VISTAS - LITTLE THUNDER/VISTAS - PETIT TONNERRE

I met Robin Phillips in summer 1971 in Chichester, where he was iedrcting Caesar and Cleopatra with John Clement and Anna Calder-Marshall. I was visiting a friend who was working in wardrobe and Phillips came in asking us to sing him nursery rhymes; he wanted Cleopatra to be singing one when Caesar came upon her.I re-met him in Vancouver in '82 when Phillips was playing in The Dresser at the Vancouver Playhouse. I was the subject (with Phillips) of a newspaper interview; I had dressed Tom Courtney (who played The Dresser in film) when I had worked years before in London, and the writer saw synchronicity there and set up the article.Three years later, I was the theatre critic at that same newspaper, The Province, yet I never forgot my initial meeting with Phillips, his lack of self-celebrity, his commitment to giving his actor every detail to create her character. I learned to look at a director's work through that short but perfect experience.