Interviews

INTERVIEW: Alexandra Spencer-Jones, Artistic Director

Interviews
Alexandra Spencer-Jones

Ewan Stuart talks to the artistic director of Action to the Word Theatre Company. Alexandra Spencer-Jones has previously worked on Constance & Sinestra and the Cabinet of Screams, for which she won the MTM:UK award for Best Emerging Artist, and A Clockwork Orange which has now embarked on a world tour. Her current show The Oresteia: Part 3 Eumenides opens at Camden People’s Theatre. The Oresteia: Part 3 Eumenides is the final part of a trilogy of plays you’ve been working on. What is it all about? Essentially the three parts are a struggle from darkness into light, so you have to go through all the grist to get to salvation, it’s the Ancient Greek’s version of the Christ story, and the creation of democracy in the purest sense of the word. So this third part is all about tying up a lot of the wrongs and pulling not just … Read more

FROM THE DRESSING ROOM: Jenna Russell

Interviews, West End
Jenna Russell

The stage door of the Harold Pinter Theatre tells a hundred stories. A stage door keeper, literally the keeper of the stories, presides over a comfy nook covered in headshots, some yellowing, corners curling. A hundred stories, a hundred once-upon-a-times. Jenna Russell’s dressing room tells its own story. She shares with Merrily We Roll Along co-star, Josefina Gabrielle. Gabrielle’s side of the dressing table is covered in make-up, brushes and powder and paints, neatly laid out in readiness for the evening show. On Russell’s side, there are three or four photographs of her baby daughter, Betsy, blu-tacked to the mirror. She tucks her legs beneath her on her chair and begins to tell stories. Born in London, brought up in Dundee and a performer from a young age, she has plenty of stories to tell. She is delicate-looking, radiant, with huge, open, blue eyes that brim with tears when she talks … Read more

INTERVIEW: Chris Urch, Playwright

Interviews
Chris Urch

Actor Chris Urch has written his first full-length play and there is already talk of him perhaps being the British Tennessee Williams. BT: Chris, you trained as an actor, what spurred you on to play writing?CU: Whilst training at the Drama Centre there was this lesson called Character Analysis where I would have to create a character, write a scenario and act it out on my own in front of my peers. It was quite an exposing lesson, you wrote the scene, acted the scene and directed it yourself but I always enjoyed creating these characters and dialogue. This then spurred me on to start secretly writing plays alongside my training. Talk to us about the process of writing your first play, Land of Our Fathers. I’m from a small mining community and wanted to write about that as it’s personal to me. There was a tragic mining disaster in … Read more

INTERVIEW: Seth Rudetsky

Interviews
Seth Rudetsky

David Richards sits down for a quick chat with Seth Rudetsky – A multi-talented and multi-faceted entertainer. It is a rare balmy and sunny day, the first official day of Summer, when Seth Rudetsky and I sit down in Leicester Square to chat about his life, profession and current collaboration with Patti LuPone. His work to date has been really quite unique; a mixture of actor, pianist, enthusiast and chatty man. ’My career is like a big pie. I’ve always been interested in multiple aspects. I’ve never been interested in one thing. I was a classical piano major in college, but at the same time I was conducting the musicals, I was also in the musicals, and then I was hosting the comedy night: we would do this thing called ‘Mock Students’.’ Clearly Rudetsky has always had an unquenchable thirst for knowledge and first-hand experiences of the theatrical world, particularly musical … Read more

Broadway Interview – Jason Ralph

Broadway, Interviews
Jason Ralph in Peter And The Star Catcher

I was a real goth kid at school and my mum was terrified of all my friends. She really pushed me in the direction of theatre. I found out later that she had actually persuaded the drama teacher to give me all the roles I’d played at school, but I’m so grateful because I was able gain a lot of experience.

INTERVIEW: Declan Donnellan

Interviews
Declan Donnellan

“Is there a little bit of Ubu Roi in all of us?” Emily Hardy asks acclaimed theatre director Declan Donnellan. It was an interview that started like any other Declan Donnellan and I exchange pleasantries and begin, as intended, by discussing Cheek by Jowl’s touring production of Ubu Roi, directed by Donnellan and designed by company co-founder, Nick Ormerod. Alfred Jarry’s 1896 brutal satire comes to the Barbican in April as part of Dancing around Duchamp, a season celebrating Marcel Duchamp’s influence on artists of the 20th Century. Featured is the work of Duchamp’s predecessors, his collaborators and those who continued his radical legacy, safe in the hands of leading contemporary artists. It comes as no surprise that Cheek by Jowl, who, in my opinion, represent the country’s theatrical achievements internationally like a premiership football team, have their own contribution to make. “This production of Ubu grew out of a performance … Read more