Tip of the Tongue

John Osborne once said to me, ‘An artist must always go against the tide.’

This world, limited in space and time, can be changed and sometimes so unforgettably that it can change an individual’s life

In the theatre, we have rightly rejected cosy and degraded ideas of beauty, harmony, order, peace, joy. Now experimentally, directly, in our spaces, we need to rediscover what these hackneyed values once contained

A tiny group in a tiny space can create something unforgettable

like all human beings, some are shallow, some are turbulent. This complexity is the richness that the theatre shares with us

at a time when everyone has been numbed for so long by horrors, can one horrify? When every screen and so many street corners are drenched in blood, can tomato ketchup have any effect? Over sixty years ago, London audiences at Titus Andronicus fainted nightly and St John Ambulance was in attendance. A tiny torture scene by Jean-Paul Sartre made audiences scream. Once, even the word ‘bloody’ had its effect

On stage we can meet the different levels of the person in a very short space of time, sometimes almost immediately. In everyday life this could take months or even years.

going against the tide is very difficult. First of all, one must recognise very exactly what the tide is and where it is going

as my father told me when I was very young: If there were two people shipwrecked on a desert island and they made a parliament, one would be on the right and the other on the left

When doing a play on conflict and violence, how often have I had to answer the same idiotic question: ‘Do you think you can change the world?’ Today, I would like to say, ‘Yes, we can change the world.’ But not in the old way that politicians, ideologists or militants try to make us believe. Their business is to tell lies. Theatre is, occasionally, capable of moments of truth.