The Art of the Artistic Director

Conversations with Leading Practitioners

Christopher Haydon

• Publisher: Methuen Drama
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781350016941
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Drama
• Index: Literature

How do you decide what stories an audience should hear? How do you make your theatre stand out in a crowded and intensely competitive marketplace? How do you make your building a home for artistic risk and innovation, while ensuring the books are balanced? It is the artistic director's job to answer all these questions, and many more. Yet, despite the central role that these people play in the modern theatre industry, very little has been written about what they do or how they do it. In The Art of the Artistic Director, Christopher Haydon (former artistic director of the Gate Theatre, 'London's most relentlessly ambitious theatre' – Time Out ) compiles a fascinating set of interviews that get to the heart of what it is to occupy this unique role. He speaks to twenty of the most prominent and successful artistic directors in the US and UK, including: Oskar Eustis (Public Theater, New York), Diane Paulus (American
Repertory Theater, Boston), Rufus Norris (National Theatre, London) and Vicky Featherstone (Royal Court Theatre, London), uncovering the essential skills and abilities that go into making an accomplished artistic director. The only book of its kind available, The Art of the Artistic Director includes a foreword by Michael Grandage, former artistic director of the Sheffield Crucible and the Donmar Warehouse in London.

1

SARAH BENSON

Sarah Benson has been artistic director of Soho Rep since 2007. Soho Rep is a small studio theatre in Lower Manhattan dedicated to producing innovative contemporary theatre.

Could you tell me about your journey to running Soho Rep?

I’m from Southampton in the UK originally. I’d been making work in London when I was offered a Fulbright Scholarship to do an MFA in Directing at Brooklyn College. My husband and I came over to New York so I could do that, but we planned to move right back to London afterwards. I did the MFA for two years, which was fantastic, and then there was the option of a third year under the auspices of Fulbright. Several people who I knew, both in New York and the UK, kept saying to me: ‘You should check out this theatre Soho Rep. It’s really up your street.’ So I came and saw the work and loved it. I then interviewed for an internship with Young Jean Lee who at that time worked here and I remember her saying ‘Don’t take the internship!’ But I ended up taking it mainly because I had loved the production of Maria Irene Fornes’s Molly’s Dream so much and I wanted to find out how that got made. So I interned for a year under my predecessor Daniel Aukin. One of the programmes that Soho Rep runs is the Writer/Director Lab – where writers and directors develop projects from the ground up. Daniel asked me to take over co-chairing it, and that was a great chance to just jump into something.

At the same time I had a conversation with Frank Hentschker at the Segal Theater Center which is part of CUNY.¹ This is an amazing place that works to bridge the professional and academic worlds. They had this festival called Prelude, but Frank was ready to throw in the towel with it. So I told him that I’d like to take a shot at curating it for a year, which he allowed me to do. So between the Lab and Prelude I had this incredible opportunity to start picking up the phone and calling artists.

That was the beginning of things. Up until then I had only seen myself as a director. But the experience of working on those projects made me realize that I really enjoy the process of curating and of being surrounded by people whose processes are so different from mine. Being challenged by that was very inspiring. And having been an outsider to the New York theatre scene, I suddenly found myself completely welcomed by this community.

The year after that, Daniel decided he wanted to go freelance and he resigned. At the time, my husband and I were trying to decide whether to stay in New York or move back to Europe. And I applied really not thinking that I would have a chance. I thought they would hire someone who really knew how to run a theatre and had done it before. And so I was surprised when the board offered me the position. And now I have been here ten years!

How conscious did you feel of Soho Rep’s history when you took over? Do you feel that it shaped you? And how much do you think you have had the ability to shape it in return?

The history of the theatre goes back to when Marlene Swartz and Jerry Engelbach founded it in the 1970s. At that point they were doing ten shows a year for a total cost of around $90,000 – which feels incredible and crazy now! They were doing a lot of neglected classics, but I think the throughline was about engaging with language and how language functions in the theatre. When Daniel took over, he focused on new work exclusively. Everything we do now is new. Either it’s a commission or it’s something that we have found or developed from the ground up. Very occasionally we will produce the US or New York premiere of a new international play, like we did with debbie tucker green’s plays born bad and generations or Alice Birch’s Revolt She Said, Revolt Again.

Daniel also began to shift the producing model. Previously, it had been about giving a lot of people opportunities – being this hot bed for artists to try stuff. But he shifted it to be about putting more significant resources behind fewer projects – with the aim that we should be creating the very best versions of the work that we possibly could. That’s something I really believe in and have continued to develop. Soho Rep is one of the few places that will give a really full-throated production to an unconventional artist who has maybe never had a show before. Many of the larger off-Broadway theatres are just not in a place where they are able to do that for someone who is completely unproduced.

It’s also been important to me to address our history as a predominantly white institution and ask how we can be an anti-racist theatre. There is such deep structural bias in the field, especially in ‘experimental theatre’ that basically exists outside any meaningful economic system. It inherently privileges people who have the cultural capital to work for close to free. That creates a lot of white work. And that work in turn dominates the conversation as those are the artists who have had the opportunities to develop their voices early on and who are later deemed ‘off-Broadway ready’. It is an impoverished conversation and one that of course only feeds and perpetuates the oppressive structures. So that is something we are constantly trying to work against and transform.

How does your programming process work? What draws you to a particular project and how do you go about curating a specific season?

This season is a good example of how we programme in terms of process, as the projects have had such radically different paths to production. Aleshea Harris’s play Is God Is was sent to me by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins. I read it one night and emailed Aleshea the next morning to talk about doing the play. The text was brilliant and indestructible and barely changed during our process. Jackie Sibblies Drury’s play Fairview alternately began three years ago as a co-commission with Berkeley Rep. It has come through our development programming at the theatre over a two-year period and has taken on many different forms as Jackie has generated this incredibly exciting text through a workshop process.

We approach every project we are doing differently: whether it’s playwright driven or more director driven. We’ve even done some design-driven projects. We worked with Louisa Thompson who instigated and designed a project called Washeteria that was set site-specifically in a Laundromat. At the first rehearsal, we didn’t have a script, we just had a design model and the writers César Alvarez and Charise Castro Smith responded to that. And when we did Sarah Kane’s Blasted, that was instigated by the actor Marin Ireland. The urgency she felt to do the play at that time was infectious.

Sometimes it feels as if we are reinventing the company in response to how each particular project needs to be produced. So we don’t have specific ‘slots’ or a particular protocol for how we produce. It’s driven by the needs of the project and the particular alchemy of people who have gathered to do it. And while text is very much a throughline in our work, I’m super interested in giving directors space to instigate things.

I guess I’m mostly interested in artists who have a destabilizing force. That will often start from me reading something or seeing something that I’m challenged by or that makes me feel uncomfortable or embarrassed. I find that those are very fruitful feelings to dig in to.

Do you seek to develop longer-term relationships with artists? Or does it tend to be more on a project-by-project basis?

I feel like part of our role in the landscape is to shine a light on the brand new or the overlooked. So are we ever going to do another Young Jean Lee or Lucas Hnath play? Probably not. Unless they are creating something in the future that I feel they couldn’t make anywhere else. Artistically I feel completely in love with everything they are doing but we have to make space for artists who have yet to have those very early production experiences.

The Gate has a very similar approach – the focus is on discovering new talent rather than continuing to work with established artists. So Soho Rep and the Gate are very closely aligned in that way.

Yes, exactly. And especially when it comes to our young artists in the lab, we always try and serve as a champion and advocate for them. We almost act as agents for them in very early projects. So if something comes out of the lab that I think is amazing but is not for us, then I will try and figure out who can I get in the room that might respond. A big part of our role is trying to get artists out there.

I feel like we are in such a rich moment for playwriting currently. There’s a lot of really exciting work happening and it’s great to be able to share that with as many people as we can. In the UK, theatre is more accepted as a valid part of everyday life for people than it is here. So I feel a real drive to carve out space in the culture and to advocate for the vitality of theatre artists.

Do you mean that theatre is seen as having a more civic role in the UK than in the United States? After all, we have a National Theatre and the United States doesn’t.

Yes. Here, theatre is something you have to really make the case for and so I feel like that’s what I’m doing over and over again through the work itself and in conversation. The civic nature of theatre lies in the form itself, which is what makes it so astonishing to me. There is something about how we gather and how we experience a thing together that is transformative. Some of the shows I do are quote unquote ‘political’ but I’m much more interested in the form itself being a civic act than I am in content-based politics.

You’re one of the few artistic directors (ADs) in New York who also regularly direct work as well – many ADs here are primarily producers or literary managers. That is very different from the UK where most ADs also direct regularly. Do you think that has an impact on how you run this building as opposed to how other organizations in New York operate?

I hear from the artists – whom we work with here – that it feels different, because they feel like they are talking to me as a peer artist. And that is definitely the dynamic I aspire to. I always make it explicit when I’m offering notes on something that they are just my opinion. I don’t have any expectation that they will be implemented. In fact quite the opposite! I crave robust disagreement as that often makes the show better. I’m not interested in the ‘director for hire’ relationship. Though a lot of artists do end up wanting significant input and feedback, our general approach is to start from a place of transmitting autonomy to the artists and letting them tell us how we can be most helpful.

Why do you think there are fewer artistic directors in New York who actually direct as well?

Mainly because the fundraising is such a slog! The financial model in New York is completely different to the UK. I’m lucky to work with two absolutely remarkable people at the theatre: Cynthia Flowers and Meropi Peponides. Cynthia is my business partner and a phenomenal fundraiser. Meropi is an artist and a creative producer extraordinaire. Working with them has kept me sane and helped me evolve as an artist in large part because I so admire both of their work. Our board is also very pro having a working artist running the theatre, which is a rare gift. It’s something that they rightly think is a big part of the DNA of the company and affects our identity and how we choose, produce and make work.

How would you define the type of community or communities that Soho Rep serves?

I used to resist this as I felt like it was hermetic, but I think I have come to accept that part of our role is to serve as a hub for people who have self-identified as theatre artists and who are trying to find their way – that up and coming generation of people who are saying: ‘I think this is what I want to do with my life.’ The question is, how can we serve a role in expanding the number of people who think of themselves like that? Who feels like they can self-identify as a theatre artist? It’s an insane thing to do! It tends to line up with a very narrow demographic that is tightly equated with historic access to power and education.

We used to be seen as a kind of theatre speakeasy where many people never even knew we were here. But now we’re more known outside just the theatre community. We’ve opened that up in part by developing partnerships. For example, we formed a relationship with the Borough of Manhattan Community College around five years ago. We teach classes there, we’ve had some of their students intern with us, and we have a programme where all of their students will come and see our work during previews. So we have forged ongoing, meaningful interactions with students who otherwise might not know what we were doing, or feel like it was for them.

Do you feel that, as an artistic director, there is a public aspect to your role?

I do, but I try and fulfil that through the work. You make the work as strongly as you can and hope that it lives in the world and seeds questions for people through the feelings they experience in the theatre. I also try to amplify the direct connection between the work and audience. That is something I’ve thought a lot about over the years, especially in a ‘one paper town’ like this where the New York Times is so dominant in how people understand what’s being made. And, of course, I do feel like we have to make noise around the NEA² money getting taken away and our values being dismantled. But, generally speaking, I try and put all my energy into the work itself and have that do the speaking.

Do you think theatre has an activist role? Especially in the current context with things like Trump in the United States and Brexit in the UK?

I believe theatre has to respond to what is happening. It’s a local and temporally specific medium, and it’s civic in its form because it’s about gathering people in a room and saying: ‘Together we are all going to make this thing right now live, and you being here completes that experience.’ So I feel like there’s just something inherent in that form that is a kind of activism.

But do I want to commission a bunch of plays about Trump? Not interested. It’s not how the theatre functions for me. I don’t want to just give an audience a message and say: ‘Here take this.’ I want to transform how you think about yourself. What we are trying to do with the work is to destabilize people’s assumptions. That’s always been my interest but I feel more fired up than ever to make work that does that.

It’s funny because often you will see critics in the UK say: ‘The great thing about theatre is that it can respond really quickly to contemporary events.’ But I just don’t believe that’s particularly true. It can take years to develop a really good show. By the time we have commissioned, developed, designed and produced a genuinely good show about Trump, he will probably have left office.

That’s so true. The thought of creating some slapdash thing in response to Trump building a wall or whatever just doesn’t interest me. We have to put our faith in pushing the ideas we’re excited about and the things that make us uncomfortable. Those are going to be the things that ultimately ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents 
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• A note on the spelling of the word ‘theatre’ (or, er, ‘theater’)
• Introduction
• 1. Sarah Benson
• 2. André Bishop
• 3. Oskar Eustis
• 4. Paige Evans
• 5. Robert Falls
• 6. Vicky Featherstone
• 7. Sarah Frankcom
• 8. Kwame Kwei-Armah
• 9. David Lan
• 10. Tom Morris
• 11. Jim Nicola
• 12. Rufus Norris
• 13. Diane Paulus
• 14. Josie Rourke
• 15. Indhu Rubasingham
• 16. Howard Shalwitz
• 17. Niegel Smith
• 18. Kully Thiarai
• 19. Erica Whyman
• 20. Madani Younis
• About the author
• Imprint