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Interviews
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"There are never enough theatres. People want to be entertained" Simon Sladen talks to Gerald Armin - Artistic Director of the new Waterloo East Theatre It's always exciting when a new theatre opens, especially with all the doom and gloom of arts cuts lately. For Gerald Armin "There are never enough theatres. People want to be entertained" and that's exactly what he's set out to do in his brand new theatre in Brad Street, SE1. It takes less than a minute to reach the theatre from Waterloo Station and once inside a warm welcome awaits you. Playbills adorn the sunshine yellow walls and give what is ultimately a railway arch a grand feeling of space, vibrancy and life. Gerald is at his computer, taking a call for tickets - not only is he Artistic Director, but he runs the box office and does much of the other work too. Multi-tasking and multi-roling sum up his career. "I've been a performer since I was seven years old and stopped in 1990," he explains. "Musical theatre was what I did. That was my job. I was also a very big commercial dancer in the 80s. My last show was Singin' in the Rain with Tommy Steele at the Palladium, then it just sort of left me. I thought 'I don't want to be doing this anymore.' I'd been in theatre all my life and wondered 'Where do I go now?'" He took a year out to do some "blue sky thinking" in Australia and on his return to the UK decided to embark on a career as a producer. "I do get as much of a kick as I did as a performer putting all the creative team together, watching the rehearsals happen and then thinking 'You've got to do it for eight shows a week and I don't have to!'," he laughs. "Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think I would be an owner of a theatre. That was never on my plan at all. It's bizarre. If there's anything that I wanted to do, it was to be an artistic director somewhere," but instead of being one for someone else's theatre, he is now his own boss. "It's not an easy job", he adds, "But I do have the best of both worlds. There's nothing nicer than having people come out of the auditorium and say 'Thank You'." The entire build was completed in under six months. "We signed the lease on 2nd March and work started on 8th March. I actually saw the venue in April 2009 and then it took a long time to do the planning application and change of use license and then we had to have the environmental report done." But how did he stumble upon the space? "Eighteen months ago I was looking for a site specific place due to my frustrations as a producer trying to find economically viable spaces." After a quick Google search for "How to rent a railway arch", the rest, as they say, is history. There were no big dramas in the entire process, but Armin expresses his frustration at all the paperwork and red tape. "You have to fill in the right forms, tick the right boxes, say the right things and then there are the various licenses." He thinks it is this, more than anything else, that deters young people from a theatrical career as a producer. "For me all I wanted to do was open a theatre. I realise you have to have regulations, but that process of red tape may put people off." The theatre itself can seat up to 120 people, a good size for a Fringe venue and, more importantly, my personal bugbear of bad sight lines is avoided as the seating is staggered and tiered. "These seats were actually given to us. I begged, borrowed and Ebayed almost everything here. All the lighting trusses come from Ebay, the seats came from a theatre in Rochester, the floor is made up of boards from construction sites, all the carpet tiles are from Ebay and the only things which are new are the toilets, build and construction stuff." Such an approach keeps costs down and makes Waterloo East an incredibly green venue. This is a very personal project and there are little bits of Gerald peppered all over the theatre: the playbills in the foyer are from his own collection and the toilet signs of West Side Story male and female dancers in silhouette hark back to his first West End show. "Network Rail said that this is one of the best conversions they've ever had from an independent company coming in. They can't believe we've squeezed every inch out of the space" and it is easy to see why Network Rail, who lease the archway to Gerald, believe this. The stage is spacious, the seating has good leg room, there are three dressing rooms, a wardrobe and storage space, and you can move around freely in the toilets without having to bumble past each other as if in a crowded lift. "The toilets are one of my pride and joys. We tried to give them as much space as we could and actually the ladies toilets has three cubicles", boasts Armin proudly. "There's a couple of things that still need doing and I've got a bit of painting still to do out the back," he apologises, but even without these finishing touches the theatre is already of a very high standard. Armin is a man with an eye for perfection and aims to make the theatre comfortable for everyone, whether onstage, backstage or in the audience. The theatre will never go down the route of being associated with any particular theatrical form. "It'll be a real mixture of stuff here at Waterloo East. What I really want to do, being a producer myself, is to try and encourage other producers to take a risk and have someone who has been there, done it, to help them. I want people to walk past and think 'What have they got on now?'" An eclectic mix will always be on Waterloo East's theatrical menu. "In the future we might decide to do some of our own stuff," he says, but is keen to add that Waterloo East will never be purely a producing house. He is realistic and knows that it will take around five to seven years for the theatre to become fully established, but so far business has been going well, with all performances selling out. "It was amazing when we had our first production and real people turned up. They'd bought tickets online and they'd come to my theatre to see a show. That was amazing." Keen to encourage a diverse crowd, he explains that "Every run of a show, apart from one-nighters, obviously, will have a pay-what-you-can performance and we'll try to keep ticket prices as low as possible. I want to be part of the community and I think there's a real audience here who may not want to pay £30 for the Young Vic. Maybe they can afford to come here one night and see something instead of sitting in front of the television? I think it's pricing that puts people off. People want value for money." If he could work with anyone, Gerald would love to work with Des McAnuff, director of Jersey Boys and who knows, perhaps this is the start of plans for their ten year anniversary celebrations? We'll have to wait a while to see what the far off future brings for Waterloo East, but in meantime the following productions form the theatre's first ever season, before a series of Sunday Christmas concerts in December. He adds "Look out for details of our Christmas show, we hope to announce it in the next couple of weeks!"
Further information on productions and the theatre itself can be found at www.waterlooeast.co.uk.
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