Speaker 1: Hmm, are we okay for noise? By the way, it's
Speaker 1: Friday night.
Speaker 2: It's Friday, Friday night, It's Friday night. We should do
Speaker 2: something that was so fine the night?
Speaker 1: It wasn't that all right? I know? Just to sing?
Speaker 1: What did we? We?
Speaker 2: Sang?
Speaker 1: Still my escape going in June of this year. I'm
Speaker 1: completely unsure about what to do with Damien Hirst's beautiful
Speaker 1: studio space next to the River Cafe, which he was
Speaker 1: giving to us for the memorial for Richard Rogers. My husband,
Speaker 1: a friend, Jonah Freud, introduced me to s Devlin by text.
Speaker 1: A few hours later, I found myself talking to her
Speaker 1: while she put her child to bed at midnight. S
Speaker 1: the design of the set for Beyond his concert, the
Speaker 1: West End production of the Crucible, the fashion show for Youth.
Speaker 1: Saint Laurent had recently finished her radical book in Atlas
Speaker 1: of s Stevlin. At the end of the conversation, she said,
Speaker 1: I'll tell you what, Ruthie, I'm going to Lisbon tomorrow morning.
Speaker 1: Why don't I stop over on the way to the
Speaker 1: airport is eight o'clock oka, of course, s I said,
Speaker 1: already exhausted. She arrived at day on the dot we've
Speaker 1: had a look at the space. She told me what
Speaker 1: to do and got straight into a taxi to make
Speaker 1: the flight. This was s spontaneous, generous, positive, creative, funny
Speaker 1: and very smart. As I write this, S is in
Speaker 1: the restaurant talking to Charles pull and our manager about
Speaker 1: what makes the River Cafe a set a place that
Speaker 1: is active and calm, dark and light, noisy and quiet
Speaker 1: at different times of the day. When it comes back
Speaker 1: from all this, we'll talk about food, theater, space, books,
Speaker 1: family and cooking, and most of all, we will talk
Speaker 1: about friendship, and we will talk about love.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Yes it's beautiful. Don't change a word.
Speaker 1: So you know the drills. And we asked you to
Speaker 1: choose from all the recipes of all the books from
Speaker 1: the last twelve cookbooks. So I'd like ask you why
Speaker 1: you chose this recipe for kanelini bean soup.
Speaker 2: But this is from the first book. And of course
Speaker 2: my first encounter when the River Cafe first was open,
Speaker 2: when I was first able to come, which took a
Speaker 2: while to get my table, and then when the book
Speaker 2: came out and we were fans, so I wanted to.
Speaker 1: And well back then it.
Speaker 2: Was probably me in France read before I met my
Speaker 2: husband Jack. But my husband Jack is an extraordinary cook.
Speaker 2: He makes this canelini bean soup and he makes it
Speaker 2: very specifically with a piece of toast in the bottom.
Speaker 2: And he did teach me how to make it. So
Speaker 2: I have made it okay, but more often I have
Speaker 2: eaten it and that it didn't make it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I The recipe canellini bean soup. Serve six two hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty grams cooked cannellini beans, a handful of fresh
Speaker 2: sage leaves, two to three garlic cloves, peeled and chopped,
Speaker 2: three tablespoons of olive oil, a bunch of fresh flat
Speaker 2: leaf parsley chopped extra virgin olive oil in a large saucepan.
Speaker 2: Cook the garlic in the olive oil until soft but
Speaker 2: not brown. Add the parsley, then add beans and stir.
Speaker 2: Put three quarters of the bean mixture into a food
Speaker 2: processor with some reserved cooking liquid. Pulse briefly. You do
Speaker 2: not want to pure. Add more of the cooking liquid
Speaker 2: if necessary, but the soup should be thick. Return to
Speaker 2: the saucepan and season. Reheat if too thick, add more
Speaker 2: cooking liquid. Serve with generous amount of extra virgin olive oil.
Speaker 1: And perhaps some toast.
Speaker 2: And I would if I were Jack, I would be
Speaker 2: toasting something in the bottom.
Speaker 1: So you have that gorgeous toast and beans and oil.
Speaker 1: So we love threems three ingredients, isn't it? You know, simplicity,
Speaker 1: which I guess is perhaps the way you work it is.
Speaker 2: And also I don't eat meat, so and I, as
Speaker 2: you mentioned, I use quite a lot of energy, so
Speaker 2: I have to be quite careful to make sure I
Speaker 2: get a lot of protein without eating meat. And the
Speaker 2: beans are amazing for that as well.
Speaker 1: So, going back to the beginning, tell me about growing
Speaker 1: up in the Devlin household. Where were you born?
Speaker 2: I was born in Kingston Hospital in Kingston upon Thames,
Speaker 2: not too far from here, proper suburbia, proper suburbia in
Speaker 2: the western suburbs of London. And then my parents went
Speaker 2: on a romantic weekend break to Rye in East Sussex,
Speaker 2: and they bought a house on a whim on a
Speaker 2: cobbled street called Mermaid Street which used to descend into
Speaker 2: the sea. And the house had been lived in by
Speaker 2: Conrad Aiken the poet and his daughter Joan Akin, the author.
Speaker 2: So in my mind, the house spoke. There was a
Speaker 2: model city, model town of Rye next to the house,
Speaker 2: and we used to visit it every weekend because my
Speaker 2: mother and father were so excited to invite their friends
Speaker 2: to see the place they loved, so they would take
Speaker 2: them to the model, which was a sone Lumier and
Speaker 2: it told stories. So each house told a story, including
Speaker 2: my house. So I was only six years old, so
Speaker 2: in my head something made me think that objects could speak,
Speaker 2: houses could speak the way that I think bean speak
Speaker 2: and food speaks. So that was me growing up. And
Speaker 2: my mother was a teacher.
Speaker 1: What did she do.
Speaker 2: She taught special needs children, dyslexic children. At that time,
Speaker 2: she had taught lots of things, but she was teaching
Speaker 2: dyslexic kids. And my dad was a journalist specializing in education.
Speaker 2: They were both fascinated with education, actually, But my mom
Speaker 2: prepared all the food. My dad could make scrambled eggs
Speaker 2: on toast, that was really it. I'm worried that I
Speaker 2: might be like my father was slightly known for only
Speaker 2: cooking one thing. Okay, because I don't get very much.
Speaker 1: That's fine, what is your one thing?
Speaker 2: Well, I do make cheese and tomatoes, on toast quite well,
Speaker 2: if it's good toast, and I sometimes put red pepper.
Speaker 2: I'm trying to use the vegan cheese.
Speaker 1: Are you vegan and vegetarian?
Speaker 2: Now I'm vegetarian, but I'm just trying to be as
Speaker 2: smart as possible with the ingredients. But yeah, my mum
Speaker 2: was in the kitchen. She was trying to manage everything.
Speaker 2: There were four kids, four and she taught all day
Speaker 2: and then he came home and cooked. Yeah, would you
Speaker 2: sit down, all of you to do Yeah, every year.
Speaker 2: But it was quite a lot of you know, back
Speaker 2: then in the eighties and late seventies, quite a lot
Speaker 2: of potato waffles, the freezer, whatever she had time for.
Speaker 2: Then she got a slow cooker and she realized that
Speaker 2: before she went to work, she could put all the
Speaker 2: ingredients big meaty stews she could put.
Speaker 1: She would do a.
Speaker 2: White one or a brown one, and she put all
Speaker 2: the ingredients of the chicken or whatever it was in there.
Speaker 2: In the morning, she'd go out do her whole day teaching,
Speaker 2: and then we would come home from school. The idea
Speaker 2: was that the big stew would be there for us
Speaker 2: to eat, and that worked well, no, because we liked
Speaker 2: the potato waffles, so we would just go to the
Speaker 2: freezer and get poor mam so she gave up after
Speaker 2: that a bit.
Speaker 1: So your father would come back. Would he work in London?
Speaker 2: Yeah, we only saw him at the weekend because he
Speaker 2: would stay up in London to get to Rye at
Speaker 2: the time, it's quite a track, so he would come
Speaker 2: back at the weekends. So my mum was really holding
Speaker 2: the four and we we all did a lot of things.
Speaker 2: There was music lessons orchestra. We had a little yellow
Speaker 2: citron Diane that we had to park facing downhill on
Speaker 2: Mermaid Street, otherwise it wouldn't start if it was facing
Speaker 2: uphill because then if it if it didn't start, you.
Speaker 1: Could just roll it down.
Speaker 2: She would put hot water bottles on it in the
Speaker 2: winter to stop the points freezing. She had a little
Speaker 2: plastic like a bonnet that you put on to stop
Speaker 2: your hair getting wet. In the shower. She put one
Speaker 2: of those over the whole car, a big bonnet to
Speaker 2: stop it getting wet. But we would go to the
Speaker 2: beach after school in the summer every day, to camber
Speaker 2: Sands or to Winchelsea and we would My food memory
Speaker 2: of that time I was sitting usually crappy weather, in
Speaker 2: the wind and unwrapping foil crusty little pastries, and then
Speaker 2: the sand, the grit of the sand would get in them,
Speaker 2: and she would make these little pastry chicken pies. So
Speaker 2: I remember the chicken in the sand. They were kind
Speaker 2: of tasty with a bit of sand in them.
Speaker 1: So you grew up in this house with four children,
Speaker 1: where are you in the list of number two? Number two?
Speaker 1: And the mother who worked, a father who was absent,
Speaker 1: and you had a meal every night that you would
Speaker 1: sit around the table and would you all talk about
Speaker 1: what you've done during the day, just eat and then
Speaker 1: do the homework.
Speaker 2: Was noisy, very noisy, and kind of My brothers went
Speaker 2: to boarding school for a while. I think it was
Speaker 2: all too much, probably for my mum to manage four
Speaker 2: kids at once, so they went off for a bit
Speaker 2: and they would come back in the holidays and it
Speaker 2: was very, very noisy, and there were friends over, and yeah,
Speaker 2: it was food and noise and talking.
Speaker 1: And at lunch, would you take your lunch to school?
Speaker 1: Did you get lunch school food?
Speaker 2: School food? Yes? Oh yes, oh yes. School food was
Speaker 2: horrible rice puddings that were all skinny, and you had
Speaker 2: to eat it all. It was a local school called
Speaker 2: Frieda kardam in Rye Primary School, and then we moved
Speaker 2: to Kent to go to a school called Cranbrook School,
Speaker 2: which was a grammar school. They had a little cafeteria
Speaker 2: that you would choose your food, but we just did
Speaker 2: eat the potato waffles.
Speaker 1: And came back to the I'm afraid it's such a
Speaker 1: shame because I've never seen a potato. I guess I
Speaker 1: have to go through the British education system had a potato.
Speaker 2: Yes, I mean, in fairness to my mum, the the
Speaker 2: fact that you know, we were annoying children who liked
Speaker 2: processed food was not her fault. She's a fantastic cook.
Speaker 2: She makes great big themed I mean, she would make
Speaker 2: ridiculously crazy birthday cakes, theatrical, perhaps extraordinarily the I mean.
Speaker 2: My mum's a great artist, as is my dad. They
Speaker 2: didn't pursue art as her career, but all of our
Speaker 2: birthdays were always it would be a themed mermaid cake
Speaker 2: with mermaid biscuits. I am I'm pretty terrible because I
Speaker 2: do when I eat a meal, and I've been served
Speaker 2: the most beautiful meals in my life by my husband
Speaker 2: and others, But I tend to eat the conversation. Yeah,
Speaker 2: the food tastes of the thought. That's fine, that's a story.
Speaker 2: That's a story of food. And I think food can
Speaker 2: be a story. And I think you know, what you
Speaker 2: eat is so much obviously more than what's going in
Speaker 2: your mouth. And the lighting. I am obsessed with what
Speaker 2: the light is. I can't if I walk into a restaurant,
Speaker 2: the light is where I will probably go up to
Speaker 2: the person's say, can I just dim this switch here?
Speaker 1: So what is the lighting that you like? Low? Low?
Speaker 2: Or outside and being in the like just now, we
Speaker 2: were sitting outside your beautiful piazza. So either natural light
Speaker 2: or the light of the fire. Yeah, by the fire,
Speaker 2: the food by a fire.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I'm Charles Pullan, executive director of the River Cafe, and
Speaker 3: we are sitting on the table one oh six on
Speaker 3: the terrace outside on a Friday afternoon, and I'm about
Speaker 3: to talk with es Devlyn. Very exciting. We want to
Speaker 3: get her take on the feel and the energy and
Speaker 3: the design of the River Cafe. So rather than one
Speaker 3: of her sets that we do all over the world,
Speaker 3: be rather interesting just for us to hear what your
Speaker 3: take is on the space that we use. As people
Speaker 3: arrived through the front door, their first view as they
Speaker 3: look left down the length of the very long dining
Speaker 3: room is that it's the big pink word oven than
Speaker 3: the fire in there flickering away, which has a wonderful
Speaker 3: purpose of shrinking the room in a way and making
Speaker 3: it feel cozy and make it feel much more intimate
Speaker 3: despite the facts it is a very long, large dining room.
Speaker 3: It's such a such a sort of hackneyed old reference,
Speaker 3: the fact that there is so much in common with
Speaker 3: the theater and the restaurant world. But it's a truism
Speaker 3: because there are so many parallels with how you gear up,
Speaker 3: you rehearse your audition, but then there's the energy that
Speaker 3: just before service, just before the curtains up, and then
Speaker 3: you all jump into your roles. And so we've always
Speaker 3: talked about the staff and the food and all that
Speaker 3: side of things. But from your point of view, it
Speaker 3: might be interesting to hear how the kind of design
Speaker 3: of the dining room itself comes into play.
Speaker 2: I think the comparison between the performative aspects of the
Speaker 2: delivery of food and the physical aspects of being backstage
Speaker 2: and front stage are clear. I don't find them hackneyed.
Speaker 2: I think they're fascinating. When I was here last time,
Speaker 2: it was an evening. The weather was a bit like this,
Speaker 2: maybe not so sunny, but we all gathered in bright
Speaker 2: clothes in honor of Richard's love of bright colors, all
Speaker 2: around the banks of this piazza, and.
Speaker 1: Of course the river. It's called the River car favor reason.
Speaker 2: We are adjacent to this great planetary force that runs
Speaker 2: through our city. So for me, those fundamental forces of
Speaker 2: the fire in the bright crimson furnace, and the river
Speaker 2: that's here, this green piazza of grass that's outside, the
Speaker 2: vivid color of the doors everywhere in the toilets, this
Speaker 2: beautiful red orange fluorescent color. Right, So, I think all
Speaker 2: of those energies are felt even when you're inside. We're
Speaker 2: sitting outside now, but I believe they're felt inside as well.
Speaker 2: And of course the color that the idea that when
Speaker 2: you eat, you're not just eating food, you're eating color.
Speaker 2: You're eating light because the way that light reverberates off
Speaker 2: objects to create color. You're eating what you smell, You're
Speaker 2: eating the conversation that you might be having with someone.
Speaker 2: That's what you're eating. That's what you're nourished by. So
Speaker 2: much more than molecules that you need is fuel, right,
Speaker 2: and that's this place has always celebrated that. And of
Speaker 2: course what's beautiful about it in my understanding of the
Speaker 2: etymology of this restaurant and why it's so duly loved,
Speaker 2: is because it began as a place of work, didn't
Speaker 2: It began as a canteen to feed those who were
Speaker 2: working together to make buildings.
Speaker 3: The paper tape cloth here is absolutely was here so
Speaker 3: that Richard could get out its pens and squibble on
Speaker 3: them and design the next compute, whatever it might have been.
Speaker 2: And I think that's why it feels so rooted in
Speaker 2: this spot. It's here for more reasons than one might think,
Speaker 2: even on the surface. Of course, now it's become this
Speaker 2: incredibly sought after place to have some of the finest food,
Speaker 2: with the finest produce, with some of the most successful
Speaker 2: and accessible and readable and beautiful cookbits that have ever
Speaker 2: been made. But it started because a team at lunch
Speaker 2: time needed to eat in a place where there aren't
Speaker 2: many restaurants. And it started from we always talk about
Speaker 2: in any kind of work of art, what was the
Speaker 2: need it need to be made, and this needed to
Speaker 2: be made, like Ruthie and Richard needed to be together,
Speaker 2: like you know, their need of each other sort of
Speaker 2: resonated through all their friends and the vast kind of
Speaker 2: circle of people they've gathered around them, which I really
Speaker 2: witnessed when I was here on that the way.
Speaker 1: I understand that you cook for the people that you
Speaker 1: work with as any yeah every day.
Speaker 2: Yeah so I don't cook, but I have a cook
Speaker 2: who makes meals every day. And we started that probably
Speaker 2: about seven years ago when we moved to a studio
Speaker 2: that didn't really have an easy way for people to eat.
Speaker 2: But also it was part of balancing our carbon footprint
Speaker 2: and it seemed much more sensible. If I have around
Speaker 2: eight to ten people in the studio every day, we
Speaker 2: make them vegetarian food. There's no food waste, there's no packaging,
Speaker 2: no one's running around getting bits of things in plastic
Speaker 2: boxes or anything. But it was what's something I could do.
Speaker 2: You know, we still fly. I can diminish it, but
Speaker 2: I can't completely get rid of that from my practice
Speaker 2: at the moment. But what I can do is serve
Speaker 2: everyone a really nice vegetarian all eat together. Yeah, we
Speaker 2: will stop work. We go around the table in my house,
Speaker 2: there's a garden there. We all sit down and we eat.
Speaker 2: We have a wonderful lady called Chia who's cooking for
Speaker 2: us at the moment. We had Antonio until she had
Speaker 2: to leave. But that's really important for me that we sit,
Speaker 2: we talk to each other, we eat great food.
Speaker 1: I think that again, how you combine work food. You
Speaker 1: know that people who need to go out and go
Speaker 1: for a walk to stop the people the idea of
Speaker 1: the business lunch where you go to a restaurant and
Speaker 1: you discuss work, which was an anathemat It rends a
Speaker 1: piano Richard's partner. He thought, I remember when they were
Speaker 1: doing the Pompa. It was like either you ate or
Speaker 1: you worked. You never would, you know, combine the two,
Speaker 1: you know, the idea of enjoying a meal while you
Speaker 1: talked about work, you continue the work of the meal or.
Speaker 2: Usually not normally, we just talk about stuff we want
Speaker 2: to talk about. It's not working over lunch. And everyone
Speaker 2: goes out for a walk after lunch because we're near
Speaker 2: Dulwich Park, so people go out, they wander off, they
Speaker 2: get a coffee, they have all break but normally know
Speaker 2: the conversation. Either we're silent. Sometimes sometimes we just need
Speaker 2: a break and we will sit there. We're happy in
Speaker 2: each other's company, just eating. We're very happy to say nothing.
Speaker 2: Or we just chit chat about any old thing that's
Speaker 2: nothing to do with work. Or we invite people to lunch.
Speaker 2: A lot of the time there are a lot of
Speaker 2: kids who want to see the studio who might not
Speaker 2: otherwise experience what a studio is like. So we're busy,
Speaker 2: but we're always stopping for lunch. So we say come
Speaker 2: to lunch, so they come. They get the vibe. Everyone's
Speaker 2: not panicking because they're not meant to be working. It's
Speaker 2: a time for a break.
Speaker 1: And you're quite solitary.
Speaker 2: I love being on my own. I love reading. I
Speaker 2: always draw when I read. I write when I read,
Speaker 2: I draw, I have to underline. I can't read without
Speaker 2: a pen in my hand. I love it on my own,
Speaker 2: but I don't spend very much time on my own
Speaker 2: because I have two children out and I have eight
Speaker 2: people in my studio minimum, so I'm rarely on my own,
Speaker 2: so I really cherish it when I am.
Speaker 1: Because we were talking the other day about artists and alcohol,
Speaker 1: and drinking and going out and being together in the
Speaker 1: evening because so many artists are alone during the day
Speaker 1: that then when it's sort of over, you want to
Speaker 1: kind of go out to be out. Did you have
Speaker 1: that period in your life before you had children you
Speaker 1: were working and then partying.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I think the time when I moved
Speaker 2: to London, when I was at early teens. You know,
Speaker 2: it was magical. My boyfriend at the time was.
Speaker 1: Sixteen is young.
Speaker 2: I was young.
Speaker 1: Well your parents were fine with that.
Speaker 2: And not really no. Yeah, I was kind of determined
Speaker 2: in what I wanted to do, and it was music.
Speaker 2: My boyfriend at the time was a record producer and
Speaker 2: a sound engineer, so I was with a lot of
Speaker 2: musicians and I spent a lot of time in recording studios,
Speaker 2: just observing how music is made, how tracks are recorded,
Speaker 2: how music is edited. That was a really formative time
Speaker 2: to get under the skin of recording in music. And
Speaker 2: then when I was in Bristol, that was probably my
Speaker 2: most party time. That was my hallucinogenic moment.
Speaker 1: Tell me about then when you left home.
Speaker 2: I was about sixteen and I fell in love with
Speaker 2: a man who was twenty four. I did finish school.
Speaker 2: But I spent a lot of time in London.
Speaker 1: Has that a domestic situation? Did you live in a
Speaker 1: house and have to cook and shop for yourself?
Speaker 2: But we do. You know, we had hardly ever been
Speaker 2: to a restaurant when we didn't go to restaurants ever,
Speaker 2: we didn't have the money for kids in a restaurant,
Speaker 2: and restaurants in England at the time, it wasn't the
Speaker 2: same thing that we're talking about. Well, as I was
Speaker 2: growing up in the seventies and eighties, we never went
Speaker 2: to a I can remember going to a restaurant.
Speaker 1: Once special occasion, or I think it.
Speaker 2: Was because the car broke down and we went and
Speaker 2: it had red walls and the parmesan was off. That's
Speaker 2: all I remember about a restaurant. So the first time
Speaker 2: I really remember going to restaurants was when I was
Speaker 2: sixteen and I met my boyfriend and he would take
Speaker 2: me out in London to restaurants and we went to
Speaker 2: Mister Wing and we ate duck pancakes. It's an Earl's
Speaker 2: Court and Julie's restaurant and those were the rest and
Speaker 2: I was like, wow, this is crazy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you ate in restaurants and maybe cooked for
Speaker 1: yourself or yeah.
Speaker 2: Then I did do a bit of cooking, and I
Speaker 2: would have been at university when I got your book.
Speaker 2: I didn't have any furniture. I had a wooden palette
Speaker 2: on the floor and I put cushions around it. And
Speaker 2: I would try and make the River Cafe recipes. That
Speaker 2: was when I first got the blue book.
Speaker 1: And then you cooked your way through university? Did you
Speaker 1: stay there? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I did cook. Then I would eat veggie
Speaker 2: burgers in the cafe. Vegetarian at that I wasn't. No,
Speaker 2: I just like the veggie burgers. I wasn't vegetarian. Then
Speaker 2: I would make chicken. I would do tie dinners, and
Speaker 2: I would get the galangle and lime and coconut milk
Speaker 2: and make chicken coconut milk soup. I would do that.
Speaker 1: So when you left Bristol, and what did you do?
Speaker 2: When I left Bristol, I had been writing, as you do.
Speaker 2: I was doing an English literature degree, so I was
Speaker 2: reading and writing, reading, reading, writing for three years. But
Speaker 2: I also wanted to paint, so I painted a lot.
Speaker 2: I painted my whole house, which was rented.
Speaker 1: Murals on the walls.
Speaker 2: Yeah wow. And it was a rented apartment, and it
Speaker 2: had a shag pile carpet that I ripped off. It
Speaker 2: was disgusting, had carpet all over the side of the bath.
Speaker 2: So I took all the carpets away and painted on
Speaker 2: the floor great big murals and painted a lot of
Speaker 2: I made a lot of things.
Speaker 1: Did your landlord ever stop by to visit?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: In trouble.
Speaker 2: When I left, I had to put it all. I
Speaker 2: had to get a new shag pile carpet, put it back.
Speaker 1: So underneath some person's apartment, you should go back there
Speaker 1: and lift up the carpet. Discovery and Michelangelo under under canvas,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 2: Have a look in number one three five cotton brow
Speaker 2: one three nine. I can't remember, but so I wanted
Speaker 2: to make art there. And I went to Saint Martin's
Speaker 2: and I did the foundation course.
Speaker 1: After the university, I did it all back front. It's
Speaker 1: not bad to have one education and then have another.
Speaker 1: I wasn't ready to go to art school.
Speaker 2: Although I'd always made art at school, I wasn't ready
Speaker 2: to go to art school, not least because if you
Speaker 2: went to art school you had to stay living at home. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And I wanted to move. I wanted to live in Bristol,
Speaker 2: so yeah, I went to Saint Martin's and had the
Speaker 2: most you know, rich year of just I was. I
Speaker 2: was a mature student by then. Everyone else was eighteen.
Speaker 2: I was twenty one and quite old. So I did
Speaker 2: everything there. You really got into photography, printmaking, sculpture, made
Speaker 2: a lot of books. I sowed a book. I decided
Speaker 2: a book had to be made completely stitched. And then
Speaker 2: people kept saying to me, oh, you really should check
Speaker 2: out this theater design course.
Speaker 1: A'd sat minds There was a.
Speaker 2: Specific one called Motley Theater Design Course, which was run
Speaker 2: by a ninety three year old lady called Percy Harris,
Speaker 2: who's a bit of a legend in the world of
Speaker 2: stage design. And I said, I don't really care about theater.
Speaker 2: It's quite boring. I never sit through and was asleep,
Speaker 2: or it's a music it's kind of embarrassing. Want to
Speaker 2: do theater? And they said, no, no, just go and
Speaker 2: check out this course. And I walked in and it
Speaker 2: was this red room, smell of pot noodle. Definitely saw
Speaker 2: a mouse.
Speaker 1: And where was it. It was in the.
Speaker 2: Scene dock of the theater Royal Drury Lane at the time,
Speaker 2: there was Miss Saigon. So every night you would hear
Speaker 2: the helicopter coming down, and it was just ten students,
Speaker 2: pretty much feral, slightly smelly. They hadn't left that room
Speaker 2: for a year.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: They were just in and they were making. They had
Speaker 2: little model theaters, they were listening to opera. There was
Speaker 2: references and photographs and painting stuck all over the wall.
Speaker 2: And I felt, I thought, this is my tribe. I'm
Speaker 2: happy and I've never really left that room. In a way.
Speaker 2: Whatever I'm making, it's in a room. My room now
Speaker 2: is kind of like that. It's covered in stuff, Piles
Speaker 2: and piles of books, tons of little drawings and pictures
Speaker 2: all over the wall, lots of little sculptures, quite magical,
Speaker 2: lots of miniatures.
Speaker 1: You have a beautiful voice. Did you sing? Do you know?
Speaker 2: I did try and say occasion, I was so bad.
Speaker 2: Funnily enough, I've learned to use my voice a bit now.
Speaker 2: When I make sculptures, I speak in them. But about
Speaker 2: tell me more about that?
Speaker 1: What do you mean?
Speaker 2: Well, there's a work that's on in Miami at the
Speaker 2: moment called Forest of Us and it starts as a
Speaker 2: small film with me talking. Really just noticing the similarity
Speaker 2: between the shape of human lungs and the shape of trees,
Speaker 2: and just observing that. Then the film comes apart and
Speaker 2: you walk into a sculpture that reverberates that observation. But
Speaker 2: when I first made these types of works in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 2: I would never have used my voice.
Speaker 1: Like a lot of people.
Speaker 2: If I heard my voice on an answering machine back
Speaker 2: in the day when we had answers, I've been back.
Speaker 2: Oh God, I don't sound like that. That's weird. I
Speaker 2: sound you know, that's terrible that I got used to
Speaker 2: it when I used to read my children's stories when
Speaker 2: I put them to sleep, and I got used to
Speaker 2: the different quality of sound. If I had one of
Speaker 2: their heads on my chest, my voice sounded different, and
Speaker 2: I got used to that, and I kind of became
Speaker 2: comfortable with my own voice around.
Speaker 1: Then, stories and boys and theater and designing the story
Speaker 1: of your growing up, decorating the cakes to going to
Speaker 1: Bristol and cooking Thai food and putting murals under carpets.
Speaker 1: It's all about discovery and trying to find the story
Speaker 1: with the theme underneath it. And then food is the same.
Speaker 1: You have the ingredients. You try and think how you
Speaker 1: can respect the ingredient, the simplicity of the ingredient, if
Speaker 1: you're a vegetarian, if you're vegan, if you're trying to
Speaker 1: do something with or without. It always is that kind
Speaker 1: of restraint which then leads to the richness, doesn't it.
Speaker 2: I think so when I think everything that you're just
Speaker 2: describing there is also about seeking a very basic human
Speaker 2: need for being participant in ritual. Yeah, and we were
Speaker 2: talking actually a little earlier about river, caffe and ritual.
Speaker 2: And you've got all the ingredients here for ritual. You
Speaker 2: have the river, you have the fire, you have that
Speaker 2: piazza of grass, And I think more and more it's
Speaker 2: what we lack and it's what we seek. The storytelling
Speaker 2: voice is another way of calibrating time. It's such a
Speaker 2: tiny fragment of our existence as a species that we
Speaker 2: calibrate time with a clock mechanical digital that's so recent.
Speaker 2: It was always calibration by means of planet tree distance.
Speaker 1: And when is the right time. When Richard was doing
Speaker 1: Lloyd's they wanted to put a clock on the outside
Speaker 1: of the building. How we went to Gane Tangley and said,
Speaker 1: would you possibly design a clock. It was a real
Speaker 1: whole long story, which is you had to call them
Speaker 1: at a certain time of day, and somehow I was
Speaker 1: very involved in this, and so I made the call
Speaker 1: and you had to tell him right away what you wanted.
Speaker 1: And so I said, mister Tangly, you know, this is
Speaker 1: Richard Roger's wife, and we'd like to put a clock
Speaker 1: on the outside of Lloyd's. Anyway, that's fantastic. I love
Speaker 1: Richard Rogers's work, I love Lloyd's, I love insurance, I
Speaker 1: love clock. This is a brilliant idea. And he thought
Speaker 1: about it. We talked about it, and then he said,
Speaker 1: there's there's just one thing that if I design a
Speaker 1: clock for you, there's one condition. And I said what
Speaker 1: would that be? And he said, the clock must not
Speaker 1: tell the correct time. Wonderful, and you know, and they have.
Speaker 1: Of course Lloyd's went next. You know, they weren't totally
Speaker 1: but the idea that you could have a clock that
Speaker 1: you knew as a you know, as a ritual, as
Speaker 1: a consistent which which would not be correct. It is okay,
Speaker 1: I'll meet you under the Lloyd's clock, but I don't
Speaker 1: know what time that will be.
Speaker 2: I think so I think these these other ways of
Speaker 2: calibrating time that are not digital. And I think one
Speaker 2: of the things I started doing. I was traveling a
Speaker 2: lot too much for a while, and to sort of
Speaker 2: earth myself, I would every morning when I would wake up,
Speaker 2: I wouldn't quite know where I was. Straight away, I
Speaker 2: didn't know, and I would just observe the light coming
Speaker 2: through the gap in the two curtains, and for a
Speaker 2: while I just say, Okay, I don't know anything else.
Speaker 2: I just know that line of light. And I started
Speaker 2: photographing them, and I've been doing it for about twenty years,
Speaker 2: and I now I'm in a state where in the morning,
Speaker 2: even if I wake up at home, I don't have curtains.
Speaker 2: I have blinds. So what you see are these two.
Speaker 1: Squares have light.
Speaker 2: Two yeah, beautiful squares of light. And actually the door
Speaker 2: doesn't quite shut probably, so I often get a line
Speaker 2: of light through the door and I just sit with those.
Speaker 2: I set my alarm twenty minutes before I have to
Speaker 2: get up, which is what time normally I get up
Speaker 2: around seven point thirty. But I try to just have
Speaker 2: that moment with the lines of light, like a sort
Speaker 2: of you know, the room is a sun dial.
Speaker 1: The River Cafe is excited to announce the return of
Speaker 1: our Italian Christmas Gift Boxes, our alternative to the traditional
Speaker 1: have the The gift boxes bring you all of our
Speaker 1: favorites from the River Cafe, kitchen, vineyards and the designers
Speaker 1: from all over Italy. They're available to pre order now
Speaker 1: on Shop the River Cafe do co UK. Tell me
Speaker 1: about the most recent or most interesting set you've done,
Speaker 1: that you've worked out. Do we call them sets? Do
Speaker 1: you still call themselves?
Speaker 2: Well, you might call them a stage sculpture. I mean
Speaker 2: I think historically set design hierarchically, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Tell me about set design, well.
Speaker 2: It sometimes has been perhaps regarded as something decorative or something.
Speaker 2: So the only reason I am a little bit particular
Speaker 2: about the words I used to describe it is it
Speaker 2: just helps people to recognize that objects can be protagonists,
Speaker 2: that environments can speak, that places speak, that you know,
Speaker 2: a cup if it's picked up in this particular way
Speaker 2: under a particular like can you know, be vocal about
Speaker 2: stuff in the way that mountains can and rock scan
Speaker 2: and stream scan, you know, and animals can. That's why
Speaker 2: I use stage sculptures a bit just to kind of
Speaker 2: provoke a little bit, but a recent one. There's one
Speaker 2: out on at the moment actually at the Gilgod Theater
Speaker 2: for The Crucible, a.
Speaker 1: Book that we all if you're American and you grew
Speaker 1: up in high school in America, we all with the Crucible.
Speaker 2: Tell me about the Crucible and this up well, when
Speaker 2: you enter the space. It was at the Olivier Theater
Speaker 2: at the National and now it's at the Gilgud Theater.
Speaker 2: When you enter the space, it already confronts you because
Speaker 2: it is a living box of water pouring, and in
Speaker 2: the Gildgod particularly, it's somewhat unnerving because the gil Good
Speaker 2: is a beautiful ornate iced cake of a proscenium Edwardian theater.
Speaker 2: So it makes you anxious straight away to see this
Speaker 2: water pouring like is there a giant leak? That it's
Speaker 2: pretty powerful, and it already helps heighten the atmosphere. You know,
Speaker 2: there's always that terrible moment when you go in a
Speaker 2: theater and you've bought your popcorn or whatever. You sit down,
Speaker 2: the seats are uncomfortable. You're with a friend. You're not
Speaker 2: sure that they're going to like it. They might find
Speaker 2: it boring, because theater can be crap, you know, and
Speaker 2: crack theater is some of the crappiest thing you can imagine.
Speaker 1: Because it's hard to do well.
Speaker 2: So if you sit down and you've got all those anxieties,
Speaker 2: will it be good? Will it be bad? Will I
Speaker 2: be bored? If already there's a gesture that's confident, that
Speaker 2: already says I'm going to look after you, I'll keep
Speaker 2: You're safe, You're safe with me, then it's a bit
Speaker 2: like a restaurant. You walk in and the colors are
Speaker 2: being chosen, people already relax, And I think what happens
Speaker 2: is people become already tuned in a little bit to
Speaker 2: the vibration of the gesture.
Speaker 1: Have the sets usually lit then before you when you
Speaker 1: sit down, you can see what it's going to be.
Speaker 1: Is it dark, going to light?
Speaker 2: And well, it varies, but I'm trying to, I guess,
Speaker 2: increase the porosity between the feeling of walking into the
Speaker 2: Turbine Hall or the Serpentine and the feeling of walking
Speaker 2: into the Gilgod Theater. And I think if you walk
Speaker 2: in there's already a sculpture there, you engage in a
Speaker 2: different way, and then of course the music begins, and
Speaker 2: in this case, it's Caroline Shaw has done this extraordinary
Speaker 2: work with an extraordinary musical director as well. And these
Speaker 2: voices begin and they are cost you and you don't
Speaker 2: have time to worry anymore. You're grabbed.
Speaker 1: Do you work with a director from the very first,
Speaker 1: when he starts or she starts thinking about how the
Speaker 1: play is going to be directed? Because I do that
Speaker 1: with a book. We don't write the recipes and then
Speaker 1: talk to the photographer and the graphic designer. We all
Speaker 1: sit around the table and think, what is every page
Speaker 1: going to be? How are we going to photograph this
Speaker 1: before we even cook it, or how are we going
Speaker 1: to make the page make you want to cook a
Speaker 1: recipe and make it clear. So it all starts with that.
Speaker 1: And is that the way it is with you?
Speaker 2: With Lindsay Turner, she's the director of the Crucible, and
Speaker 2: she and I have worked together now for quite a
Speaker 2: long time, for ten years. Actually, I spend quite a
Speaker 2: lot of time on a farm in Sussex and she
Speaker 2: came down there oka tell me that I haven't I
Speaker 2: only just got I haven't done much with it yet.
Speaker 1: What do you want to do? This is a diversion
Speaker 1: from the Crucible.
Speaker 2: But well, my dream would be that the people in
Speaker 2: my studio who are on computers a lot of the time,
Speaker 2: I would really like it that on a Friday or
Speaker 2: maybe once a month or what often we can do it,
Speaker 2: they would come to the farm and put their hands
Speaker 2: in the earth. And it's just a visual symmetry as well.
Speaker 2: If these hands are on computer keys all the time
Speaker 2: and these imaginations are everywhere, but the nature of our practices,
Speaker 2: they're making models, but a lot of the time they're
Speaker 2: on computers, and I think it be beautiful for them
Speaker 2: to be hands in earth, you know, helping to grow
Speaker 2: the food that we then eat. That would be the dream. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's the dream. So that's what we're great.
Speaker 1: It takes time. We went to the farm with So I.
Speaker 2: Went to the farm with Lindsay and we sat and
Speaker 2: we read the Crucible. We just read the whole thing aloud.
Speaker 2: And that's what we always do, is we read it
Speaker 2: so that play exists between us. We just share the parts,
Speaker 2: so that before we start, even before talking about.
Speaker 1: Was it her idea to put it on? Was it her?
Speaker 1: She brought it to the nation.
Speaker 2: She had the vision to do it, and she had
Speaker 2: a really clear vision for how she wanted to do it.
Speaker 2: But even after that first reading, we started to say,
Speaker 2: what if. What if the first scene was just this
Speaker 2: group of girls sitting at the back of the congregation muttering,
Speaker 2: and then one of them gets slapped and we just
Speaker 2: see them from the back. So we sort of conjured
Speaker 2: the first scene and that led to the environment and
Speaker 2: the sculpture around it.
Speaker 1: Would you direct yourself? Would you say I can do both?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I sometimes do, especially with the music, and sometimes
Speaker 2: but I really like the collaboration with the director. I
Speaker 2: direct the materials and the you know how the life
Speaker 2: video and the materials might coalesce, and she directs the
Speaker 2: performers and the cast, and it's a lot of directing
Speaker 2: of different material and human things.
Speaker 1: Do you go where do your players aren't? Do you
Speaker 1: go often to see it? And how this said once?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm normally onto, I'm normally onto the next thing,
Speaker 2: but I love to go back. Yeah, you know, especially
Speaker 2: towards the end, towards the final night.
Speaker 1: What was it like working with Beyonce then from the
Speaker 1: Crucible to Beyonce or was a Beyonce to the Crucible?
Speaker 2: Well, I've been working with her for a long time
Speaker 2: because we started in twenty fifteen. Oh yeah, that's a
Speaker 2: very big team, lots of extraordinary collaborators over time all
Speaker 2: over the world and a massive production and also with
Speaker 2: able test Fay the weekend so his stadium show was
Speaker 2: also happy at the same time, so there was one
Speaker 2: night where you could go and see Beyonce the weekend
Speaker 2: or another place near England, which is really good.
Speaker 1: To see that on Monday, Yeah, way to see that.
Speaker 2: I tell you what's fun about that is it's a
Speaker 2: really divided audience. It's an audience who loved theater but
Speaker 2: might not always be so interested in football. Yeah, it's
Speaker 2: an audience who really might not normally set for in
Speaker 2: a theater but love football, like my son who doesn't
Speaker 2: like theater but likes football. So Ludo will come for that.
Speaker 2: And at the beginning there's a little shiftiness like am
Speaker 2: I going to hate this? How's it going to be?
Speaker 2: And by the end, yeah, everyone is crying and singing
Speaker 2: Sweet Caroline together and it's a bit like we've been
Speaker 2: talking a little bit about national assemblies and how they
Speaker 2: might form a new kind of form of governance and
Speaker 2: new ways to participate in democracy, and actually at the
Speaker 2: end of that it gives you hope that actually, given
Speaker 2: the right stimulus and the right materials and environment, people
Speaker 2: can find common ground.
Speaker 1: In the pandemic. When we close the River caf If
Speaker 1: you don't ask me what's important in the city, I
Speaker 1: would have said, you're a theater of concerts, parks, playgrounds, hospitals.
Speaker 1: You know, put restaurants way down. But you realize it
Speaker 1: going to see what you're just describing, or to come
Speaker 1: perhaps to a restaurant and see people you might not
Speaker 1: have seen for years that you pump into or that
Speaker 1: you're again the thing of being taken care of, that
Speaker 1: you can walk in and feel that you know it's
Speaker 1: going to be okay. You might have had an argument
Speaker 1: or been stuck in traffic, or lost your job, or
Speaker 1: getting divorced or getting married, or you know, happy things
Speaker 1: are saved up for months to come, but that somehow
Speaker 1: when what you want, and I think what I want
Speaker 1: both of us, is to have somebody walk through the
Speaker 1: door and feel it's going to be okay and leave
Speaker 1: feeling better than when they arrived.
Speaker 2: I think so, and I think it comes back to
Speaker 2: ritual and the passing of time, because if you've been
Speaker 2: working intensely, and you walk into a restaurant and you
Speaker 2: know that there's going to be a new rhythm to
Speaker 2: the rest of that day. First, it's going to be
Speaker 2: the ritual, the welcome, the formalities, the choosing the glass
Speaker 2: of whatever you're going to drink, the course one, the
Speaker 2: course too. This is a clock in itself, the same
Speaker 2: when you go to the theater. And actually, now after
Speaker 2: having become temporarily extinct, all of my practice was temporarily extinct.
Speaker 2: Me and Jack, we both have devoted our lives to
Speaker 2: mass gatherings. Yeah, and suddenly mass gatherings were weapons of
Speaker 2: mass destruction?
Speaker 1: Did you do?
Speaker 2: Panicked? Talked a lot on zoom, became a radio station.
Speaker 2: Would have been better to shut up and go off
Speaker 2: and do a sabbatical, but didn't.
Speaker 1: But we didn't know. I spent every day.
Speaker 2: Jack looked at me, he said, as you're like a
Speaker 2: mad sort of ringleader doing zooms. He said, just leave
Speaker 2: your people alone. They're happy to have some time off.
Speaker 1: But somehow the contact at some point, wasn't it what
Speaker 1: I felt? Well, how we feel now?
Speaker 2: Like the other day going to the weekend's concert where
Speaker 2: it's eighty no screens, eighty thousand people singing together, one
Speaker 2: five h eight man holding eighty thousand people in a stadium.
Speaker 1: We look, we're pinching.
Speaker 2: Ourselves, just thinking a few years ago this felt like
Speaker 2: it would never happen again. And for me, it's so vital,
Speaker 2: one of the most important things we do, I think,
Speaker 2: as humans being together.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, let's talk about this book. Yeah, let's definitely
Speaker 1: talk about this book. I want you to describe this
Speaker 1: people who are listening about what we have at the
Speaker 1: table between you and myself.
Speaker 2: So what's sitting in between me and Ruthie right now
Speaker 2: is a book. It's a small twenty two centimeter square
Speaker 2: by about I'm going to say about eight centimeters thick,
Speaker 2: so it's a chunky object, and it's got a hole
Speaker 2: cut out of the front. And then in the following
Speaker 2: pages are more offset holes, and around the holes are
Speaker 2: drawn the names of everyone who's ever participated in any
Speaker 2: of the collaborative works that I've made over time. Then,
Speaker 2: as you unfold its thousand pages, there are seven hundred
Speaker 2: images mainly of a sort of parallel series of works
Speaker 2: that I've been making for thirty years, small paper sculptures, paintings, drawings,
Speaker 2: and then Finally, by the end there's fifty thousand words
Speaker 2: in it as well of text of commentary, and then
Speaker 2: by the end there are pictures of most of about
Speaker 2: one hundred and twenty projects. So it's like doing a
Speaker 2: big end of year tax return.
Speaker 1: How long did it take you to.
Speaker 2: I started it seven years ago, and then my first
Speaker 2: deadline was four years ago, so I've been missing deadlines.
Speaker 1: Really have four extra extra years of work.
Speaker 2: That's it.
Speaker 1: This is a very good way of putting it. I
Speaker 1: had you stop four years ago, the book might have
Speaker 1: stopped a lot of beautiful work.
Speaker 2: This is true.
Speaker 1: That's a bit. It's available in your local bookstore. It
Speaker 1: is all good bookstores are online, yeah, and Amazon.
Speaker 2: It's sitting number one, but number one best in artist monographs, and.
Speaker 1: It's published by terms in Hudson. And it's a beautiful,
Speaker 1: beautiful object, beautiful book, and it's showing beautiful work. So yeah,
Speaker 1: to the next one. If we go back, if we
Speaker 1: like ritual, tradition and consistency. If you think about food,
Speaker 1: it's a question that I always ask at the end
Speaker 1: of what has today been a wonderful conversation. Food is
Speaker 1: we have when we're hungry, when we're tired. When, as
Speaker 1: you say, you need protein, when you need energy, when
Speaker 1: you want to feed your children or be fed. It's
Speaker 1: also comfort. What would be a food you might go
Speaker 1: to for comfort?
Speaker 2: It is my cheese and tomatoes on top. It is.
Speaker 1: It is. It's mainly tomatoes and.
Speaker 2: Red peppers and with a bit of cheese on top,
Speaker 2: and you know, some really good outive oil, some salt
Speaker 2: and pepper. Make two slices of it, just bake it, yeah,
Speaker 2: and then maybe a little glass of wine.
Speaker 1: Would that if we're going to the wine and the
Speaker 1: cheese and tomatoes, that sounds like a very very comforting meal.
Speaker 1: Thank you for today, Thank you for my friend think.
Speaker 1: Thank you. If you like listening to Ruthie's Table for
Speaker 1: would you please make sure to rate and review the
Speaker 1: podcast on the iHeart Rate app, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. Ruthie's Table four
Speaker 1: is produced by Atomai Studios for iHeartRadio. It is hosted
Speaker 1: by Ruthie Rodgers. It's produced by williem Lensky. Our executive
Speaker 1: producers are Zad Rodgers and Fay Stewart. Our production manager
Speaker 1: is Caitlin Paramore.
Speaker 2: Special thanks to everyone at the River Cafe,