Virginia Woolf’s Night and Day opened SXSW last week at the Barbican. #nightandday #barbican #sxsw

[00:00:06][music] >> All of Virginia Woolf's stories are timeless.

[00:00:12]>> I think she was just an incredible rebel.

[00:00:15]>> It is about a journey of someone who's finding themselves. This is a journey about family dimensions.

[00:00:20]>> She's the beginning of us entering the psychological age. I am actually just making this up.

[00:00:25]>> It's a story that's that's feminist at its heart. It's about women not being allowed in places that they deserve to be in.

[00:00:31]>> people are still negotiating how you balance life and love. I mean, it feels very engaging to me.

[00:00:36]>> I think she's one of the first people to treat sort of thought processes as plot.

[00:00:41]And so, that's why she feels so very modern.

[00:00:43]>> The easiest element to relate to was the overbearing parents who would try to crush your dreams. That's something I've experienced [music] with my mom and dad.

[00:00:51]>> Trying to find balance between love and ambition is no small feat.

[00:00:58]>> And obviously she became quite depressive and did drown herself, but [music] in this book she's very funny.

[00:01:04]>> So, we worked really hard, the writer, myself, [music] the producers, to really look at what the core of this story was.

[00:01:10]>> Uh Catherine is fiercely independent, not giving up your dreams [music] no matter what, to develop your own interests and your identity, to keep looking at the stars.

[00:01:22]>> Finding out what part that Cyril really plays in Catherine's story, but also within his own story.

[00:01:28]>> To not ruin it, I had to do a bit of research, yeah. Cuz I knew we were going to be asked to improvise. You can't just, you know, do my normal thing of talking [music] about Jaffa Cakes and Botox. I can't improvise about those things.