Clint Dyer on dealing with dyslexia, racism, his admiration for Shakespeare and his vision for directing
Ways to Change the World with Krishnan Guru-Murthy
Channel 4 News
4.6 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 25 November 2022
⏱️ 33 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Clint Dyer is an actor, writer and director who has turned his pain into power. That power has resulted in numerous ‘firsts’, the first Black British artist to have performed, written and directed a full-scale production at the National Theatre and the first Black man to direct a Shakespeare tragedy at a major British venue.
In this episode, Clint joins Krishnan to discuss theatrical traditions, his vision to articulate the Black experience and his new history-making production of Shakespeare’s tragedy Othello.
Warning: this podcast contains references to racist language
Produced by : Imahn Robertson
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to Ways to Change the World. I'm Krishnan Guru Murthy and this is |
| 0:07.1 | the podcast in which we talk to extraordinary people about the big ideas in their lives |
| 0:11.7 | and the events that have helped shape them. We are on location today in the National Theatre |
| 0:18.0 | overlooking a very rainy London because my guest this week is the deputy artistic director |
| 0:24.5 | here Clint Dyer. Clint is a actor, director who has made all sorts of really amazing video, |
| 0:33.7 | stage, musical firsts in his career which is partly inevitable I think as a result of being |
| 0:41.4 | a black actor and director and we're going to explore some of that but he is here at the |
| 0:46.2 | National doing a new production of Athello which I think makes it the first black directed. |
| 0:54.1 | Yeah, Athello. Yeah it does. Thank you for having us here. Pleasure, pleasure, pleasure, |
| 0:58.1 | honour to meet you. Tell me about Athello first. What does Athello mean to you? Why do you want to do it? |
| 1:07.4 | Wow, what does it mean to me? It's something so obviously Shakespeare means a lot to me. As a writer, |
| 1:13.6 | as an actor, director, he is somebody that not only do we hold up as one of the greatest writers, |
| 1:21.9 | you can't leave his work either watching it or reading it without having such admiration for |
| 1:30.4 | his use of language. To not appreciate Shakespeare, it goes against the whole idea to actually want |
| 1:37.7 | to be in this business to want to tell stories. So me trying to get involved with Athello |
| 1:45.8 | has been a tricky, tricky road for obvious reasons and maybe some not so obvious. As a kid, |
| 1:52.1 | you know, my first introduction to Athello was watching white actors, supposedly great white |
| 1:57.7 | actors of morals and of great skill and intelligence, blacking themselves up. |
| 2:08.4 | Yeah, you know, so it was always met with contradiction, you know, I want to be in this industry |
| 2:15.0 | that holds up this great writer who supposedly was okay with the lead characters blacking themselves |
| 2:26.6 | you then you start to learn a bit more about what writing is and what theatre is and how an |
| 2:32.8 | interpretation of the story is the key. The words are a map. The intervention by the director |
... |
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