I never know what the theatre piece is about when I start something new. I create a structure, a frame, in which I encourage the performers to present themselves to the world. Simply, authentically and without fear. I listen to their stories and the work and the meaning emerges.  Sometimes tender, sometimes hopeful, sometimes joyous, sometimes melancholy but most of all profoundly human.

I have just finished a big project with The Performance Ensemble  –  The Promise of a Garden, a co-production with Leeds Playhouse, Leeds Older People’s Forum and Leeds 2023.  It was very well received from the people who watched it live at the theatre and online when we live streamed it. I am now 72 years old, I’ve been working in the theatre all my professional life and I have to admit this was a difficult and stressful piece of work to make. I felt my age and my fragility. I was lacking in energy and at times didn’t think I could do it anymore. But I did and it was well received.

Read about it here

Everyone has a history – of course .. right from the start.  The members of the Performance Ensemble happen to have a lot of history –  a lot of that is behind them, it’s true.  This is a group of people mostly over the age of 60, and we are looking at what we can do with that history, how to express it, work with it, enjoy it, share it and make sense of it all in the present.  We have made several pieces of work together in various ways over the last six years: Dancehall of Dreams, Anniversary, Bus Ride, Bed, Crossing. These performances were all different in how they were made, and where they were presented, but they were all ways of bringing the histories/herstories of people to the attention of a contemporary audience, through theatre. We are nevertheless just as interested in the future as we are in the past. We are creating ‘Art with the Experience of Age’ to borrow a phrase from our friend Francois Matarasso

But just taking a step back for a moment .. my history is in making theatre, and this is something I have been reflecting on – because it directly informs what we are doing here in Leeds, and why I wanted to set up the Performance Ensemble, here in this particular city.

It’s a long history, and one of people and places who have influenced and inspired me and the work we are now doing. I would like to reflect on that because it helps to explain why I am here in Leeds.  For now, let’s start in Scotland .. It’s arguable, but we could say that Scotland has now and has always had an international outlook – there is a comfortable connection there with Europe especially with northern European countries.  There is certainly a distance from London – and a resistance to, and resentment about the effect that decisions made there at a seat of power in England have had in Scotland. Theatre in Scotland has certainly reflected that as seen in the work of 7:84, Communicado and TAG.    Dundee Rep’s principles were based on reflecting the cultural concerns of the local community, rather than trying to emulate the repertoire of a theatre in say, the South of England. For example, in 1987, I directed Witches’ Blood there. Based on William Blain’s Dundee saga, this was a performance event created with and for the people of the city – and has had a lasting legacy.   Setting something in motion, rooted in the history of a place and that continues to have relevance going forward is a continuing interest for me. 

It was an exciting time. In 1990, Glasgow was the European City of Culture.  This was an extraordinary moment for the city, and the legacy of this is well documented.   

I was working with TAG Theatre Company on a large scale community production City by the writer/musician/artist and inspiration to many, Tom McGrath

During this time I was introduced to the work of Lev Dodin, Peter Brook, Robert Lepage, and was drawn to what was happening in theatre in continental Europe and beyond, and how that work was made over extended periods of time.  These artists were among those providing inspirational force ever since.

I had met Lev Dodin the year before with a theatre delegation to Saint Petersburg led by 7.84 Artistic Director John McGrath.  After Glasgow I continued to meet him every six months or so somewhere in Europe, where I would see his shows and he would take me to dinner. We would talk about life and art and ensemble theatre. He was my mentor and teacher. He made four visits to Northern Stage to teach and share his amazing work and advised me on the development of The Northern Stage Ensemble.

In all of this 1990 excitement however, there was one particular moment that has stayed with me – a visit to the Grassmarket Project in Edinburgh, during the Fringe Festival. In the company’s own words Glad presented “an uncompromising description of homelessness” directed by Jeremy Weller. Based on the experiences of selective members of Edinburgh’s homeless community, the production involved twelve men from the Grassmarket area of the city, who alongside two support actors confronted their audience with personal experiences of boredom, violence, alcoholism, drug addiction and social exclusion. I remember the production most because of a speech from Shakespeare’s Richard the Second that one of the performers, Terry, recited. It was the most beautiful, touching and powerful rendition of Shakespeare I had ever heard and still is in my memory bank to this day… Let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of kings ….

The irony was in witnessing this powerful performance delivered by someone who was homeless, in Edinburgh – one of the richest cities in the world and not so far from the cultural extravaganza of Glasgow European City of Culture.

Later I moved a little further south, and at Northern Stage, as the artistic director there, I was able to draw on my experience in Glasgow during 1990, to bring some of the inspirational artists to work with us in Newcastle. Peter Brook kicked it off with The Man Who … . Lepage came four times starting with Elsinor. We could invite them to present their work on our stages in the theatre and to help us develop our process. 

This was not a ‘school’ of practice, in the sense of following a regime of training or thought, in the ways that say, Stanislavsky, Meyerhold, Grotowski have been established.  It was more concerned with being alert to the potential suggested by particular practitioners, in the way they work with performers and speak to audiences in their specific cultural environment.   I have been inspired by the principles by which they work, for example, how multiple perspectives are used in the stories told on the stage, how different forms of presentation, expression and aesthetics are involved: film, street dance, spoken word, punk, bodies of all shapes and sizes .. and even animals in the case of Alain Platel. This was not the world of plays but the world of performance.

At Northern Stage, going forward into the new century, we had a vision of a way of working that would bring about an ensemble of performers who could work together over time.  With the help of a new line of funding through the Lottery, that’s exactly what we did – engage a group of performers who were mostly young, mostly from the region, and bring in also experienced artists, to learn to play an instrument, or to work on their own particular strength – and to make work, not just the performances on the stages, but work in the community, in schools and other local settings.  This was something quite new for England at any rate, at the time .. and we did it for eight years.  People said we’d never do it, that we were mad, that the model was unsustainable.  But we did it.

When I left Northern Stage I travelled and talked and worked with artists in China and in Singapore, amongst other places.   The business of travelling away from ‘home’ and particularly when that ‘home’ is England, is bound to involve a reflection on the role that place has played in the world – colonialisation for one thing, and also a critical perspective on one’s own work and your place in the world.   And I continued to reflect on the artists I knew from other cultural perspectives, whose work highlighted people with long life experience:

Yukio Ninagawa – and the Saitama Gold Theatre he founded to work with people over 55.

Pina Bausch – who re-framed her celebrated piece Kontakthof to present older performers as the dancers in the original scenario.

When I returned to the UK I worked with Changing Lives (Formally the Cyrenians) in Newcastle.  This involved spending time with people who had extraordinary life experiences, sometimes concerning homelessness, seeking asylum, dealing with addiction.   I could bring my knowledge of a range of theatre practices to support people to share their experiences with others, through performance.