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Interviews
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Jonathan Holloway - RNT Events Manager Peter Lathan talks to Jonathan Holloway, Events Manager at the National Theatre and responsible for the Watch This Space! festival. July on the South Bank. A dilapidated 2CV drives into Theatre Square and proceeds to collapse around its occupants, a couple of manic French tourists. Their suitcases fall off the roof-rack. The car bursts into flames and they spray it - and the audience - with a fire extinguisher. They steal from the audience - drinks, a sandwich, even a push-chair. They even attempt to kidnap a girl. Sounds familiar? Of course it is - it's the old circus clown car routine - but the audience (me included!) roar with laughter. It's just so well done. And after half an hour of this mayhem (that takes some doing: keeping an audience laughing for thirty minutes or more with what is essentially one joke), they drive off to great applause and I am joined by the man responsible for what we have just seen, National Theatre Events Manager Jonathan Holloway. He is the man in charge of Watch This Space!, the National's annual free events programme, and responsible for programming its theatre element. He's been in post since 1997, when he set up the Events Department, and he's as enthusiastic as he has ever been. He spends part of the year travelling to festivals across Europe to see and book acts and clearly loves every minute of the job. "Mind you," he says, "we see twenty or thirty shows that don't measure up for every good one." I wondered if continental Europe was where he found most of the performers but no, Manchester and the Stockton Riverside Festival are equally important. What normal theatregoers tend to forget, he points out, is that more people in the UK see street theatre than go to football matches. Watch This Space! alone has an audience of around 150,000. (A few facts: the event runs for ten weeks; there are events six days a week; 75 companies give over 100 performances.) "It's a very demanding form," he says, "and has a totally different etiquette to normal theatre. People vote with their feet: if they don't like it, they walk away! And the fact that it's free makes a huge difference. People expect a lot from free shows and are more likely to complain if they don't like it. We actually get more complaints about free work than paid!" So why does the National do it? Is it intended to put "bums on seats"? "Not really. People don't see what we do out here and then think, 'I want to see The History Boys,' for example. They probably wouldn't get a ticket anyway! But what we do does affect people's perception of the place, so it not only has to stand up in its own right, it also has to have that NT quality." He organised the first festival in 1997. "It was on a much smaller scale, of course," he says. "We ran for six weeks, with shows for two or three days a week. It was quite light and… I suppose you could call it 'nice'. In the second year it grew considerably in size and we were able to include some darker work, too." The planning for the event is a long task. Whilst Jonathan will visit festivals and performances throughout the year, it is the period from January to April when the work is at its most intense. Watch This Space! is not the only festival the Events Department organises. There's also the biennial Festival of Lights, held in the foyer during Octber/November. "There are fire or lantern festivals all over the world," Jonathan says. "It's pretty much a universal theme as we approach the darkest days of the year, and so, again, we try to bring work from around the world to Theatre Square." I had heard that the Events Department has a budget of £350,000, which made him laugh. "It's probably less than half that," he says, "but it does vary from year to year. We are fortunate in that we have a great sponsor in Bloomberg. Obviously the budget is reviewed every year, but Bloomberg have been tremendously supportive." What of the man himself? Although he has a track record as a director of theatre-based productions (under the name Jack Holloway), including Robin Hood in the National Theatre Loft, and as a writer, he is most excited by outdoor and site-specific work. "It's very dynamic, very exciting," he says. "I am excited by working in unusual spaces." He is Chair of Total Theatre Network and founding director of Elemental Arts, and led a large-scale (65 participants) showcase of UK performers, called Elemental, at the 2003 Chalon Festival. Now this 34 year old is moving on. He leaves the National at the end of August to take over as director of the Norfolk and Norwich Festival, a new challenge which he clearly relishes. The search for his successor will start soon. Watch this space!
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