As the more astute amongst you may be aware from the subtle hints I have dropped from time to time in this blog, my chosen career is that of theatre director (also it's in the sidebar). I don't often delve into the world of theatre here - this is a sacred space reserved for vital and pressing journalism about which Batman is best, after all - but sometimes the muse pipes a tune and I must dance to it. To put it in a way that is slightly less absolutely appalling, as the amount of time I spend doing my job increases, the amount of time available to spend thinking about Batman decreases. Since I am unwilling to give up the one dominion in which I occupy the role of benevolent dictator, I thought I'd try combining the two.
The following is a sum total of all the things I will one day end up proclaiming loudly at the Oliviers at the same moment the room goes unexpectedly quiet. Howard Davies will shake his head in dissapointment. Rufus Norris will delicately avert his gaze. Thea Sharrock will make an awkward face to her left. I will drink champagne with great dignity, and trip as I leave the room. Thus:
Theatre Director Confessions, or How to Sabotage Your Career in Forty-Four Easy Steps
1) Sometimes when I watch Mark Rylance
act, I hear Liz Lemon’s voice in my head saying “Nope. Hipster
nonsense.”
2) Every time I try to read a Beckett
play I giggle uncontrollably and have to put it down because it’s
so very Beckett. Consequently the only Beckett play I have read
is Waiting for Godot and it took me three goes to get past the first
page.
3) I like Tom Stoppard. Haters to the
left.
4) It is ridiculous that any high profile
production directed by a female director should have to represent all
work by female directors but I am irrationally panicky when such
productions are anything less than flawless and I read the reviews
poised in a state of hyper-tense paranoia, scouring them for anything
that would not have been said about a male director.
5) I am more angry than I let on about
the fact that Michael Grandage was allowed to spunk an astronomical
amount of money on a season of work that never rose beyond “okay, I
guess”, simply by virtue of being Michael Grandage.
6) I have only ever seen one Katie
Mitchell production but sometimes I lie and say I have seen others.
7) I lied to Ben Whishaw about being a
fan of Katie Mitchell.
8) I have never read Katie Mitchell’s A
Director’s Craft.
9) I have never read Peter Brook’s The
Empty Space.
10) I own both, and still believe that I will read them one day.
11) I have an irrational fondness for
female directors who swear a lot.
12) I get uneasy when directors are
criticised for having gone to Oxbridge because I went to Oxbridge and
I try and calculate how much my level of privilege is offset by being
female and always conclude that it is not enough.
13) I am far too easily influenced by
other people’s opinions. I no longer know how I feel about London
Road, having heard it praised and eviscerated with equal ferocity.
14) I sometimes have trouble telling Simon Stephens plays apart, which feels a bit like being racist.
15) I believe that everyone has the right
to fail, and fail big time, at least once, but I am scared that the
reality is such that I have to be hitting home runs from the start.
16) Sometimes my attention wanders in
rehearsal. I am secretly convinced that no other director has ever
let their focus slip, ever.
17) I would like to be able to point to a defining incident in my childhood that explains why I decided to become a theatre director, like a supervillain origin story. Sadly, I can’t get beyond ‘I like plays and I like being in charge and I have no transferrable skills.’*
18) I can, however, pinpoint the moment when I acknowledged to myself that I wanted to be a theatre director. It was New Year’s Eve 2009/2010 and after repeatedly being turned away from the club my friends were in for being too drunk, I was eventually allowed access, belted up the stairs just in time for the countdown and looked out through the floor-to-ceiling windows to see the National Theatre lit up across the river. “In ten years’ time,” I slurred to the assembled party, few of whom were paying attention, “I’m going to be on the other side of the river.” Four and a bit years later, I no longer retain the same sense of certainty, but have at least never been clubbing on New Year’s Eve since.
19) The best thing anyone has ever said to me over the course of my fledgling career is, "I'm not scared of Nick Hytner. I'm scared of you."
20) The worst thing anyone has ever said to me over the course of my directing career was not actually a comment but they laughed openly at a play I had spent six months working on. The play was not, per se, a comedy.
21) I am sort of waiting for a certain
generation of theatre makers to die out.
22) I am definitely waiting for a certain
generation of audiences to die out.
23) I will always rather go and see a
Shakespeare play than any other writer, and I believe he is
objectively the best playwrighdt in the English language. Fine if
there is someone else you prefer, but do not fool yourself that there
is someone better. There isn’t.
24) Equally, I sort of wish the RSC was
just Greg Doran directing and no-one else.
25) I feel slightly sorry for the Marlowe
Society. I feel like they sit around pretending Shakespeare doesn’t
exist and if someone says the word ‘Stratford’ the room goes
silent except for the sound of a single glass shattering on the
floor.
26) I think less of people who dismiss
Sarah Kane.
27) I worry that ‘edginess’ is going
to become the defining factor in how well a play is received amongst
my generation of theatre practitioners.
28) I feel like I should feel like more of a nonsense about
using the word ‘practitioners’ but I don’t.
29) I feel guilty that I am more likely to
remember young male actors I like than young female actors.
30) I find actors easier to get along with
than playwrights, which is why I prefer working with dead ones.
31) I am a bit sad when actors like
Benedict Cumberbatch and Tom Hiddleston find international film and
television fame because it means I am less likely to see them in the
theatre again and, probably, less likely to see performances as good
as the theatre ones I saw at the beginning of their careers. Andrew
Scott, stay with us.
32) I have invented a fictional Royal
Court playwright whose work includes such plays as 'Savage Genuflection' and 'The Quiet of Skin'. The title of the play is said in context approximately two-thirds of the way through each. I am not
sure to what purpose this imaginary person exists but I'm sure I’ll
find out in due course.
33) I’m pretty certain I’ll write a
humorously personal yet insightful collection of essays about
Shakespeare plays one day and when I do, I’ll probably call it
‘Lear’s Button’. It will have moderate success, read mostly by
dramatically minded English undergraduates, being too academic for
most theatre-goers and too silly for most academics.
34) I once had a whole conversation with another theatre director I was trying to impress that I thought was about the Marvel Comics Avengers but was actually about the 1960s television series Avengers.
35) I once thought my cast had locked me in the lighting booth where I was doing some work so they could order pizza without me. It later transpired they were writing individual thank you cards. I still would have liked some pizza though.
36) The fact that I will now never direct Richard Griffiths as King Lear almost makes me not want to bother directing King Lear at all.
37) I think anyone who actually likes Titus Andronicus will grow out of it.
38) If I were offered a choice between running any theatre building I wanted or being the next companion on Doctor Who, I am genuinely unsure what I would say.
39) Everyone always uses the example of a Shakespeare play 'on the moon' to denote ridiculous relocations of classics. I have never seen a Shakespeare play set on the moon. I would like to.
40) I thought Joss Whedon's Much Ado film was better than Kenneth Branagh's.
41) There is no role I would not like to see Cush Jumbo play. Literally no role.
42) Going to see a high-profile production
of a play you know and thinking to yourself ‘I could probably do
that better’ is one of the most enjoyable feelings you can have in
this business, and you must never ever tell anyone about it out loud.
43) I genuinely don’t understand why
Hamlet at least is not played equally by male and female actors now.
(Hedda Gabler is not the female equivalent of Hamlet. Hamlet is the
female equivalent of Hamlet.)
44) Jerusalem wasn’t all that.
*Slightly disingenuous, but I don’t
think you want to hear the long-winded, over-earnest version I save
for job interviews.
