Off-Cut: Four

An excerpt from an interview with Polly Teale who directed The Shared Experience Theatre Company's production of "Jane Eyre". The interview was conducted by Margaret Throsby on Australia's Radio National.

Margaret Throsby: I always think that adapting classic works that people know and love, know backwards and study and know every word of…..that the adapter runs the risk of raising peoples hackles because they have left out things that somebody else might find very important.

Polly Teale: Yes, I mean, I think you have to be quite bold and risk that, in a way, because if you try and make everybody happy you are never going to win. And funnily enough I think because the original act of writing the novel is a creative act I think the act of adapting it has to be a new act of creation. I think if you are trying to be too faithful and become too sort of frightened…

Margaret Throsby: …slavish…

Polly Teale: …yeah…exactly, then you in a way just end up with the surface of the story. And for us I think, the crucial thing is that you have always got to find a way of "cracking the story open", if you like.

An interesting expression of the dangers that exist not only for the creators of story but also for the actor who is the creator of character. The same parallel elements obviously apply.

Margaret Throsby conducts wonderfully relaxed and informative interviews on ABC Classic FM (105.9Mhz) 10.05am to 11.00am each weekday.