TheProfessionals – Richard Hayhow

Title: Director

Name of Organisation: Open Theatre Company/The Shysters Theatre Company

Length of service: Twelve Years

Phone: 01905 620631

Email: otchilltop@msn.com

How long in present post? Twelve years

What does your organisation do? Open Theatre Company promotes performing arts work with learning disabled people, and creates productions in collaboration with The Shysters based at the Belgrade Theatre in Coventry.

What does your current job involve? Devising and directing The Shysters? productions, most recently ?A Midsummer Night?s Dream? at the Belgrade Theatre, in which the Shysters played the mechanicals.

Dreaming up, fundraising for and organising OTC/Shysters projects
Managing the money!
Collaborating with other like-minded organisations to produce new performance work
Working with the Shysters to develop performance work with other learning disabled companies and in other settings such as special schools

Who did you used to work for and what did you do? I worked for Worcester Arts Workshop for 14 years as Drama Officer, working with a wide range of local community groups. That?s it!

What do you enjoy most about your present post? The sense that there are endless possibilities for what we can create, and the fact that no two days are ever alike in this work.

What do you find most difficult in your present post? Matching the dreams with reality: being organised enough and having enough money to cope with the current expansion of our work

What is your career ambition?To keep finding new and different projects to do; never to lose the sense of wanting to make new work

Who has influenced your career to date most and why? The people I work with, who always surprise me with their invention, and my eclectic CD collection ? music is at the heart of our work

If you could have done any job in the world what would you like to have done? In another life I would have been ? an actor, a singer, a dancer and a pianist.

If you had three wishes for the future of the arts what would they be?
Greater respect for the diversity of experience and creativity that exists in all people
A stronger connection between the way we live our lives and the art we create
Endless opportunities for everyone to have a great time creating whatever they want.