PAUL: Hello, and welcome
to Regrets I've Had a Few.

I'm Paul Hunter, Artistic Director of Told
by an Idiot, and this is a podcast where I

talk to friends and colleagues delving
into what made them

the person they are today.

Hello and welcome.

My guest this month is
a genuine creative producer.

He's run a theatre,
he's worked in some of our most creative

institutions,
and now collaborates with one

of the UK's most iconic theatre figures.

Welcome, Tim Bell.

TIM: Hi, Paul.

PAUL: Hello Tim.
Thank you so much for joining us.

I'll have to reveal
who that iconic figure is.

Maybe I'll wait for a bit.

But it's so lovely to see you.

Obviously, we met many years
ago in various different guises.

But I'd like to start, like I always do,
Tim, if that's all right,

and take you back to your, if you can,
your earliest theatre memory,

what it was that you might remember having
seen, was that with school or family,

and how it affected you
or didn't affect you?

TIM: Yeah, okay.

Well, I was expecting this one,
so I've been racking my brains.

I think it was Norwich Puppet Theatre's
production

of George's Marvellous Medicine,
which toured to my school,

Hillside Avenue Primary School in Norwich.

I remember, I can see it in my mind very
clearly, the moment where grandma's head

went through the roof,
but her feet were still on the floor.

The wonder of that, the spectacle,
the imaginative power of that,

I think has really stuck with me.

I like my theatre to be theatrical.

I like to see the workings.

I don't like us pretending
that we're not in a theatre.

Therefore, I think, yeah,
that's really stuck with me.

PAUL: Interesting, an early introduction
to theatre via puppets.

Is that something that stayed with you,
puppetry, or comes and goes?

TIM: It comes and goes, I think.

I've just directed a show at the...

Well, it's a show for the Egg,
which is part of the theatre Royal Bath,

which is currently at the Unicorn called
Squirrel, which has

a a large puppet squirrel in it.

I say large because it's three foot tall,
and this show

is for one to four-year-olds,
and they aren't even three foot tall.

I imagine to them it's absolutely
terrifying, but I

think that might be one of the few
times I've worked with a puppet.

But yeah, I do love it.
It's fun.

PAUL: No, and that show sounds fantastic.

I know that's going on to have
further life as well.

You have your early experience
of seeing something.

Do you have an early memory of performing
in something at all at school or a

youth group or something?
TIM: Yeah, God, yes.

I was one of those ghastly
performing children.

I was in a youth theatre run by
Norwich Theatre Royal, which was amazing.

Those friends that I made there are
my friends still, and then they're

friends for life, those people.

I remember playing The Spirit of a Tree
at the age of nine alongside Al Pacino.

No, in the Lion, the Witch,
and the Wardrobe.

That was probably my earliest
memory of performing.

I also used to...

This is an awful thing to admit.

I used to dress up as
Michael Jackson and dance in our school

assemblies for the rest of the school.

It's hugely inappropriate for a number
of ways now thinking about it, but yeah,

I think I was always a performer.

PAUL: Trust me, this is a place where you can
share whatever theatrical

experience you've had.

But I am now fascinating because
that has taken me completely by surprise.

I have to address
that in some shape or form.

Was there a particular sequence
of Michael Jackson that you would do?

TIM: No, I just pretend to do
some Michael Jackson moves.

I begged
my mother to buy me a white sequin glove,

a single white sequin glove,
although you can't buy just one,

obviously, and some white socks.

I just used to, I don't know,
pretend to moonwalk in front of people.

It's very bizarre.

PAUL: Wow.

That's an astonishing reveal there, Tim.

TIM: Thanks very much.

PAUL: What age did you join
the Youth Theatre then?

Relatively young?
TIM: Yeah, relatively young.

Age of eight, I think.

But I come from a fairly
theatrical family.

My great grandfather was
a Victorian strong man.

PAUL: Wow.

TIM: In the stripy red top and everything,
posturing in all of those positions,

you you imagine those guys to do.

My grandmother, his daughter, was in a tap
dancing troupe called Terry's Juveniles.

PAUL: What?
TIM: She - yeah, exactly.

I've got a lot more information on her
because she's still with us than him,

but she toured all over the country,
hippodromes and those venues.

Yeah, tap dancing.

PAUL: This in some ways makes sense
of the Michael Jackson performance for me,

really, in the sense that you have a rich
tradition of variety and music all

in your background by the sound of it.

TIM: That's absolutely true.

I used to watch a lot of it as a kid
It was still on telly a lot those days.

My parents used to take me to see -
a very lucky privilege - they

took me to absolutely everything.

Agatha Christie's and Whodunits
and pantomimes and serious, so-called

serious plays, whatever that means.

I've been in and around
theatre for a long time.

PAUL: Well, this is interesting.

With this rich showbiz heritage
that you come from Come on now.

You're obviously performing
at the Youth Theatre.

When was the first kernel of, oh,
maybe I could do this for a job, was it

performing that you were thinking of?

TIM: Yes, it was.
I trained as an actor after I left school.

PAUL: Where did you go?

TIM: I went to Webber Douglas,
which is now part of Central,

which in itself is a slightly odd thing
because I feel when that all happened,

you feel a bit rudderless, I guess,
when the place that gave you your craft,

I guess, disappears or
merged with somewhere else.

PAUL: Well, it's funny you should say
that because where Hayley and I met

40 years ago, actually, this year, when
we also met John Wright,

our other co founder who was teaching,
was then Middlesex Polytechnic.

It's now, I think,
some luxury flats in Hampstead.

At least yours was absorbed
into another creative institution.

TIM: Yeah, sure.

PAUL: At what point did you feel…

Actually, I'm quite interested.

What roles did you get
at drama school then?

TIM: I might skirt back a little bit
because I was at Sixth Form College.

I'd done all that,
that youth theatre stuff performing

and found the thrill of performing
and that live experience as a performer.

But it was only when I went
to Sixth Form and I did theatre studies,

did I really begin to I consider
also the power of it and what it can

do and the power of art, I guess.

I saw this company called Théâtre de
Complicité, I don't know

if you've heard of them?
PAUL: Oh, yes, I've heard of them.

Yes, more on them later.

TIM: More on them later, yeah.

I saw the Street of Crocodiles and became
absolutely obsessed with them,

and then found another company
called Told by an Idiot.

PAUL: Yeah, I've heard of them.
TIM: Yeah, exactly.

I was imagining myself in some devised

process and bit playing a part in that.

But I didn't know who to turn
to, who to talk to about this.

I actually did a couple of Complicité
workshops, but that path into devised work

was a very murky one for me.

I knew other people in our youth theatre
who'd gone to a traditional British drama

school, he said, making
those inverted comment signs.

That seemed like more of a tangible way
of doing things that you could go there

and you could train,
and then you became an actor,

and then you got parts,
and then you made a career from it.

I got distracted from the thing
that really lit my fire,

which was devised work.

I got distracted and I got
taken into drama.

I applied for drama school.

I got into drama school.

Don't get me wrong, I had an amazing time
because

you're doing plays and plays and plays
and plays and you're working on your

technique and you're reading plays
and you're with other

people who are doing that.

What did I get?

I got Mr..

I played Mr. Collins
in Pride and Prejudice.

I did a good line
in Bumbling Norfolk Yokels.

I had quite a big beard at the time,
so assorted pirates, that thing.

PAUL: I can see your casting line now, Tim.
Great.

TIM: Thank you.
It's quite interesting.

PAUL: You went into that room,
but you'd already had this interest and

fascination, as you said earlier,
with devised work.

How did you find…

What was the beginning of your
journey back to that world?

TIM: Yeah, okay.

I
did, after I left Webber,

five years or so of some half decent
theatre and some really awful British

horror movies, really that have
never seen the light of day again.

It was when I was drawing on my experience
playing assorted pirates in a production

of Treasure Island,
that I met a group of friends who,

like me, were bored of waiting
for the phone to ring and wanted

to try and put something on themselves.

They were all musicians,
and I'm a musician as well.

We decided, we were on this tour,
touring out of the back of a van,

and we went to Lime Regis.

This bad production of Treasure Island was
fairly poorly attended in every single

venue we went to,
except the Marine Theatre in Lime Regis,

which is a beautiful little theatre
that is built into the sea defencers,

the sea
batters up against the side

of the theatre, and it was
absolutely packed in there.

We were talking to the person who ran
that theatre, and we said,

Well, what's going on here then?

This is sold out.

We're not normally sold out.

She said, Well, in Lyme over the summer,
there's a real thirst for it.

In one way, it could be thought of as

end of the pier variety, I guess,

is that audience of people who are
on holiday and want to be entertained.

The Marine Theatre itself
used to be an old drill hall.

It reminded me of another bit
of my growing up tradition, which is

watching rural touring theatre companies.
Yeah.

Like, hugely influenced by them,
Eastern Angles, companies like that.

Anyway, the owner of the Marine Theatre,
the person who was in charge, said, Well,

why don't you,
to ask a group of lads, why don't you

write a show and bring it back next year?
Which we did.

From that, and I was in that first show,
there was something

about being in it and also producing it
that felt really

uncomfortable for me in a way.

I love actors.

They're amazing and brilliant, and they
can stand on a stage and not know.

That's what it's amazing about them.

They can throw themselves into a process.

I I was getting more and more reluctant
to do that and more and more drawn towards

producing or directing or having a more
objective view of a process.

That's where I read.

Then I remembered,
Oh, yeah, I love devised work.

I went back into it that way.
Okay.

PAUL: Well, yes, of course,
I love that theatre we've played there.

It's an extraordinary space, as you say,
overlooking the sea and everything.

Then when you get the opportunity, how
did it come up for you to run the venue?

TIM: Well,
that little rhythm that I talked about,

about us making a show and bringing
in there every summer,

repeated for three years, I think.

We formed a company called
Shanty Theatre Company,

my friend Harry Long and me,
and a brilliant actor musician called

Stuart McLoughlin, who was writing a lot
with Kneehigh.

We were in in that Southwest tradition
of acting musicianship storytellers.

It was on, I think, our third summer there
that they invited us to apply to run

the building,
which was a different proposition,

because Lyme Regis
has a big reputation because of Pride

and Prejudice, Jane Austin and all of
that stuff, the French Lieutenant woman.

PAUL: Yes, indeed.

TIM: It's packed in the summer, and they have
10,000 visitors every

single day in the summer.

But only three and a half thousand
people live there year round.

It's like a big village in the winter.

We got the job, and we were sat
there one day thinking,

September drifted into October,
which drifted into November, and suddenly

it was very, very, very quiet.

We might be doing one show a week,
if we're lucky, for a one-nighter.

That might be yourselves,
it might be Told by an Idiot, or might be

Malt Loaf, the vegan tribute to meatloaf,
or Genesis-ish, the Genesis Tribute Band.

PAUL: Well, all I can say to jump in there, Tim,
is I'm very glad that the Idiots

are keeping such brilliant company.

TIM: Yeah, me, me too.

PAUL: The names themselves,
Malt Loaf is inspired.

Sorry, so carry on.

TIM: No, but we thought, Well, what can we
do with this venue the rest of the time?

We started a programme called R&D
by the Sea, where we would invite

companies down to use our space.

The dedicated,
amazing network of volunteers who kept

that building going would put people
up and people would test out ideas.

I guess at that point,
I got really interested in process

and how to find or facilitate artists
to find forms that perfectly

match the content of their ideas.

What can I do as a producer,
creatively, to make that happen?

That is the thing that started me
on the journey that I'm on now, I guess.

PAUL: Well, I think that
you've put that so eloquently.

It is a perfect segue
into your current job,

which I want to get your correct title
- you're Senior Creative Producer.

TIM: Yeah, I know.

I don't like the senior bit, but somebody
other than me thinks it's important.

PAUL: Okay.

Well, I should now reveal, obviously,
for those who don't know,

that you work and collaborate very closely
with Simon McBurney, at Complicité.

It feels like the progression that you've
gone on to then end up working with Simon

and obviously everyone else, the amazing
people that are part of that company.

How did that come about?

I have to ask, what was the early stages
of that like walking into that

relationship and that dynamic?

TIM: Yeah, wow.
What was the early stages?

Lockdown happened,
and I was at the time working at the Egg

in Bath, which is It's
an amazing- amazing place.

Amazing children's venue,
and it really does

extraordinary things for children's art,
and you don't get a lot

of that in this country, I think.

This job at Complicite came up,
and I guess my head was turned.

I really loved working at The Egg,
but there was something about Complicité,

that company I saw all those years ago
Street of Crocodiles and then Mnemonic,

that really hooked me in.

I applied and it was in lockdown,
so I was interviewed online on Zoom.

Yuck.

But that yuck enabled me to cover
my computer screen with Post-it notes

with all the things I
made sure I wanted to say.

I got the gig and Simon said, Well,
before you start, why don't you,

why don't you come down
to the southwest to Stroud,

where Simon lives,
to a place called Hawkwood,

the College for Future Thinking,
which you might or might not have been to.

It's an amazing rehearsal facility
where they can put up to 48 people up.

There's a rehearsal room in studios and
this stuff, and we do a lot of work there.

Simon and I,
We decided very early on that we

were going to learn by doing.

That was Simon's invitation to me,
is that we'd start to make things and we'd

learn how to work together
by making things together.

That's what we're still doing.

PAUL: Yeah, well, that's also, obviously,
in some ways, a really great philosophy

to get to know someone like that.

In a sense, I suppose that's certainly
what happened with me and Hayley.

We rocked up and didn't know each other.

Then John provoked us, and we got
to know each other through doing stuff.

Putting it as succinctly as doing stuff,
it's also obviously a very instinctive

and very direct way because we often
assume, Oh, we need to find out lots

of things about each other by
talking and meeting.

Whereas actually the doing of it reveals
maybe more about who we are and what we're

like and more immediately,
Did it feel like that?

TIM: Yeah, totally.

You don't really find out about somebody
until you're in the trenches with them.

You're trying to make work together
and you're bumping heads and you don't

know, and God, it's on next week,
and what are we going to do?

Or we got to deliver this thing
to whoever by the end of the day.

That's when you really learn, I think.

I love it.

I love just rolling
sleeves up and getting going.

PAUL: Yeah, it's true, isn't it?

I think If I think about the
fantastic relationship I have with Jen

at Told by an Idiot,
I think it's all in the most unlikely

of places where things don't always go
in any way, often don't go the way you

thought it might go,
that you then not only rely on each other,

but spark off each other, I think.

TIM: I totally agree.

That uncertainty is the place
of creativity, isn't it?

I guess as a producer,
my job is to make people feel safe

in uncertainty,
the artist I'm working with,

whilst at the same time
in a world that is so outcome-driven,

it's to try and clear the way,
to try and de-clutter a process so

the artists that I work with, not just
Simon, can really follow their instincts.

For me to hold that space with that tidal
wave of expectation with all of my might.

Sometimes it feels like there's that what
is in Wallace and Gromit meme, isn't it?

Where Gromit's laying the train track
as the train is circling towards wherever,

I'm oblivion, and we don't
know where we're going.

Sometimes my job feels like that.

Another time,
we've just finished a four-year project

with Crystal Pite,
the extraordinary Canadian choreographer

in the Netherlands Dance Theatre.

We're talking at the time
of the Winter Olympics, aren't we?

Crystal describes my role as being like
the guy in the curling team who's

frantically shuffling the ice as this,
whatever it's called, the stone,

glides to where it needs to be.

It does feel like that sometimes, too.

It's just that making space.

PAUL: Well, I think the two analogy to you use,
the Wallace and Gromit one, the track, and

your choreographer's
analogy, reference to the curling,

I think, seemed very appropriate.

I think it's interesting because
one can get suddenly or sometimes

bound by the lack of risk
that happens around things.

You and I have spoken about this before,
and being able to genuinely invest

and support in risk at a time when people
aren't fully embracing it,

I think requires a particular personality,
which I think you certainly do have.

Tim, we are approaching the end
of this really fascinating chat.

I always like to finish by asking
some rapid fire questions to my guest.

TIM: Great.

PAUL: You just have to say the first thing
that comes into your head as

a response to these questions.

Here we go.

I see you're sporting one,
and we've talked about this briefly

when we bumped into each other.

Do you favour the neutral baseball
cap or the branded baseball cap?

TIM: I prefer a neutral one,
but they're quite hard to find,

and so I end up in branded
ones more often than I like.

PAUL: Brilliant answer.

This is, I think, well,
I'm interested to know the answer to this.

The Cobb at Lime Regis or Borough Market.

TIM: Oh, goodness.

The Cobb at Lime Regis.
Yeah.

PAUL: Script or improvisation?
TIM: Improvisation.

PAUL: Pulp or Radiohead?

TIM: Radiohead.

PAUL: Table tennis or volleyball?

TIM: I'm really good at table tennis,
and this is an open invitation to any

listeners to challenge me to a game
of table tennis, and good luck.

That's all I can say.

PAUL: Well, I have to say that's made this
episode for me because you speak

with the confidence that my 15-year-old
son, Dexter has, he is absolutely

convinced, and you have that conviction.

With that conviction,
which I really admire,

I think we might have to set up
a Complicité and Idiot table tennis

tournament across all departments.

TIM: Game on.

PAUL: What do you reckon?

TIM: I did the Clore Leadership Programme,
and everyone was talking up

their table tennis skills.

I tell you what, they were all awful.

I'm very suspicious of anyone in life
who has arrived at a conclusion

who is sure about anything.

Uncertainty is my modus operandi, except
the fact that I'm really

good at table tennis.
PAUL: Well, I think that's brilliant.

You spent the whole episode talking about
not being in that place,

but you're very definite.

Let's talk about this table tennis.

TIM: It's not just me.

Natalie in our creative
engagement department.

I've never seen her play,
but I imagine she's excellent.

I think there's a few dark
horses in there as well.

PAUL: I think we could draw on a few.

Then there might be some debate as
to who gets to have what players.

Obviously, there is some crossover
between Told by an Idiot and Complicité.

The bit like, recall the players.

Anyway, we got stuck down
the rabbit hole of table tennis.

Swallows and Amazons or The Hobbit.

TIM: Swallows and Amazons.

PAUL: A Devon approach to the scone or
the Cornish approach to the scone.

TIM: My goodness.
Devon.

PAUL: Perfect.
TIM: I'm sorry, everyone in Cornwall.

PAUL: Tim, it's been utterly
delightful as ever to catch up.

Thank you so much for sharing your
insights around what

you do and your journey.

It's fascinating.

I wish you, obviously, I look forward
to see what else is being cooked up in

Complicé Day HQ by you and the gang.

I hope to see you very soon.
Thank you very much.

TIM: Our next show is a Michael Jackson tribute
piece, so I can't wait for you to see it.

PAUL: Which takes place during
a table tennis game.

TIM: In a school assembly, that's right.

PAUL: Yeah, perfect.
I look forward to it.

I'll book my ticket now.
Cheers, Tim.

TIM: Cheers, Paul.
PAUL: Thanks very much.

All the best.
TIM: Okay, bye.

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