The Value of Storytelling with Stephen Fry and Tim Carroll

i believe the broadcast is live young mr  carroll here we are and uh welcome to this   uh conversation with mr frye and uh tc here where  are you steven well i'm in los angeles actually   uh southern california which is not a  wise place to be in terms of infection   but given that i'm secluding myself and not  seeing anybody you can do that anywhere really   um so i might as well be here and i have things  that brought me here uh to do in studios that are   very kind of kovid friendly so i'm getting on with  mostly audiobooks to be honest just just recording   for the audible company audible.com um whole  series have you read any good books lately yeah   i have i've read them out loud with my lips  moving and everything um the the two great orwells   um 1984 and and uh animal farm and you may think  of course amazon who owns audible is one of those   impoverished companies that needs to wait for an  author's copyright to expire before they bother   to do new versions of him because that's what's  happened to the the in you've probably noticed   as well the great gatsby there's been a lot of  talk about that's gone into public copyright   and so they're talking about will there be  a muppet um great gatsby and of course the   more intelligent people are saying will there  be a shaw theater great gatsby then they no   longer have to pay the fitzgerald estate have  it now uh are wheels revolving in your mind now   they are but tell me how this applies  to george orwell who did a course as you   uh as you are about to tell us die in 1949 yeah  that's true actually that's later than the others   should he still be in copyright perhaps  i made a mistake perhaps he's not wrong   no he should have left it because uh 70 years is  the copyright so 2019 orwell came out of copyright   so he's been out of there for a few  years couple of years you're right yeah   yeah and uh people may not know but in uh canada  we have only a 50-year statute of limitations   so orwell's been out for 20 years here that's  really strange because canada shares with   britain the same territorial nature doesn't it  so that the book that's published in london say   is also in canada i mean i know this from  my own books whereas you have to have   separate publication in america because  it's considered a different territory   but obviously canada is its own territory  when it comes to to copyright expiry are we   we can't be talking about expirations  and copyright all the time though it is   an interesting subject because there is a kind  of ethical question to it isn't there as to how   much the descendants of a dead artist uh deserve  to constantly to take in all this money um and   probably most agents and uh producers and and you  know will agree that when dealing with an estate   it is quite common for the children  and grandchildren of the great   woman or great man to be a bit difficult shall we  say you know the keepers of the sacred flame on   the one hand who are the ones who burn the private  letters and refuse to let anybody quote a single   line possibly or who are just so greedy that they  consistently charge vast sons for well of course   and then there's bernard shaw himself who as you  know did rather interesting things with his estate   did indeed but at the time of the making of  my fair lady it was the most expensive movie   ever made and the reason for that one was not so  much the budget although that was very big as the   huge payment to the shore estate that jack  warner made for the rights of pygmalion i believe   yes indeed and um uh sure as well as  endowing the royal academy of dramatic art   in london also left a large amount  of money for the establishment of a   rational spelling system yes which which  didn't really take off as we can see   no india and his name is still spelt slightly  differently from the adjective for certain   indeed and pronounced differently here  so i sometimes when i first arrived in   canada i would make puns like we could go for  a walk along the shore thinking that that was a   terrifically uh elegant pun but they all fell flat  because they say what what do you mean what's the   similarity of being poor and shocked exactly it's  the same with rhyming in lyrics and poetry that   a british lyricist to tim rice or a don black can  rhyme if they wanted to uh pawn as in pornography   with lawn as in where you walk on the grass  but in america again that would make no sense   in either country of north america canada pouring  and pan at different things you push upon in the   game of chess but it's nothing to do with porno no  it's much much more rational in fact now i wanted   to um ask you today to talk a little bit about  storytelling yeah because uh that's something that   you're very good at and it's something that you  uh that you did for us so i was going to start by   asking you um uh how you look back on your time at  the shore was it a was it a fun summer do you know   tim it really was it was one of the most wonderful  summers i've ever spent both in terms of the   late spring um rehearsal period uh which i was  i never really told you how nervous about it i   was i mean for months beforehand i thought i  should have been better prepared that i was   than i was i thought i should know every line of  of homer and every line of greek myth and that   i should come with absolute preparation but  instead there was this remarkable experience   of walking from the little house i rented and  watching a spring like no other in terms of   blossom niagara on the lake has really has it on  every other town i've ever visited in springtime   it's just stunning how it burst into life so there  was a marvelous sense of long winter having come   to an end when i arrived there was still snow  on the lawns and then this magnificent change of   climate and i was discovering this new town in a  new place i'd never visited and i had all the time   in my head that it was supposed to be very simple  that i sit in a chair and share a story but that   can i was worried that it would look lazy you know  surely i should be leaping about and transforming   myself in weird ways and becoming gods in you know  really doing a performance and what but what i   wanted to do was to bring it down and i had this  image as you know i think in my head which was   of a family sitting around the fire and of  children saying why why does water come from   the sky why what's who does it who sends it  because all our ancestors would have said who   not what really when there's a force a movement  that you don't understand you think who is it   who is making the noise in the mountain when it  rumbles which is now we would say oh that's old   news it's a volcano or that's an earthquake or you  know why is something pushing flowers out of trees   every you know time is it how long it is with what  we call a year out come these flowers from the   trees who sends them what is this movement this  motion that we don't control but somebody else   does and that's what we call a god whether it's  the force that pushes flowers out of trees or the   force that drops the leaves six months later in in  in autumn or whether it is the weather or the the   movement of the sea or indeed other movements  that we don't control like our raging our fear   and our love and our lust all of these until you  find a theory of to describe their agency properly   in terms of physical laws all these things you  give a name and an identity and a character   and the characters are gods the god of love  and the god of of of seasons and the god of   thunder and the god of earthquakes the god of  harvests and all these things and of fire and   over over those periods of sitting around  the half telling your children this they   become more detailed and they had  more personality they take on more   kind of resolution you know they're more hd  they're more filled with life and color and depth   and surprise um so they're becoming with literary  creations because you know rather than just being   stereotypes of angry god they become a god that's  you know ambiguous and uh it's contradictory and   doesn't it behave as you would expect and so early  myth an explanation of the forces around becomes a   complex theater and an art form a  literary effusion of characters and   all the time you know each generation of children  are sitting around going now now i know more about   hermes so tell me that time hermes did this  or tell me about the time that zeus was nearly   killed by his own daughters well tell me about  how the giants took over you know and and and   it becomes a whole fantastic panoply of stories  that that stay with you um and they have these   different phases the early phase of explaining  how things are into a more complicated phase of   of addressing almost every aspect of humanity  everything about ourselves that we find   puzzling our own lust and yet our yearning for  purity our yearning for love and for holiness   and for goodness uh uh are yearning to be  thought of well and as having behaved well   yearning to to to achieve and to fulfill what  we think our our potentials are all these things   combine with our fear of the dark things  inside us these thrashing slimy qualities   of frenzy and addiction and revenge and darkness  that we all have and this mixture well there are   different ways of explaining it and one of the  reasons you and i love theater of literature   is that the way literature and theater explain it  is dramatized it's brought to life in front of us   it plays out the story of our contradictions other  explanations neurological psychological freud say   or common theories of of of how our minds are  composed by our genes and and by our upbringing   and so and all these are are interesting and  i wouldn't for a moment say that they're wrong   because they're an obvious way to look at  why we are the way we are this composition of   animal and of what seems to be something higher  in the cognitive sphere but none of them i think   plays with this truth as well as mythology and  everything that springs from mythology so it's the   root of storytelling and it's the root of theater  it's the root of of making a ritual and a ceremony   and a celebration and a comedy and a tragedy  out of all the pieces uh that make us human   that's beautiful and it's quite a long way  isn't it from uh explaining why it rains   to some of those myths that you were telling  in mythos which are even still 3000 years   older than we are now so how did that happen i  mean myths you you used the word i think evolve   you didn't that was the the gist wasn't it  and there's something fascinating to me about   if myths are reproduced as we are by being handed  on from one person to to the next there must   be something about these particular myths that  allowed them to survive while others dropped away   there is and and i mean it's it's it's a difficult  one because uh paleontologists and archaeologists   and ancient historians will will obviously have  different views and as we know the the truth of   science and investigation and archive and hard  academic work always um always wags a finger at   the uh the facile kind of cheap explanation that  that sounds so good in uh in a quick conversation   those are but really you know so that there are  the popular scientists and explainers the malcolm   gladwell's and the and the noel uh yuval hararis  who who tell fabulous stories that that seem to   shed light on how we develop but but behind them  are always a piles of academics who go quite as   simple as that but nonetheless i think it is fair  to say that it's probably wrong to see too much   exceptionalism to the greeks it just they happen  to be in the right place at the right time   that it it would be a weird kind of i suppose  we call it racism today to suggest that   the tribes that that congealed around the  mainland and islands of greece the dorians and the   ionians and the various different  peoples who arrived from the sea and   and who settled and became what we think of as  greek that they had they were endowed with some   form of intelligence or creative spark that was  greater than any other human beings around at the   time i think what what happened was and and you  know i don't know enough about this to go into   massive detail but there was um the bronze age um  you know we we we we name our ages after metals   um uh at least you know out of materials  i should say there was the stone age   when the most that human beings could do in terms  of repurposing the materials into around them into   which we were born was stone you know using stone  on stone to make flint arrows and all the rest of   it we know about that that's the stone age or the  and there was a new stone age and neolithic age   but then some of our ancestors discovered that  you could do things with copper and tin which made   decorative and useful and aggressive  objects out of this molten stuff this alloy   that we call bronze and that was the bronze age  and it was during the bronze age it seems that   certain mediterranean tribes settled enough  to create an empire the mycenaean empire   and a language i mean a written language rather  that all humans were speaking by this time   but um they they created uh an alpha well not an  alphabet it is a difference it's called linear a   and it's never been solved and that's the era of  agamemnon and the mycenaean empire and supposedly   the trojan war so that there was a bit of writing  but we don't know who could do it whether it was a   hierarchical group of priests and kings and anyway  the trojan war was fought and then there was a   huge collapse of this civilization a bit like the  i suppose the fall of the roman empire where we   gave way to a dark ages similarly archaeologists  call that what followed the greek dark ages the   the collapse of the bronze age no one quite knows  why it happened there were some people who maybe   invaded these so-called sea people um and anyway  there was a huge amount of trouble and then they   they grew back again but in between that time  they had transmitted their stories of their wars   and their fights and their actual events including  a war that took place in what we call turkey now   that we call the trojan war and writing came back  but this time it created a form of linear b that   was solved in the 20th century and all around  the mediterranean thanks to the phoenicians uh   from the holy land from sort of lebanon area  just south of lebanon what we call now called   the alphabet arrived and so they were finally able  to write down the stories that had just been told   mano armano orally they were able to write them  down and they and it became a literature and   the greeks were the only people in a position  to do that they were just at the center of that   mediterranean crossroads of trade and and the  exchange of ideas from the phoenicians um and that   and the other thing which we should think about  i guess as we approach it an opposite age is that   the sea levels appear to have sorted themselves  out they appear to have lowered and and for   hundreds of years if not thousands before then um  people had lived on the edges of continents where   there was sea in order to sail but they couldn't  build ports and harbors because they didn't know   from one year to the next when the sea level would  would be right for that so they build a harbor and   then the next year would just get completely  swamped by high tides but suddenly everything   they noticed settled down and they thought oh four  years in a row now this particular bay has been   exactly the same shape and they started to build a  few kind of moles and groins and other such things   i say that word with all due respect and um and  so you could start to get commercialization and   the transmission of ideas and goods that only  trade allows no matter how anti-capitalist one is   one has to accept that capitalism is the  main vector for ideas as well as for money   and goods and produce and all the rest of it  and the ideas spread like wildfire once you had   these settled coastal towns so tyre in the  phoenician area was an important one for   tyrion purple and for the high-priced goods  and the tyrians who were the phoenicians   also took with them this new way of representing  sounds by letters as we would call them now   so it's a complicated answer i'm not really  qualified to give it exactly but the reason the   greek myths are so exciting i think is because  the greeks happened to be at that point of   time where everything was growing you know the  trade commerce and ideas could be written down   and and and the memories of poets who had just  spoken these things could be recorded finally   in a way that's lovely and we it's a good  opportunity to uh mention that quite soon not   this year but we are very hopeful next year we'll  be staging the mahabharat which is uh oh good   marvelous you're too young in fact to remember  peter brooks mahabharata or aren't you did you   i i skyped off from my final year at oxford to  go up to glasgow and see it well those watching   who who are lovers of theater will probably have  heard of peter brooke who's one of the most uh   influential figures in theater and drama  generally in art of the of the late 20th century   um and you can probably tell more about him than i  can but he famously stripped drama down at a time   in the 60s when new writing was coming in he also  went back to ancient writing shakespeare famously   his production of a midsummer night's dream  everybody who saw that which i didn't says it was   their greatest evening ever in the theater and  it's the midsummer night's dream really the   most popular easy cheesy shakespeare imaginable  and he made it something utterly new and then   he started traveling around the world didn't he  went to africa and he went then to india to the this extraordinary epic work which  you have obviously been involved in   have you been working on the translation with  others no i'm our um our great friend ravi jane is   uh adapting with miriam fernandez and uh going to  direct it and i'm really thinking of it as i mean   it's a great thing that we're doing it but i'm  also thinking that it's it's living proof that   uh the answer to what's so special about the greek  myths is is obviously well nothing necessarily the   you know there's no reason to suppose  that every uh developed culture and of   course the the culture that gave rise to the  mahabharata was an extraordinarily rich one   and the interesting thing for me though in  terms of the evolution is that whether it's   an amazing epic like the mahabharat whether it's  a set of myths as fascinating as the greek myths   in themselves they must have gone  through evolution just to get to the   versions that we find them in and um you will  have read bruno bettelheim's wonderful book the   uses of enchantment where he talks about folk  tales and fairy tales as being handed down from   uh parent to child and that that must go through  this process of winnowing where all the details   that don't achieve what the story could achieve  get drop away naturally yeah beautiful little   details that do what it is trying to do um  keeping a darwinian kind of twist to the nature of   story as it as it evolves through the generations  also rise to the question of what it is that it's   doing and also of course there's the nature of  what one calls a civilization um and obviously   we're we're hypersensitive to this idea now  that we we all know the famous uh um gandhi   uh answer to when he was asked what he thought  about western civilization and he said i would   welcome it and and of course we kind of we'd love  to beat ourselves up and say yes i know what you   mean and this idea that there is an advanced  form of humanity and the white westerners are   the vanguards of that is now obviously regarded  rightly as not just nonsense but pernicious   nonsense and self-deceptive and uh and uh and also  a kind of uh part of the what fueled some of the   most questionable forms of of colonialism and so  on but having said that it is also obviously true non-judgmental way without having to use with  words like primitive and savage there are peoples   who survive in ways that involve very elemental  ideas of food weather the seasons and so on   and they exist in smaller groupings and their  whole lives are are based around those issues and   seasons and the the sea the uh you know so for  example first nation groups in in canada those   into the north of the arctic circle their lives  are dominated by the huge changes of light and   cold that take place in these big seasons and in  being able to when the sea is not frozen being   able to go out and and so on but there are other  groups who would like that to begin with but over   four or five thousand years such has happened  with the greeks who were more or less settled   who went from a a position of what we would  now call tribalism and and quite simple hunting   but not hunter-gatherer slowly laying down crops  and becoming civilized into building cities   and towns into having hierarchies and castes of  priests and of priestesses and and and into into   more complex forms of living than those who  who lived according to the hunt and the season   and their myths therefore took on more complexity  as well that their gods became like them   more you know they became darker more devious  more subtle uh more filled with you know and   then responsible for different handcrafts and  skills that had not existed hundreds of years   earlier so in that sense that's that's how the  that's how things grow and develop isn't it   i think so it's worth anyone who's interested  in these things joseph campbell's um book the   hero with a thousand faces actually shows  the similarities between all almost all the   mythic structures of the world and how in  a funny sort of way however sophisticated   ones life might be now we seem to want the  same things from stories that we wanted   thousands of years ago which which brings  me to the my my last question before i'll   start taking questions from the audience some of  whom are uh writing in already and asking things   um which was you know you were sitting in  front of an audience in 2018 or whatever it was   and uh telling these very very old stories and  how did you feel that landed did you get a sense   of oh i'm just telling people old stories  and they're bored or no nothing back we got   i think it was really encouraging i could i mean  as much as one can trust it and i think one can   you actors always know when an audience is  holding on listening and engaged and when they're   and then when they're you know because we're  all vain and we all want to be listened to   and so we're constantly looking for cues like  children that mummy is listening and daddy is   listening and i've got my audience and they're  paying attention um i had been worried that   a lot of people from canada which is  actually a country that seems to me to be   more aware of the difficulties of its  position in terms of the first nation and the   colonial uh input from the you know the british  and the french and then the later waves of   of of immigration so on that it's you know  working these things out more so for example   uh before the show i hadn't this is not  something that happens in britain but the   um talking about who this land used to belong  to and thanking the first nation people for   you know for for having been guardians of the  land and so on and all this was new to me and   so i immediately thought when i was told this was  part of the canadian experience now is to try and   engage with everything dark and unhappy as well  as uh as well as you know more optimistic and   successful all the elements of life in canada i  had thought that maybe people would say why are   you coming here with greek myths you know we have  the the first nations have their stories their   creation stories their stories of the moon and the  stars it came from and that's more relevant to us   and i didn't want you know i wanted it to be  quite clear that i wasn't making a case for a an   old victorian educational system and we should all  learn the classics and if we if we can't you know   can't tell stories about uh hermes and  uh aphrodite then then we are you know   we're not educated because that wasn't the  point at all the point was to try and um   just make people lean forward and go wow i've  heard of some of these names but i didn't really   know that was so that's how zeus was born i've  heard of zeus um i didn't know goodness me you   know and and to make the connections i didn't want  to force any meaning onto i didn't want to say   this myth means because i think the excitement  is to hear a myth yourself and go oh in a way   that's just the greeks you know trying to work out  why incest is so problematic or something you know   or oh that's the greeks and in more obvious cases  you know looking at um let's face it we've all   been thinking of how greek myth and uh freud  and human uh um psychological problems should   we say narcissism i mean you know it's obvious  when i was doing the show in 2018 and i told the   story of narcissus which is a beautiful origin  story and and and then you know a puzzling one   and then one that most people know this boy  who sees his own reflection in the water and   falls in love with it and doesn't realize it's his  reflection thinks it's someone in the water and of   course as oscar wilde pointed out it's also the  reflection in the water seeing someone up there   and seeing them reflected in in their eyes  seeing themselves reflected in the eyes   of the person looking in um but anyway  all that i would naturally end it with   uh narcissism now is looked at not as a story for  artists to paint daffodils but as a psychological   dysfunction malignant narcissism people who can't  take criticism who believe the world revolves   around them who sees everything according to  their own uh ambition and their own sense of self   and you know i didn't make this big description of  what was a malignant narcissist and lean forward   and say nobody we know and the audience would  scream with laughter because of course everybody   the elephant in the room was the the trampolo in  the room everybody would immediately say haha we   know what you're talking about but the fact  is this will this would have been true if you   went back a thousand years if you went back to  a court of um norman king's say in britain and   started to speak about narcissism that all nudge  each other and go so let's talk about william ii   the fact is these are there are such truths  in mythology such absolute truths about human   nature and and we get over excited perhaps  by so many other aspects of the greek myths   or stories generally of plays and dramas that we  forget that that what they really are is stories   about ourselves they're just wonderfully about  ourselves they are mirrors you know that's the   it's such a cliche we forgot to say it that the  you know hamlets and the players you know to   hold the mirror as it were up to nature um it is  it's a very important part and let's face it this   coronavirus pandemic uh i again this can sound  so pretentious but i would suggest that a lot of   health and happiness has been maintained  amongst millions of people by their ability   to tune in to television drama actual  theatrical drama opera dance music all   kinds of performance art poetry these things  have kept people sane over the past year and   let's face it we haven't we don't owe  economists and politicians the same   thanks for keeping our souls more or less  happy content or connected if you like   because we talk about the technological connection  i mean the statistics about this um this past year   are terrifying do you know that if the if the  richest people in america if the 40 richest people   in america gave every american three thousand  dollars every american three thousand dollars   they would still be richer than they were  nine months ago well that's how much money   billionaires have made during this period and  now we can be class angry about that we can be   anti-capitalist about that we can do all kind  of things about that but i think it's worth   just remembering that if we've been kept sane  if we've been kept amused if we've been kept in   touch with our fellow humans over the past year  it's because of the performing arts anything else   in some cases the performing arts have been  purely commercial you know netflix and all   the rest of it it's a transactional thing you  pay this money you get this you get bridget   you know you get whatever tiger king  or whatever happens to be the thing and   you know we can we can say that's silly or  whatever but it is these things come out of trade your theatrical training um and a belief in  pursuing what it is that we are our fellows you   know these these people whose arms you know  we can't put our arms around them for real   but we are fully aware of our position  as human beings and uh and the mystery   of being alive and we owe everything to artists  for helping us think about that during this past   year anyway i don't want to ever do that thing but  it is true for me isn't it i think so and it's a   it's important to say that it's only been a  palliative really hasn't it because the real thing   is still being in the same room with the art and  the performance and you know much as i'm sure   anyone would enjoy a film of your performance  as mythos it would not be the same thing as   being in the room all breathing together  and leaning forward and you know not just   not just having the high wire aspect of it of  you know will he lose his place or whatever but   forgetting all of that high wire stuff which you  do when it's going really well and simply leaning   forward to hear what comes next we do have to get  back to that and this year has proved how urgent   that do you know that moment which i love in  theater more than almost anything else is when a   play has finished and the final applause has gone  down and you turn to that person next to you whom   you've had a fuss of banging elbows with and not  being quite sure whether to have a conversation   with them and you catch their eye and you go  wasn't that wonderful and they go ah and then   you make contact with others who've had the same  experience with you in the theater as you shuffle   out it's that that it's that catching the eye that  that it's just you cannot as you say you know you   can't make up for that with zoom or more so now  look at questions from others that's what you want   i've and interestingly i'm going to start with  the one of the most recent to come in which is um   uh what would you see is the next great story  about i think this it says about this but i think   it means um covered because it says do you think  like the 1918 food this will be swept under the   rug in 15 years so it's true isn't it that there  were very few stories told about spanish flu and   yes it is interesting if you look at uh novels  and things like that between the end of the first   world war and the great period of the great gatsby  and and the and the 20s and the you know the   the youth and the roaring excitement of the jazz  age there is no literature that addresses the   horror of millions dying in in pain and loneliness  in huge you know on treadle stretchers and in   canvas uh emergency hospitals it must have been  a miserable miserable time and and many of them   i mean unlike uh kovid the spanish flu was  particularly pernicious uh for the young you   know for healthy young men especially those who  had managed to return from the trenches without   injury and they find the supreme irony of being  knocked down by that and i suspect because i've   spoken to agents and producers over the last few  months as as you can imagine we all have and um uh   there's a kind of joke can you believe they sent  me a they sent me a treatment for a a kind of a   covid drama who the hell wants to see that  you know there is this absolute assumption   the one thing we will not want to see for at  least 10 years after this you know once the   vaccines have finally blown this away and we're  all okay again if we are um i think it's true we   we won't want to see dramas about about  lockdown seclusion and um covered death   it may be the old mention of it but i doubt a  little bit i'd add a little feature much right it   it might just feature as a sort of setup might not  because theater you know likes the pressure cooker   play the people who are trapped together in a  room so you could imagine it being the background   for a play about people driving each other  mad in a sort of look back in angus absolutely   in a way that's only the given circumstances  isn't it it's true now here we have people   strangely interested in your career stephen  i i don't know if it's out of concern but actually here's a really interesting question  before we get on to i've got some questions coming   up about homes and jeebs and things which you one  might expect but i was particularly interested   because when when you told your stories i don't  know if people uh always knew this but when um   when you told your stories in mythos both at the  shore and in uh britain you weren't going off an   absolute script you were you you had your bullet  points and uh bits bits that worked tended to   uh come back as you do and we tell our best  stories but you were it was a mix of the the   fixed and the flowing and one of the questions  i was struck by this evening is someone asking   about the monk debate and your experience of that  sort of debate which not the only one you've done   which is as you know a classic example of  the fixed and the flowing isn't it you have   your first speech um pretty much word for word  but then a lot of the debate will hinge on how   light you are on your feet and quick with your  responses so what's your what's your key to that   it's a really interesting point i think um there  is you know you can do debates where your main   interest is the nature of a debate and you go okay  what side am i arguing all right i think i can   think of some things to argue for that side of the  debate or there is a debate where you're asked to   um to take part and it's something you really care  about you actually believe what it is that you you   are proposing or or opposing and then it becomes  slightly more difficult and that was the case with   the monk debate because i genuinely wanted to sort  of make the point that uh that i was worried that   the cultural wars were leading people into  positions where they cared more about the you know the the purity of their view the how  right they were than with making the world you   know a kind of happier more at ease with itself  kind of place and so i thought well you know what   i don't want to do is just score off the opponent  because it's my you know my my argument is not   with people who believe in political correctness  because no one believes in political correctness   if you you'll ask them to say no i i don't believe  in political crimes but i do believe this which   you may interpret as political correctness so i  i was i was really i didn't want to upset the as   it were opponents and also i was standing next  to jordan peterson who's a huge figure in in   at the time he was you know uh probably one of  the most famous people in the world because of the   huge success of the shows he did and the fact that  a large number of people flocked to his message of   uh you know the masculinity should be reclaimed  not be apologized for and and and so on and then   we can argue about about him and of course he's  in an unhappy situation anyway he's been very   ill um but so i you know i didn't want it to  become a sort of jokey thing where i was on   stage with someone i hated and wanted to just  mock him or that i wanted to mock the people i   was against i just wanted to calm it all down  and i think that's the key with debates is actually most people you chat with if you  if you just take the heat and the and the   anger out of the debate people are very happy to  talk to you um and that's kind of the point that he had this extraordinary idea which  i think is so beautiful and true   which he called the narcissism of small  difference and you know um old jordan peterson   came to fame because he refused to use the  pronouns that trans people wanted him to use and i didn't realize this at the time but it  was actually a debate about precisely that   the narcissism of small difference  actually if jordan peterson thought   that it mattered that his freedom was utterly  and irrevocably threatened by him being forced   to call trans people by the pronoun they wanted  to then that was just his egotism it was his   absurd narcissism just give him a break and say  okay i mean you can say if you want to i think   it's a bit daft but i'll call you then all right  if that's if it's going to offend you if i don't   it's no skin off my nose to do what you want to do   and similarly trans people who are  desperate to be called by the right pronoun   they don't need to be quite so upset if they  aren't you know it isn't a defense to their   very existence and being unless they choose  it to be that on both sides there is a kind   of narcissism there is a you're with us or you're  against us and it isn't that it genuinely isn't   everybody can make an accommodations they  can make an accommodation if they want to   and just say all right it isn't a question of  my freedom or anarchy it's just i can just move   this way and you can move this way and it sounds  very simple but i do think that is behind most of   the anger and upsets behind public debate these  days and so the reason i say yes to things like   the monk debate is not because i think i'll have  a good time because i know i'll get incredibly   nervous and very worried about saying anything  wrong but because i genuinely believe that if   i stand there and i'm reasonably friendly and  encourage others to be reasonably friendly then   it should be apparent that this all-or-nothing  zero-sum game with us or against us attitude is   revealed to be as preposterous as i think it is  that actually we all get on much better than we   think we can i have to say we did a very nice job  of that i i was there and it was very clear in the   room that the audience was sort of relieved every  time you got up because there was such a lot of   noise coming from everyone else and um and it and  it showed also in your off-the-cuff remarks that   you didn't take it as a a kind of um um battle of  whips where the targets come up with the sharpest   put down you actually tended to take the question  quite seriously which is i thought very beautiful   um all right so now a few a few of the uh delving  into the back catalog things here one of our is uh   really enjoying your sherlock holmes narration  and uh wants to ask if you're enjoying doing it   or have enjoyed doing it i'm sure you've finished  them now it was an extraordinary thing for those   who don't know i i did the what sherlockians  called the canon which is to say all the sherlock   holmes stories written by arthur conan doyle  because many have been written since cannon doyle   by kind of conan doyle wannabes or mark conan  dolls monkey but but um there is the canon which   are the the short stories and the novels of here  uh of of condor and i read them for audible and   it is it's a lot 72 hours or something i think um  and so it's a lot of reading it's enough to make   the larynx bleed but i had enormous enormous fun  doing it there is something about conan doyle's   prose this solid victorian prose it's like um it's  a bit like the alan bennett phrase you know it's a   a thread of good-class tweed running through  english literature that there is something so   admirable and strong and crunchy about the his  his sentences you know he writes marvelously he   evokes fear and wickedness and everything else  sort of better than most most thriller writers   so he's still just fun to read um and also  the character of holmes is i mean he just is   ageless and to be sitting even you know you're in  a studio and there's a big glass partition between   you and the um engineer um but nonetheless you  are inside this world of fog and pipe smoke and   certainty you know i think that's what's so  pleasing we all and and i i don't want to   go into some great gender horror here but we all  want a parent a father in in many cases like homes   we want someone we can turn to who has the answers  who can suck on a pipe and frown a bit and just   say this and you go oh thank you because we  live in an age where there are no adults anymore   you know there are no grown-ups um i mean i we  hope that joe biden will be a grown-up because you   know obviously before america never had one uh for  the past four years but you know that there is no it's it's the wizard of oz you know there's no  authority they're just a fraud behind a curtain   there's no there's no dumbledore there's  no sherlock holmes there's no there's no   master there's no mistress there's no one who  can say come my children this is the answer   okay you're quite good at that sort of role  aren't you i mean people no i mean because   you know you are very imposing and uh and you have  a beautiful rich voice all of this stating facts   as you know i'm not in the business of blowing  smoke up your fundament uh you remember only   too well how little i'm in that business um but  but you've you've played things like jeeves the   master of hobbiton was it was oh yes  lake town in in the hobbit yeah there   you go master of lake town and so on you  know you you do um you do this sort of   evontula authority rather well did  you do you like playing those roles   i guess i do i mean i i can't deny it it is it is  pleasurable to play the teacher the father figure   the mentor role is deeply enjoyable uh um when i  was reading the the harry potter books back in the   90s the part i always enjoyed most was dumbledore  just being that sort of figure but partly because   i grew up i said grow up wanting it it's not quite  right i didn't want it in the sense of lacking it   my father was a wonderful man and very uh fabulous  in the intelligence and all the rest of it but i   always sought out teachers and mentors i loved the  idea of an authority that there was someone who   had a view of things and who had wisdom and a way  of coping that that was in that i didn't have and   that they would pass it on to me and so with  with doing roles like jeeves or whatever you   know there is unquestionably a joy in being that  character who can make everything all right again   you know that's reassuring for us as well of  course because once you know the structure   of a holmes or ajeeb story you you don't  really have too much anxiety you just have   well we know that jeeves will be the source of  the redemption and the rescue we we just don't   know how yet yeah exactly exactly right and that  one of our audiences is um you're going to have   to help me here um is it interested to know  what you think of bridgeton you you mentioned   bridgeton in passing and um please tell us what  you think about this very successful production   is the question which sounds a bit  leading to me it is interesting   and it is leading to to some extent in as much as  i'm a long time no longer secret uh because i've   come out about this um fanatic for the novels of  georgette heyer who single-handedly created um   regency romance really i mean well actually jane  austen did all romances regency or otherwise   owe everything to pride and prejudice there  is always you know the uh plot is a bright   sparky vivacious intelligent female who meets a  saturnine dark attractive but slightly arrogant   and dodgy male and they hate each other at  first sight but we know they love each other   and then a parade of different men is laid in  front of us the stuffy preposterous one the rakish   dodgy one the attractive but unreliable one  the respectable but dull one you know all these   different uh ones are laid before the heroine  and each one of them falls and is not acceptable   and then finally she's in the arms of the one we  knew she should be and that is the story of most   romantic fiction and it works very well and we owe  jen austin a great death but what's so wonderful   about georgette hayer is that she's so witty  and so historically profoundly well researched   the details that you get from georgette has  novels and she wrote from the 1930s to the 1970s   um the details of land management and parties  and coaches and horses and costume and   food everything is stunningly well done and  and the language the joy of the language   and the point with jane with georgette hair  is that you have to you arrive in her books   and you have to accept the world that she lays  it out in front of you it is an exact replica   of the the regency period the regency period  it's only nine years it's 18 1811 to 1820.   and so the act of parliament of 1811 1820 when  george iii died in jordan and the prince regent   became george iv uh in that time a lot happened  notably 1815 the flu and the the peace as it   was known and so you know it was obviously a very  important time but it's only 11 years and yet this   whole kind of literature attached to it i'm i'm  taking a long time to come to bridgeton i grant   you but if you love jane austen you love the fact  that everybody who reads sorry not generosity if   georgette hair everybody who reads georgette  hair feels perhaps rightly that they knew   more about the details of the regency period than  most cultural historians you know that we are so   the the detail of thieves can't and servants and  their how much they're paid and how they work   and all these details are so beautifully done  but most importantly the details in terms of   gender sex expectation marriage love all these  you have to accept how they were in georgette   hare's day for their stories to make sense  so you become a regency person with those   values which are often snobbish and appalling and  dreadful and we wouldn't accept them now but if   you dive into georgia hey that's the reward now  with bridgeton what you're getting is a totally   21st century view of everything um and it's  charming and buxom and rumpy and but utterly and   disastrously inaccurate in almost every  degree i mean this is i love the way they   you say shall instead of will when expressing the  future tense and that's that's their idea of being   early 19th century in their language  shall you go to bed yes i shall you've got to be a slightly more accurate than  that to reproduce the age but they're doing   something else and it's wonderful what they're  doing and it's obviously hugely successful so   nothing i can say should or would take away from  it but it's it's not for me because i love that   period i love the whole long 18th century as  historians call it from the 1680s up to um 1820   which is of course nearly  nearly 140 years but but is   it's what they call the long 18th century it's  a fascinating time of history and bridgeton is   it's right it's charming but very good i  i guess i'll cut you off there um so we're   gonna have to finish in a moment i'm just going  to sort of not summarize but just tell you that   i've been thinking as you were speaking about  georgette hare and jane austen and so on that   so much of what we've been talking about  about stories is to do with enjoying structure   and enjoying ordering of things and that in  many ways it is only a question of the rules   of the game that once you've decided that  the rules of the game in georgette heyer   are strict accuracy then she mustn't break those  rules but as long as you come to something like   bridgeton saying well the rules of the  game are that we don't care about that   but that we want everything to feel like it's  um valley girls but in 18th century then then   but there are always certain rules of story shape  they're about girl meets boy girl loses boy girl   gets boy back again or whatever it is which uh  what once we bought into them and decided that's   um the shape of story we like then we we  really resist them being changed as you know   children hate it when you change a story the  third or fourth time you tell them they want   the same story absolutely right and it's funny  you should mention children because that's one   of the things i would say about greek myth  that is different from us it is in greek myth   the children can be killed in hollywood and  our culture they can't you know if there's a   young family and there's a monster on the loose  you know that the monsters might kill the husband   might kill the wife but the children you can't see  children on screen being killed it is a taboo for   us you know medea can chop up her own younger  brother who's a boy 10 or 11 and throw his bits   into the sea as a means of slowing her father down  because he'll have to stop and pick the bits of   his his own son you know we would just not  allow that it doesn't you know you could do   terrible things uh with which the censor would  pass but we don't accept and and the greeks do   go further and in that sense in order to  enter the world of greek myth you have to   give a bit of a shudder and understand that we are  going back to we're going back to meet ourselves   at a time that we're not quite sort of ready to  accept ourselves perhaps that's good well and as   lp hartley said the past is another country  they do things differently then so out of point   we're we're out of time so the very last question  to which you can give a simple one-word answer yes   for uh when are you coming back to the shore  stephen well i'm i hope to be invited um if i am   i will look at my diary and say then i'm coming  next april or whatever but it would be lovely   to come back uh even just as a visitor to go  and see a season and apart from anything else   thank you for looking in on on tim and me as we've  chatted and above all thank you for keeping faith   with the shaw theater and the festival because  it will be back and it'll be back and it'll be   welcomed and better than ever before because  we now know how much we need things like that   to be the first flowers to unfurl as the  world gets back to normal so i i hope to   witness that as much as an audience member as  a performer but whatever role you'll see me in   ladies and gentlemen stephen fry thank  you so much goodbye everybody thanks

Channel: Shaw Festival

Views: 10,300

Rating: 4.9502072 out of 5

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Id: 70eOb5i200k

Length: 61min 2sec (3662 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 18 2021