S5: E5: Claudia Mayer on Designing for Shakespeare Plays

Claudia Mayer discusses designing for Shakespeare plays, including Macbeth, The Tempest, and The Merchant of Venice.

For a complete episode transcript, click http://www.womenandshakespeare.com

Claudia Mayer's co-production company: https://jvproductions.co.uk/

Interviewer: Varsha Panjwani
Guest: Claudia Mayer
Researcher: Iris Kobrock
Producer: Caroline Lehman
Transcript: Benjamin Poore
Artwork: Wenqi Wan

Suggested Citation:  Mayer, Claudia in conversation with Panjwani, Varsha (2025). Claudia Mayer on Designing for Shakespeare Plays [Podcast], Series 5, Ep.5. http://womenandshakespeare.com/

Twitter: @earlymoderndoc
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Email: earlymoderndoc@gmail.com

Transcript

[00:00:00] Glass Shatter

[00:00:02] Varsha: Hello, dearest listeners. Welcome to Women and Shakespeare podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Varsha Panjwani, and I have been reflecting on, well, to be honest, seething at the remarks made by Britain's Prime Minister Keir Starmer earlier this month. 

[00:00:29] Varsha: Presenting a White Paper on immigration that is designed to curtail legal migration, he said that without these new and tougher rules, we risk becoming an island of strangers, not a nation that walks forward together. So he links strangers with immigrants and separates them from the nation. His rhetoric deliberately erases the fact that immigration and migration has always been a part of Britain's nation-building [00:01:00], and people bringing in labour and skills have contributed to Britain's rich national culture in food, in architecture, in music, in fashion, literature and arts.

[00:01:15] Varsha: Even Shakespeare, a playwright who is at the heart of British culture, was inspired by migrants, and he made sure that he included migrant characters in his plays such as Othello and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. And it was the women coming from the Netherlands to London who brought with them skills to make ruffs, those starched and pleated frilly colours that evoke Britain's Shakespearean age for us.

[00:01:48] Varsha: So it is a delight for me to talk to someone who continues this tradition and whose experiences of living in different countries have given her a design [00:02:00] sensibility that she has brought to British stages generally and to Shakespeare, particularly. Claudia Mayer was born in Australia and she spent her early childhood in India before settling in England.

[00:02:16] Varsha: She's a wonderful theatre designer who has worked across a wide range of theatres, such as the Royal Court, Young Vic, Gate Theatre, Sadler’s Wells, Riverside Studios, West Yorkshire Playhouse, Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, and many, many more. She has collaborated extensively with Jatinder Verma. Jatinder Verma founded the British Asian company, Tara Arts as a response to the racist murder of young Gurdip Singh Chaggar in West London in 1977. 

[00:02:58] Varsha: For Tara Arts, Claudia Mayer designed [00:03:00] The Merchant of Venice, The Tempest and Macbeth as well as a migration trilogy, Journey to the West. She also collaborated on the design of the magical space that is the Tara Theatre, developing the first multicultural theatre building in the country, which was opened in 2016.

[00:03:24] Varsha: Together with Jatinder Verma, she has founded JV Productions. In this episode, we talk about her various projects and her dizzying array of intercultural experiences and heritages that inform her very unique designs. 

Varsha: Claudia, you are the first designer on this podcast, and as a British Asian, I find people like me represented in your stage designs for Shakespeare and beyond. So you are very welcome to [00:04:00] Women and Shakespeare podcast. [00:04:02]

Claudia: Thank you very much. [00:04:02]

Varsha: And I just wanna begin by a question that we ask everyone on this podcast. When did you first encounter Shakespeare, and what was the nature of that encounter? 

[00:04:13] Claudia: I first encountered Shakespeare, probably like many others at school. I think we started at about 10 or so, which is quite young, and the language is assumed to be difficult. But as a person who lived in a another country and spoke another language, language was not something which had to be individually grasped word by word, as far as I was concerned. 

[00:04:43] Claudia: So I found that in fact, Shakespeare was not a problem. I always knew what the people were trying to say. And I think that's been a lesson all through, that if you get stuck word by word – ‘what does that word mean? I dunno [00:05:00] what it means precisely’ – you will find difficulty. Let the language flow. And just as listening to a foreign language, you'll get it. [00:05:10] You'll get it.

Claudia: And that's the value of it. It is music, I think. And if you take it as music, as song. Then you will have a much deeper understanding of what's being said. And I actually found it frustrating because so many people would say, but I don't know what this word means. And then we'd have to stop. [00:05:31] And then you go back and the whole thing would lose its flow.

Claudia: So that was what I got out of it, and I loved it and we performed it. The school made us perform it, which was an enormous advantage. Though I painted quite a lot of scenery, and – 

[00:05:49] Varsha: Of course you did. And you are an incredibly accomplished designer. [00:05:55] 

Varsha: You worked on many productions and theatres in Britain and [00:06:00] abroad, and what first brought you to theatre and to design? Did you start at school painting scenery? [00:06:08]

Claudia: I did, but I didn't know that it was a job. I didn't know it was possible. I was very interested in museums, in fact, and I found that the way that things were displayed was not welcoming and that I wanted to put things in context [00:06:23] really, what was this pot?

Claudia: And I think this also stems from coming from a very different country because as a child, as a baby, I'd lived in a mud village in India, and so pots, clay pots had a meaning, had a function, had a part in everyday life, and this was something that I wanted to put across, and I think that that's where I started being interested in contextualizing, I suppose.

[00:06:54] Claudia: It's to illustrate what everyday objects are, or everyday [00:07:00] actions that lead to Medea or whatever, to make that into a real world. So make ideas real and make real things more real. Because people do say, oh, it's for theatre, so you don't have to do it so exactly. Or just any old pot or any old chair.

[00:07:22] Claudia: Not at all. It's very precise and the chair will express a lot about the world that you are creating. And as a designer, my job is to create a world where this thing can happen, these events can happen. These people can exist and have these relationships with each other. 

[00:07:43] Varsha: A number of times, that's my problem when I go to museums as well, that you are getting objects, but you are not getting the social networks involved for creating or using that object. [00:07:56]

Varsha: You're not getting the [00:08:00] emotion behind that object. So I'm very much connecting that you need to create a world wherein these objects, designs, clothes have meaning, as they do. 

[00:08:12] Claudia: Yeah, exactly. The hands who, you've made it, it's real. People wore it. I'm fascinated by that. I'm actually also, as a child, I was very interested in time travel.

[00:08:24] Claudia: I wanted to go back and see how people wore wimples and the extraordinary costumes that people wore. Those were everyday clothes as now. And I always want, I, I still would quite like to actually – fantasy land. [00:08:43]

Varsha: Yes. And you've done that through theatre design a lot. So along with director Jatinder Verma, you are the co-founder of JV Productions, which is committed to intercultural and multicultural work, [00:09:00] and you have spent your childhood in India, but you settled in England.

[00:09:05] Varsha: So does your personal embodied experience really help you in this cross-cultural communication that this production company wants to achieve? 

[00:09:17] Claudia: I hope it does, but in a way I can do no other. I can only work from what I know and what I can explore and what I relate to. In fact, 99.9% of the time it's been something which has enriched my contribution because I do bring just another sensibility, another spice to the mix.

[00:09:42] Claudia: For example, I did the mystery plays, which are medieval Bible stories told by the community. So they would make carts and do Noah and the flood, and they would do Lucifer and the angel being cast [00:10:00] out and – fantastic. These are beautiful pieces of writing actually, because they are so present and they're very much from the people.

[00:10:08] Claudia: And again, my childhood in India was absolutely punctuated by exactly that. Processions and events and embodiments of the gods and the stories and the puppetry, which should come round, which would go on all night in the, this kind of thing was a real way of doing stories, of spreading stories and information and so forth.

[00:10:36] Claudia: And so doing the mysteries was absolutely glorious for me. It was a lovely thing to do, and we did them, a three-way country. So we had Belgium, France, and England. We had Portugal and England another time. We had just a straightforward English. It's a great thing to do, and if you can get hold of a text, I would recommend it.

[00:10:58] Claudia: So yes, I [00:11:00] think that actually doing something from the past is cross-cultural in a way, because again, people's beliefs and attitudes and hopes and fears and levels of life in a way, what people expected life to be, are so different in the past. It varies whichever age you choose. So I feel that I'm already being cross-cultural by looking at something from the 17th century, from France, say, or if you're looking at a Molière, you've got to really change your head and understand the relationships of the people in their context before you can [00:11:42], if you want, modernize or whatever, but you need to know how it works first. And so I think cross-cultural is equally cross period. 

[00:11:53] Varsha: I totally agree with you. It is a different culture to ours, and like you, I have [00:12:00] found that actually living across cultures really helps me to understand that. I might not bring my Indian sensibility or British sensibility [00:12:12]  to all the works that I do, but I understand the concept and that to, how to interact with a different culture, what tools to use, what strategies to use. So I totally agree with you on all that you are saying.

Varsha: And in 2015, you worked on a production of Macbeth for Tara Arts. I saw it with my dad. He was here and he lives in India, and I wanted him to see his kind of work that is happening.

[00:12:45] Varsha: However, it is set within a modern British Asian family, and the weird sisters of that production were Hijras, which is India's third [00:13:00] gender community. But apart from the multi-layered costumes in that production, there were some fantastic and meaningful stage images.

[00:13:10] Varsha: There were ancestral portraits on the stage. So what research did you have to do on British Asian lives to set the scene for that production? 

[00:13:22] Claudia: This is very true, which is because British Asian is different from Indian or British. I would quite like to talk about the Hijras because I think that it's a remarkable way of allowing people to be who they are, but they are quite, they're quite needly, and they seem to fit to me so well because they are quite witchy, the Hijras and that you have to have them at the wedding and all sorts of ceremonies.

[00:13:50] Claudia: They have to be there because they are part of life and they are a little bit witchy, aren't they? They're a little bit, you have to pay them. [00:14:00] You'll be in big trouble otherwise. 

Varsha: And they know. 

Claudia: They know, exactly. 

Varsha: You don't have to tell them. 

Claudia: Exactly. You don't invite them. 

Varsha: You don't invite them. They're, if there's [00:14:09] somebody born, they know, they're at the door.

[00:14:12] Claudia: Yeah. And they're mischievous as well. They're not, there's no cruelty, there's no wickedness, it's not wicked witches, but they are like a force of nature. They are not embodiments of morality in any way. They are simply the way things work. You fall out of the nest – tough, but you try and stick to the rules and they will help.

[00:14:39] Claudia: But also there's fate and I loved that idea, I really went with it. I thought it was fascinating and effective and taking away a little bit from all the sort of hocus pocus that can be around the witches. 

[00:14:53] Varsha: One is always left a bit charmed by them, but also a little bit sceptical and on [00:15:00] edge. So I thought that putting our Hijras for the weird sisters struck exactly the right note.

[00:15:06] Claudia: No, I'm delighted because it lightened it as well as keeping it mysterious. There's a whole society, they have their own 

[00:15:15] Varsha: Yeah. 

[00:15:15] Claudia: Ways of doing things, which are secret, which is theirs. And charms and yes, it entirely made sense to me, although you don't find them here in, in this country, but what people bring with them is something quite particular.

[00:15:34] Claudia: And as far as I know or have found out that in a way people bring very much their communities with them in their heads, but then when they encounter all the different communities, there's a relaxation of that rigidity. And I think that that's very heartening actually, [00:16:00] because you don't want too much rigidity in your life.

[00:16:04] Claudia: But I think on the other hand, the core values never go. I think those are things which remain. And there was an extraordinary Sikh gentleman. Who was a Scottish, he became a Scottish Lord or Laird, and he was an astonishing person. He had an extraordinary castle and he had his tartan and the full deal. So I, I did look at him quite a lot as being a very eccentric, actually example of a British Asian.

[00:16:38] Claudia: But I think for Macbeth, I think what's so important there is how can you express royalty and attitudes to royalty? It's not the boss. It's not a person who's got there by making deals or whatever it is. Royalty is [00:17:00] a, and particularly in Shakespeare, it is something inherent in the person and it entails responsibilities.

[00:17:12] Claudia: And if you destroy a royal life, that is a terrible transgression. And so the whole idea of succession is enormously important because it's the blood. And the blood is something which you cannot tamper with. And so I used these portraits, partly because I've seen them in people's houses. You put portraits of your past ancestors there.

[00:17:42] Claudia: But this was also because as soon as Duncan, who is the king, as soon as he's been killed by Macbeth, you got a terrible crack in the cosmos because this is not as things should be and disaster will follow. [00:18:00] And then of course there's another one because you put Macbeth up there and then he's killed. And this was a situation that Shakespeare himself was dealing with because the throne had been diverted.

[00:18:14] Claudia: And so part of Shakespeare's story is transgression of the absolute most fundamental kind, which is killing a king and not doing your duty by making the succession secure. His queen had not done that. She never married, she didn't have a child, and there was trouble. But I think that these disruptions in the flow of time and the right way to do things are very much part of his story and his fear.

[00:18:50] Varsha: I am really fascinated by how much the British Asian context fits in with this play, Macbeth, because as you were [00:19:00] saying, Elizabeth I has died and you have a Scottish monarch, James, who becomes the King of Scotland and England, and people are thinking about that succession a lot, right? .

[00:19:16] Varsha: It is a break from Tudor to Stuart monarchy. So people are increasingly thinking about questions of succession, and I feel that's very much the case of how you think of your elders and ancestors in British Asian and Indian contexts. 

Varsha: There is something sacred about that thread and once you cut that thread [00:19:45] you will feel guilty all your life like Macbeth does, no matter how they are, no matter what they behave, there's something really innately sacred. And once you transgress, I [00:20:00] feel you will end up feeling guilty like Macbeth and Lady Macbeth do. So it's interesting, right, how much these two really fit in together. [00:20:12] Yeah.

[00:20:13] Claudia: Yes. It's also in the Mahabharata. Krishna. He has a lot to answer for. 

[00:20:17] Varsha: Yeah. Now that we are on it, I do want to ask, because you have worked on Indian epics like the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, and were they part of your childhood, these stories as you were living in India and then you did a design exhibition for the Ramayana at the British Library?

[00:20:38] Varsha: Um, I'm fascinated by the Mahabharata as well as you mentioned. It's a sort of revenge plot, right? And there are different consequences at every moment for each act of revenge that you choose to enact. So I want your take on how you have these epics in your [00:21:00] mind and in your designs. 

[00:21:02] Claudia: Yes, I knew of these, these stories, the Mahabharata less so because that is an enormous epic, but it is about succession.

[00:21:12] Claudia: Because Bhishma right at the beginning says he will not become king. And as soon as you've done that, you've broken the line. So then what? Power, as we know today, all over the world, is an incredibly volatile – it creates such chaos that it has to be controlled. 

[00:21:40] Claudia: And this is why we have systems of succession or election or whatever, because you need to control this somehow absolutely volcanic need that people have to take power to have power, to practice power, and so actually I think many epics will be [00:22:00] about power and how you deal with it, how you make it, not about you, but about something bigger than you.

[00:22:08] Claudia: Which is the people that you have power over and the absolute horror, the cosmic problems that you create if you mess about with power. And in each of our families, we know people who need to have the power, which is what you're saying about Macbeth. And so any play of that calibre of Shakespeare, not so much in the comedies, but.

[00:22:33] Claudia: Power is –  I'm going on about it because what's happening now – but it's a very dangerous commodity, even in the right hands. And it needs control. It needs tethering. Yeah. And systematizing. And so the Mahabharata is all about power passing, not passing, waiting. It being fair, it being unfair. It's a hugely complicated story and I can't even [00:23:00] start to go into it, but I think all life is there.

[00:23:03] Claudia: There is, there is a lesson in it, and I would like to set the Mahabharata in a village in a fully rounded village where there are all sorts of, all the types of people will be there because it's about that field. And that field should be mine. No, it should be mine. There you are. Okay. Go. I've got brothers, I've got sisters, I'm whatever.

[00:23:30] Claudia: But that's, you start with that. You've got a story, whether you go to the past or the future, or, yeah, so I think Shakespeare was about language and personal, personal experience, personal space, personal behaviour, and it uses facets of what the Mahabharata has. But the Mahabharata is, I think it's cosmic. I think it's about the birth of the planets and all that.

[00:23:57] Claudia: It's the Big Bang. It's forces. [00:24:00] Forces colliding and creating. Yeah, I think it's, but I think big stories are like that. The Greek myths are like that. They are, again, they're about planets hitting each other and creating you. If you see it that way. It's, they are fundamental forces of nature. And there's a bit of it in Shakespeare, but Shakespeare is more controlled and more [00:24:28] systematized. 

[00:24:30] Varsha: I think that I find it useful to have these epics in my mind as I'm interpreting Shakespeare because it touches on various issues, but I think of Shakespeare's plays as episodes taken from these huge, big questions that these epics are asking. But tell us about your exhibition on the Ramayana at the British Library.

[00:24:58] Varsha: How did that come about? How did you [00:25:00] think of organizing the space there? 

[00:25:02] Claudia: That was very much a favourite job, actually. That was terrific because they were rebinding a series of paintings of the Ramayana, and there were hundreds of them, hundreds, and I wanted to put them in a place. From the paintings, I took trees and buildings and so forth and made places for these beautiful paintings to be and, and I spent months and months just studying the paintings and getting the right, the context for these paintings.

[00:25:38] Claudia: And it was just watchmaking really. I was doing a lot of very detailed work. Photoshopping. And making cutouts. So we had cutout jungle made from the paintings themselves, and then the pillars, there are four huge pillars. So we put monkeys and leaves and it was a lovely job. I loved it. And they never [00:26:00] said, I said, I want to put leaves on the trees and all this on the pillars, and no one ever said no. [00:26:06] So I just carried on. 

[00:26:09] Varsha: It was like being dropped inside a painting and exploring it. It looks wonderful. If somebody wants to, there are pictures of it still. And I now wanna ask you about The Tempest. So in 2008 you worked on The Tempest and I wanted to talk in particular about your use of ropes in that production.

[00:26:34] Varsha: Because of all the multipurpose things that these ropes were doing, and I found the ropes interesting in The Tempest, but I also found them interesting when I put it in juxtaposition with your design for the trilogy Journey to the West, because you used ropes in that production as well. So tell us about your use of [00:27:00] ropes in these productions. [00:27:02] 

[00:27:03] Claudia: I suppose in this country, rope is very much to do with the sea, and both of these pieces were very much to do with the sea as well. And the ropes were great for getting people up so you could make a different dimension. And since Journey to the West was a journey, you need them to be in a different dimension.

[00:27:27] Claudia: They need to be able to go up and down and – we didn't, our actors were, they were alright with the ropes – and we got silks. In fact, they’re cloth and they’re nylon. The silks would come down and people wrap themselves and they can climb up them. And you can hold yourself in, what's called a silk, where you can't do that with a rope because it's too rough.

[00:27:52] Claudia: So we had these silks as well, but the rope is also used for correction. Let's say, state [00:28:00] correction, so for hanging and for ships and for tying up your goods. There's a lot to a rope. And also ropes are stranded. So first you make, you make one strand out of your coconut or whatever it is, your fibre, and you make that, and then you wrap that with another one and then another one.

[00:28:22] Claudia: And it's somehow the, this idea of these strands. That also were waving around because they used them in many ways. They, you can do all sorts of dramatic things with a rope and you can change the look of a space. You gather them all up and hold them up. You've got a, a roof, you've got a tent. So it's a very efficient way of changing the space that you've got without using great big bits of scenery.

[00:28:53] Claudia: And I like using minimal things to change a space. It's [00:29:00] surprising and it keeps people on their toes and you can make a forest. We had forests in both Tempest and Journey to the West, and the last part of the trilogy ended with the actor who was playing a boy who'd grown up in this country, and he was saying, ‘the elderflower is mine.

[00:29:23] Claudia: The countryside is mine. Hadrian's Wall is mine. It's mine’. And he was lifted. He couldn't quite climb, but we lifted him all the way up and he surveyed this new country, which belonged to him, and that was very powerful. And this idea of raising somebody up somehow to survey what was theirs – their new kingdom or their own identity, that this is his identity, which is something hard for people to come to terms with actually, I think.

[00:29:58] Claudia: And that's what it is, to be [00:30:00] dual. That the elder flower is yours and so is the haldi, the turmeric is, both are yours. Both are, and it, yeah.  

[00:30:09] Varsha: I love how all of the context that you are bringing to the ropes resound in Journey to the West, but also Tempest, right? Which is also about journeys, which is also about packing your few belongings and appearing in a new place.

[00:30:29] Varsha: But it's also about the opposite of that beautiful raising to the height, surveying of the land and calling it mine. Because Tempest is all about settler colonialism and landing at a different place and surveying things from a height and saying ‘mine’ with the inflicting of much violence. And I think this moment at the end of Journey to the West, it is a sort of reparation, [00:31:00] reclamation of sorts where you are saying, ‘it's mine’.

[00:31:03] Varsha: Not because you wanna occupy it, but you want to belong in it. I'm very curious to ask you this question. Have you encountered resistance from either audiences or sponsors when you approach Shakespeare in this manner? Because Shakespeare is so important to the idea of some sort of mythic, non-hybrid, pure Britishness, and you are bringing all this interculturalism into it.

[00:31:32] Varsha: So what has your experience been like with sponsors, with people?

[00:31:34] Claudia: As a designer, I don't get so involved in that, but I know that Jatinder was on a panel at the National Theatre to talk about Shakespeare and somebody asked him why he was doing Shakespeare. I don’t know what to say to that, really. On the one hand, you go out into the world and you make people read and [00:32:00] write and learn Shakespeare, but then if they want to do the plays, you say, why are you trying to do it?

[00:32:05] Claudia: So it's a sort of. Yeah, it's a nonsense. It's a nonsense, really. It – there, there's too, there's, yeah. I can't really express how, how pointless it is. If you think that, then probably you just need to watch game shows and leave it at that. There's the whole, there's the whole idea that you do it traditionally.

[00:32:30] Claudia: That's called traditional Shakespeare. Traditional Shakespeare is what, exactly? Is it when they changed the ending, when Nahum Tate decided that he didn't like the ending of Romeo and Juliet, and so he made it end happily. Is that traditional? No, it's nonsense. And so on and so forth. And if you see there are few, there's just I think one or two illustrations of actually how Shakespeare did Shakespeare in those days.

[00:32:54] Claudia: So Coriolanus is dressed in Elizabethan costume with [00:33:00] some sort of toga on top of it. We could do that. Shakespeare is simply a writer. It's simply a text like Ibsen or any text, and it belongs to each one of you, I would say, each one of us. And if you respond to it, that's the important thing. It's not about whether they're wearing doublet and hose.

[00:33:23] Claudia: We don't know what they wore because there's very little information, but they did extraordinary masques in Tempest. There's all that. What's her name? Ceres, and so on. I think it is. Anyway, there's a whole thing about harvesting and so forth that would've been a masque with the most extraordinarily complicated costumes and[00:33:42] mostly that's cut in shows and maybe that's traditional. Who knows? Traditional is, it's a nonsense. It's as you respond to it, that's traditional. I reckon. 

[00:33:57] Varsha: I agree. And when people say to me [00:34:00] traditional Shakespeare, I say to them, whose tradition? This is my traditional Shakespeare that I'm doing in saris, I'm doing traditional Shakespeare.

[00:34:10] Varsha: Yeah. That's how it's always been done in my country. Yes. 

[00:34:14] Claudia: Yeah, exactly. It's. 

[00:34:16] Varsha: Yeah. My producer has told me that I need to wrap up, but I do wanna ask one question, and that is about the stunning project that you work on, which was Tara Arts' new theatre space, which opened in 2016 and is considered the country's first multicultural theatre.

[00:34:39] Varsha: And I've been several times. I've been love with that space. So talk us through the design choices for that and how did you want the space to feel intercultural and multicultural?

[00:34:53] Claudia: As I keep saying, it's inevitable that it's going to be a mixture if it's coming from me and [00:35:00] from Jatinder and I, and he – I, because of this village where I was a small child with a mud floor, I wanted a mud floor.

[00:35:11] Claudia: And we even thought of getting a cow because the traditional mud floors are made with cow dung mixed with mud, and it's very antiseptic, by the way, cow dung. It's a very clean thing and you can use it for fuel and so forth as people do. So I did look into getting a cow. 

[00:35:32] Varsha: That would've made me feel right at home, actually.

[00:35:34] Claudia: But it turned out not to be that easy. In Earlsfield in London there, there was no real place for a cow. And also you'd have to keep it churning, so you'd have to get a cement mixer to keep it going and keep it like cement before you put it down. We looked at synthetic products. We looked at other ways of doing mud.

[00:35:55] Claudia: We couldn't find anything. In the end, it turned out to be very simple. We [00:36:00] used mud from Jurassic Dorset, and so a guy came up with a load of Jurassic Dorset mud and he put it down and there it was, and it was fantastic, and it's very nice underfoot. It's not wood, which I love, wood. But it's not wood and it's certainly not concrete or anything like that.

[00:36:23] Claudia: And so it's a very sympathetic substance to have under your feet, whether you are doing barefoot or with shoes on. It's also incredibly resilient. You can do anything to it. You can throw water at it, you can put any sort of hole in it, you just fill it up. It's really pretty successful substance, actually.

[00:36:44] Claudia: So that was something that we knew from the beginning that we wanted that, but we also wanted to make it a mixture of cultures. So we wanted Earlsfield bricks and London brick, London mortar and all that. But then [00:37:00] we also wanted Indian elements as well. Poor me, I had to go to India and source doors and pillars and pieces of salvage architecture and bring them back.

[00:37:15] Claudia: We took the architect as well. He came and said yes to my choices, luckily, and so we brought them back in a container which we could trace as it came all the way round, and they had to be. Adjusted a little bit to be put in, but they're absolutely, they'll last beyond doomsday. 

Varsha: Really? 

[00:37:38] Claudia: They're solid, absolutely solid. And I didn't want it to look like an Indian restaurant, mind you. I had to, I had to be careful. Not to put too much in, in fact. But we had a very wonderful architect who took on board very much the idea that the spaces should feed into each other so that the people in the office should always know [00:38:00] that they were in a theatre.

[00:38:01] Claudia: And so there were glass panels so that people could see as they came down the stairs, what was happening in the theatre, what was happening in the rehearsal room, so that the connections were very important. And people did comment on that. And so that was an enormously successful part of that building.

[00:38:19] Claudia: And the other thing was that because we were making a –  basically the end-of-terrace house into a theatre of such magical enchantment. But so I wanted the foyer to look really quite ordinary in a way. Just it was that you've got the box office and a desk and a bit goes out into the garden. Very nice. Oh, is it rather a nice door there?

[00:38:43] Claudia: And then you go through the door, which is not oversized, and then. We had double height theatre, so you are already into the full height of the building and people were absolutely astonished. And it was a little bit like going into a castle as [00:39:00] well, I found, once it was done. And I think that it gave people an experience which they had not had before, which is going into a castle keep with a mud floor and then see a show.

[00:39:14] Claudia: So it was a fantastic experience. Fantastic to be able to be involved in that, actually. I was very privileged. 

[00:39:21] Varsha: I love that space. For everybody who is in London, I think you should make it an absolute stop in your itineraries and we have you to thank for it as well. 

[00:39:36] Varsha: Thank you so much for being a guest. And I'm feeling more empowered. Thank you so much, Claudia. 

Claudia: Thank you. Thank you. 

Varsha: That was Claudia Mayer talking about designing for the stage, including for Shakespeare's plays such as Macbeth, The Merchant of Venice, The Tempest.

[00:39:53] Varsha: She was telling us about collaborating on the design for Tara Theatre, and she was reflecting on [00:40:00] making work that fully represents our mixed heritages in the plays and spaces of this nation. With that, I bid you adieu, adieu, adieu, but remember to tune into Women and Shakespeare, streaming at Apple Podcasts and Spotify and wherever else you get your podcasts.

[00:40:22] Varsha: If you want to listen to the podcast with a full transcript, head over to the website, www.womenandshakespeare.com. Until then, keep smashing the patriarchy. 

[00:40:34] Glass Shatter