00:00:01.120 - 00:00:12.800

GREGORY DORAN: My name is Greg Doran. I'm the artistic director emeritus of the Royal Shakespeare Company, and I started here as an actor in 1987.

00:00:12.800 - 00:00:23.240

I progressed across the footlights to become assistant director, associate director, chief associate director, and then was made artistic director 10 years ago.

00:00:23.240 - 00:00:44.500

And I have just stepped aside and I'm looking forward to whoever leads us into the next chapter of the RSC's history. The origins of the RSC.

00:00:44.500 - 00:00:57.010

Well, effectively the RSC was established in 1960 by Peter Hall. But of course, Shakespeare at Stratford goes a long way back to 1879.

00:00:57.010 - 00:01:11.950

And when it was established, when the theatre was built by Charles Edward Flower of the Flower family, who raised so much money for the building of the theatre he was known as Self Raising Flower, well he had a dream

00:01:11.950 - 00:01:25.630

for the theatre which is significant in that it is echoed throughout the RSC's history and the history of the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre. He was inspired by a German company run

00:01:25.630 - 00:01:38.440

by the Duke of Saxe Meiningen and that company were an ensemble. They were dedicated to looking at Shakespeare's plays to analyse all the parts.

00:01:38.440 - 00:01:48.640

Not just the leading parts, not just the star vehicle element of Shakespeare, if you like. And they had a subsidy from the Duke himself that didn't rely on the box office.

00:01:48.640 - 00:02:10.180

And some of those basic principles have echoed through the history of theatre in here in Stratford and Shakespeare production here in Stratford. So the early theatre was a week long festival of plays but also

00:02:10.180 - 00:02:25.360

run by a very eccentric man called Frank Benson who was a last, maybe not the last, but one of the great actor managers, and he established a company. So again it was a company doing all the plays

00:02:25.360 - 00:02:42.040

and doing things like one season they did the history cycle. So they did a thing called the week of kings, and that thematic element of putting the Shakespeare plays together became a very interesting thing later

00:02:42.040 - 00:02:55.600

on if you like. Then, of course, that Shakespeare Memorial Theatre burnt down in 1926 one blustery March morning. And the competition was raised to start building the new

00:02:55.600 - 00:03:14.830

theatre, and Elizabeth Scott's theatre opened in 1932. Not terribly successfully to begin with one has to say because it was really modelled as in much of the architecture of the age.

00:03:14.830 - 00:03:29.950

Sort of more as a cinema than as a theatre. So there was a lot of cubic capacity to fill in terms of volume, but she-- and the history of that theatre became a history really

00:03:29.950 - 00:03:43.390

of trying to alter the actor audience relationship from-- when it opened somebody said that standing on the stage of the Royal Theatre, then Shakespeare Memorial Theatre,

00:03:43.390 - 00:03:57.190

and addressing the audience was like standing on the Cliffs of Dover and addressing Boulogne. So a tough job. So subsequent directors tried to change the nature of that space

00:03:57.190 - 00:04:14.380

to kind of pull the stage out, to pull the galleries around, to cantilever out the gallery, to put side galleries in order to establish that ideal actor audience relationship for Shakespeare.

00:04:14.380 - 00:04:31.870

So when in terms of the post-war period, you got people like Barry Jackson, who had set up the Birmingham Repertory Theatre who started to establish some really extraordinary talents

00:04:31.870 - 00:04:50.170

within the company like Paul Schofield and Peter Brook who had worked with him at Birmingham. And then he was succeeded by Anthony Quayle, who led a sort of star system throughout the 50s which

00:04:50.170 - 00:05:01.990

put Stratford on the map in a different kind of way in that the Oliviers came, and Laurence Olivier played Coriolanus, and he played Titus Andronicus, and he played Malvolio and Macbeth,

00:05:01.990 - 00:05:20.290

and Peggy Ashcroft, and John Gielgud, and Michael Redgrave. And indeed, in 1951, they did a histories cycle for the Festival of Britain starring the great Richard Burton as Prince Hal, Henry V. But by the time

00:05:20.290 - 00:05:32.590

you get to the late 50s, and when Peter Hall starts performing, directing for the company, there's a definite shift. And what he wants is in a way to go back

00:05:32.590 - 00:05:49.330

to some of the principles that Flower set up which was to establish a company long term and have that company be led by great actors like Peggy Ashcroft and Paul Schofield,

00:05:49.330 - 00:06:02.020

and influenced, again by a German company, by the Berliner Ensemble to change the whole aesthetic in a way. So he wanted to instead of having

00:06:02.020 - 00:06:19.150

sort of painted sets and painted canvas, he wanted the sets to be made of metal and wood, and the costumes to be made of leather. And so a real different aesthetic entirely and close

00:06:19.150 - 00:06:33.940

to the Berliner Ensemble. And I think that shift to a different kind of emphasis on how Shakespeare was spoken less about what was regarded as the sort of voice beautiful as the music of Shakespeare

00:06:33.940 - 00:06:46.360

and down to the sort of politics, if you like, of those plays. And again, a commitment to the speaking of Shakespeare. He brought John Barton in from Cambridge

00:06:46.360 - 00:06:58.840

to establish a sort of house style in terms of how the verse was spoken. And I think that in those first few years he established some real ground rules for what

00:06:58.840 - 00:07:16.390

this company was, one of which was to establish our London base at the Aldwych, and to really emphasize how Shakespeare production and Shakespeare performance could be improved if you were cross fertilizing that

00:07:16.390 - 00:07:30.340

with productions of modern plays by we did the first play by Pinter the third play by Pinter Homecoming. Old Times, for instance he did here.

00:07:30.340 - 00:07:55.300

And that idea of developing actors skills, not as a sort of rarefied Shakespeare focused style, but so that actors would be as comfortable in Albee or Pinter as in Shakespeare.

00:07:55.300 - 00:08:11.920

And I think subsequent directors followed that lead. I think under Trevor Nunn, for instance, I think we also started to look at different spaces. When Trevor looked at the tin shack that

00:08:11.920 - 00:08:28.300

was the costume store that is now The Other Place where Michel Saint-Denis had run acting classes and experimental acting studio, he wanted to develop that instinct.

00:08:28.300 - 00:08:45.640

And when Buzz Goodbody became the first director of T.O.P and the first woman to direct for the RSC, you know, she followed that through particularly with productions of King Lear and Hamlet with Ben Kingsley.

00:08:45.640 - 00:09:02.900

And what happened I think with the T.O.P. was a concentration on a different kind of style, which was more forensic, which was close up, which allowed a greater scrutiny on performance if you like.

00:09:02.900 - 00:09:15.340

So the T.O.P, and then subsequently an old banana warehouse in Covent Garden called Donmar Warehouse that was established as the London equivalent, if you like of T.O.P. also not just

00:09:15.340 - 00:09:31.100

to focus on Shakespeare and Trevor Nunn obviously did his famous Macbeth there following all that experimental work on the detail of that, and stripping away from the big house big scale Shakespeare.

00:09:31.100 - 00:09:43.990

Which gave us a different audience. It led to things like small scale tours. It broadened our perspective. It's the search for new spaces.

00:09:43.990 - 00:10:07.570

Eventually we wanted to move out of the Aldwych and the moved to the Barbican which Trevor described as a jewel set in a concrete sea. And that instinct for building out, if you like,

00:10:07.570 - 00:10:21.340

was a very key instinct along with also, of course, musicals which Trevor was-- sort of instigated. Musicals of Shakespeare like The Comedy of Errors

00:10:21.340 - 00:10:36.250

that he did with Guy Woolfenden and starring Judi Dench and Michael Williams and Roger Rees and so on. But then, of course, into Les Miserables and allowing us to establish a different kind of funding base

00:10:36.250 - 00:10:50.490

for the company because subsidy had been a huge element that Peter Hall had established and vied with the National Theatre to establish, to make sure that we were able to afford the amount of work we were doing.

00:10:50.490 - 00:11:04.800

And I think Terry continued that work, and of course, under Terry-- Terry Hands regime, we opened The Swan which was to initially to look at the work of Shakespeare's

00:11:04.800 - 00:11:16.170

contemporaries. So we were looking at Shakespeare not only in the context of new work, new writing but also of the stable of writers in which Shakespeare

00:11:16.170 - 00:11:36.510

himself worked. And I think that those instincts have kind of continued. Adrian, of course, he want-- he passionately wanted to have a theatre in Stratford following on from the success of The

00:11:36.510 - 00:11:52.410

Swan, in a way, in which the actor-audience relationship was much more intimate, building out of all the discoveries from the T.O.P. et cetera and recognizing that an audience-- the audience in the 1930s was different to an audience

00:11:52.410 - 00:12:18.630

in the 1980s, and we required a closer relationship. And I think what Adrian tried to do into in terms of the sense of wanting to knock down the old Elizabeth Scott building and build a new theatre there, which had a Shakespearean

00:12:18.630 - 00:12:25.210

relationship to the audience, if you like, so that the audience weren't somehow sitting out there in the dark. They were part of the experience,

00:12:25.210 - 00:12:43.440

and it was complicit and quintessential to the experience, if you like. That also led to-- it was part of an instinct in terms of getting actors to Stratford, which we meant that we,

00:12:43.440 - 00:13:00.450

in his terms, wanted to lose the stranglehold of having to perform every-- a 60-week contract which then went to the Barbican. So the removal from the Barbican was a very contentious element

00:13:00.450 - 00:13:17.430

of Adrian's regime, but it came from a very, very key instinct for the company. And under Michael Boyd, the RSC then did indeed manage to establish, put ourselves on a better financial footing,

00:13:17.430 - 00:13:34.890

but also managed to establish, again, the newly transformed Royal Shakespeare theatre. And also Michael wanted to go back to principles of ensemble and make sure that we established-- re-established,

00:13:34.890 - 00:13:50.080

if you like, the RSC's centrality as a teaching organization, and the work of our education department really began to flourish and grow, and the demand that we should put--

00:13:50.080 - 00:13:58.890

we should stand up for Shakespeare, do Shakespeare, kids in the classroom should be able to have access to the same kind of techniques we had in the rehearsal room.

00:13:58.890 - 00:14:15.570

And I think also under that, during Michael's time, the growth of our community engagement started. And it's both of those instincts have been something that I have continued under my aegis, if you like.

00:14:15.570 - 00:14:32.070

And I guess, one of the things that seemed to me to be really important was that we-- indeed we looked-- that we looked at the play-- that-- the danger with the company

00:14:32.070 - 00:14:46.470

has always been a sort of conveyor belt of Shakespeare's, and if it's Tuesday, it must be As You Like It sort of thing. And I-- having spotted that we had done 10 Romeo-- sorry, in one decade, we had done five Romeo and Juliet.

00:14:46.470 - 00:15:00.900

Between 2000 and 2010, literally five productions of Romeo and Juliet which to me was reducing the currency. So I made a very simple programming decision which was to that we would work through the entire canon

00:15:00.900 - 00:15:16.440

without, as they say on the radio, for hesitation, deviation, or repetition and just work our way through and so that each play would be an event. It wouldn't be-- we wouldn't be doing A Midsummer Night's Dream

00:15:16.440 - 00:15:24.930

because it was the time to do another Midsummer Night's Dream. We'd be doing it because there was a passionate idea behind it.

00:15:24.930 - 00:15:41.460

And indeed, in 2016, Erica Whyman deputy artistic director, did an extraordinary production of Dream which we toured around the country and which had-- the rude mechanicals were played by local amateur groups,

00:15:41.460 - 00:15:52.680

and all the fairies were played by local schoolkids, and thousands of people connected with the RSC in a way that they hadn't been able to do before. So the mantra that Shakespeare is for everyone

00:15:52.680 - 00:16:10.800

was something that we felt we had to really positively embody, if you like. So I suppose what the RSC means now is analysing what our relations-- what Shakespeare's relationship is

00:16:10.800 - 00:16:24.840

to the audience that we play to. And one of the aspects of that is greater diversity in casting and the people who get to put on those plays, get to direct those plays, design those plays

00:16:24.840 - 00:16:43.200

and diversity in terms of not just so I had done a Julius Caesar which was set in Africa with an entirely Black cast led by Patterson Joseph and Cyril Nri and Adjoa Andoh.

00:16:43.200 - 00:16:57.630

And that was because we could. Maybe 30 years ago that would not have been possible, but that is an opportunity and is there. And in the same way that we--

00:16:57.630 - 00:17:15.990

I've just directed Richard III with Arthur Hughes who was the first disabled actor to play that iconic disabled role, if you like, going back to Charlotte Arrowsmith who was the first deaf actor to play a major role in Stratford using

00:17:15.990 - 00:17:34.470

BSL in a production of Troilus and Cressida in 2018, which was the first gender balanced production that we'd done. So I guess in terms of changing who does it

00:17:34.470 - 00:17:53.460

and what it's for and who owns it has been a big factor in what I guess we've tried to do. Like the Wars of the Roses which we've just done which, again, have had both--

00:17:53.460 - 00:18:08.760

several groups of people involved. Our Shakespeare Nation group, which is a community engagement program for adults who have historically not engaged with theatre or with Shakespeare, the Next Generation group,

00:18:08.760 - 00:18:33.300

which is a company of young actors who are drawn largely from low income families and in areas of social deprivation. And they can be with the company for seven years from 12 to 19. And also we had a group of undergraduates

00:18:33.300 - 00:18:43.880

who had just gone through-- had just graduated from drama school but after two years of a pandemic. And so we wanted to make sure that that opportunity was still

00:18:43.880 - 00:18:57.090

there. So I guess all the kind of instincts of who we are now are derived from where we've been, and I think there's a sort of Janus-like attitude, I feel,

00:18:57.090 - 00:19:12.990

that we look forward, but we also look back. I think it's important for us to know where we came from in order to know where we're going. And I suppose that is a neat segue to the whole attitude

00:19:12.990 - 00:19:41.780

to our archive. There are, of course, radical productions of Shakespeare plays which change how we think about the plays, whether that is famously Brook's Dream in 1970, which

00:19:41.780 - 00:19:59.920

threw the emphasis back onto the words to create the images if you like. So gone was all the sort of moonlit glades and gossamer fairies, and it was a sort of a set

00:19:59.920 - 00:20:21.590

of trapezes and Chinese acrobat primary colors. And it was clearly expressed or captured a sort of joy that was released by removing it from the sort of clutter, if you like, that-- of theatrical tradition.

00:20:21.590 - 00:20:32.600

So sometimes those productions are doing precisely that, cutting against that tradition. And sometimes it's a radical interpretation of a particular character like Tony Sher's Richard III

00:20:32.600 - 00:20:50.120

which sort of became an absolutely phenomenal iconic performance which then, of course, affected all the other performances of Richard III as Brook's Dream had done.

00:20:50.120 - 00:21:02.750

Nobody wanted to Dream after Peter Brook had done it or do a pale imitation of it or an homage to it. And after Tony's Richard III, you then had to radically rethink and refresh

00:21:02.750 - 00:21:13.550

what your ideas of the plays were. I think the same probably with the Wars of the Roses that Peter Hall and John Barton did that saw them-- saw the connections between the plays,

00:21:13.550 - 00:21:29.320

saw the advantage of an ensemble because I think the Wars of the Roses sort of defined what it was that Peter Hall wanted his company to be after a few-- after a couple of years of trying different things

00:21:29.320 - 00:21:40.580

and looking at different things. It suddenly all coalesced in terms of ensemble and in terms of aesthetic and in terms of the way the thing was spoken.

00:21:40.580 - 00:21:58.790

And I think Hamlet is a play that that has frequently happened with, whether that was David Warner's Hamlet in 1965, which caught the spirit of the student radical of-- in his long scarf, his long orange scarf

00:21:58.790 - 00:22:09.720

and a sort of questioning of the establishment that suddenly he was a student from the radical '60s, if you like. In the same way that David Tennant caught something else

00:22:09.720 - 00:22:23.990

when he did it, when he played Hamlet and brought a very, very contemporary aesthetic to it and was the funniest of Hamlet's. He literally took the lines about I

00:22:23.990 - 00:22:41.600

have of late yet I know not why I lost all my mirth, well, suggesting that Hamlet was a funny guy. And that was suddenly something incredibly fresh and new. So I think that there are often times when suddenly somebody

00:22:41.600 - 00:22:56.060

captures something in a play that is-- that hasn't been seen before and makes us rethink how we may want to do those plays in the future. And sometimes that is about opportunity.

00:22:56.060 - 00:23:10.910

It is like, as I was saying, Charlotte Arrowsmith playing Cassandra in Troilus and Cressida and then the following year playing Audrey in As You Like It, the goatherd Audrey, again,

00:23:10.910 - 00:23:26.270

with BSL, with an interpreter on stage with her who then turned out to be the boyfriend, William, who-- and it was the most radical interpretation, weirdly, of that relationship I've ever seen.

00:23:26.270 - 00:23:40.970

And you suddenly go-- I remember doing a play at T.O.P in 1999, which was called Oroonoko. It was an Aphra Behn novella adapted by Biyi Bandele,

00:23:40.970 - 00:23:53.840

and it was the first time the RSC hosted or fielded a virtually entirely Black company. And out of that, one of those actors, one of those young actors was David Oyelowo

00:23:53.840 - 00:24:13.160

and two years later, Michael Boyd cast him as Henry VI. And that, what he brought to that part was in a way not his Blackness but a sort of rigorous integrity and spirituality.

00:24:13.160 - 00:24:26.030

And that made us rethink who can play what, to some extent, I think. So, yeah, there are always productions. You can never identify them beforehand.

00:24:26.030 - 00:24:46.150

They always-- like as I was saying, about Buzz Goodbody's Hamlet or Lear in the T.O.P leading to Trevor's Macbeth with Judi Dench and Ian McKellen, those-- that's partly what's great about the continuum of the RSC

00:24:46.150 - 00:24:58.550

is not that we keep on doing those plays but that we keep on seeing them-- trying to see them freshly or sometimes do them differently to they were done last time.

00:24:58.550 - 00:25:08.930

And I think that is-- that's an instinct. That's a dangerous instinct because you start applying concept, as Adrian Noble used to say,

00:25:08.930 - 00:25:35.210

with a capital K and an umlaut which is not always the best approach. Seasons get planned in many different ways. I have been lucky enough to work at the RSC

00:25:35.210 - 00:25:56.660

under three different artistic directors before myself, and they get planned in different ways. There was-- there used to be, under Terry and Adrian Noble particularly, and to some extent under Michael Boyd,

00:25:56.660 - 00:26:18.350

a group of associate directors. So that was-- that became a sort of an organizing the different desires of those particular directors to do those particular-- whatever particular play.

00:26:18.350 - 00:26:35.120

And that was-- so that was the kind of-- that was a sort of lottery, to some extent. And I remember saying to Michael, can I do whatever it was?

00:26:35.120 - 00:26:44.810

And he would say, oh, that spoon's been licked which meant another director had put in for that particular production. So I think under--

00:26:44.810 - 00:26:57.740

what I found challenging and what I wanted to change from that was that it felt to me as though it didn't allow a longer term sense of how the plays may be put together.

00:26:57.740 - 00:27:11.150

And themes at the RSC and indeed, going back to the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, have been a really interesting way of looking at those plays. So whether that is the week of kings

00:27:11.150 - 00:27:26.120

that Frank Benson did before the Great War which famously was witnessed by W.B. Yeats who wrote about it at the time about how he'd never seen the connections between the plays working so well going

00:27:26.120 - 00:27:50.570

away-- the right way through to Peter Hall's Wars of the Roses or indeed, how in thematic terms maybe Trevor did a Roman season, which indeed we did in 2017. And a season of late plays was one that Adrian put together,

00:27:50.570 - 00:28:05.360

and they are always fascinating to see how those work and often on the kind of centenaries, if you like, or the big events. So for instance, for the Millennium,

00:28:05.360 - 00:28:25.920

Adrian decided that we would look at all the history plays, but because, to some extent, one of the things that happens at Stratford is that sometimes plays are done with the hindsight of what they did last time.

00:28:25.920 - 00:28:43.230

So Adrian decided instead of-- well, he decided to put all of the histories together. But instead of tetralogising them and sort of finding all the through routes and having the same cast, et cetera,

00:28:43.230 - 00:29:01.520

the same ensemble doing it, he decided that he would ask each of the associates to do a different play and in a different space but with the kind of continuity of the same company so that you might-- so you might get--

00:29:01.520 - 00:29:16.340

the crown for instance, was a continuous prop that went through, the same crown. But Stephen Pimlott did a modern dress Richard II in T.O.P, and Michael Attenborough did a more traditional Henry

00:29:16.340 - 00:29:35.180

IV in The Swan, and so that was a different shaking up of the plays, if you like. And we decided-- under Michael, we decided to do a different way of putting the plays together

00:29:35.180 - 00:29:49.730

and not histories or late plays but shipwreck plays, in which there are shipwrecks. And there were quite a lot of them in Shakespeare from The Tempest and Twelfth Night to The Comedy of Errors.

00:29:49.730 - 00:30:09.710

And so there were different connections made, therefore, between those different plays. And I guess my decision really was indeed to-- we started with the second history tetralogy

00:30:09.710 - 00:30:21.470

and finished with the first one which is chronologically, if you like, in the right order. But instead of tetralogising them, I wanted to look at them each in their own right.

00:30:21.470 - 00:30:48.310

So Richard II is a great lyric tragedy, and Henry IV as an extraordinary-- somebody once said that if Hamlet is Shakespeare's statue of David,

00:30:48.310 - 00:31:07.430

then the Henry IV plays are his Sistine Chapel. They're full of life and variety and what have you. And of course, sometimes there are other elements that affect planning.

00:31:07.430 - 00:31:15.250

So when we did that tetralogy, we decided to see each of the plays in their own right. First of all, Richard II, then putting the Henry IV plays together.

00:31:15.250 - 00:31:26.140

And then a year later, as it happened on the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt, we did Henry V, and then for 2016, we put them all-- we brought them all back together

00:31:26.140 - 00:31:37.450

and toured them for the first time to China, to the People's Republic of China, which was the first time we'd ever taken our work from the main stages into China.

00:31:37.450 - 00:31:49.940

So that affected the planning of the whole cycle of work. And sometimes it's to do with touring that we want to take something from the main repertoire and tour it.

00:31:49.940 - 00:32:05.090

So I think there are different instincts at different times, and sometimes they're to do with centenaries-- with centenaries of Shakespeare's death or Shakespeare's 450th or the celebration of his folio,

00:32:05.090 - 00:32:18.580

and those are-- sometimes we like to have plays in conversation between the main house and The Swan or the RST and The Swan, I should say.

00:32:18.580 - 00:32:38.830

And in 2016, we decided to put together work that we did in, for instance, 2016 was also the 400th anniversary of Cervantes, and so we did an adaptation of Don Quixote in that time

00:32:38.830 - 00:32:53.920

as well. And I think those conversations are always very, very interesting, sometimes plays that connect so you can go and see a revenge tragedy in The Swan

00:32:53.920 - 00:33:11.940

and then go and see Shakespeare's revenge tragedy and Hamlet on the main stage. I love the prompt books. So maybe I should explain what a prompt book is.

00:33:11.940 - 00:33:25.560

So a prompt book is a record of a production, but it's a practical record. In rehearsal, we have a stage management team made up of the stage manager who is sort of running the show, as it

00:33:25.560 - 00:33:39.570

were, or running the rehearsals from a sort of technical point of view and who will eventually be the representative of the stage management team there at the side in the wings during the show.

00:33:39.570 - 00:33:48.870

And then there is an ASM who does a lot of the running around, who makes sure that all the props are in the right place during the rehearsals. And then there is the DSM whose job

00:33:48.870 - 00:34:05.590

it is to record every element of the rehearsals and every change made in rehearsals. So if there are changes to the script, if lines are dropped or cut or if lines are added,

00:34:05.590 - 00:34:23.970

they will go into that text. But they are also recording all the moves, and often when a production settles, there is a sort of a blocking in which

00:34:23.970 - 00:34:38.880

would be adhered to in every performance, more or less. And the prompt book will record that and will record where somebody enters from, where they exit. And it will also record all the cues, so the lighting cues,

00:34:38.880 - 00:34:53.370

the sound cues, the automation cues, nowadays the video projection, et cetera. And that is-- so it's a very, very important record of the show.

00:34:53.370 - 00:35:10.380

And it's important because it is the book that is used during the show so that the DSM, the deputy stage manager, who has done all that work uses that copy sits in the control box

00:35:10.380 - 00:35:24.270

with a clear view of the stage and calls the show from the moment when they call the half which is actually 35 minutes before the show and then beginners just before the show

00:35:24.270 - 00:35:37.980

and calls the actors calls and then throughout the show calls those cues out to the stage manager or to the musical director in the band box or the sound cues, et cetera.

00:35:37.980 - 00:35:49.050

And has to do it in such a way and in an orderly and precise way so that should the DSM suddenly not be available for whatever reason, then somebody else can take that over,

00:35:49.050 - 00:36:00.210

and it is clear what needs to happen. So as a record of a very live thing, they are very interesting. I as a director find them really interesting

00:36:00.210 - 00:36:12.450

and instituted something that I found was really necessary which is, of course, that there's no such thing as a definitive text of a Shakespeare play.

00:36:12.450 - 00:36:28.860

So every production will have made choices about what lines they insert or cut or change around. And that is sometimes really necessary because one of the things we also record

00:36:28.860 - 00:36:40.470

is the running times and the playing times of the productions. The running time being exactly how long it was from lights up, if you like, to the interval and then

00:36:40.470 - 00:36:54.070

from the second half to the curtain call, and the wait a minute-- is that the playing time, or is that the running time? Anyway-- and one records the moment from the beginning

00:36:54.070 - 00:37:04.510

depending on how long the interval was or how long it took to start the show off. So that's-- and that is interesting because you can tell from--

00:37:04.510 - 00:37:19.800

so going back to basics, that Shakespeare's plays are long. That's the thing that everybody knows. They are long. Some of them-- well, so the shortest

00:37:19.800 - 00:37:31.500

is The Comedy of Errors which is maybe 1,725 lines, something like that, and Hamlet is over 4000. In fact, Hamlet is the longest play in the canon but not the longest play in the first folio

00:37:31.500 - 00:37:45.870

which is Richard III which is a very long play. Now, in my experience of Shakespeare, Shakespeare goes at 900 lines an hour. Some people, some scholars say it's 1,000 lines an hour.

00:37:45.870 - 00:38:05.340

They're not accounting for fights, dances, entrances, audience reaction. In my experience, as I say, 900 lines an hour is the sort of usual playing time of a Shakespeare play.

00:38:05.340 - 00:38:16.680

so if you want to start at 7:15, 7:30 and you want to have a 20-minute interval, and you want to be done by half past 10, then it's a mathematical equation.

00:38:16.680 - 00:38:30.940

You've got 2,400 lines to play with. Believe me, I've done the maths. But only seven of Shakespeare's plays, maybe, are that length, and some are at least one and a half times that.

00:38:30.940 - 00:38:44.550

So one of the fascinating things about looking at the prompt copies, prompt books is just seeing what directors have cut. The prompt books also indicate changes of fashion and priority

00:38:44.550 - 00:38:55.050

because we used to-- there was a time when we had-- regularly had two intervals in a Shakespeare play. There was a time when they regularly came down at a quarter past 11.

00:38:55.050 - 00:39:08.340

And fashions have changed, and maybe concentration spans have changed. I don't know, maybe we're responsible for that. But it's a significant thing, and the prompt books

00:39:08.340 - 00:39:22.440

are great at revealing not just what they've cut but what-- where they've transposed things, where they-- the doubling of the characters. Some of the Shakespeare plays, Henry VI, Part Two

00:39:22.440 - 00:39:38.950

has more characters than in any other Shakespeare plays. It's got 67 named parts. And if you've got a company of 22, then that's going to be a real logistical challenge.

00:39:38.950 - 00:39:53.070

The prompt books also, I have to say, note another change in theatre practice. I did a production of Timon of Athens in the main house in 1999.

00:39:53.070 - 00:40:07.530

It hadn't been done in the Royal Shakespeare Theatre since John Schlesinger did it in 1965 with Paul Schofield. It was fascinating to see what they had cut and what they hadn't cut, but it was also

00:40:07.530 - 00:40:21.780

interesting to see that there were 45 people in the cast, in fact, 46 people in the cast with people like Janet Suzman and Michael Pennington and Frankie de la-- Frances de la Tour playing unnamed parts.

00:40:21.780 - 00:40:30.480

But-- and I-- so they had 46. I had 21. I once did an exercise of looking back

00:40:30.480 - 00:40:50.010

on the prompt books of one of the first Shakespeares I was in as an actor in the company which was Julius Caesar in 1987 and looking at as Julius Caesar came back into the repertoire every five years until I did the African Julius Caesar.

00:40:50.010 - 00:41:06.510

And it had-- the number of actors had gone down by roughly two each production. So probably 31 actors when I did it in '87, and then I was being asked to do it with 21 actors in 2012.

00:41:06.510 - 00:41:26.100

So there are things to glean about theatre practice and theatre history and also, too, which are interesting to debate as to what is the effect of having a smaller company.

00:41:26.100 - 00:41:44.130

And sometimes that is to do with the real challenge on the understudies, for instance. Because that is another element that the prompt books reveal which is how, if an actor goes off,

00:41:44.130 - 00:41:59.850

how does the knock-on work? When I did Hamlet with David Tennant, we had done it here in Stratford, and then we opened in London in the West End.

00:41:59.850 - 00:42:13.410

And David slipped a disk and had to come out of the show on press night. And so we had to-- so Laertes had to step up to play Hamlet,

00:42:13.410 - 00:42:30.420

but then also Guildenstern had to step up to play Laertes, and then Reynaldo had to step up to play Guildenstern. And so the knock-on effects were quite extraordinary. But unless you've got a very detailed prompt copy,

00:42:30.420 - 00:42:46.200

unless you've got the notes that reveal that-- and it can happen just at the half. Suddenly an actor is off and can't go on and what that means has to be immediately available as information.

00:42:46.200 - 00:43:03.960

So that-- what-- looking through the archives of that is very informative as well as being very terrifying. One of the interesting things I think about having an archive and thinking about how people can access that archive,

00:43:03.960 - 00:43:18.010

more importantly, in a way, is that there's something contradictory to the instinct of theatre because the theatres tend to be about what they're doing, what they're putting on now, and what they're going to do next.

00:43:18.010 - 00:43:32.860

And the attitude of what they've done is whether it can assist and be plundered to whatever future plans there are. Whereas, the archivist's instinct is one of conservation

00:43:32.860 - 00:43:49.600

and preservation, and I think we as a theatre company find ourselves sort of somewhere between the two. I tell the story sometimes that I was doing a production of All's Well That Ends Well with Dame

00:43:49.600 - 00:44:05.770

Judi Dench, and we got to the scene in the second half during the technical rehearsal where Helena arrives as a pilgrim, and Claudie Blakley was playing Helena, and she walked on the stage, and the costume just

00:44:05.770 - 00:44:18.100

seemed too elaborate for the pilgrim status. And Deirdre Clancy, who is designing the show, set to the show, the costumes of the show, she kind of talked to the costume supervisor.

00:44:18.100 - 00:44:32.350

The costume supervisor went up to the store, brought back a rack of much simpler costumes that would fit Claudie and would fit the rest of the production. And eventually, very shortly after that, Claudie

00:44:32.350 - 00:44:46.970

came back out onto the stage wearing a very simple black dress with a simple neckline and long sleeves, floor length. And Judi came up to her and said,

00:44:46.970 - 00:44:58.030

can I just look at the label in that? And she turned the label down, and it said Judi Dench, Lady Macbeth, 1976. So from-- Claudie was completely delighted

00:44:58.030 - 00:45:16.270

that she was wearing one of Judi's costumes. And I think that sense of preservation but the-- but also using the resources we have I think is very thrilling for actors because part

00:45:16.270 - 00:45:28.750

of the joy of doing Shakespeare at Stratford is that you are part of an unbroken continuum which goes back 140 years. And that continuum is both inspiring and intimidating

00:45:28.750 - 00:45:44.320

in equal measure. Arthur Hughes now playing Richard III, he's aware of all the other actors who played Richard III including my partner Tony Sher, famously

00:45:44.320 - 00:45:54.490

on crutches. And it's-- some of those productions become legendary, and you sort of-- you want to know. You want to have access.

00:45:54.490 - 00:46:13.900

You want to be able to sort of touch that history, and it is very potent. I remember that production of Richard II with David Tennant. Ian Richardson's widow had kept a ring that Ian had worn

00:46:13.900 - 00:46:30.880

and when he played the part famously in a production by John Barton alternating with Richard Pascoe the roles of Bolingbroke and Richard II. And Ian Richardson's widow gave David Tennant the ring that he

00:46:30.880 - 00:46:47.020

had worn which David was completely thrilled to wear because the emotion and sentiment is actually a really important part of theatre. And therefore, we have not just a kind of clinical attitude

00:46:47.020 - 00:47:07.660

to those prompt books and the physical archive of costume bibles and indeed then the collection of costumes and props and what have you. There's something emotionally very potent

00:47:07.660 - 00:47:24.400

that I think is key to how we change and how we deliver Shakespeare. I think it's an important element of our resource, if you like.

00:47:24.400 - 00:47:41.230

In the last decade, one of the interesting things about the prompt books is being able to reference them with the recordings of the productions. Now, we have quite a lot of recordings of RSC productions

00:47:41.230 - 00:47:59.650

because even though it's a single wobbly camera at the back of the auditorium, if you like, there is always a recording made of the show. And that was partly because of the gap,

00:47:59.650 - 00:48:15.400

potentially, between a run at Stratford and then going to the Barbican or take it on tour and how you may want to check back on quite how did that fight choreography work?

00:48:15.400 - 00:48:30.550

Where did that person enter from? And going back to whisk through the archive recording is-- it was very useful. But of course, now we have something much more

00:48:30.550 - 00:48:46.870

sophisticated, and you can also watch the different iterations of a production. So the Hamlet that I directed with David Tennant started in the Courtyard theatre and then went to the Novello,

00:48:46.870 - 00:49:03.640

but then it turned into a film after that. And yet in a way, essentially, it followed the same blocking pattern, if you like, and essentially the same text.

00:49:03.640 - 00:49:16.090

But if you want to see how a production develops, I think that is a very interesting element of it because Shakespeare's own relationship to his plays clearly developed.

00:49:16.090 - 00:49:28.600

The fact that we have the folio version of Hamlet but we also have two quarto versions, i.e. the paperback edition, if you like, as opposed to the omnibus collected works.

00:49:28.600 - 00:49:46.210

And there is one quarto known as the bad quarto and-- in which there are lines like to be or not to be, ay, that's the point instead of the famous line we know. But it indicates that we think that was

00:49:46.210 - 00:50:02.770

done as a performance on tour when they didn't have access to the script, and therefore, they all tried to remember what it was. And it seems like Marcellus could remember most of his

00:50:02.770 - 00:50:15.070

lines because his lines are all very clearly remembered, but some of the others aren't. So it indicates that the text changed. So the second quarto and the folio

00:50:15.070 - 00:50:25.850

have completely different-- for instance, the position of to be or not to be is in a completely different place in one and in the other. So it indicates that Shakespeare was continuing--

00:50:25.850 - 00:50:38.980

and his company were continuing to work on those plays. And you can see that same instinct in operation in our own productions as they move from the rehearsal room into the theatre and then maybe, as I say,

00:50:38.980 - 00:51:04.250

on tour or going to London or elsewhere. I remember doing a Henry IV with Tony Sher as Falstaff, and we decided we would look-- we would compare productions done by some of the greats--

00:51:04.250 - 00:51:23.660

Peter Hall in his famous history cycle, Terry Hands, Adrian Noble, Michael Boyd-- and it was fascinating to see how much they had cut. But it was also examining which bits had been cut

00:51:23.660 - 00:51:35.540

and which lines had gone and just to sort of go, well, I wonder why they cut that, or I wonder why they put that there. And it was in a way like having those great directors

00:51:35.540 - 00:51:45.920

in the room with you sort of discussing the how you might cut something. And sometimes that's an inspiration because I remember doing The Winter's Tale

00:51:45.920 - 00:52:03.080

and looking at Adrian Noble's famous production and just amazed at how much of the text he had actually cut. So for instance, with Richard III, I in fact, have cut 30% of the text in order

00:52:03.080 - 00:52:06.190

to get it done by half past ten.