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Neal Foster twenty years on and still going strong... From small acorns... Back in 1992, Neal Foster had a theatre company but nowhere to house it. Two decades on, Neal’s Birmingham Stage Company (BSC) has become so successful that it’s never short of a place to call home, with theatres across the world eager to stage one of its many highly rated productions. What’s On caught up with Birmingham-born Neal to find out how BSC is intending to celebrate twenty glorious years... Next month is Birmingham Stage Company’s twentieth birthday. How does the company plan to celebrate? Good question. We’re so busy we haven’t actually planned a party yet, but I think we’ll have more cause for celebration if we can get through all the shows we’ve got planned for this autumn. We’ve actually got five shows on for Christmas. In terms of big events, we’re looking more towards our twenty-first anniversary next year. So how are you planning to mark that momentous occasion? We’ll be bringing a special production of Horrible Histories to Birmingham, to the Old Rep, and we’ll probably plan an office celebration around that. 10 www.whatsonlive.co.uk The cast of James And The Giant Peach How did the creation of Birmingham Stage Company come about? I had a small theatre company and was looking for a base in which to reside. I looked at different theatres which weren’t being used around the country and came across the Old Rep theatre in Birmingham. It was a coincidence that I was from Birmingham, but I didn’t know about the Old Rep theatre - a lot of people, even now, still don’t know about it. It was this wonderful auditorium in pristine condition, but it was only being used for about five months of the year, by amateur societies - some of which are still using it today. It took a year for me to persuade the City Council to let me base my company at the theatre. Finally, they agreed, and we launched our first show in 1992. They agreed on the basis that there would be no funding and no support. In fact, they charged me to rent the theatre, and the amateurs charged me to hire the lighting. I have no idea how I did it, but here we are some twenty years later! And you’re still completely independent, surviving entirely on box office sales... Yes, we’re one hundred percent reliant on box office sales. I suppose it would be an achievement just to have survived, but I’m pleased to say that we have, in fact, flourished. I suppose it took a while for me to realise that actually not having any public funding was quite liberating - being able to do what we wanted, how we wanted, and to take risks. We’ve always been able to do the
kind of work that we wanted to do without having someone looking over our shoulder saying, ‘should you really be doing that, shouldn’t you be doing this?’. Eventually, that became an enjoyable thing, but in the beginning it was quite tough-going - although we were lucky in that we had some very big successes early on from a commercial point of view. Our first Christmas show, The Fantastic Mr Fox - which was the first professional Christmas production to be shown at the Old Rep for twenty years - actually had seventeen-and-a-half thousand people come to see it. That shows how important Roald Dahl has always been to us as a company. The theatre only has three hundred-and-seventy-six seats, and we had all those thousands of people come through the doors to see that show. Artistically, our first anniversary production, Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, was considered by most people to be the best production in Birmingham for about twenty years. So from a commercial and artistic point of view, we made quite an impact early on, and I would say that those two productions were crucial to the future success of the company. It wasn’t long afterwards that Richard Dreyfuss came over from America to direct Hamlet, and Jonathan Church directed The Crucible for us. He’s now running Chichester, and also ran the Birmingham Rep, so big things happened quite quickly. Is your role now purely managerial? No, I’m still acting in the Horrible Histories show in the West End. I’m an actor who runs a theatre company. Most companies are run by a director; this company is the other way round. Do you personally decide which shows you’re going to produce? Yes, generally I tend to decide what we’re doing. I’ve got a fantastic team. There are just four of us who run the whole outfit, which, by comparison with companies like the Birmingham Rep or the RSC, is an extremely small number, yet I think we may actually produce more shows. What is it about Roald Dahl’s stories that make them so appealing to adapt for the stage? Well, he was a genius. I also think his key feature was that he didn’t patronise children at all. He takes you on such amazing adventures, a lot of which writers nowadays would have to be very brave to write. For example, George’s Marvellous Medicine is about a boy who goes around the house finding all the liquids he can to mix into a potion to give to his grandma. A lot of writers would think twice about writing that today, worried that a child might go off and do it, but children absolutely know fantasy from reality, and they love the adventures he creates. He’s also incredibly funny in a really genuine and clever way, and he creates some extraordinary characters. I think it’s great writing, and I have no doubt that people will still be reading his books in a hundred years time. I think they must have been classics the moment he put pen to paper. So is there a particular Dahl story that you favour? I think our forthcoming Christmas show, James And The Giant Peach, is one that’s always appealed to us. It was his first story, so it’s got all the initial ingredients that you saw expanded on in later stories. What I love about it is it’s epic. It starts quite domestically, then the peach ends up flying into the air, sailing over the ocean and eventually landing in New York. It’s got a great epic appeal, and that’s always a great challenge for us as producers. There are obviously some great props needed in the production. Who’s responsible for those? I have a fantastic creative team. We’ve got Colin Richmond, who’s a very experienced designer - he’s created the most fantastic set. We’re just working out how we can afford it at the moment - it’s expensive but it’s absolutely genius, and if we can put everything on stage that he’s created in this beautiful model that’s sitting in our office, then it’s going to be sensational. You first presented James And The Giant Peach more than ten years ago. How will this latest incarnation differ? I think it will be very different. As a company, we’re ten years further on. We’ve got much more experience and expertise, and we also have far greater resources. As a company we’ve come on leaps and bounds, so there are a lot more possibilities open to us. So what would you say has been the highlight in the company’s twenty-year history? There have been a lot, which has been interesting. I would say we’ve had something wonderful happen every year. From the point of view of children’s shows, it would have to be The BFG, The Jungle Book and Horrible Histories - at the moment we’re having a tremendous amount of fun with that. Then you’ve got Skellig and The Firework Maker’s Daughter. In fact, I think everything we’ve ever done has been a highlight. It’s all been very special. So how long does it take to get a show to the stage? Normally, I would say eighteen months. That’s a lot of work, especially when you’ve got so many productions showing at any given time... Yeah, I don’t really know how we do it. What we like to do is forward-plan as much as possible, to avoid getting caught out. We always try to be ahead of ourselves. As a company we’ve got quite a good reputation with the theatres that we tour to, because we’re always ahead of ourselves and we’re always the first with the marketing. Every year we have a theatre phone us asking, “can you help us out, we don’t know what to do for Christmas. Can you do something for us?”. Maybe we’ve hit upon something by having such a small team. Although it seems so few of us are doing so much, there’s something to be said for sitting around a small office and working together, because we’re constantly checking up on and knowing what we’re all doing. Again, I also think it’s a virtue of having no funding. There’s no safety net; no one to bail us out if anything goes wrong. Twenty years in, how would you summarise the secret of your success? I would like to think it’s because we produce very good productions, and that when our audiences put their hard-earned cash on the counter to purchase a ticket for one of our shows, they know they’re going to get something special. My major aim is for interview... people to leave the theatre feeling different; either happier or more reflective, or having a better understanding of themselves, or knowing something that they hadn’t known two hours earlier when they walked in. Do you think the public are now more switched on about what they want to see? The only thing we’ve found over the last few years is that people are more inclined to go and see what they really know well, rather than take a risk on things they don’t know so well. It’s a shame, as there’s a lot of wonderful stuff out there which isn’t necessarily well known, but I think because of the recession, people are taking fewer risks in terms of what they choose to see. Which is the company’s most toured production? It has to be George’s Marvellous Medicine, which we’ve been doing since 1995. I think we’ve done about eight or nine productions, and it never fails to delight. It’s such a fantastic story, and we never get bored of it. In fact, we’re doing it in Cambridge this Christmas, and we just know it’s going to be a fantastic experience. It’s just a faultless piece of theatre. How do you personally select pieces to perform? I choose the play first, and if I think there’s a great part for me, I choose to be in it. I choose plays very much on the basis of what I think it will do to the audience. Will it take them on a journey that’s worth going on? Will they have felt that they’ve ‘gone somewhere’ by the end of the show? My test for knowing whether a theatre production has worked is whether the audience felt they had left the theatre and journeyed into the world they saw before them. So looking ahead, what have you got planned for 2013? Horrible Histories and James And The Giant Peach continue to tour, and Barmy Britain will continue in the West End. Then we’ll have some new programming towards the end of the year. We’ve also got a few international dates, with Horrible Histories going to Hong Kong and Singapore, Australia and maybe New Zealand. How does it travel? Brilliantly. They absolutely love it, and I love foreign audiences. They’re so engaged, have such a great time and are always willing to take part. We’re also about to take Horrible Histories to Dubai, Bahrain and Abu Dhabi, and I kind of know already that it’s going to be fantastic. You’re very well travelled as a company - both internationally and throughout the UK - so how does the Midlands compare as a theatre destination? Very well. I think we’re nicely spoilt in the Midlands with what we’ve got, and Birmingham is still the theatre that I most enjoy coming back to. It’s still our home. Birmingham Stage Company present James And The Giant Peach at The Old Rep, Birmingham from Wednesday 14 November to Saturday 2 February 2013 www.whatsonlive.co.uk 11
Page 1 and 2: THE MIDLANDS ESSENTIAL ENTERTAINMEN
Page 3 and 4: Editor: Davina Evans davina@whatson
Page 5 and 6: Spoken Word artist to share his nea
Page 7 and 8: The last twelve months have present
Page 9: absolutely furious, because I neede
Page 15 and 16: Music PREVIEWS Madina Lake Kasbah,
Page 17 and 18: Music PREVIEWS The Civil Wars Warwi
Page 19 and 20: Music GIG REVIEWS For further revie
Page 21 and 22: House, Birmingham BELLOWHEAD The As
Page 23 and 24: Music LISTINGS For full listing inf
Page 25 and 26: Classical LISTINGS For full listing
Page 27: Comedy LISTINGS For full listing in
Page 31 and 32: Theatre PREVIEWS Wounded TA Centre,
Page 33 and 34: Theatre PREVIEWS L.O.V.E Arena Thea
Page 35 and 36: Theatre LISTINGS For full listing i
Page 43 and 44: Theatre REVIEWS Here are a few of t
Page 45 and 46: Theatre WEST END Douglas Hodge to s
Page 47 and 48: For those not in the know, how woul
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Page 51 and 52: Sonia Sabri Dance Company mac, Birm
Page 53 and 54: Film TO From FRI 16 NOV WATCH THE L
Page 55 and 56: Rust And Bone CERT 15 (123 mins) St
Page 57 and 58: Nativity 2: Danger In The Manger! C
Page 59: novel Before I Die. Showing at Ludl
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VisualArts PREVIEWS Ongoing exhibit
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CHRISTMAS FESTIVAL 24 - 25 NOV, 10A
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62 www.whatsonlive.co.uk
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Events PREVIEWS Worcester Victorian
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Events LISTINGS For full listing in
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Variety is the Life Of Spice.. Come
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Christmas countdown... As preparati
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Media SponSor What’s On MAGAZINE
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THE Great Barr HOTEL Christmas Part
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Clubbing BIRMINGHAM AIR Heath Mill
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Eating Out Restaurant in search of
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PURNELL’S 55 Cornwall St, B3 2DH
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Nov 2012 - View Online - Whats On Live

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