Extract from The Club of Budapest Televison Documentary

An interview with Mark Rylance, Artistic Director of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre and Creative Member of The Club of Budapest International

by Katalin Bogyay

Q How did you find out that there was a Club of Budapest and what is your personal and professional relationship to the Club of Budapest International?

I wanted to say how delighted and honoured I am to be invited to be a Creative member of the Club of Budapest. I read the Club’s aims in a local newspaper here in Britian, and immediately felt that the aims of the Club were very associated with my understand and my feelings about Shakespeare and, indeeed, the incredible circumstance that Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre stands again at this threshold of the new century, the new millennium. I felt an association most strongly, I think, in the literature that said it was important that we not only understand, but feel this new responsibility for the planet and for the new society which we’re entering into with its massive new communications technology, which will prescribe a oneness, an interdependence between us all. This marriage of understanding feeling, to me, is what Shakespeare is always talking about, that knowledge is bathed in emotions, desires, commitments and that, without this emotion, it just becomes dry words, it loses its meaning and that, to me is what this wonderful theatre does; it unites a thousand, five hundred people - some standing and some sitting, all members of society - into a oneness so they not only see the play, but they hear the play, they understand the play and they feel the play at the same time. So I hope that while I’m here, as the Artistic Director of Shakespeare’s Globe, that the Globe Theatre can be a help to the aims of the Club of Budapest. I suppose I feel in total agreement with what the Dalai Lama has said… that you don’t have to look very hard, to see that most of the problems facing us today are manmade… and, therefore, the need for a mirror that will accurately represent our own human nature, to hold the mirror up to our human nature, that need has never been greater. And I think Shakespeare has shon, in the four hundred years since he created his great art, that his mirror transcends and penetrates all cultures and nationalities, and so I hope that the international Shakespeare Globe Centre will carry out a new and profound role mirroring our human nature and helping us to understand how we can make better the things that we’ve made mistakes about before.

Q What are your greatest fears relating to humanity at the end of this century?

I think my greatest fear is that my children and my grandchildren won’t be able to survive on this planet and they they will look back on my generation with righteous anger and fury at what we’ve allowed to happen. I think that’s the over-riding fear for me at the moment, that we have, as the Club has so rightly stated, for the first time out of all the generations a choice about not only our own personal fate but about the fate of the planet, and so I really welcome the awake-call that the Club of Budapest is giving, along with many many other organisations, that we wake up to this new power, this new choice we have for the first time, perhaps, in our consciousness as human beings on earth.

As I start to benefit from the communication that’s so rapidly growing around the world, I start to read books about other cultures. A book about Africa I read the other day described initiation rituals that an African young man goes through and there’s, what I call, such penetration of the veil of consciousness about what is possible for a human being in the African culture compared to the limitations that our rational mindset gives us, that I’m also nervous, I suppose, about the amount of waking-up that’s going to happen for people and that we need to be aware in the years ahead that people’s consciousness is going to explode and we need to be able to support and take care (of people), and go step by step as we become aware of each other and of how different we are.

Q Is there a chance to speak and to think positively about the future of humanity. What do you think?

I don’t know if I would describe my fears as pessimistic because I think one doesn’t have to be pessimistic to be frightened. The realities of our situation are frightening. It’s not a view as much as an awareness that if we carry on in the way we’re carrying on, we won’t have a planet any more, so that I don’t know that I would see it as a view that’s coloured by pessimism or optimism. I just think that’s the reality of the situation and the fear is that we won’t wake up in time. But I am enormously optimistic. I suppose being an actor I’m aware, I see constantly around me in rehearsals and performances of plays, like the plays of Shakespeare, the ability of people to transform themselves; the limitations of who we are, are often illusionary, and that also matter follows the imagination. This project, for instance, this great circle of hope, this wooden O, it was created not by money being there first, or by the theatre being there first, it was created by one man having an imaginary idea, and that imaginary idea being strong enough and good enough, I suppose, to withstand all the different tests and buffets fortune and fate three Sam Wannamaker’s way here, and he withstood that for over 30 years, and eventually died before it came to fruition. But that imagination was so good that manifestation followed, so I do believe profoundly that if you get the imagination right you can change the world. I’ve seen that over and over and over again, so I’m very optimistic about that, and I believe people have much more potential to change than they realise. So that gives me great optimism about the future. I also feel very optimistic lately, in that my work in Shakespeare has really awakened in me the possibilty for artists to tell stories and give experiences to the people of the world, that show where all our religious beliefs, our cultures, unite into a oneness, an interdependence, and I suppose that, to me, falls very coincidentally with this circular theatre, which in itself unites an audience. There isn’t a top or a bottom, or a top of the table or the bottom of the table. I met with Prince Charles earlier this year, looking at the play we opened the theatre with - the history of King Henry V - and was amazed to find that it had its roots in and connections with the Sufi organisation, the Order of the Khidr, which is related to the English Order of the Garter, whose aim was to show the underlying unity between Islam, Judaism, Christianity. This, to me, was a profound discovery, and I think that it gives a great call to all of us, as artists, to tell stories that show and help us to understand how united we are, as well as giving indications of where differences are, and where those differences are important. So that makes me feel positive, too.

Q What would Shakespeare think about this Club?

If anyone speaks about Shakespeare, they obviously speak more about themselves than the man, and he created his art for that purpose, so the mirror is not clouded. But personally, I feel that your dedication to the understand and feeling of thoughts, he would be completely in harmony with, and also your attempts to show the areas, and give a great call, that we are united more than we are divided, this also is something that in his work he tried to do; looking at many different cultures, many different traditions, and telling stories that brought them into the present day, uniting and sharing the different wisdoms in all these traditions. So I think he’d be a very happy member, and he probably is a member, anyway, on a different plane.

Mark Rylance interviewed by Katalin Bogyay in Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre