Night Waves

Fiona Shaw joins an audience at BBC Radio 3's Free Thinking festival to explore: What Acting Can Teach You About Life. Award-winning actress Fiona Shaw is famous for creating some of the most challenging and emotionally demanding roles in the theatre, including Jean Brodie, Hedda Gabler and Medea. But what's it like to spend weeks getting inside such characters, and then to walk back into the dramas of ordinary life? Stepping out of her usual on stage role, Fiona Shaw draws on her professional career and talks to an audience at the Sage Gateshead about the interface between the stage and the street, and reveals how the characters she plays have influenced the person she is. Has she been changed by becoming other people? Anne McElvoy chairs the event, recorded at BBC Radio 3's Free Thinking festival of ideas, that takes place 5-7 November 2010. Producer: Fiona McLean.