Barrie Rutter
Desert Island Discs
BBC
4.3 • 14.3K Ratings
🗓️ 19 June 2016
⏱️ 34 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Kirsty Young's castaway is the actor and theatre director Barrie Rutter.
He is the founder and artistic director of the touring theatre company Northern Broadsides.
There was nothing in his background to suggest he'd spend his life on stage. He was brought up by his father, who worked nights unloading fish in Hull. There were no books in his childhood home and he discovered his passion for theatre whilst at secondary school with the help of his English teacher who spotted his talent for performing. His first role was as the Mayor in Gogol's, 'The Government Inspector'.
He was a member of the National Youth Theatre where he appeared with Helen Mirren and went on to study at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. After a career in the National Theatre and the RSC, in 1992 he founded Northern Broadsides which stages Shakespeare plays, other classical works and new writing with the aim of presenting "Northern voices, doing classical work in non-velvet spaces".
Producer: Sarah Taylor.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello I'm Kirsty Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Highland Disks from BBC Radio 4. |
| 0:06.0 | For rights reasons, the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast. |
| 0:10.0 | For more information about the program, please visit BBC.co.uk. |
| 0:17.0 | Radio 4. The My castaway this week is the actor and director Barry Rutter. |
| 0:39.0 | Founder and artistic director of the Northern Broadside's Theatre Company, he puts on plays in non-velvet spaces |
| 0:46.4 | with Northern Voices. The work ranges from the classics to new dramas, and the locations can be anywhere from Skipton Kettle Market to a Roman |
| 0:55.3 | Amphitheatre in Austria. |
| 0:57.8 | His impatience with convention might be something to do with his beginnings. Although the eldest of four boys, growing up in |
| 1:04.7 | hull, he never knew his siblings, living with his father a fish porter in a house with one bedroom |
| 1:10.5 | and no books. He loved boxing and rugby till the moment aged 15 when an |
| 1:15.9 | English teacher persuaded the gobbie rutter to take part in a school play. From |
| 1:20.6 | there it was on to the National Youth Theatre where he says he fell in love with the |
| 1:24.8 | rock and roll of Shakespeare's text. |
| 1:27.9 | One of his most prominent recent successes was casting and directing Lenny Henry as Othello to widespread rave reviews and sell-out performances. |
| 1:36.7 | However, he says of himself, I'm still a front of Cloth Merchant. |
| 1:40.8 | I do love to be on a stage. I like the renewal of theatre every night. So welcome, Barry Rutter. |
| 1:47.0 | The renewal, and I'm presuming also probably the presence of an audience, are two of the most important things about that. |
| 1:54.0 | Yes but also the ephemeral nature of theatre. I love the fact that it goes and it disappears |
| 2:00.3 | and you learn from it but you can't carry it with you because the next night |
| 2:04.6 | audience is always new. That's the real magic for me. Northern Broadsides would set up in |
| 2:09.8 | 1992 and as I mentioned I think they were your words or certainly in the description of it being set up this you know |
| 2:16.4 | Northern Voices doing sometimes classical work but not always in non-velvet spaces |
... |
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