Creative Nonfiction #2: Sophie Fiennes on Four Quartets and documenting live theatre

Seventh Row Podcast

In the second episode of our Creative Nonfiction Film podcast season, Sophie Fiennes discusses The Four Quartets and how she approaches documenting live performance on screen. In The Four Quartets, she captures the stage play of the same name, directed by and starring her brother, actor Ralph Fiennes. For the production, Ralph Fiennes adapted the T.S. Eliot poem for the stage — which was never originally intended to be performed that way — and then toured this production around the UK in 2021.

Sophie Fiennes’s film of The Four Quartets is neither live capture nor a full adaptation of the play. Instead, Fiennes remarkably documents the theatre production on screen, maintaining all the original lighting and blocking. Her choices of framing and camera movement really puts us in the black box theatre with Ralph Fiennes. Unlike most recorded theatre, where there is a constant sense of information loss, Sophie Fiennes gives us a sense of the theatrical space so we get a better sense of what we’re missing when we’re missing it. It’s built into Sophie Fiennes’s direction.

Sophie Fiennes discusses Ralph Fiennes’s production, the challenges of documenting the play on screen, and how working with Declan Donnellan of Cheek by Jowl just before she shot The Four Quartets changed how she thinks about acting and theatre.

Click here to read the episode show notes.

The show notes also include excerpts from Sophie Fiennes's director's script.

You will also find an AI-generated transcript in the show notes.

Useful links

• Read T.S. Eliot’s The Four Quartets
• Listen to Cheek by Jowl’s Not True But Useful podcast episode on thresholds and space
• Read our interview with Sophie Fiennes on Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami

More on creative nonfiction

Download a FREE excerpt from Subjective Realities here.

Get your copy of the ebook Subjective Realities: The art of creative nonfiction film here.

Get your copy of the ebook In their own words: Documentary Masters vol. 1

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Related Episodes on creative nonfiction

• Ep. 99: Creative Nonfiction with Penny Lane and Carol Nguyen
• Sundance 2023 Ep. 7: Best of the fest + documentaries Fantastic Machine, Is There Anybody Out There, and more
• Ep. 123: Sundance 2022: Creative Nonfiction

Members Only Episodes

• Ep. 67: Frederick Wiseman’s Ex Libris and City Hall (Members only)
• Ep. 95: No Ordinary Man and John Ware Reclaimed: Reclaiming history in documentary (Members only)

Credits

Host Alex Heeney is the Editor-in-Chief of Seventh Row. Find her on Twitter @bwestcineaste.

Email us at contact seventh row com.

This episode was edited, produced, and recorded by Alex Heeney.