One of the coolest things Twickenham Fest does is to commission new works.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
The home of Rugby Union is in Twickenham - just outside London in the suburbs, where I live. I'm mad for it. The trouble with being an actor and being in the theater is that you always miss the games.
The BBC does a sterling job, but I'd like to see it do more. ITV does four arts programmes a year; it used to be 28. At least Sky, with its two arts channels, is trying.
I really, really love new work, and that's why, you know, I produced a concert series supporting new musicals and stuff like that. I hope to do more things like that.
I hope to make the process of producing my take of the Biennial a transparent and interesting one for artists.
In England, there's a lot of people producing their own work and becoming producers and filmmakers, so they're not constantly waiting around. It can be very scarce for work, so it's important to create the work.
I've always been inspired by a lot of work coming out of the UK.
One of the great joys of launching your idea on the web is that it's a meritocracy. The good stuff will rise to the top and find an audience, and you don't have to impress one idiosyncratic commissioning editor.
Britain has enormous amount of talent, as we've seen from the BAFTAs. It's all here, and it has to be allowed to flourish.
There's so much of this thing now, where you're supposed to do all the work before you get the commission. I think it's really good to try to resist that. If you just have a week to come up with a pitch for something, your ideas aren't going to be very good. Get your income from somewhere else, and keep your writing not tied into these contracts.
If you swap it about, do television, theatre, film, you can go on surprising yourself. The problem is you get employed to do something you've already done. They want something from that sheep pen of performances they've seen you do.