Michael Boyd Talks REVOLUTIONS, 3 Years in the Making with Whatsonstage.com

 

Whatsonstage.com reports on the genesis and progress of REVOLUTIONS, the sweeping investigation by the Royal Shakespeare Company of life under the former Soviet Union, three years in the making.

This is a big month for the RSC and the REVOLUTIONS project. The planned four year celebration will launch this month with the premiere of two new works by Russian playwrights, THE GRAIN STORE and THE DRUNKS.  Also included in the series will be other new plays an debates. In an interview reported on whatsonstage.com, RSC's famed Artistic Director Michael Boyd shares his experience with the undertaking.

In this excerpt of the interview, Boyd shares his inpiration for project:

MB: My personal relationship with Russia, which started when I was a schoolboy, was certainly shaped by excitement at the violent upheaval brought about by the 1917 revolution. It was also brought on by the intriguing sense of Russia as 'other': a forbidden land of mystery which was nonetheless disturbingly familiar...Ten years later, when I arrived in Brezhnev's Moscow as a trainee theatre director in 1980, it felt like I was landing on the moon, or rather in a dream. This was still Europe, but everything looked, smelled and felt so profoundly unfamiliar. Being woken in the train and coldly interrogated by East German border guards in Berlin had been a shock, but the real sense of crossing into another world began at Brest on the Soviet Border. Here, the entire train was raised into the air to have its wheel carriages replaced for Russia's wider railway tracks...From the moon you can see the Earth more clearly, and I saw that on the coffee table of the waiting room was Country Life, the Sunday Post and the Daily Telegraph. The Earth looked very small. I felt decidedly Russian, and resolved to learn as much as I could from this great, frightening, bungled country. I was also determined to learn from the brilliant and courageous theatre artists working against the odds under the watchful eye of the Communist Party.

To read the full interview, click here.

REVOLUTIONS is not the first comprehensive showcasing of a culture's history.  In 2005 the RSC commissioned a series of works on the Spanish Golden Age of Drama.

The first two commissioned works of the REVOLUTIONS series, THE GRAIN STORE and THE DRUNKS both premiere on 24 September 2009 (previews from 10 September) at the Courtyard Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, where they run in rep until 1 October 2009.

Michael Boyd trained as a director at the Malaya Bronnaya Theatre in Moscow and in 1979 took up his first post as a trainee director at the Belgrade Theatre in Coventry, graduating to Assistant Director a year later. In 1982 he joined the Sheffield Crucible as an Associate Director and three years later became founding Artistic Director of the Tron Theatre in Glasgow where he was to stage an acclaimed production of Macbeth starring Iain Glen, and an award winning adaptation of Janice Galloway's The Trick is to Keep Breathing, as well as Michel Tremblay's Quebec plays, The Real World? and The Guid Sisters. Boyd joined the RSC in 1996 as an Associate Director, notably staging the three parts of Henry VI together with Richard III at the Young Vic in London in April 2002, as part of the This England: Histories Cycle, winning the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Director. During this time he was also Drama Director of the New Beginnings Festival of Soviet Arts in Glasgow in 1999, and directed Miss Julie in the Frank McGuinness version at the Theatre Royal Haymarket in February 2000. Taking over from Adrian Noble in 2003, Boyd assumed control of the RSC, burdened with a deficit of £2.8m, with a remit to turn its fortunes around. By a combination of artistic excellence and quiet husbandry, including a year-long Complete Works of Shakespeare Festival (begun in April 2006 and which involved other companies as well as the RSC) plus a financially successful London season at the Novello Theatre in 2006, Boyd slowly rebuilt the company's fortunes and reputation. In 2007 he launched the long-awaited RSC's Stratford theatre redevelopments. This included construction of the temporary Courtyard Theatre to provide a Stratford venue while work was in progress, designed to house The Histories cycle, before its transfer to the Roundhouse in London in 2008.

 

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