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the thing which is shocking is that you very
rarely see a play in which a woman is
responsible for a significant piece of the
world - whether that’s in the private sector,
public sector, in government, in school, or
whatever it might be - without it being
thoroughly and utterly about her private life.
There’s a very strong sense that the women
in our plays - and, indeed, on our television
screens - are there to remind us that there’s
a domestic sphere. This, to me, seems
extraordinarily old-fashioned, because there
are lots of women in very senior positions
making a difference in the world. Women are
doing very complicated jobs all over the
place, but we don’t tell those stories. If we
cover them, it’s about their love life and their
marriages falling apart, or them not being
able to cope with their washing machine.
These are all things which are part of life, but
I do think there’s a gender bias in the way
we select our stories. ‘State of the nation’
plays tend to be plays around men. That’s
the thing which interests me most because I
think there’s something we can do about it.
We can encourage writers - female writers -
to write us big plays, and male writers to
remember that women play all sorts of roles
in life and not just domestic ones. Of course,
the more women in senior or influential
positions in theatre, the better, because more
of us are likely to be thinking about these
issues. But we also have to expect our male
colleagues - and Greg is very much on
board with this - to take it seriously too.
Again to quote ‘Well-behaved women
seldom make history’, which female
character in history has inspired you most
on a personal level?
One of the plays, Timberlake’s play, deals
with a woman who I knew nothing about. A
woman called Bouboulina, who was an
eighteenth century Greek naval commander
who set up a fleet of ships to take on the
Ottoman Empire and get Greece its freedom.
She sounds fabulous, and recently I’ve been
very inspired by her. Also, I suppose some of
the groundbreaking politicians that we forget
about. People like Barbara Castle and Shirley
Williams, who’s still going strong, really did
change the way we think about politics and
women. I worry that we forget they made so
much change. We have these great role
models and all we need to do is follow them.
Tell me about the long-term plans for The
Other Place?
If we get all the funding in place this year,
which I hope we will, then next year we’ll go
on site. We won’t be changing the structure
at all, but what we will do is build two new
rehearsal spaces so that we can have the
performing company for the main stages in
that building as well. Our current costume
store is a bit cramped and not in a great
place, so much so that it’s difficult to have
them on show to the public. So we’ll be
rehousing that department so that the
costumes will be on constant public display.
This will then create opportunities to tour the
store and see the nitty gritty of many, many
years of making costumes. There’ll also be
the studio theatre, with about three hundred
seats.
You’ve been in the business for a long
time. How do you think people’s tastes
have changed since you started out?
I suppose there’s more of a sense of
adventure. There’s a generation of theatregoers
who’ve now grown up with cinema
and television screens being completely
pervasive, including on their computers. I
think this is a generation who want
something from the live experience that’s a
little bit more self-conscious, and I think
that’s an exciting development. I also think
that right now there’s a renewed seriousness
about theatre and other art forms. The
world’s been through quite a lot of change
and continues to do so, with very difficult
wars around the world, and we’re in a
moment of trying to understand ourselves.
Maybe fifteen years ago we were a bit more
preoccupied with entertaining ourselves.
There’s nothing wrong with that, but I think
there’s a renewed interest in looking to
theatre to present complex questions and
maybe get some answers.
Your first Main House production opens
later this year. How would you describe
The Christmas Truce?
I’m absolutely loving working on it. It’s such
a moving and inspiring story which is, I think,
quite an important antidote to - quite rightly -
remembering the tragedies of World War
One. Although it won’t shy away from how
tough it was, it’s a story not only of courage
but also of peace. It’s about people who
couldn’t resist peace, even if it were only for
a night or two. That, to me, seems like a very
Christmassy thing to do. We did some work
on the script about six weeks ago and we
were all in tears at the end - for the right
reasons! It’s a beautiful story that’s set
locally, so we’re really doing our research
about the Royal Warwickshires.
You sent out a plea to local people to
come forward and share information. Has
that benefitted the play?
Yes! I can’t tell you how many stories we’ve
received! Hundreds! Too many to use, but
even the stories that won’t make it into the
play, or into the research, have been very
useful background in helping us try and
understand how people feel about that war
and what they remember. We’ve learned
some things that we really didn’t know about
Stratford. There were a couple of field
hospitals - one of them in one of the theatre
buildings and one of them in the Town Hall -
which were quickly overrun, so they had to
move out to a big hall nearby. Also, we didn’t
know that soldiers were shipped from
Australia to the front line, and that when they
were injured they were sent to Stratfordupon-Avon.
So yeah, we’ve learned all sorts
of things.
The RSC has a reputation for producing
very successful Christmas shows. Is there
a commercial pressure for this to be an
all-singing, all-dancing production?
There’s always a pressure, but the pressure I
feel is to make sure families have a really
fantastic, Christmassy evening while telling
them this true story. I don’t feel it has to be
an all-singing version. There’s going to be
live music, but it’s not a musical in the
conventional sense. We’re aware that it’s a
very different kind of show to make at
Christmas, but I still think it’ll be uplifting and
a lot of fun.
What are your future plans in your current
role at the RSC. Do you have a personal
plan?
Oh my God, no! As an organisation, we’ve
got a five-to-six-year plan to think through all
the Shakespeare that we want to do and
which order we want to do them in. We’re
giving a lot of energy to 2016 because it’ll be
the four hundredth anniversary of
Shakespeare’s death. His death has very
rarely been commemorated, if ever. That’s a
very important fixture, and I’m going to play
my part in that by directing my first
Shakespeare. I’ll be directing A Midsummer
Night’s Dream in a rather unusual way, in
that I’m going to have a different group of
amateur actors in different touring venues
across the country. So there’ll be twelve
touring venues, as well as Stratford and
London, and we’ll work over the next two
years to find amateur actors to play Bottom
and the Mechanicals. We’ll find children to
play Titania’s fairy train. It’ll be an
extraordinary thing, and then each of those
groups will come to Stratford in the summer
of 2016 and do a couple of nights on the
main stage here. That’s a fairly big plan and
takes up any remaining room in our heads!
Midsummer Mischief shows at The Other
Place at The Courtyard Theatre
from Sat 14 June to Sat 12 July
Midsummer Mischief playwrights, from left to right: E.V. Crowe, Timberlake Wertenbaker,
Abi Zakarian, Alice Birch. For further information on all four plays, visit www.rsc.org.uk
8 www.whatsonlive.co.uk