On July 31st 2020 I stepped away from my role as Creative Director of London Bubble Theatre Company. I was appointed to the role in July 1989. So that’s just over thirty years. Some people think I started the company. This is not true, four Directors preceded me, and the founder, Glen Walford, did two stints.
I was 66 (and still am at the time of writing). I knew I was coming to the end of my tenure so had some time to think about the impact. Should I adopt the brace position or visualise a soft landing?
I had a memory of interviewing the founder of Welfare State, John Fox just before the last performance of the last piece he made with the company. His departure was not a happy one. I remember vividly his rage and I made a note to myself at the time that I wanted to leave in a more settled state, with my affairs in order and my mind at peace.
But…leaving a theatre company is tricky. Other artists can easily continue their practice - writers, painters, composers, they can continue to create alone. Theatre-makers need people - especially Directors. It’s difficult to continue to create without first assembling a company.
It is also personally disturbing. You are leaving friends - the people you have made theatre with are essential to a directors craft but they are not inanimate pens or brushes, they are fellow travellers, artists in their own right - co-creators and critical friends. So the loss is both professional and social.
To an actor this will sound pathetic. Actors make and unmake relationships within ensembles and casts regularly - I stand in awe at their ability to commit emotionally knowing the relationship will end. To a writer or designer, who stand once removed from a company, it will also sound like whining - my partner, Pip Nash, is a designer and I know how brutal the relationship to a show and company can be.
However some roles in the arts, like Artistic/Creative Directors or Conductors, rely on ongoing relationships that may last for a number of years, and when this emotional labour is no longer required the change process needs thinking about.
In the long term I intend to conduct some interviews with long serving directors and reflect on what they say - partly for therapeutic reasons, partly to question the idea that Directors should change roles every 5 years - which has become orthodoxy. (An orthodoxy no-one mentioned to Pina Bausch).
But in the short term I had to do something for myself - and perhaps for the artist-friends who I had worked with at Bubble. After looking over my artistic record - a list of shows and venues, many of which had slipped into the swamp areas of my mind - I was struck by the geographical spread of the work. Not only 60+ shows, but 60+ different places. From that came the idea to re-visit some of the locations, to weave them into walks and invite artist-friends. Simply to say - we did that, here. And it was good.
I called the walks the Re-Markings.
Thanks, I'll check them out.
ReplyDeleteHave, you should talk to ******** who used to run theatre *********** in Leeds. He stepped down from running his company after many years of success because he wanted the freedom of being a performer/ deviser un shackled by business of running a company
.A very sane but punk man he seemed to relish the new challenges it threw up for him.
It sounds a bit beat yourself up to me. I think that actors do relish this building of new relationships because we all need a family however short lived and actually the short term of it makes it more potentially creative I think because of the sense of risk.
Ian
Expanding on the above:
Well I think ,
and this is partially informed by my experience of being a head teacher who had to abandon a project that felt like family and who then spent possibly too time mulling on why it happened, asking questions around blame and fault when it might have been better to have recognised what we had done well and then move on to pastures new rather than periodically circling the same doubts, I also found that stepping away made me aware that groups tell themselves stories that are sometimes useful but that can also condition our thinking and make it hard for us to think outside the box. Actors working with new people has them experiencing a kind of accelerated family life that can seem very intense but in which the end is always visible and in which people often understand the need for' 'own space'.
in lockdown it has been 'weirdly' intense and digital relationships have become as significant as physical ones, maybe because they leave more to the imagination.
The duration doesn't automatically make it easier to create new things in fact sometimes you need new partners to see different things .
I think new participants who experience something of the re marking would bring something different to them particularly if the telling reflected a wide range of different individual perspectives.
Ian
As Ian said, I always relished the transient love and bonding of any group of performers I worked with. It's the sense of forming close friendships and falling in love with each diverse member of the group that I particularly enjoy. It teaches me to be open and fall a little in love with everyone I meet and share an experience with.
ReplyDeleteReally interesting project Peth. I'm sure it will be a poignant and visceral experience.
ReplyDeleteAs for actors' relationships in companies - my first ever job was a season at Pitlochry in Scotland. 6 months away from my London home in the beauty of the Highlands. We all got very close. And I agree with Amanda that it opened my heart to future relationships. However, when it was over and I was saying 'goodbyes' I couldn't understand the slight cool look in the eyes of the experienced actors. I thought we'd continue seeing each other all the time. I came to learn that wasn't the case. Yet, of course, the other characteristic of actor's 'company friendships' is that when you do finally reconnect, you instantly tap into that initial relationship and pick up where you left off. A coda to all this is that, although I am no longer in the business, 3 of my closest friends, I met in that Pitlochry company. Bit of a fluke I think :)