The world according to the Redgraves

  
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Not only did the Redgrave family — Vanessa, Lynn and Corin — accept Lifetime Achievement Awards Saturday night at the Savannah Film Festival, they made history as well. According to their own admission, this was the first time in their long, illustrious careers that all three siblings have sat down together in one place to give interviews.

Thanks to the auspices of SCAD, I was lucky enough to be one of the fortunate few journalists on hand for the landmark occasion earlier that day. Thanks again to the College not only for putting on such a professional, high-quality event, but for reaching out to local media as well.

As you might expect from members of the world’s premiere theatrical dynasty, you don’t so much interview the Redgraves as watch them perform. On one end of a line of stools sits Vanessa, the outspoken political sister, searing every verbal point into you with her burning blue eyes. On the other end sits Lynn, the “softer,” Americanized sister, speaking of her home in Connecticut.

Between them sits brother Corin — who might actually be the most political of the three — in a state of Zen-like calm, obviously accustomed to his sisters’ constant, overlapping interplay and resigned to the utter futility of trying to upstage them.

Here’s Vanessa, known for her support for controversial causes, on the resurgence of the political documentary:

“More audiences than ever before are looking at documentaries, which they used to never watch because they were only shown very late at night, or in a tiny little art house,” she says.

“If you look at the viewing figures for Supersize Me or any of Michael Moore’s films, I don’t think you can say you’re preaching to the converted,” Vanessa continues. “You have to say that more and more people, millions more people, are becoming hungry to know and are wanting to see — and are paying money to see — films that are presenting certain aspects of the world we’re living in.”

Here’s Lynn on the current state of live theatre in the U.S.:

“The fact is there’s some wonderful work being done in regional theatres all over the States. The big problem is ticket prices in New York, that’s just prohibitive,” she says. “I wish more and more theaters would do like regional theatres do, where they pick a matinee or pick certain days of the week when they’ll give a whole bunch of cheap seats away, so people who can’t afford those ticket prices can go.”

The subject that seemed to get all three most impassioned was the importance of the arts in the school system. Here’s Lynn:

“Where I live, there’s a program at my grandchildren’s public school called Arts Alive, where they get little kids to the theatre in Hartford or New York or Danbury, and also bring artists into the schools. The more the government has pulled back on arts funding in schools, the more outraged parents are. Arts Alive in Connecticut is an absolute result of disgust at the lack of arts allowed into the public schools,” Lynn says. “So parents are saying, ‘OK, then, damn it, we’re going to create it ourselves and it’ll be for everybody.’”

To which Vanessa responds:

“This is happening more and more and more — people, whether they’re parents or teachers or members of other professions, have realized that arts are vital to a forward-looking and thriving community.”

But quiet Corin is suddenly not so quiet, and offers the most assertive point:

“We have to be absolutely adamant that money, public money, state money, has to be provided for theatre at all levels, and not just the capital city or the major cities, but in small towns, too. And that has to be an absolute commitment which we demand from political parties — otherwise they can’t even claim to be political parties!” he says. “We believe that the theatre, from its earliest example in England, and its very earliest example in Greece, is an essential part of human society.”

A pause, then Vanessa laughs and proclaims majestically with a wave of her arm: “There you go, that’s it, that’s a good answer!”

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