed the National Theatre. In 1977 he was knighted for his contribution to the theatre. [Listener: John Goodwin; date recorded: 2006] TRANSCRIPT: One has a responsibility as a director, and as an actor, not to mess about with the classics. I mean I don't mind people, as it were, drawing silly bits onto a classic, but they ought to be seen as foolish as they are because Shakespeare is rather good. Shakespeare does rather know better than us. Now, if you translate what we do to Shakespeare to the musical world,...
published: 27 Jul 2017 -
Peter Hall - The author as part of the directing process (26/40)
To listen to more of Peter Hall’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxvFwDL5JP8tHveaKSdsiiB British-born theatre director, Sir Peter Hall (1930-2017), ran the Arts Theatre, founded the Royal Shakespeare Company when he was only 29, and directed the National Theatre. In 1977 he was knighted for his contribution to the theatre. [Listener: John Goodwin; date recorded: 2006] TRANSCRIPT: Perhaps I ought to analyse a little bit more what... being a director entails because I don't think people understand really what a director is; they think of him as some sort of autocrat — which he's not. And I think the first thing to be said is that doing a play, or an opera for that matter, is very much... is very different if you're doing a modern piece in whic...
published: 27 Jul 2017 -
Peter Hall - After the run has finished (30/40)
To listen to more of Peter Hall’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxvFwDL5JP8tHveaKSdsiiB British-born theatre director, Sir Peter Hall (1930-2017), ran the Arts Theatre, founded the Royal Shakespeare Company when he was only 29, and directed the National Theatre. In 1977 he was knighted for his contribution to the theatre. [Listener: John Goodwin; date recorded: 2006] TRANSCRIPT: I think the interesting thing is that... there is a kind of... golden mean that you're left with, with each piece of work. It's after the public have decided, it's after the critics have decided, it's after the media has decided, it's probably after the run has finished. There is a trace which is nearly always accurate... [JG] Yes. Nearly always. [JG] Yes. It...
published: 27 Jul 2017 -
Peter Hall - Final polishing of a play (31/40)
To listen to more of Peter Hall’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxvFwDL5JP8tHveaKSdsiiB British-born theatre director, Sir Peter Hall (1930-2017), ran the Arts Theatre, founded the Royal Shakespeare Company when he was only 29, and directed the National Theatre. In 1977 he was knighted for his contribution to the theatre. [Listener: John Goodwin; date recorded: 2006; date recorded: 2006] TRANSCRIPT: Once you get to the latter stage in rehearsal as a director, if you've observed the form and you've generated the feeling, there's then a period which is almost practice, when the actors simply have to run the play and... and try and make an emotional journey inside themselves which sustains it and which is accurate and makes them feel comfortab...
published: 27 Jul 2017 -
Peter Hall - Directing a play more than once (23/40)
To listen to more of Peter Hall’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxvFwDL5JP8tHveaKSdsiiB British-born theatre director, Sir Peter Hall (1930-2017), ran the Arts Theatre, founded the Royal Shakespeare Company when he was only 29, and directed the National Theatre. In 1977 he was knighted for his contribution to the theatre. [Listener: John Goodwin; date recorded: 2006] TRANSCRIPT: It's very interesting this question of, you know... why do you go back on things? I've done a lot of plays more than once. I've done four 'Hamlet's, four 'Twelfth Nights', three or four 'Tempests'... and I don't honestly remember what I did before. People always say to me, and how is it different? And I say I've absolutely no idea how it's different. I'm different; ...
published: 27 Jul 2017 -
Peter Hall - The great adventure of the Royal Shakespeare Company (11/40)
To listen to more of Peter Hall’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxvFwDL5JP8tHveaKSdsiiB British-born theatre director, Sir Peter Hall (1930-2017), ran the Arts Theatre, founded the Royal Shakespeare Company when he was only 29, and directed the National Theatre. In 1977 he was knighted for his contribution to the theatre. [Listener: John Goodwin; date recorded: 2006] TRANSCRIPT: 1959, I... was the 100th anniversary season of… of Stratford, and all the stars were rolled out and… and I did Coriolanus with Olivier and Edith Evans, and I did the 'Midsummer Night's Dream' with Charles Laughton. And then, in 1960, I started the great adventure of the… the RSC [Royal Shakespeare Company]. And I suppose, you know, looking back on it, the company wa...
published: 27 Jul 2017 -
Peter Hall - How Waiting For Godot changed my life (8/40)
To listen to more of Peter Hall’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxvFwDL5JP8tHveaKSdsiiB British-born theatre director, Sir Peter Hall (1930-2017), ran the Arts Theatre, founded the Royal Shakespeare Company when he was only 29, and directed the National Theatre. In 1977 he was knighted for his contribution to the theatre. [Listener: John Goodwin; date recorded: 2006] TRANSCRIPT: I did a production of Pirandello's 'Henry IV' which was transferred to the London Arts because they had a spare couple of weeks, got very good notices. I had a phone call asking me to go to Windsor rep to do 'The Letter' by Somerset Maugham, and as I went off to do that, the Arts Theatre London said would I like a… a very low-paid contract carrying tea, reading scri...
published: 27 Jul 2017 -
Peter Hall - The secret of the Cambridge University drama department is... (7/40)
To listen to more of Peter Hall’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxvFwDL5JP8tHveaKSdsiiB British-born theatre director, Sir Peter Hall (1930-2017), ran the Arts Theatre, founded the Royal Shakespeare Company when he was only 29, and directed the National Theatre. In 1977 he was knighted for his contribution to the theatre. [Listener: John Goodwin; date recorded: 2006] TRANSCRIPT: I was recently in America with my company, doing 'As You Like It', in Los Angeles. We went to the drama department of the University of Southern California because they asked us if we would go and do a workshop. There were a 100 students and I looked at these 100 students and thought, where on earth are you going to go? There aren't a 100 jobs in the American theatr...
published: 27 Jul 2017
developed with YouTube
5:19
Peter Hall - Pauses are as important as the lines (28/40)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 5:19
- Uploaded Date: 27 Jul 2017
- views: 3181
To listen to more of Peter Hall’s stories, go to the playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxvFwDL5JP8tHveaKSdsiiB
British-born theatre di...
To listen to more of Peter Hall’s stories, go to the playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxvFwDL5JP8tHveaKSdsiiB
British-born theatre director, Sir Peter Hall (1930-2017), ran the Arts Theatre, founded the Royal Shakespeare Company when he was only 29, and directed the National Theatre. In 1977 he was knighted for his contribution to the theatre. [Listener: John Goodwin; date recorded: 2006]
TRANSCRIPT: You can then really start microscopic work. I mean, you know… you can spend half a day on two pages, actually getting right to the nitty gritty. Now it will depend on the play… what you're doing. I mean, if it's Shakespeare, much of your concern will be when Shakespeare indicates a half line, a gap… in the text. What is that there for? Does it indicate a move, a piece of physical business? Does it indicate a moment of stillness? Does it indicate a pause, or what? So much of that comes off the page still. If you're dealing with Pinter you have a plethora of pauses and silences written into the text. When I first started doing Pinter actors would say: ‘What's this pause here and we decide where we pause’. And I would say: ‘No, you don't; that pause is as eloquent as a line and I'll show you how’. Pinter's pauses are about the unsaid but if the actors don't know what is… what is unsaid, the pause will never hold and the pause will seem rather artificial, rather camp, rather silly. And I'm sure, you know, you can very easily see Pinter that's drummed into significance by all these pauses being held by actors who don't know why they're holding them. So you have to get a subtext going so the actor knows what's going on inside himself. The pause is a crisis point about the unsayable or the unsaid but nobody after a pause is in exactly the same state as they were in when they went into it. I get people to learn pauses as if they were lines and I remember indeed when… years ago when I did the first performance of 'No Man's Land' with… with John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson, they both of them came from a theatre which didn't really use pauses very much and didn't understand them very well. So whenever there was a pause the other one thought the other one had dried so they would say: ‘Johnny, is that you?’ or Ralph would say…and Ralph would say… Johnny would say: ‘Ralph is that you?’. And I finally had to have the stage manager rehearse them through so that they said the line and then the stage manager said loudly: ‘Pause’. And finally we got the shape, the form, which we were supposed to end up with.
Now, now we're in deep water. The tradition of Stanislavsky and the tradition of the American Method is that the actor says: ‘Who am I, what do I want, what is my motivation, what is my emotional centre, what is my demand, what is my emotional demand?
[JG] Who are my parents?
Yeah. And they… it'd go on and on and on like that and then they say: ‘Now what do I say?… to be or not… I don't want to say that'. So you… you improvise emotionally without words and then you go and look at the text. So the feeling comes before the form. I have absolutely no doubt that real, credible theatre — I use the word credible, not true, because theatre is not true, there's nothing true about standing on a stage saying somebody else's lines in somebody else's clothes — there can be something credible but theatre that is credible has to, I think, put form before feeling. Because what we've got is the form, whether it be a Mozart aria or whether it be an Aeschylean huge speech to be delivered in a mask, there is a form which sustains the piece and it's the tension between the form and the feeling which actually excites the audience. If you feel, you can't express the form. If Ophelia comes out from the nunnery scene and says: ‘Oh what a noble mind is here o'erthrown’, in hysterics, she's got 14 lines which is very like a sonnet of antithetical analysis of what he could have been and what he is. And you can't do that if you're sobbing your guts out. Inside she's sobbing her guts out and using the words in order to keep control. So the form comes first and then the feeling, and whether you're singing an aria or whether you're working in a mask or whether you're doing Shakespeare's blank verse or whether you're doing Pinter's pauses or whether you're doing Beckett's antitheses they are all formal disciplines. The mask is exactly like the form of the aria or the form of the verse, or the form of the… of the pauses and the writing of Pinter or Beckett. And that's something I've written about and tried to get down into two books about the nature of mask. Because I think mask in that sense is anything formal — the formal discipline. And I suppose that's what my whole life has been built on, that and the search for a company.
https://wn.com/Peter_Hall_Pauses_Are_As_Important_As_The_Lines_(28_40)
To listen to more of Peter Hall’s stories, go to the playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxvFwDL5JP8tHveaKSdsiiB
British-born theatre director, Sir Peter Hall (1930-2017), ran the Arts Theatre, founded the Royal Shakespeare Company when he was only 29, and directed the National Theatre. In 1977 he was knighted for his contribution to the theatre. [Listener: John Goodwin; date recorded: 2006]
TRANSCRIPT: You can then really start microscopic work. I mean, you know… you can spend half a day on two pages, actually getting right to the nitty gritty. Now it will depend on the play… what you're doing. I mean, if it's Shakespeare, much of your concern will be when Shakespeare indicates a half line, a gap… in the text. What is that there for? Does it indicate a move, a piece of physical business? Does it indicate a moment of stillness? Does it indicate a pause, or what? So much of that comes off the page still. If you're dealing with Pinter you have a plethora of pauses and silences written into the text. When I first started doing Pinter actors would say: ‘What's this pause here and we decide where we pause’. And I would say: ‘No, you don't; that pause is as eloquent as a line and I'll show you how’. Pinter's pauses are about the unsaid but if the actors don't know what is… what is unsaid, the pause will never hold and the pause will seem rather artificial, rather camp, rather silly. And I'm sure, you know, you can very easily see Pinter that's drummed into significance by all these pauses being held by actors who don't know why they're holding them. So you have to get a subtext going so the actor knows what's going on inside himself. The pause is a crisis point about the unsayable or the unsaid but nobody after a pause is in exactly the same state as they were in when they went into it. I get people to learn pauses as if they were lines and I remember indeed when… years ago when I did the first performance of 'No Man's Land' with… with John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson, they both of them came from a theatre which didn't really use pauses very much and didn't understand them very well. So whenever there was a pause the other one thought the other one had dried so they would say: ‘Johnny, is that you?’ or Ralph would say…and Ralph would say… Johnny would say: ‘Ralph is that you?’. And I finally had to have the stage manager rehearse them through so that they said the line and then the stage manager said loudly: ‘Pause’. And finally we got the shape, the form, which we were supposed to end up with.
Now, now we're in deep water. The tradition of Stanislavsky and the tradition of the American Method is that the actor says: ‘Who am I, what do I want, what is my motivation, what is my emotional centre, what is my demand, what is my emotional demand?
[JG] Who are my parents?
Yeah. And they… it'd go on and on and on like that and then they say: ‘Now what do I say?… to be or not… I don't want to say that'. So you… you improvise emotionally without words and then you go and look at the text. So the feeling comes before the form. I have absolutely no doubt that real, credible theatre — I use the word credible, not true, because theatre is not true, there's nothing true about standing on a stage saying somebody else's lines in somebody else's clothes — there can be something credible but theatre that is credible has to, I think, put form before feeling. Because what we've got is the form, whether it be a Mozart aria or whether it be an Aeschylean huge speech to be delivered in a mask, there is a form which sustains the piece and it's the tension between the form and the feeling which actually excites the audience. If you feel, you can't express the form. If Ophelia comes out from the nunnery scene and says: ‘Oh what a noble mind is here o'erthrown’, in hysterics, she's got 14 lines which is very like a sonnet of antithetical analysis of what he could have been and what he is. And you can't do that if you're sobbing your guts out. Inside she's sobbing her guts out and using the words in order to keep control. So the form comes first and then the feeling, and whether you're singing an aria or whether you're working in a mask or whether you're doing Shakespeare's blank verse or whether you're doing Pinter's pauses or whether you're doing Beckett's antitheses they are all formal disciplines. The mask is exactly like the form of the aria or the form of the verse, or the form of the… of the pauses and the writing of Pinter or Beckett. And that's something I've written about and tried to get down into two books about the nature of mask. Because I think mask in that sense is anything formal — the formal discipline. And I suppose that's what my whole life has been built on, that and the search for a company.
4:24
Peter Hall - My expectation of actors before rehearsals (27/40)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 4:24
- Uploaded Date: 27 Jul 2017
- views: 2018
To listen to more of Peter Hall’s stories, go to the playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxvFwDL5JP8tHveaKSdsiiB
British-born theatre di...
To listen to more of Peter Hall’s stories, go to the playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxvFwDL5JP8tHveaKSdsiiB
British-born theatre director, Sir Peter Hall (1930-2017), ran the Arts Theatre, founded the Royal Shakespeare Company when he was only 29, and directed the National Theatre. In 1977 he was knighted for his contribution to the theatre. [Listener: John Goodwin; date recorded: 2006; date recorded: 2006]
TRANSCRIPT: If he's read the play lots and lots of times and he's talked to the author — if living — and he's studied the author — if dead — then he might be in a position to enter the rehearsal room. I don't myself believe that you should design the play before you've discovered the play and I don't believe you can discover the play without the actors. Now this is not common practice because the accountants have pointed out that if you build them the model of the set well before the rehearsal starts, it can have longer to be built and will therefore be cheaper. And you say ‘Yes, but it might not be right’, and they say, ‘Well, you're going to have to make it right before you go’. Anyway, that is... that is a dispute. Mostly you have to design the set before you meet the actors. What is happy and what is right is that you design the set with the actors and in fact you design everything with the actors. You have final editorial control but in the early days, I think the first time you meet the actors, you're not saying to them, we're going to do the play like this. You say the play is... targeting this area of experience, this area of life; how can we, by reading it, discussing it, finding it together, how can we make that clear? And at that point the play is a rather diffuse object, and as you work on it through the first couple of weeks, it narrows down, diagrammatically.
Now, I now do something which is extremely unpopular with the Stanislavsky/Method brigade. I say to actors: ‘I want you to come on the first day knowing your lines’. Now if you do that, you save a fortnight's rehearsal at a stroke. Also, if you're doing Shakespeare, part of learning the lines is also learning where the ends of the lines are, where the breath pattern is, quite a technical thing. Now, it's much easier to learn lines by wandering about with a book in your hand and remembering that when you go and sit on the sofa you say this line, or when you go... But it wastes time and therefore I now expect actors to come, having learnt it, and we sit round and play it to each other, sitting, discussing. Anybody can discuss anything; anybody can say anything. And we actually find out what the life of the scene is from that absolutely mutual examination. And that can go for five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10 days and you... you start to notice that the actors physicalize slightly certain speeches. They... they move or they half get up or, after a bit, they're actually standing up and that is the moment when you need to put it into the set as whatever the set may be, and at that point, it's probably some bits of tape on the floor, gummed down, there's a door and, if you really want to make a meal of exiting, you do that and open the door and push into it. Anyway, the rough spatial relationships are there. If you've been really responsible as a director you will have staged each scene in your book so that, in the event of nothing happening among the actors, you can give a quick diagram staging. But if you do that it is a sign of failure because, at the moment when you begin moving, the actors should know so much about it from their experience of sitting round and talking and acting it and acting it and acting it, that they actually stage it very fluently and very easily out of their own instinct. And occasionally you have to intervene and say, you know, ‘Don't go over there because, if you do, you're masking him’. But they're tiny things, and if it's working well, you can stage a very difficult scene very quickly because the actors know where they need to be and they know how they need to move. And that's because of the past work, not the present work.
https://wn.com/Peter_Hall_My_Expectation_Of_Actors_Before_Rehearsals_(27_40)
To listen to more of Peter Hall’s stories, go to the playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxvFwDL5JP8tHveaKSdsiiB
British-born theatre director, Sir Peter Hall (1930-2017), ran the Arts Theatre, founded the Royal Shakespeare Company when he was only 29, and directed the National Theatre. In 1977 he was knighted for his contribution to the theatre. [Listener: John Goodwin; date recorded: 2006; date recorded: 2006]
TRANSCRIPT: If he's read the play lots and lots of times and he's talked to the author — if living — and he's studied the author — if dead — then he might be in a position to enter the rehearsal room. I don't myself believe that you should design the play before you've discovered the play and I don't believe you can discover the play without the actors. Now this is not common practice because the accountants have pointed out that if you build them the model of the set well before the rehearsal starts, it can have longer to be built and will therefore be cheaper. And you say ‘Yes, but it might not be right’, and they say, ‘Well, you're going to have to make it right before you go’. Anyway, that is... that is a dispute. Mostly you have to design the set before you meet the actors. What is happy and what is right is that you design the set with the actors and in fact you design everything with the actors. You have final editorial control but in the early days, I think the first time you meet the actors, you're not saying to them, we're going to do the play like this. You say the play is... targeting this area of experience, this area of life; how can we, by reading it, discussing it, finding it together, how can we make that clear? And at that point the play is a rather diffuse object, and as you work on it through the first couple of weeks, it narrows down, diagrammatically.
Now, I now do something which is extremely unpopular with the Stanislavsky/Method brigade. I say to actors: ‘I want you to come on the first day knowing your lines’. Now if you do that, you save a fortnight's rehearsal at a stroke. Also, if you're doing Shakespeare, part of learning the lines is also learning where the ends of the lines are, where the breath pattern is, quite a technical thing. Now, it's much easier to learn lines by wandering about with a book in your hand and remembering that when you go and sit on the sofa you say this line, or when you go... But it wastes time and therefore I now expect actors to come, having learnt it, and we sit round and play it to each other, sitting, discussing. Anybody can discuss anything; anybody can say anything. And we actually find out what the life of the scene is from that absolutely mutual examination. And that can go for five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10 days and you... you start to notice that the actors physicalize slightly certain speeches. They... they move or they half get up or, after a bit, they're actually standing up and that is the moment when you need to put it into the set as whatever the set may be, and at that point, it's probably some bits of tape on the floor, gummed down, there's a door and, if you really want to make a meal of exiting, you do that and open the door and push into it. Anyway, the rough spatial relationships are there. If you've been really responsible as a director you will have staged each scene in your book so that, in the event of nothing happening among the actors, you can give a quick diagram staging. But if you do that it is a sign of failure because, at the moment when you begin moving, the actors should know so much about it from their experience of sitting round and talking and acting it and acting it and acting it, that they actually stage it very fluently and very easily out of their own instinct. And occasionally you have to intervene and say, you know, ‘Don't go over there because, if you do, you're masking him’. But they're tiny things, and if it's working well, you can stage a very difficult scene very quickly because the actors know where they need to be and they know how they need to move. And that's because of the past work, not the present work.
- published: 27 Jul 2017
- views: 2018
3:48
Peter Hall - Remaining true to the classics (29/40)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:48
- Uploaded Date: 27 Jul 2017
- views: 616
To listen to more of Peter Hall’s stories, go to the playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxvFwDL5JP8tHveaKSdsiiB
British-born theatre di...
To listen to more of Peter Hall’s stories, go to the playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxvFwDL5JP8tHveaKSdsiiB
British-born theatre director, Sir Peter Hall (1930-2017), ran the Arts Theatre, founded the Royal Shakespeare Company when he was only 29, and directed the National Theatre. In 1977 he was knighted for his contribution to the theatre. [Listener: John Goodwin; date recorded: 2006]
TRANSCRIPT: One has a responsibility as a director, and as an actor, not to mess about with the classics. I mean I don't mind people, as it were, drawing silly bits onto a classic, but they ought to be seen as foolish as they are because Shakespeare is rather good. Shakespeare does rather know better than us. Now, if you translate what we do to Shakespeare to the musical world, I mean it's the equivalent of going into the opera house and people saying: ‘Oh yeah, we don't have the overture to the 'Marriage of Figaro' anymore; I mean it really isn't necessary. We get straight into the action, it's terrific’. I've seen 'Hamlet' with no first scene. I mean who wants all those boring people wandering about on battlements with ghosts I mean, says the director, and cuts it. I mean it is absolutely criminal and critics, in my view, should get up and blow the whistle on people. But they don't know the texts well enough themselves and they regard it as rather with it and cool and… and rather clever to be like that. I don't think it's clever at all; I think it's a… it's a demonstration of arrogant stupidity but there you are. And then, you know, somebody comes along and, and does the full text, people say, my goodness, it isn't as difficult as all that, I can understand it. Well, of course you can understand it if you actually tell the story that Shakespeare told. But if you cut half of it you can't. I suppose that in every Shakespeare play at this moment in time there are half a dozen, perhaps a dozen lines, which have aged so badly that they really are incomprehensible to a modern audience, but there're not more. And people who hide behind the idea that Shakespeare is incomprehensible don't know how to comprehend him and that's… it's just as simple as that, as far as I'm concerned. So, you know, I'm now called an Iambic Fundamentalist by my enemies and I'm regarded as a pedant. But when I started doing this I was regarded as a revolutionary who did nothing about… who knew nothing about Shakespeare and shouldn't be let loose near him. I mean that was… when I went to Stratford and started the RSC, half the media were saying: ‘Look, this man does 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof' and 'Waiting for Godot', he's a modernist, he knows nothing about Shakespeare. We don't want him. You know, he'll be doing this and doing that and doing the other.' So one… one sees one's reputation going in waves of action and reaction, of being a boring traditionalist and then being a revolutionist and what is the truth? Well, the truth is you do what you do because you believe it's what you should do and that's all really what you can do. You can't be influenced, I think, by media reaction to you. Of course one is depressed by it, of course one doesn't like bad notices. Of course one doesn't like being misunderstood. But there's absolutely nothing you can do to trim your own sails; you have to be what you are, because if you're not what you are, then you really have no possibility of looking yourself in the mirror… I mean. So I've had my ups and downs with the media but I rather… I'm rather excited by the media as a… as an entity because we live in a terribly complex society which is so full of noise and cries and adverts and promotions and this and that, that unless you've got millions of pounds that you can spend on advertising, the only way to point out that you're doing the play is to shout very loudly to the media and hope they'll pick it up. It's a sad fact but true, so we need the media, I think rather more than they need us.
https://wn.com/Peter_Hall_Remaining_True_To_The_Classics_(29_40)
To listen to more of Peter Hall’s stories, go to the playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxvFwDL5JP8tHveaKSdsiiB
British-born theatre director, Sir Peter Hall (1930-2017), ran the Arts Theatre, founded the Royal Shakespeare Company when he was only 29, and directed the National Theatre. In 1977 he was knighted for his contribution to the theatre. [Listener: John Goodwin; date recorded: 2006]
TRANSCRIPT: One has a responsibility as a director, and as an actor, not to mess about with the classics. I mean I don't mind people, as it were, drawing silly bits onto a classic, but they ought to be seen as foolish as they are because Shakespeare is rather good. Shakespeare does rather know better than us. Now, if you translate what we do to Shakespeare to the musical world, I mean it's the equivalent of going into the opera house and people saying: ‘Oh yeah, we don't have the overture to the 'Marriage of Figaro' anymore; I mean it really isn't necessary. We get straight into the action, it's terrific’. I've seen 'Hamlet' with no first scene. I mean who wants all those boring people wandering about on battlements with ghosts I mean, says the director, and cuts it. I mean it is absolutely criminal and critics, in my view, should get up and blow the whistle on people. But they don't know the texts well enough themselves and they regard it as rather with it and cool and… and rather clever to be like that. I don't think it's clever at all; I think it's a… it's a demonstration of arrogant stupidity but there you are. And then, you know, somebody comes along and, and does the full text, people say, my goodness, it isn't as difficult as all that, I can understand it. Well, of course you can understand it if you actually tell the story that Shakespeare told. But if you cut half of it you can't. I suppose that in every Shakespeare play at this moment in time there are half a dozen, perhaps a dozen lines, which have aged so badly that they really are incomprehensible to a modern audience, but there're not more. And people who hide behind the idea that Shakespeare is incomprehensible don't know how to comprehend him and that's… it's just as simple as that, as far as I'm concerned. So, you know, I'm now called an Iambic Fundamentalist by my enemies and I'm regarded as a pedant. But when I started doing this I was regarded as a revolutionary who did nothing about… who knew nothing about Shakespeare and shouldn't be let loose near him. I mean that was… when I went to Stratford and started the RSC, half the media were saying: ‘Look, this man does 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof' and 'Waiting for Godot', he's a modernist, he knows nothing about Shakespeare. We don't want him. You know, he'll be doing this and doing that and doing the other.' So one… one sees one's reputation going in waves of action and reaction, of being a boring traditionalist and then being a revolutionist and what is the truth? Well, the truth is you do what you do because you believe it's what you should do and that's all really what you can do. You can't be influenced, I think, by media reaction to you. Of course one is depressed by it, of course one doesn't like bad notices. Of course one doesn't like being misunderstood. But there's absolutely nothing you can do to trim your own sails; you have to be what you are, because if you're not what you are, then you really have no possibility of looking yourself in the mirror… I mean. So I've had my ups and downs with the media but I rather… I'm rather excited by the media as a… as an entity because we live in a terribly complex society which is so full of noise and cries and adverts and promotions and this and that, that unless you've got millions of pounds that you can spend on advertising, the only way to point out that you're doing the play is to shout very loudly to the media and hope they'll pick it up. It's a sad fact but true, so we need the media, I think rather more than they need us.
- published: 27 Jul 2017
- views: 616
3:45
Peter Hall - The author as part of the directing process (26/40)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:45
- Uploaded Date: 27 Jul 2017
- views: 500
To listen to more of Peter Hall’s stories, go to the playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxvFwDL5JP8tHveaKSdsiiB
British-born theatre di...
To listen to more of Peter Hall’s stories, go to the playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxvFwDL5JP8tHveaKSdsiiB
British-born theatre director, Sir Peter Hall (1930-2017), ran the Arts Theatre, founded the Royal Shakespeare Company when he was only 29, and directed the National Theatre. In 1977 he was knighted for his contribution to the theatre. [Listener: John Goodwin; date recorded: 2006]
TRANSCRIPT: Perhaps I ought to analyse a little bit more what... being a director entails because I don't think people understand really what a director is; they think of him as some sort of autocrat — which he's not. And I think the first thing to be said is that doing a play, or an opera for that matter, is very much... is very different if you're doing a modern piece in which the author is available and comes to work with you, or whether you're doing a classic of the past where you have to find out so much about the context in which the work was originally given. Well if you're dealing with Samuel Beckett or Tennessee Williams or Harold Pinter or Peter Schaffer or Simon Gray... or, you know, these are just people I've worked with and have been blessed with... Michael Tippett in opera...then you have an absolute interplay. You can say, 'what do you mean here' and mostly the Samuel Becketts and the Harold Pinters of this world say I don't know what I meant, what does it say. And they make you look and see what it says. So you actually try and figure out what they meant. And that, of course, is quite a creative act in itself, which is much better than the author just telling you, this is what it meant. Sometimes authors are very bad directors of their own work because the actor asks what it means and they're told categorically what they means and they then act a category, just something very simplistic, so it lacks ambiguity. So it's... it's very, very different. I love working on a modern piece with the author; the only thing I do absolutely say is that if you're going to come as an author to rehearsal you should be there most of the time. You shouldn't come on special days when the author is present, which paralyses everybody. In other words, he should be part of the process and he should be able to say anything he wants about what the director's doing and the director should be able to say anything he wants about the text. That's how I've done... I don't know, 10 or 11 plays of Harold Pinter's and I think it sometimes slightly unnerves the actors when they see two people arguing like we do but our argument is so... is very well intentioned and very amiable. It's not destructive and it's not egotistical. So it works and it's very creative. If you're doing a historical piece, an old piece, a Shakespeare piece, one of the first things you have to do is to try and immerse yourself in the period of the piece itself, socially and historically, and try to understand why he wrote that as he wrote that at the moment that he wrote that for the audience he was writing for. All these are great imponderables and it's a lot of scholarly work, a lot of scholarly reading, which you don't bring into the rehearsal room with you because actors are not really very interested in scholarship; they want something visceral they can get hold of. But you can create an atmosphere, I think, where you... you know, the actors really respond to their duty which I think is not to say... had Shakespeare been writing now he would have done it like this, but to say Shakespeare wrote it wanting it to mean something like this and this is what we're trying to convey to you. That's very difficult to define and, you know, you can argue over it very, very much and very often.
https://wn.com/Peter_Hall_The_Author_As_Part_Of_The_Directing_Process_(26_40)
To listen to more of Peter Hall’s stories, go to the playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxvFwDL5JP8tHveaKSdsiiB
British-born theatre director, Sir Peter Hall (1930-2017), ran the Arts Theatre, founded the Royal Shakespeare Company when he was only 29, and directed the National Theatre. In 1977 he was knighted for his contribution to the theatre. [Listener: John Goodwin; date recorded: 2006]
TRANSCRIPT: Perhaps I ought to analyse a little bit more what... being a director entails because I don't think people understand really what a director is; they think of him as some sort of autocrat — which he's not. And I think the first thing to be said is that doing a play, or an opera for that matter, is very much... is very different if you're doing a modern piece in which the author is available and comes to work with you, or whether you're doing a classic of the past where you have to find out so much about the context in which the work was originally given. Well if you're dealing with Samuel Beckett or Tennessee Williams or Harold Pinter or Peter Schaffer or Simon Gray... or, you know, these are just people I've worked with and have been blessed with... Michael Tippett in opera...then you have an absolute interplay. You can say, 'what do you mean here' and mostly the Samuel Becketts and the Harold Pinters of this world say I don't know what I meant, what does it say. And they make you look and see what it says. So you actually try and figure out what they meant. And that, of course, is quite a creative act in itself, which is much better than the author just telling you, this is what it meant. Sometimes authors are very bad directors of their own work because the actor asks what it means and they're told categorically what they means and they then act a category, just something very simplistic, so it lacks ambiguity. So it's... it's very, very different. I love working on a modern piece with the author; the only thing I do absolutely say is that if you're going to come as an author to rehearsal you should be there most of the time. You shouldn't come on special days when the author is present, which paralyses everybody. In other words, he should be part of the process and he should be able to say anything he wants about what the director's doing and the director should be able to say anything he wants about the text. That's how I've done... I don't know, 10 or 11 plays of Harold Pinter's and I think it sometimes slightly unnerves the actors when they see two people arguing like we do but our argument is so... is very well intentioned and very amiable. It's not destructive and it's not egotistical. So it works and it's very creative. If you're doing a historical piece, an old piece, a Shakespeare piece, one of the first things you have to do is to try and immerse yourself in the period of the piece itself, socially and historically, and try to understand why he wrote that as he wrote that at the moment that he wrote that for the audience he was writing for. All these are great imponderables and it's a lot of scholarly work, a lot of scholarly reading, which you don't bring into the rehearsal room with you because actors are not really very interested in scholarship; they want something visceral they can get hold of. But you can create an atmosphere, I think, where you... you know, the actors really respond to their duty which I think is not to say... had Shakespeare been writing now he would have done it like this, but to say Shakespeare wrote it wanting it to mean something like this and this is what we're trying to convey to you. That's very difficult to define and, you know, you can argue over it very, very much and very often.
- published: 27 Jul 2017
- views: 500
1:04
Peter Hall - After the run has finished (30/40)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 1:04
- Uploaded Date: 27 Jul 2017
- views: 328
To listen to more of Peter Hall’s stories, go to the playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxvFwDL5JP8tHveaKSdsiiB
British-born theatre di...
To listen to more of Peter Hall’s stories, go to the playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxvFwDL5JP8tHveaKSdsiiB
British-born theatre director, Sir Peter Hall (1930-2017), ran the Arts Theatre, founded the Royal Shakespeare Company when he was only 29, and directed the National Theatre. In 1977 he was knighted for his contribution to the theatre. [Listener: John Goodwin; date recorded: 2006]
TRANSCRIPT: I think the interesting thing is that... there is a kind of... golden mean that you're left with, with each piece of work. It's after the public have decided, it's after the critics have decided, it's after the media has decided, it's probably after the run has finished. There is a trace which is nearly always accurate...
[JG] Yes.
Nearly always.
[JG] Yes.
It may have had very bad notices, but there it is because the public say no no, this is worth something.
[JG] Yes.
It may have had very good notices and not been consistent.
[JG] Yeah, absolutely.
So I think, on the whole, we live in a... providing there's freedom of speech...
[JG] Truth will out.
Truth will out, as long as there's enough voices and they're not gagged...
[JG] Yes...
Or corrupted...
[JG] Yes.
That is a worry in this day and age that we're getting more and more nannyish... in you know, in the way we're treated.
https://wn.com/Peter_Hall_After_The_Run_Has_Finished_(30_40)
To listen to more of Peter Hall’s stories, go to the playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxvFwDL5JP8tHveaKSdsiiB
British-born theatre director, Sir Peter Hall (1930-2017), ran the Arts Theatre, founded the Royal Shakespeare Company when he was only 29, and directed the National Theatre. In 1977 he was knighted for his contribution to the theatre. [Listener: John Goodwin; date recorded: 2006]
TRANSCRIPT: I think the interesting thing is that... there is a kind of... golden mean that you're left with, with each piece of work. It's after the public have decided, it's after the critics have decided, it's after the media has decided, it's probably after the run has finished. There is a trace which is nearly always accurate...
[JG] Yes.
Nearly always.
[JG] Yes.
It may have had very bad notices, but there it is because the public say no no, this is worth something.
[JG] Yes.
It may have had very good notices and not been consistent.
[JG] Yeah, absolutely.
So I think, on the whole, we live in a... providing there's freedom of speech...
[JG] Truth will out.
Truth will out, as long as there's enough voices and they're not gagged...
[JG] Yes...
Or corrupted...
[JG] Yes.
That is a worry in this day and age that we're getting more and more nannyish... in you know, in the way we're treated.
- published: 27 Jul 2017
- views: 328
5:06
Peter Hall - Final polishing of a play (31/40)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 5:06
- Uploaded Date: 27 Jul 2017
- views: 408
To listen to more of Peter Hall’s stories, go to the playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxvFwDL5JP8tHveaKSdsiiB
British-born theatre di...
To listen to more of Peter Hall’s stories, go to the playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxvFwDL5JP8tHveaKSdsiiB
British-born theatre director, Sir Peter Hall (1930-2017), ran the Arts Theatre, founded the Royal Shakespeare Company when he was only 29, and directed the National Theatre. In 1977 he was knighted for his contribution to the theatre. [Listener: John Goodwin; date recorded: 2006; date recorded: 2006]
TRANSCRIPT: Once you get to the latter stage in rehearsal as a director, if you've observed the form and you've generated the feeling, there's then a period which is almost practice, when the actors simply have to run the play and... and try and make an emotional journey inside themselves which sustains it and which is accurate and makes them feel comfortable. Then comes the last stage — the fourth or fifth stage — which is entirely about editing, where you say that was very nice but we don't need it, or that pause has got to go, or that isn't, you know. And now we look at the whole thing we don't need... And that can be quite worrying to the actor because bits get pulled out; cuts are very difficult always, but if they're right, they heal terribly quickly. If they're wrong they go on bleeding; you know you've got to be very careful. But none of us know in this business — actor or director — what we've done until we ask the audience. I mean when I'm directing a comedy I think I know where the laughs are, but I don't. Maybe I get 40% of them right.
[JG] And nor do the actors actually.
Nor do the actors, no, no. So that the first... the first time a group of actors meet an audience with a comedy is absolutely terrifying because it goes off like a great uncontrolled beast with laughter... muffles and distorts the next line which the actor speaks into the laugh, so you miss the next laugh because they haven't heard the payoff. Most comedic acting, you know, is... is about having a clear establishment, a clear feed. The payoff only works if the feed is really understood. That's why, if you... if you talk to people like Morecambe and Wise they say that the thing that matters is the straight man not the clown.
Clowns are of course, another... another thing altogether and a very great problem in Shakespeare because he did have clowns – two great clowns – in his company. And... I mean a clown, by definition, is someone who, when they walk on the stage, makes the audience laugh without doing anything. And you can't say it's because he walks funnily, because that's not why they laugh; it's just because he just is funny.
[JG] It's like Tommy Cooper.
Yeah, Tommy Cooper, absolutely, absolutely. And I... I know from bitter experience that actors who try and act clowns are not funny, but somebody who is a... is a clown, given Shakespeare's texts, gets laughs when the audience don't actually understand quite what he said. Because the writing is so meticulous in order to present the audience with the possibility of laughter that they laugh. But you need to have it delivered by a clown.
So once you've met the audience and you've seen what they tell you, you then go to work again.
[JG] Arthur Lowe doing Stefano.
Arthur Lowe doing Stefano, absolutely, absolutely.
[JG] He was an incredibly funny character.
Absolutely and that wonderful guy I had last...
[JG] The fall guy.
The guy I had at Bath last year in 'Much Ado' playing Dogberry.
[JG] Oh him, yes.
Oh, what's he called? He was wonderful because he just was funny. He didn't have to work at it. No. But the period once you've started... I mean it's something... I... I'm told I started previews, that they didn't exist...
[JG] Yes, you did. You started them at Stratford.
Yes, because it seemed to me...
[JG] By John Barber [sic], now dead.
Yes, because it seemed to me absolute nonsense that, you know, you had a dress rehearsal on Monday at Stratford and then you opened on Tuesday. And usually there was... the critics said, you know, ‘This is rather a restrained evening, it doesn't quite work’ and, if you ever got them to come back and see the plays way on to the season, they were transported with joy to find that it was alive. I mean every... every production needs a week of running in... and work during the day.
[JG] Playing to an audience.
Playing to an audience. And it's not just simple things like how do we get a laugh here. It's just being absolutely sure that you're telling the story. The primary act of an actor standing on the stage is to tell a story to an audience, and if at any moment the audience don't understand the story or don't know where it's gone, you've lost them and that's it.
https://wn.com/Peter_Hall_Final_Polishing_Of_A_Play_(31_40)
To listen to more of Peter Hall’s stories, go to the playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxvFwDL5JP8tHveaKSdsiiB
British-born theatre director, Sir Peter Hall (1930-2017), ran the Arts Theatre, founded the Royal Shakespeare Company when he was only 29, and directed the National Theatre. In 1977 he was knighted for his contribution to the theatre. [Listener: John Goodwin; date recorded: 2006; date recorded: 2006]
TRANSCRIPT: Once you get to the latter stage in rehearsal as a director, if you've observed the form and you've generated the feeling, there's then a period which is almost practice, when the actors simply have to run the play and... and try and make an emotional journey inside themselves which sustains it and which is accurate and makes them feel comfortable. Then comes the last stage — the fourth or fifth stage — which is entirely about editing, where you say that was very nice but we don't need it, or that pause has got to go, or that isn't, you know. And now we look at the whole thing we don't need... And that can be quite worrying to the actor because bits get pulled out; cuts are very difficult always, but if they're right, they heal terribly quickly. If they're wrong they go on bleeding; you know you've got to be very careful. But none of us know in this business — actor or director — what we've done until we ask the audience. I mean when I'm directing a comedy I think I know where the laughs are, but I don't. Maybe I get 40% of them right.
[JG] And nor do the actors actually.
Nor do the actors, no, no. So that the first... the first time a group of actors meet an audience with a comedy is absolutely terrifying because it goes off like a great uncontrolled beast with laughter... muffles and distorts the next line which the actor speaks into the laugh, so you miss the next laugh because they haven't heard the payoff. Most comedic acting, you know, is... is about having a clear establishment, a clear feed. The payoff only works if the feed is really understood. That's why, if you... if you talk to people like Morecambe and Wise they say that the thing that matters is the straight man not the clown.
Clowns are of course, another... another thing altogether and a very great problem in Shakespeare because he did have clowns – two great clowns – in his company. And... I mean a clown, by definition, is someone who, when they walk on the stage, makes the audience laugh without doing anything. And you can't say it's because he walks funnily, because that's not why they laugh; it's just because he just is funny.
[JG] It's like Tommy Cooper.
Yeah, Tommy Cooper, absolutely, absolutely. And I... I know from bitter experience that actors who try and act clowns are not funny, but somebody who is a... is a clown, given Shakespeare's texts, gets laughs when the audience don't actually understand quite what he said. Because the writing is so meticulous in order to present the audience with the possibility of laughter that they laugh. But you need to have it delivered by a clown.
So once you've met the audience and you've seen what they tell you, you then go to work again.
[JG] Arthur Lowe doing Stefano.
Arthur Lowe doing Stefano, absolutely, absolutely.
[JG] He was an incredibly funny character.
Absolutely and that wonderful guy I had last...
[JG] The fall guy.
The guy I had at Bath last year in 'Much Ado' playing Dogberry.
[JG] Oh him, yes.
Oh, what's he called? He was wonderful because he just was funny. He didn't have to work at it. No. But the period once you've started... I mean it's something... I... I'm told I started previews, that they didn't exist...
[JG] Yes, you did. You started them at Stratford.
Yes, because it seemed to me...
[JG] By John Barber [sic], now dead.
Yes, because it seemed to me absolute nonsense that, you know, you had a dress rehearsal on Monday at Stratford and then you opened on Tuesday. And usually there was... the critics said, you know, ‘This is rather a restrained evening, it doesn't quite work’ and, if you ever got them to come back and see the plays way on to the season, they were transported with joy to find that it was alive. I mean every... every production needs a week of running in... and work during the day.
[JG] Playing to an audience.
Playing to an audience. And it's not just simple things like how do we get a laugh here. It's just being absolutely sure that you're telling the story. The primary act of an actor standing on the stage is to tell a story to an audience, and if at any moment the audience don't understand the story or don't know where it's gone, you've lost them and that's it.
- published: 27 Jul 2017
- views: 408
3:29
Peter Hall - Directing a play more than once (23/40)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:29
- Uploaded Date: 27 Jul 2017
- views: 441
To listen to more of Peter Hall’s stories, go to the playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxvFwDL5JP8tHveaKSdsiiB
British-born theatre di...
To listen to more of Peter Hall’s stories, go to the playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxvFwDL5JP8tHveaKSdsiiB
British-born theatre director, Sir Peter Hall (1930-2017), ran the Arts Theatre, founded the Royal Shakespeare Company when he was only 29, and directed the National Theatre. In 1977 he was knighted for his contribution to the theatre. [Listener: John Goodwin; date recorded: 2006]
TRANSCRIPT: It's very interesting this question of, you know... why do you go back on things? I've done a lot of plays more than once. I've done four 'Hamlet's, four 'Twelfth Nights', three or four 'Tempests'... and I don't honestly remember what I did before. People always say to me, and how is it different? And I say I've absolutely no idea how it's different. I'm different; it's a different time, different place, different audience...
[JG] Different actors.
Yes, different actors. All I can do is set off on the journey again in order to try and make this play live in some sort as the author intended. Very dangerous that, because we all hide behind 'as the author intended' when we don't actually know what the author intended. I mean, you can interpret it in many, many ways but I... I think to set about doing a classic play on the basis that I have my interpretation of it, is totally wrong and phoney and false and ridiculous, finally. I mean... you can't do a play so that it speaks for itself. No play speaks for itself, but you do know the parameters within which the man worked. I... I'll give you an example. I'm at the moment... deep in 'Measure for Measure', which I am about to do. I did it once in America but I've never done it in this country and I happened... just before Christmas in New York where I was working, to go into an exhibition of Egon Schiele's work – the Austrian painter – and I love his work and I love Klimt's work — that whole period — and I suddenly thought, yeah, this... this is a way in... this is the way in for 'Measure for Measure'... Vienna, Freud, Jung, all that, sexually obsessed, sewers, all, you know, and I've spent five, six weeks really on this looking at Schiele, thinking about it, and this week I realised I was imposing something on the piece because 'Measure for Measure' has a very simple antecedent. James I was a new king and he'd written a book about kingship and how a king should behave. He was very shy. He didn't like public... speaking. He didn't like public appearances. On December 26th 1604 Shakespeare presented Measure for Measure at Whitehall Palace to the King for its first performance. It's about a duke who doesn't like crowds who is very nervous, very anxious about his record as a ruler and who leaves in order to let somebody else get their hands dirty so he can watch because he feels he should be an Angelo and he then watches what Angelo's doing and he gets actually hooked into power. He could stop all those people's sufferings like that, just take the cowl of his hood off as a monk. Now this has got nothing to do with Schiele, nothing to do with Vienna, nothing to do... so out it all went. Yesterday it was all chucked out. Everything. No, trust the tale, not your fantasies.
https://wn.com/Peter_Hall_Directing_A_Play_More_Than_Once_(23_40)
To listen to more of Peter Hall’s stories, go to the playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxvFwDL5JP8tHveaKSdsiiB
British-born theatre director, Sir Peter Hall (1930-2017), ran the Arts Theatre, founded the Royal Shakespeare Company when he was only 29, and directed the National Theatre. In 1977 he was knighted for his contribution to the theatre. [Listener: John Goodwin; date recorded: 2006]
TRANSCRIPT: It's very interesting this question of, you know... why do you go back on things? I've done a lot of plays more than once. I've done four 'Hamlet's, four 'Twelfth Nights', three or four 'Tempests'... and I don't honestly remember what I did before. People always say to me, and how is it different? And I say I've absolutely no idea how it's different. I'm different; it's a different time, different place, different audience...
[JG] Different actors.
Yes, different actors. All I can do is set off on the journey again in order to try and make this play live in some sort as the author intended. Very dangerous that, because we all hide behind 'as the author intended' when we don't actually know what the author intended. I mean, you can interpret it in many, many ways but I... I think to set about doing a classic play on the basis that I have my interpretation of it, is totally wrong and phoney and false and ridiculous, finally. I mean... you can't do a play so that it speaks for itself. No play speaks for itself, but you do know the parameters within which the man worked. I... I'll give you an example. I'm at the moment... deep in 'Measure for Measure', which I am about to do. I did it once in America but I've never done it in this country and I happened... just before Christmas in New York where I was working, to go into an exhibition of Egon Schiele's work – the Austrian painter – and I love his work and I love Klimt's work — that whole period — and I suddenly thought, yeah, this... this is a way in... this is the way in for 'Measure for Measure'... Vienna, Freud, Jung, all that, sexually obsessed, sewers, all, you know, and I've spent five, six weeks really on this looking at Schiele, thinking about it, and this week I realised I was imposing something on the piece because 'Measure for Measure' has a very simple antecedent. James I was a new king and he'd written a book about kingship and how a king should behave. He was very shy. He didn't like public... speaking. He didn't like public appearances. On December 26th 1604 Shakespeare presented Measure for Measure at Whitehall Palace to the King for its first performance. It's about a duke who doesn't like crowds who is very nervous, very anxious about his record as a ruler and who leaves in order to let somebody else get their hands dirty so he can watch because he feels he should be an Angelo and he then watches what Angelo's doing and he gets actually hooked into power. He could stop all those people's sufferings like that, just take the cowl of his hood off as a monk. Now this has got nothing to do with Schiele, nothing to do with Vienna, nothing to do... so out it all went. Yesterday it was all chucked out. Everything. No, trust the tale, not your fantasies.
- published: 27 Jul 2017
- views: 441
4:44
Peter Hall - The great adventure of the Royal Shakespeare Company (11/40)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 4:44
- Uploaded Date: 27 Jul 2017
- views: 1079
To listen to more of Peter Hall’s stories, go to the playlist:
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British-born theatre di...
To listen to more of Peter Hall’s stories, go to the playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxvFwDL5JP8tHveaKSdsiiB
British-born theatre director, Sir Peter Hall (1930-2017), ran the Arts Theatre, founded the Royal Shakespeare Company when he was only 29, and directed the National Theatre. In 1977 he was knighted for his contribution to the theatre. [Listener: John Goodwin; date recorded: 2006]
TRANSCRIPT: 1959, I... was the 100th anniversary season of… of Stratford, and all the stars were rolled out and… and I did Coriolanus with Olivier and Edith Evans, and I did the 'Midsummer Night's Dream' with Charles Laughton. And then, in 1960, I started the great adventure of the… the RSC [Royal Shakespeare Company]. And I suppose, you know, looking back on it, the company was called all sorts of things: post-Brechtian, very left-wing, dragging kings down so that they looked like ordinary men, you know, a new form of design without anything pictorial, very rough and textured, all sorts… but the one thing that almost nobody commented on or saw or understood, was that we were all speaking it in the same way, and we all knew the clues that Shakespeare puts in his verse which says: this is when you pause, this is when you go fast, this is when you go slow, this is when you come in on cue, this word you accent, you do not accent this. I mean, it's all there like a score, if you know how to read it.
[JG] Yes, it sounded wonderful. Although it was very rhythmic, it sounded completely naturalistic.
Well, yes, it sounds...
[JG] It sounded modern.
But it sounds naturalistic because you can understand it. I mean, you know, Shakespeare writes in lines, iambic pentameters, hideous phrase, but… ba-bum, ba-bum, ba-bum, ba-bum, ba-bum, and if you listen to ordinary speech, it's, in English… about five beats is about what each hunk of conversation comes out as. And if you listen to French, it's six beats, so it's perhaps no accident that the alexandrine in French classical drama is six beats and the iambic five beats is ours. But why did he bother? Because it's easier to write prose than iambic pentameters and he… he did it so that the audience were not overwhelmed with information. If you say, ‘If music be the food of love play on give me excess of it that surfeiting the appetite may sicken and so die’, the audience say: ‘I'm sorry, I don't know what you're talking about’. But if you say, ‘If music be the food of love, play on. Give me excess of it, that surfeiting, the appetite may sicken and so die’, you've delivered three lines of blank verse and you can understand each line. It's a… it's a communication device primarily, and that's what we were doing. We were playing it trippingly on the tongue, which is what 'Hamlet' begs the actors to do, but we were playing it in lines.
[JG] But it was a revolution. A true revolution, I thought because I… I had heard an awful lot of the old Shakespeare with, you know, the way you were talking about it done by Byam Shaw, and the change was amazing.
But it was interesting, it's interesting...
[JG] That's much, much quicker.
Looking at the… well, that is absolutely true, I mean, plays that lasted... actually we would… we would take 25-30 minutes off a play's running time, not by cutting it, but by speaking it trippingly and by keeping it witty and… and understandable. The other interesting thing was that, you know, by the time I left the RSC which was in '68, we could do a Shakespeare play in about a week to 10 days less rehearsal, because everybody knew what they were looking for, what they were doing. I mean, that is if we had enough of the team in it, you know, but I mean actors like Ian Holm were there on and off of 10 years. I mean I… I found very early on that the only way to create a company is not by imprisoning them with tight contracts, but by allowing them to go away. If they can go away for six months, they come back, because home is then the Royal Shakespeare Company. And I… I mean the only... I've had lots of failures and made lots of mistakes, I would, but the… but the only thing I really regret is leaving the RSC when I did. I mean I had to because I was sick of it...
[JG] I wrote to you and begged you not to.
I know, I do remember you did. You took no notice. I took no notice, but what I should have done is said, 'Look, I've been doing this for 10 years, I… I need a year off, then I'll come back‘. That's what I should have done.
https://wn.com/Peter_Hall_The_Great_Adventure_Of_The_Royal_Shakespeare_Company_(11_40)
To listen to more of Peter Hall’s stories, go to the playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxvFwDL5JP8tHveaKSdsiiB
British-born theatre director, Sir Peter Hall (1930-2017), ran the Arts Theatre, founded the Royal Shakespeare Company when he was only 29, and directed the National Theatre. In 1977 he was knighted for his contribution to the theatre. [Listener: John Goodwin; date recorded: 2006]
TRANSCRIPT: 1959, I... was the 100th anniversary season of… of Stratford, and all the stars were rolled out and… and I did Coriolanus with Olivier and Edith Evans, and I did the 'Midsummer Night's Dream' with Charles Laughton. And then, in 1960, I started the great adventure of the… the RSC [Royal Shakespeare Company]. And I suppose, you know, looking back on it, the company was called all sorts of things: post-Brechtian, very left-wing, dragging kings down so that they looked like ordinary men, you know, a new form of design without anything pictorial, very rough and textured, all sorts… but the one thing that almost nobody commented on or saw or understood, was that we were all speaking it in the same way, and we all knew the clues that Shakespeare puts in his verse which says: this is when you pause, this is when you go fast, this is when you go slow, this is when you come in on cue, this word you accent, you do not accent this. I mean, it's all there like a score, if you know how to read it.
[JG] Yes, it sounded wonderful. Although it was very rhythmic, it sounded completely naturalistic.
Well, yes, it sounds...
[JG] It sounded modern.
But it sounds naturalistic because you can understand it. I mean, you know, Shakespeare writes in lines, iambic pentameters, hideous phrase, but… ba-bum, ba-bum, ba-bum, ba-bum, ba-bum, and if you listen to ordinary speech, it's, in English… about five beats is about what each hunk of conversation comes out as. And if you listen to French, it's six beats, so it's perhaps no accident that the alexandrine in French classical drama is six beats and the iambic five beats is ours. But why did he bother? Because it's easier to write prose than iambic pentameters and he… he did it so that the audience were not overwhelmed with information. If you say, ‘If music be the food of love play on give me excess of it that surfeiting the appetite may sicken and so die’, the audience say: ‘I'm sorry, I don't know what you're talking about’. But if you say, ‘If music be the food of love, play on. Give me excess of it, that surfeiting, the appetite may sicken and so die’, you've delivered three lines of blank verse and you can understand each line. It's a… it's a communication device primarily, and that's what we were doing. We were playing it trippingly on the tongue, which is what 'Hamlet' begs the actors to do, but we were playing it in lines.
[JG] But it was a revolution. A true revolution, I thought because I… I had heard an awful lot of the old Shakespeare with, you know, the way you were talking about it done by Byam Shaw, and the change was amazing.
But it was interesting, it's interesting...
[JG] That's much, much quicker.
Looking at the… well, that is absolutely true, I mean, plays that lasted... actually we would… we would take 25-30 minutes off a play's running time, not by cutting it, but by speaking it trippingly and by keeping it witty and… and understandable. The other interesting thing was that, you know, by the time I left the RSC which was in '68, we could do a Shakespeare play in about a week to 10 days less rehearsal, because everybody knew what they were looking for, what they were doing. I mean, that is if we had enough of the team in it, you know, but I mean actors like Ian Holm were there on and off of 10 years. I mean I… I found very early on that the only way to create a company is not by imprisoning them with tight contracts, but by allowing them to go away. If they can go away for six months, they come back, because home is then the Royal Shakespeare Company. And I… I mean the only... I've had lots of failures and made lots of mistakes, I would, but the… but the only thing I really regret is leaving the RSC when I did. I mean I had to because I was sick of it...
[JG] I wrote to you and begged you not to.
I know, I do remember you did. You took no notice. I took no notice, but what I should have done is said, 'Look, I've been doing this for 10 years, I… I need a year off, then I'll come back‘. That's what I should have done.
- published: 27 Jul 2017
- views: 1079
3:23
Peter Hall - How Waiting For Godot changed my life (8/40)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:23
- Uploaded Date: 27 Jul 2017
- views: 1892
To listen to more of Peter Hall’s stories, go to the playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxvFwDL5JP8tHveaKSdsiiB
British-born theatre di...
To listen to more of Peter Hall’s stories, go to the playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxvFwDL5JP8tHveaKSdsiiB
British-born theatre director, Sir Peter Hall (1930-2017), ran the Arts Theatre, founded the Royal Shakespeare Company when he was only 29, and directed the National Theatre. In 1977 he was knighted for his contribution to the theatre. [Listener: John Goodwin; date recorded: 2006]
TRANSCRIPT: I did a production of Pirandello's 'Henry IV' which was transferred to the London Arts because they had a spare couple of weeks, got very good notices. I had a phone call asking me to go to Windsor rep to do 'The Letter' by Somerset Maugham, and as I went off to do that, the Arts Theatre London said would I like a… a very low-paid contract carrying tea, reading scripts and going out to the reps if they wanted me so I could go and… so I could have my cake and eat it. And within a year, John Fernald who was running the Arts was appointed to RADA [The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art] and I was asked to take over the theatre. So aged 24 I had my own theatre with the responsibility of producing a play every five weeks bang in the middle of London, and as my very talented son, Edward, who is a great director, has said to me many a time, you don't know you were born, he says, you were so lucky. And I was lucky, extraordinarily lucky, because then once I was at The Arts, came a play one day, and I opened it and it said: 'Waiting for Godot' by Samuel Beckett. I did not know who Samuel Beckett was. I had a vague idea there was some connection with James Joyce. I knew he had a play on in Paris in a 75-seat theatre. I hadn't seen it. The letter said ‘from Donald Albery’, who was a West End producer, he said: ‘No actor in London will be in this play and no director will direct it. Everybody's turned it down. I've seen some of your work so I wondered whether it would interest you’. So I thought, well, I'm clearly very much at the end of the line here, but I read it, and I don't pretend to say that I said to myself, this is the turning point of mid-20th century drama, because I didn't. But I did say, ‘This is highly original, beautifully written, very, very funny, and unlike anything I've ever read or experienced, so it's worth a go’, and Godot changed my life. I mean it… it absolutely brought me my first offer to work at Stratford as a director, Stratford-on-Avon. It brought me the friendship of Tennessee Williams and the rights of his plays in London. It brought me directing Leslie Caron in 'Gigi', the play. We subsequently married. It brought me a little bit of money for the first time, and it lead in a way, straight to Stratford which is the next part of the chapter. So, I mean, that's all the positive side. The negative side is if you're possessed by desire to do something, the fear that you have that you will not be able to do it, or that the world will not let you do it, is a huge price which you have to pay; so it's not all, you know, it's not all lovely success, at all. And I think if you're lucky, like I was, you're even… even more aware of how easy it is to be unlucky, if that paradox makes any sense. It's a cruel profession. It's no good being okay at it, in the middle. You have to be at the top or not at all.
https://wn.com/Peter_Hall_How_Waiting_For_Godot_Changed_My_Life_(8_40)
To listen to more of Peter Hall’s stories, go to the playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxvFwDL5JP8tHveaKSdsiiB
British-born theatre director, Sir Peter Hall (1930-2017), ran the Arts Theatre, founded the Royal Shakespeare Company when he was only 29, and directed the National Theatre. In 1977 he was knighted for his contribution to the theatre. [Listener: John Goodwin; date recorded: 2006]
TRANSCRIPT: I did a production of Pirandello's 'Henry IV' which was transferred to the London Arts because they had a spare couple of weeks, got very good notices. I had a phone call asking me to go to Windsor rep to do 'The Letter' by Somerset Maugham, and as I went off to do that, the Arts Theatre London said would I like a… a very low-paid contract carrying tea, reading scripts and going out to the reps if they wanted me so I could go and… so I could have my cake and eat it. And within a year, John Fernald who was running the Arts was appointed to RADA [The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art] and I was asked to take over the theatre. So aged 24 I had my own theatre with the responsibility of producing a play every five weeks bang in the middle of London, and as my very talented son, Edward, who is a great director, has said to me many a time, you don't know you were born, he says, you were so lucky. And I was lucky, extraordinarily lucky, because then once I was at The Arts, came a play one day, and I opened it and it said: 'Waiting for Godot' by Samuel Beckett. I did not know who Samuel Beckett was. I had a vague idea there was some connection with James Joyce. I knew he had a play on in Paris in a 75-seat theatre. I hadn't seen it. The letter said ‘from Donald Albery’, who was a West End producer, he said: ‘No actor in London will be in this play and no director will direct it. Everybody's turned it down. I've seen some of your work so I wondered whether it would interest you’. So I thought, well, I'm clearly very much at the end of the line here, but I read it, and I don't pretend to say that I said to myself, this is the turning point of mid-20th century drama, because I didn't. But I did say, ‘This is highly original, beautifully written, very, very funny, and unlike anything I've ever read or experienced, so it's worth a go’, and Godot changed my life. I mean it… it absolutely brought me my first offer to work at Stratford as a director, Stratford-on-Avon. It brought me the friendship of Tennessee Williams and the rights of his plays in London. It brought me directing Leslie Caron in 'Gigi', the play. We subsequently married. It brought me a little bit of money for the first time, and it lead in a way, straight to Stratford which is the next part of the chapter. So, I mean, that's all the positive side. The negative side is if you're possessed by desire to do something, the fear that you have that you will not be able to do it, or that the world will not let you do it, is a huge price which you have to pay; so it's not all, you know, it's not all lovely success, at all. And I think if you're lucky, like I was, you're even… even more aware of how easy it is to be unlucky, if that paradox makes any sense. It's a cruel profession. It's no good being okay at it, in the middle. You have to be at the top or not at all.
- published: 27 Jul 2017
- views: 1892
2:29
Peter Hall - The secret of the Cambridge University drama department is... (7/40)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:29
- Uploaded Date: 27 Jul 2017
- views: 892
To listen to more of Peter Hall’s stories, go to the playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxvFwDL5JP8tHveaKSdsiiB
British-born theatre di...
To listen to more of Peter Hall’s stories, go to the playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxvFwDL5JP8tHveaKSdsiiB
British-born theatre director, Sir Peter Hall (1930-2017), ran the Arts Theatre, founded the Royal Shakespeare Company when he was only 29, and directed the National Theatre. In 1977 he was knighted for his contribution to the theatre. [Listener: John Goodwin; date recorded: 2006]
TRANSCRIPT: I was recently in America with my company, doing 'As You Like It', in Los Angeles. We went to the drama department of the University of Southern California because they asked us if we would go and do a workshop. There were a 100 students and I looked at these 100 students and thought, where on earth are you going to go? There aren't a 100 jobs in the American theatre for you, and of course, most of them go and work in drama departments. There's a whole world there, which is very inbred and very incestuous and quite distressing in many ways. Anyway, I was there with two young actors, both of whom had been turned out of Cambridge in the last few years and we did the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet. And they were very appreciative and then we had ‘Q&A’, question and answer, and a young man said,‘Could you tell us the secret of Cambridge drama?’ And I said, ‘I'm sorry, what do you mean?’ And he said, ‘Well, you're all different generations but the three of you all came from… came through Cambridge, and Cambridge has produced Nick Hytner and Trevor Nunn and Richard Eyre and Jonathan Miller and John Barton and Emma Thompson’ and he went on and on, and on. He'd done his homework. He said: ‘What is the secret of the Cambridge University drama department?’ And I said to this hundred-full drama department: ‘The secret of the Cambridge University drama department is that there isn't one’. The dean then said to me, ‘You have just wrecked my entire… my entire being and why we're all here’. Anyway, it's true. Cambridge drama has been extraordinarily fertile in the last 50 years because there is this ramshackle theatre and the university give the committee, who are all students, a… a sum of money each year to portion out among themselves to do plays, and you'll gather from that that if you can survive Cambridge drama, you'll probably be all right in the profession, and I think this is absolutely true. I'm a little worried now because they're refurbishing and rehabilitating the theatre and I fear it may become very expensive and run by senior dons, but I hope it will continue to be the messy thing it is, which… because that's how the… the creativity works.
https://wn.com/Peter_Hall_The_Secret_Of_The_Cambridge_University_Drama_Department_Is..._(7_40)
To listen to more of Peter Hall’s stories, go to the playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxvFwDL5JP8tHveaKSdsiiB
British-born theatre director, Sir Peter Hall (1930-2017), ran the Arts Theatre, founded the Royal Shakespeare Company when he was only 29, and directed the National Theatre. In 1977 he was knighted for his contribution to the theatre. [Listener: John Goodwin; date recorded: 2006]
TRANSCRIPT: I was recently in America with my company, doing 'As You Like It', in Los Angeles. We went to the drama department of the University of Southern California because they asked us if we would go and do a workshop. There were a 100 students and I looked at these 100 students and thought, where on earth are you going to go? There aren't a 100 jobs in the American theatre for you, and of course, most of them go and work in drama departments. There's a whole world there, which is very inbred and very incestuous and quite distressing in many ways. Anyway, I was there with two young actors, both of whom had been turned out of Cambridge in the last few years and we did the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet. And they were very appreciative and then we had ‘Q&A’, question and answer, and a young man said,‘Could you tell us the secret of Cambridge drama?’ And I said, ‘I'm sorry, what do you mean?’ And he said, ‘Well, you're all different generations but the three of you all came from… came through Cambridge, and Cambridge has produced Nick Hytner and Trevor Nunn and Richard Eyre and Jonathan Miller and John Barton and Emma Thompson’ and he went on and on, and on. He'd done his homework. He said: ‘What is the secret of the Cambridge University drama department?’ And I said to this hundred-full drama department: ‘The secret of the Cambridge University drama department is that there isn't one’. The dean then said to me, ‘You have just wrecked my entire… my entire being and why we're all here’. Anyway, it's true. Cambridge drama has been extraordinarily fertile in the last 50 years because there is this ramshackle theatre and the university give the committee, who are all students, a… a sum of money each year to portion out among themselves to do plays, and you'll gather from that that if you can survive Cambridge drama, you'll probably be all right in the profession, and I think this is absolutely true. I'm a little worried now because they're refurbishing and rehabilitating the theatre and I fear it may become very expensive and run by senior dons, but I hope it will continue to be the messy thing it is, which… because that's how the… the creativity works.
- published: 27 Jul 2017
- views: 892
5:19
Peter Hall - Pauses are as important as the lines (28/40)
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published: 27 Jul 2017
Peter Hall - Pauses are as important as the lines (28/40)
Peter Hall - Pauses are as important as the lines (28/40)
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- published: 27 Jul 2017
- views: 3181
To listen to more of Peter Hall’s stories, go to the playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFxvFwDL5JP8tHveaKSdsiiB
British-born theatre director, Sir Peter Hall (1930-2017), ran the Arts Theatre, founded the Royal Shakespeare Company when he was only 29, and directed the National Theatre. In 1977 he was knighted for his contribution to the theatre. [Listener: John Goodwin; date recorded: 2006]
TRANSCRIPT: You can then really start microscopic work. I mean, you know… you can spend half a day on two pages, actually getting right to the nitty gritty. Now it will depend on the play… what you're doing. I mean, if it's Shakespeare, much of your concern will be when Shakespeare indicates a half line, a gap… in the text. What is that there for? Does it indicate a move, a piece of physical business? Does it indicate a moment of stillness? Does it indicate a pause, or what? So much of that comes off the page still. If you're dealing with Pinter you have a plethora of pauses and silences written into the text. When I first started doing Pinter actors would say: ‘What's this pause here and we decide where we pause’. And I would say: ‘No, you don't; that pause is as eloquent as a line and I'll show you how’. Pinter's pauses are about the unsaid but if the actors don't know what is… what is unsaid, the pause will never hold and the pause will seem rather artificial, rather camp, rather silly. And I'm sure, you know, you can very easily see Pinter that's drummed into significance by all these pauses being held by actors who don't know why they're holding them. So you have to get a subtext going so the actor knows what's going on inside himself. The pause is a crisis point about the unsayable or the unsaid but nobody after a pause is in exactly the same state as they were in when they went into it. I get people to learn pauses as if they were lines and I remember indeed when… years ago when I did the first performance of 'No Man's Land' with… with John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson, they both of them came from a theatre which didn't really use pauses very much and didn't understand them very well. So whenever there was a pause the other one thought the other one had dried so they would say: ‘Johnny, is that you?’ or Ralph would say…and Ralph would say… Johnny would say: ‘Ralph is that you?’. And I finally had to have the stage manager rehearse them through so that they said the line and then the stage manager said loudly: ‘Pause’. And finally we got the shape, the form, which we were supposed to end up with.
Now, now we're in deep water. The tradition of Stanislavsky and the tradition of the American Method is that the actor says: ‘Who am I, what do I want, what is my motivation, what is my emotional centre, what is my demand, what is my emotional demand?
[JG] Who are my parents?
Yeah. And they… it'd go on and on and on like that and then they say: ‘Now what do I say?… to be or not… I don't want to say that'. So you… you improvise emotionally without words and then you go and look at the text. So the feeling comes before the form. I have absolutely no doubt that real, credible theatre — I use the word credible, not true, because theatre is not true, there's nothing true about standing on a stage saying somebody else's lines in somebody else's clothes — there can be something credible but theatre that is credible has to, I think, put form before feeling. Because what we've got is the form, whether it be a Mozart aria or whether it be an Aeschylean huge speech to be delivered in a mask, there is a form which sustains the piece and it's the tension between the form and the feeling which actually excites the audience. If you feel, you can't express the form. If Ophelia comes out from the nunnery scene and says: ‘Oh what a noble mind is here o'erthrown’, in hysterics, she's got 14 lines which is very like a sonnet of antithetical analysis of what he could have been and what he is. And you can't do that if you're sobbing your guts out. Inside she's sobbing her guts out and using the words in order to keep control. So the form comes first and then the feeling, and whether you're singing an aria or whether you're working in a mask or whether you're doing Shakespeare's blank verse or whether you're doing Pinter's pauses or whether you're doing Beckett's antitheses they are all formal disciplines. The mask is exactly like the form of the aria or the form of the verse, or the form of the… of the pauses and the writing of Pinter or Beckett. And that's something I've written about and tried to get down into two books about the nature of mask. Because I think mask in that sense is anything formal — the formal discipline. And I suppose that's what my whole life has been built on, that and the search for a company.
4:24
Peter Hall - My expectation of actors before rehearsals (27/40)
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published: 27 Jul 2017
Peter Hall - My expectation of actors before rehearsals (27/40)
Peter Hall - My expectation of actors before rehearsals (27/40)
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- published: 27 Jul 2017
- views: 2018
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British-born theatre director, Sir Peter Hall (1930-2017), ran the Arts Theatre, founded the Royal Shakespeare Company when he was only 29, and directed the National Theatre. In 1977 he was knighted for his contribution to the theatre. [Listener: John Goodwin; date recorded: 2006; date recorded: 2006]
TRANSCRIPT: If he's read the play lots and lots of times and he's talked to the author — if living — and he's studied the author — if dead — then he might be in a position to enter the rehearsal room. I don't myself believe that you should design the play before you've discovered the play and I don't believe you can discover the play without the actors. Now this is not common practice because the accountants have pointed out that if you build them the model of the set well before the rehearsal starts, it can have longer to be built and will therefore be cheaper. And you say ‘Yes, but it might not be right’, and they say, ‘Well, you're going to have to make it right before you go’. Anyway, that is... that is a dispute. Mostly you have to design the set before you meet the actors. What is happy and what is right is that you design the set with the actors and in fact you design everything with the actors. You have final editorial control but in the early days, I think the first time you meet the actors, you're not saying to them, we're going to do the play like this. You say the play is... targeting this area of experience, this area of life; how can we, by reading it, discussing it, finding it together, how can we make that clear? And at that point the play is a rather diffuse object, and as you work on it through the first couple of weeks, it narrows down, diagrammatically.
Now, I now do something which is extremely unpopular with the Stanislavsky/Method brigade. I say to actors: ‘I want you to come on the first day knowing your lines’. Now if you do that, you save a fortnight's rehearsal at a stroke. Also, if you're doing Shakespeare, part of learning the lines is also learning where the ends of the lines are, where the breath pattern is, quite a technical thing. Now, it's much easier to learn lines by wandering about with a book in your hand and remembering that when you go and sit on the sofa you say this line, or when you go... But it wastes time and therefore I now expect actors to come, having learnt it, and we sit round and play it to each other, sitting, discussing. Anybody can discuss anything; anybody can say anything. And we actually find out what the life of the scene is from that absolutely mutual examination. And that can go for five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10 days and you... you start to notice that the actors physicalize slightly certain speeches. They... they move or they half get up or, after a bit, they're actually standing up and that is the moment when you need to put it into the set as whatever the set may be, and at that point, it's probably some bits of tape on the floor, gummed down, there's a door and, if you really want to make a meal of exiting, you do that and open the door and push into it. Anyway, the rough spatial relationships are there. If you've been really responsible as a director you will have staged each scene in your book so that, in the event of nothing happening among the actors, you can give a quick diagram staging. But if you do that it is a sign of failure because, at the moment when you begin moving, the actors should know so much about it from their experience of sitting round and talking and acting it and acting it and acting it, that they actually stage it very fluently and very easily out of their own instinct. And occasionally you have to intervene and say, you know, ‘Don't go over there because, if you do, you're masking him’. But they're tiny things, and if it's working well, you can stage a very difficult scene very quickly because the actors know where they need to be and they know how they need to move. And that's because of the past work, not the present work.
3:48
Peter Hall - Remaining true to the classics (29/40)
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published: 27 Jul 2017
Peter Hall - Remaining true to the classics (29/40)
Peter Hall - Remaining true to the classics (29/40)
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British-born theatre director, Sir Peter Hall (1930-2017), ran the Arts Theatre, founded the Royal Shakespeare Company when he was only 29, and directed the National Theatre. In 1977 he was knighted for his contribution to the theatre. [Listener: John Goodwin; date recorded: 2006]
TRANSCRIPT: One has a responsibility as a director, and as an actor, not to mess about with the classics. I mean I don't mind people, as it were, drawing silly bits onto a classic, but they ought to be seen as foolish as they are because Shakespeare is rather good. Shakespeare does rather know better than us. Now, if you translate what we do to Shakespeare to the musical world, I mean it's the equivalent of going into the opera house and people saying: ‘Oh yeah, we don't have the overture to the 'Marriage of Figaro' anymore; I mean it really isn't necessary. We get straight into the action, it's terrific’. I've seen 'Hamlet' with no first scene. I mean who wants all those boring people wandering about on battlements with ghosts I mean, says the director, and cuts it. I mean it is absolutely criminal and critics, in my view, should get up and blow the whistle on people. But they don't know the texts well enough themselves and they regard it as rather with it and cool and… and rather clever to be like that. I don't think it's clever at all; I think it's a… it's a demonstration of arrogant stupidity but there you are. And then, you know, somebody comes along and, and does the full text, people say, my goodness, it isn't as difficult as all that, I can understand it. Well, of course you can understand it if you actually tell the story that Shakespeare told. But if you cut half of it you can't. I suppose that in every Shakespeare play at this moment in time there are half a dozen, perhaps a dozen lines, which have aged so badly that they really are incomprehensible to a modern audience, but there're not more. And people who hide behind the idea that Shakespeare is incomprehensible don't know how to comprehend him and that's… it's just as simple as that, as far as I'm concerned. So, you know, I'm now called an Iambic Fundamentalist by my enemies and I'm regarded as a pedant. But when I started doing this I was regarded as a revolutionary who did nothing about… who knew nothing about Shakespeare and shouldn't be let loose near him. I mean that was… when I went to Stratford and started the RSC, half the media were saying: ‘Look, this man does 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof' and 'Waiting for Godot', he's a modernist, he knows nothing about Shakespeare. We don't want him. You know, he'll be doing this and doing that and doing the other.' So one… one sees one's reputation going in waves of action and reaction, of being a boring traditionalist and then being a revolutionist and what is the truth? Well, the truth is you do what you do because you believe it's what you should do and that's all really what you can do. You can't be influenced, I think, by media reaction to you. Of course one is depressed by it, of course one doesn't like bad notices. Of course one doesn't like being misunderstood. But there's absolutely nothing you can do to trim your own sails; you have to be what you are, because if you're not what you are, then you really have no possibility of looking yourself in the mirror… I mean. So I've had my ups and downs with the media but I rather… I'm rather excited by the media as a… as an entity because we live in a terribly complex society which is so full of noise and cries and adverts and promotions and this and that, that unless you've got millions of pounds that you can spend on advertising, the only way to point out that you're doing the play is to shout very loudly to the media and hope they'll pick it up. It's a sad fact but true, so we need the media, I think rather more than they need us.
3:45
Peter Hall - The author as part of the directing process (26/40)
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published: 27 Jul 2017
Peter Hall - The author as part of the directing process (26/40)
Peter Hall - The author as part of the directing process (26/40)
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British-born theatre director, Sir Peter Hall (1930-2017), ran the Arts Theatre, founded the Royal Shakespeare Company when he was only 29, and directed the National Theatre. In 1977 he was knighted for his contribution to the theatre. [Listener: John Goodwin; date recorded: 2006]
TRANSCRIPT: Perhaps I ought to analyse a little bit more what... being a director entails because I don't think people understand really what a director is; they think of him as some sort of autocrat — which he's not. And I think the first thing to be said is that doing a play, or an opera for that matter, is very much... is very different if you're doing a modern piece in which the author is available and comes to work with you, or whether you're doing a classic of the past where you have to find out so much about the context in which the work was originally given. Well if you're dealing with Samuel Beckett or Tennessee Williams or Harold Pinter or Peter Schaffer or Simon Gray... or, you know, these are just people I've worked with and have been blessed with... Michael Tippett in opera...then you have an absolute interplay. You can say, 'what do you mean here' and mostly the Samuel Becketts and the Harold Pinters of this world say I don't know what I meant, what does it say. And they make you look and see what it says. So you actually try and figure out what they meant. And that, of course, is quite a creative act in itself, which is much better than the author just telling you, this is what it meant. Sometimes authors are very bad directors of their own work because the actor asks what it means and they're told categorically what they means and they then act a category, just something very simplistic, so it lacks ambiguity. So it's... it's very, very different. I love working on a modern piece with the author; the only thing I do absolutely say is that if you're going to come as an author to rehearsal you should be there most of the time. You shouldn't come on special days when the author is present, which paralyses everybody. In other words, he should be part of the process and he should be able to say anything he wants about what the director's doing and the director should be able to say anything he wants about the text. That's how I've done... I don't know, 10 or 11 plays of Harold Pinter's and I think it sometimes slightly unnerves the actors when they see two people arguing like we do but our argument is so... is very well intentioned and very amiable. It's not destructive and it's not egotistical. So it works and it's very creative. If you're doing a historical piece, an old piece, a Shakespeare piece, one of the first things you have to do is to try and immerse yourself in the period of the piece itself, socially and historically, and try to understand why he wrote that as he wrote that at the moment that he wrote that for the audience he was writing for. All these are great imponderables and it's a lot of scholarly work, a lot of scholarly reading, which you don't bring into the rehearsal room with you because actors are not really very interested in scholarship; they want something visceral they can get hold of. But you can create an atmosphere, I think, where you... you know, the actors really respond to their duty which I think is not to say... had Shakespeare been writing now he would have done it like this, but to say Shakespeare wrote it wanting it to mean something like this and this is what we're trying to convey to you. That's very difficult to define and, you know, you can argue over it very, very much and very often.
1:04
Peter Hall - After the run has finished (30/40)
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published: 27 Jul 2017
Peter Hall - After the run has finished (30/40)
Peter Hall - After the run has finished (30/40)
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British-born theatre director, Sir Peter Hall (1930-2017), ran the Arts Theatre, founded the Royal Shakespeare Company when he was only 29, and directed the National Theatre. In 1977 he was knighted for his contribution to the theatre. [Listener: John Goodwin; date recorded: 2006]
TRANSCRIPT: I think the interesting thing is that... there is a kind of... golden mean that you're left with, with each piece of work. It's after the public have decided, it's after the critics have decided, it's after the media has decided, it's probably after the run has finished. There is a trace which is nearly always accurate...
[JG] Yes.
Nearly always.
[JG] Yes.
It may have had very bad notices, but there it is because the public say no no, this is worth something.
[JG] Yes.
It may have had very good notices and not been consistent.
[JG] Yeah, absolutely.
So I think, on the whole, we live in a... providing there's freedom of speech...
[JG] Truth will out.
Truth will out, as long as there's enough voices and they're not gagged...
[JG] Yes...
Or corrupted...
[JG] Yes.
That is a worry in this day and age that we're getting more and more nannyish... in you know, in the way we're treated.
5:06
Peter Hall - Final polishing of a play (31/40)
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published: 27 Jul 2017
Peter Hall - Final polishing of a play (31/40)
Peter Hall - Final polishing of a play (31/40)
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British-born theatre director, Sir Peter Hall (1930-2017), ran the Arts Theatre, founded the Royal Shakespeare Company when he was only 29, and directed the National Theatre. In 1977 he was knighted for his contribution to the theatre. [Listener: John Goodwin; date recorded: 2006; date recorded: 2006]
TRANSCRIPT: Once you get to the latter stage in rehearsal as a director, if you've observed the form and you've generated the feeling, there's then a period which is almost practice, when the actors simply have to run the play and... and try and make an emotional journey inside themselves which sustains it and which is accurate and makes them feel comfortable. Then comes the last stage — the fourth or fifth stage — which is entirely about editing, where you say that was very nice but we don't need it, or that pause has got to go, or that isn't, you know. And now we look at the whole thing we don't need... And that can be quite worrying to the actor because bits get pulled out; cuts are very difficult always, but if they're right, they heal terribly quickly. If they're wrong they go on bleeding; you know you've got to be very careful. But none of us know in this business — actor or director — what we've done until we ask the audience. I mean when I'm directing a comedy I think I know where the laughs are, but I don't. Maybe I get 40% of them right.
[JG] And nor do the actors actually.
Nor do the actors, no, no. So that the first... the first time a group of actors meet an audience with a comedy is absolutely terrifying because it goes off like a great uncontrolled beast with laughter... muffles and distorts the next line which the actor speaks into the laugh, so you miss the next laugh because they haven't heard the payoff. Most comedic acting, you know, is... is about having a clear establishment, a clear feed. The payoff only works if the feed is really understood. That's why, if you... if you talk to people like Morecambe and Wise they say that the thing that matters is the straight man not the clown.
Clowns are of course, another... another thing altogether and a very great problem in Shakespeare because he did have clowns – two great clowns – in his company. And... I mean a clown, by definition, is someone who, when they walk on the stage, makes the audience laugh without doing anything. And you can't say it's because he walks funnily, because that's not why they laugh; it's just because he just is funny.
[JG] It's like Tommy Cooper.
Yeah, Tommy Cooper, absolutely, absolutely. And I... I know from bitter experience that actors who try and act clowns are not funny, but somebody who is a... is a clown, given Shakespeare's texts, gets laughs when the audience don't actually understand quite what he said. Because the writing is so meticulous in order to present the audience with the possibility of laughter that they laugh. But you need to have it delivered by a clown.
So once you've met the audience and you've seen what they tell you, you then go to work again.
[JG] Arthur Lowe doing Stefano.
Arthur Lowe doing Stefano, absolutely, absolutely.
[JG] He was an incredibly funny character.
Absolutely and that wonderful guy I had last...
[JG] The fall guy.
The guy I had at Bath last year in 'Much Ado' playing Dogberry.
[JG] Oh him, yes.
Oh, what's he called? He was wonderful because he just was funny. He didn't have to work at it. No. But the period once you've started... I mean it's something... I... I'm told I started previews, that they didn't exist...
[JG] Yes, you did. You started them at Stratford.
Yes, because it seemed to me...
[JG] By John Barber [sic], now dead.
Yes, because it seemed to me absolute nonsense that, you know, you had a dress rehearsal on Monday at Stratford and then you opened on Tuesday. And usually there was... the critics said, you know, ‘This is rather a restrained evening, it doesn't quite work’ and, if you ever got them to come back and see the plays way on to the season, they were transported with joy to find that it was alive. I mean every... every production needs a week of running in... and work during the day.
[JG] Playing to an audience.
Playing to an audience. And it's not just simple things like how do we get a laugh here. It's just being absolutely sure that you're telling the story. The primary act of an actor standing on the stage is to tell a story to an audience, and if at any moment the audience don't understand the story or don't know where it's gone, you've lost them and that's it.
3:29
Peter Hall - Directing a play more than once (23/40)
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published: 27 Jul 2017
Peter Hall - Directing a play more than once (23/40)
Peter Hall - Directing a play more than once (23/40)
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British-born theatre director, Sir Peter Hall (1930-2017), ran the Arts Theatre, founded the Royal Shakespeare Company when he was only 29, and directed the National Theatre. In 1977 he was knighted for his contribution to the theatre. [Listener: John Goodwin; date recorded: 2006]
TRANSCRIPT: It's very interesting this question of, you know... why do you go back on things? I've done a lot of plays more than once. I've done four 'Hamlet's, four 'Twelfth Nights', three or four 'Tempests'... and I don't honestly remember what I did before. People always say to me, and how is it different? And I say I've absolutely no idea how it's different. I'm different; it's a different time, different place, different audience...
[JG] Different actors.
Yes, different actors. All I can do is set off on the journey again in order to try and make this play live in some sort as the author intended. Very dangerous that, because we all hide behind 'as the author intended' when we don't actually know what the author intended. I mean, you can interpret it in many, many ways but I... I think to set about doing a classic play on the basis that I have my interpretation of it, is totally wrong and phoney and false and ridiculous, finally. I mean... you can't do a play so that it speaks for itself. No play speaks for itself, but you do know the parameters within which the man worked. I... I'll give you an example. I'm at the moment... deep in 'Measure for Measure', which I am about to do. I did it once in America but I've never done it in this country and I happened... just before Christmas in New York where I was working, to go into an exhibition of Egon Schiele's work – the Austrian painter – and I love his work and I love Klimt's work — that whole period — and I suddenly thought, yeah, this... this is a way in... this is the way in for 'Measure for Measure'... Vienna, Freud, Jung, all that, sexually obsessed, sewers, all, you know, and I've spent five, six weeks really on this looking at Schiele, thinking about it, and this week I realised I was imposing something on the piece because 'Measure for Measure' has a very simple antecedent. James I was a new king and he'd written a book about kingship and how a king should behave. He was very shy. He didn't like public... speaking. He didn't like public appearances. On December 26th 1604 Shakespeare presented Measure for Measure at Whitehall Palace to the King for its first performance. It's about a duke who doesn't like crowds who is very nervous, very anxious about his record as a ruler and who leaves in order to let somebody else get their hands dirty so he can watch because he feels he should be an Angelo and he then watches what Angelo's doing and he gets actually hooked into power. He could stop all those people's sufferings like that, just take the cowl of his hood off as a monk. Now this has got nothing to do with Schiele, nothing to do with Vienna, nothing to do... so out it all went. Yesterday it was all chucked out. Everything. No, trust the tale, not your fantasies.
4:44
Peter Hall - The great adventure of the Royal Shakespeare Company (11/40)
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published: 27 Jul 2017
Peter Hall - The great adventure of the Royal Shakespeare Company (11/40)
Peter Hall - The great adventure of the Royal Shakespeare Company (11/40)
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British-born theatre director, Sir Peter Hall (1930-2017), ran the Arts Theatre, founded the Royal Shakespeare Company when he was only 29, and directed the National Theatre. In 1977 he was knighted for his contribution to the theatre. [Listener: John Goodwin; date recorded: 2006]
TRANSCRIPT: 1959, I... was the 100th anniversary season of… of Stratford, and all the stars were rolled out and… and I did Coriolanus with Olivier and Edith Evans, and I did the 'Midsummer Night's Dream' with Charles Laughton. And then, in 1960, I started the great adventure of the… the RSC [Royal Shakespeare Company]. And I suppose, you know, looking back on it, the company was called all sorts of things: post-Brechtian, very left-wing, dragging kings down so that they looked like ordinary men, you know, a new form of design without anything pictorial, very rough and textured, all sorts… but the one thing that almost nobody commented on or saw or understood, was that we were all speaking it in the same way, and we all knew the clues that Shakespeare puts in his verse which says: this is when you pause, this is when you go fast, this is when you go slow, this is when you come in on cue, this word you accent, you do not accent this. I mean, it's all there like a score, if you know how to read it.
[JG] Yes, it sounded wonderful. Although it was very rhythmic, it sounded completely naturalistic.
Well, yes, it sounds...
[JG] It sounded modern.
But it sounds naturalistic because you can understand it. I mean, you know, Shakespeare writes in lines, iambic pentameters, hideous phrase, but… ba-bum, ba-bum, ba-bum, ba-bum, ba-bum, and if you listen to ordinary speech, it's, in English… about five beats is about what each hunk of conversation comes out as. And if you listen to French, it's six beats, so it's perhaps no accident that the alexandrine in French classical drama is six beats and the iambic five beats is ours. But why did he bother? Because it's easier to write prose than iambic pentameters and he… he did it so that the audience were not overwhelmed with information. If you say, ‘If music be the food of love play on give me excess of it that surfeiting the appetite may sicken and so die’, the audience say: ‘I'm sorry, I don't know what you're talking about’. But if you say, ‘If music be the food of love, play on. Give me excess of it, that surfeiting, the appetite may sicken and so die’, you've delivered three lines of blank verse and you can understand each line. It's a… it's a communication device primarily, and that's what we were doing. We were playing it trippingly on the tongue, which is what 'Hamlet' begs the actors to do, but we were playing it in lines.
[JG] But it was a revolution. A true revolution, I thought because I… I had heard an awful lot of the old Shakespeare with, you know, the way you were talking about it done by Byam Shaw, and the change was amazing.
But it was interesting, it's interesting...
[JG] That's much, much quicker.
Looking at the… well, that is absolutely true, I mean, plays that lasted... actually we would… we would take 25-30 minutes off a play's running time, not by cutting it, but by speaking it trippingly and by keeping it witty and… and understandable. The other interesting thing was that, you know, by the time I left the RSC which was in '68, we could do a Shakespeare play in about a week to 10 days less rehearsal, because everybody knew what they were looking for, what they were doing. I mean, that is if we had enough of the team in it, you know, but I mean actors like Ian Holm were there on and off of 10 years. I mean I… I found very early on that the only way to create a company is not by imprisoning them with tight contracts, but by allowing them to go away. If they can go away for six months, they come back, because home is then the Royal Shakespeare Company. And I… I mean the only... I've had lots of failures and made lots of mistakes, I would, but the… but the only thing I really regret is leaving the RSC when I did. I mean I had to because I was sick of it...
[JG] I wrote to you and begged you not to.
I know, I do remember you did. You took no notice. I took no notice, but what I should have done is said, 'Look, I've been doing this for 10 years, I… I need a year off, then I'll come back‘. That's what I should have done.
3:23
Peter Hall - How Waiting For Godot changed my life (8/40)
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published: 27 Jul 2017
Peter Hall - How Waiting For Godot changed my life (8/40)
Peter Hall - How Waiting For Godot changed my life (8/40)
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British-born theatre director, Sir Peter Hall (1930-2017), ran the Arts Theatre, founded the Royal Shakespeare Company when he was only 29, and directed the National Theatre. In 1977 he was knighted for his contribution to the theatre. [Listener: John Goodwin; date recorded: 2006]
TRANSCRIPT: I did a production of Pirandello's 'Henry IV' which was transferred to the London Arts because they had a spare couple of weeks, got very good notices. I had a phone call asking me to go to Windsor rep to do 'The Letter' by Somerset Maugham, and as I went off to do that, the Arts Theatre London said would I like a… a very low-paid contract carrying tea, reading scripts and going out to the reps if they wanted me so I could go and… so I could have my cake and eat it. And within a year, John Fernald who was running the Arts was appointed to RADA [The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art] and I was asked to take over the theatre. So aged 24 I had my own theatre with the responsibility of producing a play every five weeks bang in the middle of London, and as my very talented son, Edward, who is a great director, has said to me many a time, you don't know you were born, he says, you were so lucky. And I was lucky, extraordinarily lucky, because then once I was at The Arts, came a play one day, and I opened it and it said: 'Waiting for Godot' by Samuel Beckett. I did not know who Samuel Beckett was. I had a vague idea there was some connection with James Joyce. I knew he had a play on in Paris in a 75-seat theatre. I hadn't seen it. The letter said ‘from Donald Albery’, who was a West End producer, he said: ‘No actor in London will be in this play and no director will direct it. Everybody's turned it down. I've seen some of your work so I wondered whether it would interest you’. So I thought, well, I'm clearly very much at the end of the line here, but I read it, and I don't pretend to say that I said to myself, this is the turning point of mid-20th century drama, because I didn't. But I did say, ‘This is highly original, beautifully written, very, very funny, and unlike anything I've ever read or experienced, so it's worth a go’, and Godot changed my life. I mean it… it absolutely brought me my first offer to work at Stratford as a director, Stratford-on-Avon. It brought me the friendship of Tennessee Williams and the rights of his plays in London. It brought me directing Leslie Caron in 'Gigi', the play. We subsequently married. It brought me a little bit of money for the first time, and it lead in a way, straight to Stratford which is the next part of the chapter. So, I mean, that's all the positive side. The negative side is if you're possessed by desire to do something, the fear that you have that you will not be able to do it, or that the world will not let you do it, is a huge price which you have to pay; so it's not all, you know, it's not all lovely success, at all. And I think if you're lucky, like I was, you're even… even more aware of how easy it is to be unlucky, if that paradox makes any sense. It's a cruel profession. It's no good being okay at it, in the middle. You have to be at the top or not at all.
2:29
Peter Hall - The secret of the Cambridge University drama department is... (7/40)
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published: 27 Jul 2017
Peter Hall - The secret of the Cambridge University drama department is... (7/40)
Peter Hall - The secret of the Cambridge University drama department is... (7/40)
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British-born theatre director, Sir Peter Hall (1930-2017), ran the Arts Theatre, founded the Royal Shakespeare Company when he was only 29, and directed the National Theatre. In 1977 he was knighted for his contribution to the theatre. [Listener: John Goodwin; date recorded: 2006]
TRANSCRIPT: I was recently in America with my company, doing 'As You Like It', in Los Angeles. We went to the drama department of the University of Southern California because they asked us if we would go and do a workshop. There were a 100 students and I looked at these 100 students and thought, where on earth are you going to go? There aren't a 100 jobs in the American theatre for you, and of course, most of them go and work in drama departments. There's a whole world there, which is very inbred and very incestuous and quite distressing in many ways. Anyway, I was there with two young actors, both of whom had been turned out of Cambridge in the last few years and we did the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet. And they were very appreciative and then we had ‘Q&A’, question and answer, and a young man said,‘Could you tell us the secret of Cambridge drama?’ And I said, ‘I'm sorry, what do you mean?’ And he said, ‘Well, you're all different generations but the three of you all came from… came through Cambridge, and Cambridge has produced Nick Hytner and Trevor Nunn and Richard Eyre and Jonathan Miller and John Barton and Emma Thompson’ and he went on and on, and on. He'd done his homework. He said: ‘What is the secret of the Cambridge University drama department?’ And I said to this hundred-full drama department: ‘The secret of the Cambridge University drama department is that there isn't one’. The dean then said to me, ‘You have just wrecked my entire… my entire being and why we're all here’. Anyway, it's true. Cambridge drama has been extraordinarily fertile in the last 50 years because there is this ramshackle theatre and the university give the committee, who are all students, a… a sum of money each year to portion out among themselves to do plays, and you'll gather from that that if you can survive Cambridge drama, you'll probably be all right in the profession, and I think this is absolutely true. I'm a little worried now because they're refurbishing and rehabilitating the theatre and I fear it may become very expensive and run by senior dons, but I hope it will continue to be the messy thing it is, which… because that's how the… the creativity works.
Peter Hall
Peter Hall may refer to:
This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - https://wn.com/Peter_Hall
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