In Conversation with Katie Mitchell, OBE and Actor Ben Whishaw

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TORCH Goes Digital! presents a series of live online events Big Tent - Live Events! This event is part of the Humanities Cultural Programme, one of the founding stones for the future Stephen A. Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities.
Live Event: In conversation with Visiting Fellow, Katie Mitchell OBE, world renowned theatre and opera director, and Actor Ben Whishaw.
Biographies:
Katie Mitchell is a British theatre director whose unique style and uncompromising methods have divided both critics and audiences. Though sometimes causing controversy, her productions have been innovative and groundbreaking, and have established her as one of the UK’s leading names in contemporary performance.
She was born in Berkshire in 1964, grew up in the small village of Hermitage and read English at Magdalen College, Oxford. She began her theatre career in 1986 with a job at the King’s Head Theatre as a production assistant. She became an assistant director at Paines Plough a year later, and then took the same post at the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1988. In 1990, she founded her own company, Classics on a Shoestring, where she directed a number of pioneering and highly acclaimed productions including the House of Bernada Alba and Women of Troy.
In the decades with followed, Mitchell worked as an associate director with the Royal Court Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre. Whilst at the RSC, she was responsible for programming at the now defunct black box space, The Other Place, and her production of The Phoenician Women earned her the Evening Standard Award for Best Director.
Her numerous theatre credits include 2071 and Night Songs for the Royal Court, The Cherry Orchard for the Young Vic, The Trial of Ubu for Hampstead Theatre, Henry VI Part III (to date her only Shakespeare production) for the RSC and A Woman Killed with Kindness and The Seagull at the National Theatre. She has also directed opera, working with the Royal Opera House and English National Opera. An exponent of Stanislavski techniques and naturalism, her style was strongly influenced by the time she spent working in Eastern Europe early in her career. Her work is characterised by the creation on stage of a highly distinctive environment, the intensity of the emotions portrayed and by the realism of the acting.
Mitchell’s work has pushed boundaries and explored technique and, not just confined to the stage, has also taken her into other creative mediums. She has directed for film and television with work including The Widowing of Mrs Holroyd and The Turn of the Screw. In 2011, together with video maker, Leo Warner, Mitchell devised an immersive video installation called Five Truths for the Victoria and Albert Museum which explored the nature of truth in theatrical production.
Ben Whishaw (born 14 October 1980) is an English actor, in film, television, and theatre. After winning a British Independent Film Award for his performance in My Brother Tom (2001), Whishaw was nominated for an Olivier Award for his portrayal of the title role in a 2004 production of Hamlet. This was followed by television roles in Nathan Barley (2005), Criminal Justice (2008) and The Hour (2011-12) and film roles in Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006), I'm Not There (2007), Brideshead Revisited (2008) and Bright Star (2009). For Criminal Justice, Whishaw received an International Emmy Award and received his first BAFTA Award nomination.
In 2012, Whishaw played the title role in a BBC Two adaptation of Richard II, broadcast as part of The Hollow Crown series of William Shakespeare adaptations, for which he won the British Academy Television Award for Best Actor. The same year, he starred as Q in the James Bond film Skyfall (2012), going on to reprise the role in Spectre (2015) and the upcoming No Time to Die (2020). He has voiced the title character in Paddington (2014) and its 2017 sequel Paddington 2 (2017). His other film roles in the 2010s have included Cloud Atlas (2012), The Lobster (2015), Suffragette (2015), The Danish Girl (2015), and Mary Poppins Returns (2018). Whishaw received a third BAFTA Award nomination for the leading role in London Spy (2015) and, for his portrayal of Norman Scott in the miniseries A Very English Scandal (2018), won the British Academy Television Award for Best Supporting Actor, the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor - Series, Miniseries or Television Film and the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited Series or Movie.

[@Babesinthewood97]

I love Ben Whishaw :)

[@sameharaja]

Ben Whishaw! Love him! ❤

[@alrichmond4341]

Fascinating to hear you break your 5th, 6th and 7th 'walls', as it were, thereby allowing us to glimpse how you each practice your very special craft. Thank you.

[@scintillasparkles]

Loved "The Idiot"! It was my favourite book for a very long time. If dramatised, omg Ben Whishaw would be *perfect* in the role!

[@aliciacorrigan1789]

thank you so much for sharing this zoom session. I absolutely loved it and heard so many nuggets of wisdom and inspiration! :)

[@sabinedor9661]

Funnily, I recently re-read 'the Idiot', thinking that, should it be made into a film, the perfect actor to play Prince Myshkin would be Ben Whishaw. :-)

[@gracielagomez8594]

Thank you. Great zoom.

[@isammolina4842]

Darling...be careful.👀🌹🍃🌹🍃🌹🍃 we need you...after the plague.💙💜

[@user-ry8nq5ys1n]

귀여워. 자주 보고싶다! 패딩턴♡

[@beckykerr5829]

Oh Ben x

[@and_redefine_it_all]

벤 처음에 되게 뚝딱거리네ㅋㅋㅋㅋ귀여웡

[@1northsparrow246]

To what degree was this event a performance? From a Canadian perspective, I find it curious that RP is not the expected mode of speaking among such accomplished English individuals.

[@ABC_DEF]

More and more people in the south of England now speak what is often called "Estuary English" (the English of the Thames estuary). I agree it's horrible. People don't like coming across as posh. One of the nice things about living in the northern half of the UK is that you don't hear it, except when you turn on your TV, and then you hear little else.