Simon McBurney
Desert Island Discs
BBC
4.3 • 14.3K Ratings
🗓️ 15 July 2012
⏱️ 37 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Kirsty Young's castaway is the actor, writer and director Simon McBurney.
It's 30 years since he set up the ground-breaking theatre company Complicite. It brought extraordinary physical deftness to the stage and its productions won every plaudit going - from an armful of Olivier awards to the Perrier prize for comedy.
His mainstream credits range from TV roles in the Vicar of Dibley and Rev, to screen credits for The Last King of Scotland and Harry Potter. On stage, he's directed Katie Holmes and Al Pacino to critical acclaim in New York.
Of his unconventional directing style, he admits: "Some people have said, it's a bit like going into the jungle with some mad explorer - who everybody knows doesn't have any idea where he's going - but somehow he gives people some sort of confidence to keep on going."
Producer: Leanne Buckle.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Kirstie Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island 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 director, writer and actor Simon McBurney. |
| 0:40.1 | He wrote the screenplay for Mr Bean's holiday, directed Al Pacino and Katie Holmes in New York, |
| 0:45.6 | and on the small screen has been in the vicar of Dibley and Rev, so far so mainstream. |
| 0:50.9 | But his natural habitat is at the margins. It is 30 years since he founded |
| 0:55.5 | complicity, a groundbreaking theatre company which brought extraordinary physical |
| 1:00.4 | deftness to the stage and whose numerous accolades ranged from the Perrier |
| 1:04.5 | Comedy Award to an armful of Olivier's as well as collecting scores of other |
| 1:08.9 | glittering baubles along the way. Actor Mark Rylance says he has more capacity to deal with |
| 1:15.8 | chaos a wider love of randomness and impulse than the rest of us. He was right |
| 1:21.7 | was he Mark Rylons? You do enjoy? |
| 1:23.4 | Yes, I do enjoy. My brother calls me constitutionally |
| 1:26.6 | disobedient. So I like doing things. I like breaking the rules. Yes, that's true. so how does that work when it comes to the day |
| 1:35.2 | today because presumably you have to go through some of well many of the same |
| 1:38.8 | boring rituals that most of us do you know getting up in the morning getting the kids |
| 1:41.8 | fed getting to work on time. |
| 1:43.7 | Of course, but I am lucky enough to be in a profession where I make up my own day. |
| 1:50.7 | So famously I do cancel certain things because suddenly it's a sunny day and I wish |
| 1:56.6 | to be with my children and you know and not always but everything about your days is extraordinarily |
| 2:06.0 | precious and life is a constant improvisation it's a creative act it's like right now I feel the whole of my life has led up to this moment, you know, looking at you across this table. |
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