Director/Artistic Director

Leicester Haymarket: Executive And Artistic Director

Coming to the Haymarket in 1986 I moved into a very different realm of theatre. The Haymarket is the fourth largest public theatre in Britain; my post there was as Executive and Theatre Director, which included artistic, financial and administrative responsibility for a theatre with a turnover of £3-4 million, two theatres, a permanent staff of 85 and a production staff of up to an additional 80 people.

What my experience at the Leicester Haymarket highlighted was the need to get the attention of a varied audience for things that they would not normally expect to come and see. Probably the most important ways of gaining the audience’s confidence that I encouraged were first, open attempts to come out to the community and to be seen to be responding to its concerns, and second, the ability to present productions to the local audience that are seen to be important, exciting and challenging in other people’s eyes. Building the commercial side of the theatre by extending the number of visiting commercial companies, touring home-grown productions or transferring plays into the West End, was a way not only of talking to other communities but also of encouraging the immediate community to participate and try a new development. This kind of exchange and liaison allowed me to increase the productions of new plays, to bring more challenging work to the main stage, and to introduce international companies to a Leicester audience. By 1988 the Haymarket was recognised as Britain’s premier theatre for international drama.

Under my direction the theatre made a series of bold moves out into addressing the needs of its audiences. Over 1988 to 1990 I created an education liason department which commissioned Rambert Dance Company to come to Leicester one week a year to work in the schools, which also commissioned Edward Bond to write a play to be performed in schools and non-theatre venues throughout Leicestershire, which ran education days at the theatre for students, and which supported the Haymarket Youth Theatre. Among its activities was helping produce the 2-week long Leicester Schools Festival of dance and drama on the Haymarket stages. Close links were also established with the Leicester Polytechnic (now DeMontfort University), out of which came people who worked in marketing and finance, as well as acting, directing and music. I also developed community links and commissioned work for and from the large Asian community, including Jyoti Patel’s KURTI, SONA AND BA and an opera based on J P Narayan’s The Tiger of Malgudi.

The Leicester International Dance Festival which I established presented Merce Cunningham who created a dance piece specifically for the Haymarket space, and Chhau from India. Also at the first Festival was the Rambert Dance Company, with whom there was already a special artistic relationship. The Haymarket and Rambert co-commissioned a new piece choreographed by Lucinda Childs to the music of Gavin Bryars. I radically increased the number of visiting musical performances, and among the individual musicians who performed at the Haymarket were Gavin Bryars, John Zorn and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, some of whom were among the many composers commissioned to write original music for productions. Groups who played at the theatre varied from contemporary music ensembles to medium-scale operatic companies.

What I learned from the Leicester Haymarket was that the ability to establish a long-term discussion with your audience gives it the confidence to take chances. Despite the extremely conventional attitudes of this regional audience when I arrived, two years further on the theatre was filling all seats for Samuel Beckett and Howard Barker plays and welcoming the Georgian Rustaveli company and a Russian Shakespeare. Unusually the Leicester Haymarket allowed me to bring together experience with new writing and work within a classical and commercial dramatic tradition.

This combination encouraged me not only to treat the classics as new and challenging plays, but also to understand how new writing can learn from the classics and that the challenge of new writing can contribute to and augment the dramatic tradition.

People I worked with include: Frances Barber, Howard Barker, Edward Bond, David Borowsky, Mark Bramble, Gavin Bryars, Anna Carteret, Joseph Chaikin, Kandis Cook, Eduard Tchikvadze, John Dexter, Paul Freeman, Jocelyn Herbert, Anthony Hopkins, Eiko Ishioka, Yuri Lyubimov, Henry Krieger, Joe McGann, Stephen McGann, Joe Marcell, Dan Massey, Gemma Regrave, Gregory Motton, Jyoti Patel, Annie Smart, David Threlfall, Nick Ward, David Warrilow, Kevin Whateley.

Plays I scheduled and produced included: Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and Stephen Spender’s Creon, both of which were directed by John Dexter and designed by Jocelyn Herbert, and after visiting the Belfast Festival went on a major British Council tour of India; M. Butterflyby David Henry Hwang, again directed by John Dexter and designed by Eiko Ishioka, starring Anthony Hopkins, which transferred to the Shaftsbury Theatre in London’s West End; Samuel Beckett’s Krapp's Last Tape and Catastrophe starring David Warrilow which were the last productions that Beckett had a direct involvement with before he died – they played at London’s Riverside Studio and were televised by BBC before going to the Festival D’Automne in Paris and Brooklyn’s Next Wave Festival; Yuri Lyubimov’s production of Hamlet which toured extensively around the world including: Rome, Berlin, London, Adelaide and Tokyo.