Hello and welcome to Ways to Change the World. I'm Christian Gary Murphy and this is the podcast

in which we talk to extraordinary people about the big ideas in their lives and the events

that have helped shape for. We're on location today at the National Theatre because my guest is the new

director and co-CEOOO of the National Theatre, Indu Rubis Singerman. She's just announced her first season of productions.

It's very varied and quite exciting. Indu, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you. Hi.

So you've got an empty stage. How are you going to change the world with it?

It's an incredible opportunity. The stage is an incredible opportunity and the national is an incredible platform.

What I love about theatre is that it's a collective experience that brings people together and

brings people together to hopefully empathise and engage and engage in debate as well as being entertained.

And that's what I think when you say, how do you change the world is if we can just become

more empathetic to the other and to

different voices and different perspectives. You've run theatres before, but the national is

different, isn't it? Oh, it's hugely different, yes. Just explain why. Why is the national

difference? It sits on the south Bank, on the on the river,

between, I mean physically sits between the Houses of Parliament and St Paul's Cathedral.

So literally sits between church and state. So therefore sort of as a metaphor is important for national discourse.

So how are you doing it with your first programme?

It's about having as varied a programme as possible.

So like what I really love about the first two shows I'm doing,

I'm doing Shakespeare, Hamlet, and Hamlet opened this theatre in 1963,

so it's honouring the history.

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