DAVID BIANCULLI, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. One of Britain's most celebrated playwrights, Tom Stoppard, died last week at the age of 88. Condolences and tributes came from King Charles III, Mick Jagger and the National Theatre in Britain, where many of his plays were first staged. The theater released a statement saying that Stoppard's plays, quote, "with their blend of intellectual curiosity, wit and narrative experimentation, have made a lasting impact on the National Theatre and on British theater. His bold storytelling encouraged audiences to reflect on history, philosophy and the human experience." Unquote.
Stoppard's best-known plays include "The Real Thing," "Arcadia," "The Coast Of Utopia" and "Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead." He wrote screenplays for the movies "Shakespeare In Love," "The Human Factor," "The Russia House," "Billy Bathgate" and "Empire Of The Sun." He was knighted in 2007. Terry Gross spoke with Tom Stoppard in 1991, when the movie adaptation was released of his play "Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead."
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are minor characters in Shakespeare's "Hamlet." They're Hamlet's old friends who unknowingly become part of a plot to have Hamlet killed. But Hamlet has them executed instead. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern never understand the larger story they are part of. This predicament, so typical of minor characters, is the subject of Stoppard's absurdist comedy. The play first opened at London's National Theatre in 1967 and soon after had success on Broadway. Terry asked Stoppard why he wrote a story about minor characters in "Hamlet."
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)
TOM STOPPARD: The first thing I liked about them is that there were two of them. And the double act, you know, has a long and honorable comic tradition. And I can see why because they're fun to write. And these two people - not Shakespeare's version of them, but mine - I turn them into the kind of double act which everybody is familiar with. There's usually one who's a little brighter and quite often angry with the other one, who's a bit dim but sweet, and so on.
TERRY GROSS: Laurel and Hardy. Abbott and Costello.
STOPPARD: A little like that, yes. And the other thing about them was that, in the story which they've been dropped into, they have this sort of very strange predicament. When you look at Shakespeare's text, they're not really told what's happening in that play. And furthermore, when they end up dead, they don't know why. They don't know what they've done. In fact, they haven't done anything. So they're well-meaning. And they're often presented as villains, spies, on the side of the bad King Claudius. But in point of fact, there's no reason to look at them like that. No, I found them rather endearing.
GROSS: Well, you use a lot of wordplay in your work.
STOPPARD: Yeah.
GROSS: And as a matter of fact, let me play a clip here of a scene in which Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are playing, like, word game tennis.
STOPPARD: Oh, yes.
GROSS: You want to explain the way the game works?
STOPPARD: The idea is that it's two people who have to avoid answering questions. They have to answer a question with a question. And the first time somebody forgets or breaks one of the rules, then he loses a point.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD")
GARY OLDMAN: (As Rosencrantz) What's the matter with you today?
TIM ROTH: (As Guildenstern) When?
OLDMAN: (As Rosencrantz) What?
ROTH: (As Guildenstern) Are you deaf?
OLDMAN: (As Rosencrantz) Am I dead?
ROTH: (As Guildenstern) Yes or no?
OLDMAN: (As Rosencrantz) Is there a choice?
ROTH: (As Guildenstern) Is there a God?
OLDMAN: (As Rosencrantz) Foul. No non sequiturs. Three-two, one game all.
ROTH: (As Guildenstern) What's your name?
OLDMAN: (As Rosencrantz) What's yours?
ROTH: (As Guildenstern) You first.
OLDMAN: (As Rosencrantz) Statement. One love.
ROTH: (As Guildenstern) What's your name when you're at home?
OLDMAN: (As Rosencrantz) What's yours?
ROTH: (As Guildenstern) When I'm at home?
OLDMAN: (As Rosencrantz) Is it different at home?
ROTH: (As Guildenstern) What home?
OLDMAN: (As Rosencrantz) Haven't you got one?
ROTH: (As Guildenstern) Why do you ask?
OLDMAN: (As Rosencrantz) What are you driving at?
ROTH: (As Guildenstern) What's your name?
OLDMAN: (As Rosencrantz) Repetition. Two love. Match point.
ROTH: (As Guildenstern) Who do you think you are?
OLDMAN: (As Rosencrantz) Rhetoric. Game and match.
GROSS: Do you think of yourself as having played word games in "Rosencrantz & Guildenstern" as elaborate as the games Rosencrantz and Guildenstern play with each other?
STOPPARD: What's happening is that they're these two people who are stuck there waiting for the next event to discuss and talk about. Between Shakespeare's scenes, they don't really have any purpose or role. And they pass the time in different ways. They discuss things, they speculate, and occasionally, they get into some kind of game. Words is all they have available. They don't have TV or whatever. They're just there with themselves.
So in some strange way, the predicament of the writer is the same as the predicament to the characters, because in writing the play, I was in exactly that situation - that they had a scene between scenes and there was no plot that they were aware of. So they had to pass the time, and I had to invent ways to help them to pass the time. So all three of us, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and I, we were in the same situation.
GROSS: Now, one of the themes of your work is the difference between art and life, kind of comparing art and life. And both you and Shakespeare have used plays within plays. Do you think that's a good device for exploring the difference between art and life? Because, like, the framing play becomes reality, even though it's really theater, too.
STOPPARD: Yes, I don't know why, but there's something about that which clearly appeals to me because I've used it more than once, more than twice. There's something about writing about the relationship between one work of art inside or up against another known play by somebody else. There's something which makes sparks for me. And it got to a point a few years ago where I had to stop myself from doing another one of those. It was becoming a kind of mannerism.
But anyway, in my case, I'm always writing about the ostensible subject matter, not the supposed subtext. And I'm constantly coming up against students, for example, who believe that I've written the play in a sort of attempt to disguise what I'm really writing about. And I know what they mean because perhaps on some level, you're doing that. But honestly, it's not really the way that writers think, I don't believe.
GROSS: Let's get into your background a little. You were born in Czechoslovakia, and your family fled because of the Nazis?
STOPPARD: Yes. I mean, in a sort of general phrase, the gathering war, you know? A lot of people left what looked like - what looked as though it might turn into a theater of war. And we went to Singapore, which was ironic because we got there in time for Pearl Harbor and the Japanese invasion. And we got - women and children went on boats. My mother tells me that our boat was supposed to go to Australia. But for some reason or other, while we were out at sea, it turned around and went to India. And that's how I ended up there.
GROSS: So women and children were given passage on the boats and the men stayed behind. So your father stayed behind?
STOPPARD: That's right. And he died in Singapore. And after the war, when we were in India, my mother remarried an Englishman, whose name I now have.
GROSS: Stoppard.
STOPPARD: Exactly.
GROSS: Do you have a lot of memories of being frightened a lot when you were a child and your family was fleeing Czechoslovakia and then Singapore?
STOPPARD: I think I remember being driven to the boat in Singapore. And I had a sense that there was some kind of air raid. And I certainly remember a Japanese Zero airplane with its nose in the ground, just sort of where it had crashed. I remember being in the air raid shelters. Everybody in my generation remembers the smell of sandbags. But in India, I'm afraid that I'm protected by the innocence of childhood. I never felt unhappy or worried or nervous. I mean, obviously, I must have done sometimes. But in a general way, I look on India as being a lost domain of childhood happiness.
GROSS: When you were writing the screen adaptation for "Empire Of The Sun," did you identify with the story at all, you know, because you were...
STOPPARD: Yes.
GROSS: ...In Singapore during wartime, and you and your parents got away on the ship?
STOPPARD: Yeah, when I was asked to write that screenplay, they didn't know that my own childhood wasn't that different from young Jim's. Was he called Jim? Yes. But he was in Shanghai. But when I visited the location and saw the little boy's bedroom, it gave me a really spooky feeling because the designers, who must've researched it very thoroughly, they gave him books and things stuck on the walls which triggered off memories of my own.
I mean, they were my books. And over his bed was a thing, a little thing called flags of all nations - a sort of map, a chart of different flags. And I remember suddenly having this, absolutely the same chart, flags of all nations, in my bedroom. So it was a real time trip. But as for writing the story, well, listen, I didn't get put in a prisoner of war camp. And I wasn't chased around by Japanese soldiers, no.
GROSS: I want to thank you very much for talking with us.
STOPPARD: Oh, I enjoyed it. Thank you very much.
BIANCULLI: Tom Stoppard speaking with Terry Gross in 1991. The celebrated playwright died last week at age 88. Coming up, John Powers reviews the new Brazilian film "The Secret Agent." This is FRESH AIR. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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