Atw - Downstage Center

During her visit to the Brooklyn Academy of Music with the Abbey Theatre's production of Ibsen's "John Gabriel Borkman", Fiona Shaw discusses taking on one point of this lesser-known play's unromantic triangle and links her work with co-stars Alan Rickman and Lindsay Duncan back to their membership in the Royal Shakespeare Company 25 years ago. She also talks about having to get a degree in philosophy before she was allowed to enroll at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art; her quick leap from RADA to the stage of the National Theatre in "The Rivals" -- and why she stayed too long; the unique confluence of talents that came together at the RSC during her time there; her ongoing collaboration with director Deborah Warner and the uproars that accompanied their productions of Beckett's "Footfalls" and Shakespeare's "Richard II"; why she spent a lot of time as "Hedda Gabler" rearranging the furniture; how she finds modern equivalencies in the great tragedies like "Medea" and "Electra"; her first encounter with Chek