Marianne Elliott

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 29 July 2018

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Marianne Elliott is the first woman to win two Tony awards for theatre direction: the first for War Horse and the second for The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time. Both transferred to Broadway from the National Theatre, London, and have gone on to travel the world. Marianne's parents, grandparents and great-grandparents all worked in the theatre. Her father, Michael Elliott, was a founding director of the Royal Exchange theatre in Manchester and her mother, Rosalind Knight, now in her 80s, has enjoyed a lifetime on the stage and is still working. Although Marianne read Drama at Hull University, it wasn't until she was in her late 20s that her career began, when she became assistant director at the Regents Park Open Air Theatre. She went on to follow in her father's footsteps, working at the Royal Exchange, before becoming Associate Director at the National Theatre in London. In 2017 she left to set up her own theatre company with producer Chris Harper. Their next show will be Stephen Sondheim's Company. In addition to all her theatrical prizes, she has just been awarded the OBE for services to theatre in the 2018 Birthday Honours list. She is married to actor Nick Sidi and they have one daughter. Presenter: Kirsty Young Producer: Cathy Drysdale.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	This is the BBC.
0:03.0	Hello, I'm Kristi Young.
0:05.0	Welcome to Desert Island Discs, where every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, the book and the luxury item
0:12.0	that they'd want to take with them if they were cast away on a desert island.
0:16.0	For rights reasons, the music on these podcast versions is shorter than in the original broadcast.
0:22.0	You can find over 2,000 more editions to listen to and download on the Desert Island Discs website.
0:30.0	Music
0:49.0	My custom way today is the theatre director Marianne Elliott,
0:53.0	the curious incident of the dog in the nighttime angels in America.
0:58.0	Her productions are always ambitious, often audacious and frequently thrilling.
1:03.0	She must have a pretty big mental piece, multi-award winning on both sides of the Atlantic.
1:08.0	She also happens to be the only woman director with two tonies,
1:12.0	and has recently been honoured with an OBE.
1:15.0	Looking at her lineage, it's easy to assume the die was cast early.
1:19.0	Her theatrical pedigree goes back three generations,
1:22.0	and her father was one of the founding directors of the Royal Exchange in Manchester.
1:27.0	Her mother's 60-year-long acting career is still going strong,
1:31.0	but in reality amid all the theatrics of her background,
1:35.0	my custom way was a quiet, shy little girl,
1:38.0	and was in her late 20s before she made a living directing.
1:42.0	She says theatre can fundamentally change who you are and how you view things,
1:48.0	therefore the stakes are really high, you have to take risks.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.