Award-winning Dyad Productions return to Shoreham’s Ropetackle on July 13 at 7:30pm, promising “a 21st century take on Virginia Woolf’s blisteringly brilliant pre-TED talk.”
00:00Good afternoon. Really lovely to speak to Rebecca Vaughan. Now, this is a bit of a passion project for you, isn't it? You have adapted Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own, and you are bringing it, amongst other places, to the Roketak and the Shore and Morton July the 13th. Now, when we started talking, you said that you're a massive fan of Virginia Woolf. Why? What does she say to you?
00:21Oh, I think it's the way she changes literature itself. The stream of consciousness which she brings in in the 1920s, along with James Joyce, the internal life, just absolutely blew me away. I first read Mrs. Dalloway when I was at university studying English, and I had never read anything like it before.
00:47And it just absolutely blew me away. And it feels also so theatrical in some ways, in that way that we get with film, where you're able to kind of get into a character's internal life. I think she gives that on the page. And so textually, when you can do that on stage and allow people sort of the inner workings of someone's mind, it's just amazing.
01:12And so with her fiction, and then her nonfiction, like A Room of One's Own, she really puts her finger on what it is to be human. She's very funny, which I think sometimes people don't realise or miss. And so it's always a joy to bring her humour and really make people laugh at Virginia Woolf is always an absolute.
01:32And this was something that you were pondering for a decade or so to the pandemic to get you give you the chance to get down to do it. What is the significance of this book? Because it's so curious, it started as lectures to female students at the University of Cambridge.
01:47Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
01:49How does it then become the solo show?
01:51Well, for ages and ages, when I first read it, and then I went back to reread it about a decade ago, I thought this is made for the theatre. This is made to be a solo show. And I'm really fascinated by solo work and the ways in which we can break the fourth wall and talk directly to an audience with solo work.
02:08And it seemed that a lot of our work is very theatrical, has a lot of lights and sound to go with it. But in the pandemic, of course, you know, all theatre stopped, everything stopped. And we were given an opportunity to potentially create a show, but in a less traditional theatrical setting.
02:30You know, there was that time where we could do sort of open air theatre a bit or maybe in a in a tent with open sides. And I suddenly thought this is the time to do this because they're based on these lectures that she gave in 1928.
02:43I thought it's something that doesn't need loads of loads of lighting and sound and so created it ready for this festival. And then, of course, as happened, the whole thing got got postponed by the second lockdown.
02:57So we then postponed it for another another date. And then it got postponed by the third lockdown.
03:04So by the time the show actually saw light, we were back in theatres again.
03:10But yes, but the the importance, I think, for me is just how relevant her work still is.
03:18She wrote this just under 100 years ago, but still speaks to not just women, but men today.
03:24It talks so much about about creativity and and how important how important having having a little bit of money and a little bit of space is to be creative and how hard that is for writers, artists, composers, actors, anyone either.
03:41But, you know, that hasn't been given a chance, which is anyone that's, you know, for her was working classes or women.
03:46And I think that still speaks so, so clearly to women today and also about motherhood and how hard it is to to for anyone or fatherhood to be to be a single parent and to have a career.
03:59And these things are still so relevant today. She talks a lot about gender fluidity, sexual fluidity.
04:05And and I think that's that's again is these are conversations that we're still having.
04:10And it's wonderful to be able to to see audiences really realise just how much she still has to say.
04:17Perfect. Well, it sounds fascinating. It's the Rope Tackle and Shore, amongst other places, on July the 13th.
04:24Rebecca, lovely to speak to you. Sounds great.
