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INTERVIEW: RSC co-artistic directors Daniel Evans and Tamara Harvey on how they want the newly announced season to create plenty of surprises




Their usual warm and engaging selves, the RSC co-artistic directors, Daniel Evans and Tamara Harvey, are huddled around a screen as they talk to HeraldArts via Zoom from the RSC’s Clapham rehearsal rooms. It’s where Daniel is in the throes of Edward II rehearsals, entering what he calls the “crunchy place – it’s enjoyable but hard” .

“It’s lovely being here,” adds Tamara. “Hanging out and getting away from the office.”

Let’s start with what you’ve taken away from your first season’s programming.

Daniel: Shall I kick off? We’re really proud that of our scheme that saw 25,000 tickets sold at £25 or less. They’ve been immensely popular alongside our TikTok £10 tickets, of which we’ve now sold 80,000. It’s important to us to make sure that our prices are accessible to young people to be able to come to the theatre. That’s going to continue into our second season, but it was definitely a big success of season one.

Tamara: I love as well that the £20 tickets (£10 for young people) brought a whole new audience to the RSC, a high percentage coming for the first time.And another thing I loved was how much audiences surprise you. Like they flocked to The School for Scandal, which you wouldn’t necessarily anticipate, and Pericles.It’s interesting that we had more people come and see The New Real in TOP than any other production in the last 10 years.Daniel: The audience have an appetite to see different kinds of drama, and we want to build on that.

Tamara Harvey and Daniel Evans make bold season announcement
Tamara Harvey and Daniel Evans make bold season announcement

Stratford audiences have strong opinions and sense of pride – is that something you’ve got to know?

Tamara: I feel as though as an artistic director I learn more and more with each year that audiences will surprise you at every turn. Just when you think you know them, they’ll behave differently. And that there are as many audiences as there are pieces of work, which is one of the reasons why we try and ensure that there’s a breadth of programming across the season; so that we’re not over or under serving the different audiences in our communities.

Daniel: We’re not going to please everyone all the time, but if you can please most of the people most of the time, then great. Tamara: One of the things that people have said consistently is how much they’re loving the ambition, the chutzpah of it. And I think that was one of the things that people responded to with School For Scandal was the gesture of it, and it was so gorgeous.

What have been your standout moments?

Daniel: Pericles opening in Chicago, with Tamara’s production reigniting our relationship with North America. We haven’t had a show there in over a decade, and 30 years since one was in Chicago. It was a big moment for us.

Tamara: The welcome from the audiences was just breathtaking. I don’t think I’d expected it, they were so responsive and engaged. I think we all need that message of the show, about hope and joy. The other one for me just recently was Kyoto opening in the West End. It’s a brilliant show, vital and moving, and great we could bring it to a wider audience. Daniel: One more. Just the opening lines of our opening play, which were not in English. [A new prologue of Love’s Labour’s Lost was spoken in Hawaiian].That was a statement of how our in-house playwright Shakespeare can be endlessly redefined and explored. To have director Emily Burns come give us that invented new prologue to Love’s Labour's Lost was a bomb – us saying this is the way ahead, we’re going to be playful, folks.

So on to your second round of programming – up to Christmas – what’s your approach?

Tamara: Our first step is always going to the artists that we’re most excited about. By going to those we feel are speaking to our times and saying to them, what stories do you want to tell? That’s the jumping off point. And then secondly, partnerships – including international. For example, we’re bringing the Public Theatre’s production of Fat Ham, which is our third Hamlet – set in South Carolina at a barbecue. We spoke about breadth in terms of the shows, but actually breadth in terms of the experience and the view and the viewpoints of different artists.

Daniel: Our real totem is being artist led – the ideas and vision they bring.So when we think about Much Ado About Nothing, which is the first show of the season, or indeed Titus Andronicus – both those directors have really arresting visions for their productions. Mike has a very playful take on Much Ado About Nothing, which is set in the world of Italian premier football. Tamara: Although I’m always a bit wary of concepts that feel as though they’re being foist upon a Shakespeare play, this one just feels as though it blows it wide open. It’s a concept that keeps on giving.

You mention chutzpah, is that always your approach too – to have that wow factor?

Daniel: Surprise is really important to us. Like, Tamara is directing Laura Wade’s version of The Constant Wife, we’re not just doing Somerset Maugham’s original, in Laura’s hands it’s even more cheeky.

And Daniel, you’re directing The BFG at Christmas – that feels like an immense and sound choice, given how well Roald Dahl has done for the RSC previously. And obviously I have to ask how you are conjuring the Big Friendly Giant?

The first thing to say is it’s not a musical.I actually started work on it when I was at Chichester. So, we’ve been working on it now for about five years with a brilliant writer from Hull, and it will be a co-production [see panel].One of the reasons why I’m intrigued by it, and why I love it, is because at the base of it you have this idea of dreams that visit us during the night, and the BFG is a dream mixologist.

He collects dreams and makes sure that the children of the world get good dreams and not nightmares. And so the story is about this alliance: this team, an orphan, a giant and a queen come together. And I think the kind of main theme is that if you have courage, you can make your dreams come true. You can realise your dreams, making manifest them in the world. So this team of people battle the bully giants. It’s a really hard thing to do because you have to depict dreams on stage and dreams have to travel through the air and change shape and colour.

We’ve got an illusionist, a puppeteer, we’ve got brilliant costume and scenic design. So it’s a big show and we hope that it will fit into the mould of the RSC Christmas show. Although having said that, really another thing about the first season is we’re really happy that over Christmas time at Stratford, 70,000 people saw a play this Christmas. Twelfth Night played to 82 per cent capacity, which is amazing.

The outdoor theatre is not included in the programming, what are the plans for that?

Tamara: We love the outdoor theatre and we’re exploring how we can bring it back. But one of the things that we’re having to navigate is this current, really difficult financial climate. We’ve had to make certain decisions about where we spend our resources and how we can ensure that we keep making shows as brilliantly as we can. So we’ve had to keep the garden theatre in storage this year, but we haven't thrown it out.

We’re living in troubling politically troubling times, and so I wanted to end with how much the affairs of the real world are reflected on the RSC stages. What are your thoughts?

Daniel: As our in-house playwright says the job of theatre is to hold a mirror up to our times.The questions we ask when we meet artists is why this play, why now? We’re a living and breathing theatre that’s speaking to our times. So, in that sense, theatre is political, because it deals with people and their interests and issues.They are issues that matter to all of our lives. Whether it’s a woman who is being threatened by someone in power, and no one will believe her story because of the imbalance of power, which is happening all over the world still. Or whether it’s love between two people, who can’t quite yet get it together. Politics with a small p and a capital P, if you like. It is our duty as leaders at the RSC to be speaking to the wider political life in the country, which is why it’s key for us is that we do reach half a million children a year up and down the country. Creativity makes us a better society.



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