BWW Interviews: Siobhan Redmond Of The RSC

How did your support for education initiatives in theatre begin and why?

In 2008 I was asked to become a Patron of the Playing Shakespeare project at the Globe; I'm not entirely sure why - possibly because I'd just worked at the RSC with Jo Howarth, the director of that year's show which was Much Ado About Nothing - but whatever the reason I'm very glad to have been invited along to the party.

It's really exciting to be in the audience with kids who are seeing Shakespeare in many cases for the first time and who aren't bound by expectations or convention to respond in any particular way.

That's what is so special about this initiative; that the audience is so involved with what it's seeing and that the children are free to participate so directly with the plays in classwork, in their own performed versions of the texts and in how obviously they are affected by the story and the production of the plays they experience at the Globe. It's very easy to become blase as an adult theatre-goer and as a theatre practitioner but the reception with which the Playing Shakespeare project is met shows how powerful, transformative and magical theatre is in its purest form.
It's thrilling that the kids love it as much as they do and that they so plainly feel it addresses and belongs to them. All credit to the Globe and Deutsche Bank for giving 16,000 children and their teachers free access to this work.

Were you taken to see Shakespeare as a schoolchild? Can you remember your first production?

As a schoolchild I was taken to the theatre as often as my parents went; they loved all the performing arts and took my sister and me to everything from pantomimes to Noh plays. Shakespeare is infinitely more accessible than the latter as far as I'm concerned. This persuaded me that theatre was normal, natural and infinitely less strange than the apparently real world outside it. Obviously that's just my opinion but it is healthy and correct to make the assumption that theatre belongs to you the audience: it does.

My dad was on the board of the Close Theatre which was the studio belonging to the Citizens' Theatre in Glasgow and while he was at meetings my sister and I would attend whatever was playing in the main house. I saw now-legendary shows and more Hamlets than you could shake a stick at and the fact that I am not afraid of Shakespeare or of not understanding everything he says immediately has stood me in good stead as an audience member and as a performer.

What are your favourite Shakespeare roles to play? Do you have any still on the wishlist?

I'd be happy to play Adriana in The Comedy Of Errors for the rest of my life; she's such a diva and her combination of showmanship and utter sincerity is irresistible to me.

I have unfinished business with Beatrice and I hope for a long spell ahead playing those frightful old duchesses in black bombazine who come on with bags of bones and complain about everyone in England.

Siobhan Redmond is Patron of 'Playing Shakespeare with Deutsche Bank', Globe Education's flagship project for London schools. 14,000 students will receive free tickets to a full-scale, professional production of 'Macbeth' at Shakespeare's Globe this March, as well as free workshops and online resources. For full details, visit www.globe-education.org

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