Directing the future

It took me two goes to get a place on the ITV Theatre Director Scheme. When I first applied in 2007, it was known as the Channel 4 Theatre Director Scheme. That year, I got to the final interview stage and somehow went blank when I was asked to name my favourite theatre production. It was no surprise I didn’t get through, as I managed to look like an impostor with no real interest in theatre. In 2008 I did a little more preparation. I entered the interview room armed with a confidence that only past failure can give you. Things seemed to go well and a week later I was offered a place. In three years of constantly applying for the various schemes, initiatives and awards for young directors, this had been my first success.
Throughout my year-long attachment to the Nuffield Theatre, which comes to an end this month, I have been given consistently exciting work to do. My first project was to take three actors from the Nuffield’s main house production and devise a brand new play with them in the Nuffield studio. I then was asked to devise a children’s show to tour local schools. Devising was something I had little experience of, and it is nerve racking for someone used to hiding behind a written text. However, it’s a great way of forcing you out on a limb to construct drama from the ground up. I then directed a new play in the Nuffield studio, by local writer Fiona Mackie, and finally directed a production of Harold Pinter’s ‘Betrayal’ on the main stage. While all of my experiences on the scheme have been challenging and valuable, working on a main house stage is really something that ten years of fringe directing in London cannot match. Most young directors like myself are used to working in 60-seat black box theatres which battle constantly with noises from the pub below. To go from working on the fringe to a main house is like moving from television to cinema: it is an entirely different medium. Unfortunately, there are few opportunities for new directors to work on this kind of canvas. Instead, most of them will only experience bigger stages as assistants on other, more established, directors’ productions.

The sense of responsibility that comes with working for a company is a great way of forcing you to raise your game as a director. The fringe theatre scene in London is a useful starting point, but unfortunately it also perpetuates a culture of low artistic standards. Artists, technicians and actors get used to working for no money in rushed conditions and as a result the entire system becomes undernourished. The quality of my own work improved drastically during my time at the Nuffield, simply because for the first time I could actually focus on my role as a director, leaving the stage managing, producing and marketing to people who actually knew what they were doing. I hope the scheme continues for years to come, as it is one of the only ways I can think of that new directors will learn how to make serious work for wider audiences.