Quote "At the time, I was really inspired by Bruno Bettelheim’s book..."

At the time, I was really inspired by Bruno Bettelheim’s book, The Uses of Enchantment (1976). He was a Holocaust survivor, and he had a thesis - which has now been discredited - that fairy stories are therapeutic: we tell them, and they come to us at times when we need them. I was interested in the trauma that Bruno Bettelheim had felt in the camps, and the thought that stories might actually be plugging into something really dark. I felt that The Red Shoes was really dark, and my process and my mind was much less formed than it is now, but in many ways, it was all the richer for it. But I knew that I wanted all the storytellers to have shaved heads, and I knew that I wanted them in underwear, and I knew that I wanted them in clogs, and I knew that I wanted my storyteller to be this amazing drag queen, Lady Lydia…. and that underneath she was the same: that the wig would come off and there'd be a shaved head underneath.