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Interviews
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Thea Sharrock - If the profession wants me to stay I'd love to Philip Fisher talks to Thea Sharrock, as she leaves her post as artistic director of the Southwark Playhouse. Critics with an interest in the stage get to interview people from every walk of theatrical life, from designers to directors and actors to writers. However, this was the first time that I had ever arrived at a theatre and found myself interviewing the hard-working lady simultaneously doing two jobs in the box-office. The slim, fair-haired young person selling tickets and walking almost the whole returns queue into the theatre was none other than the artistic director of Southwark Playhouse herself. The only giveaway was a photo of the box-office lady on the wall behind her. The show that she was taking people into was her very successful, sell-out, Southwark swansong, Samuel Adamson's new version of A Doll's House. Thea Sharrock is one of those delightful people who is a dream to interview. Her love of theatre shines through from the moment that she describes the start of this artistic affair. "The theatre bug was sown when I was doing my A-levels. I fell in love with theatre, started reading plays and went to the theatre once a week". Interestingly, her early recollections are all of leading men, Sir Robert Stephens as King Lear, Alan Rickman as Hamlet and, in retrospect, most significantly, Sir Antony Sher's Tamburlaine. The generally self-effacing Miss Sharrock describes herself as incredibly lucky, although there is an immediate feeling that this is the kind of luck that one makes for oneself. This is the consequence of hard work and a passion that has led her to steep herself in theatre for the last ten years. In her gap-year before going to university, she contacted Sir Antony saying that she wanted to go to South Africa and asking him to suggest how she might get a job in theatre. He told her to contact Barney Simon at the Market Theatre, "and I turned up and stayed there for six months working as a general dogsbody in every department". Amazingly, in this three-auditorium theatre - "it was the size of the Royal Court so you could get to know everyone" - she was given a chance to be an assistant director on a show. It is perhaps not coincidental that she has liked working with the South African playwrights ever since and that she was involved in the choice of Athol Fugard's Hello and Goodbye which played to some very enthusiastic reviews at Southwark Playhouse. As if this was not a young theatre lover's dream come true, the second half of her gap-year was arguably even better. She wrote another speculative letter, this time to the National Theatre and amazingly, it arrived on the day when the National Theatre Studio found itself short of two out of its three key personnel. She suddenly found herself as PA to the boss, on a six-month assignment that would take her up nicely to the start of her course at Oxford. She enthuses about her good timing and good time at the National. "It was just extraordinary. It taught me so much about how theatre works, the kind of stuff that you can only see by working in one. My timing was perfect, Sir Richard Eyre was in his golden period and so this was a magical place to feel part of, and to top it off I was being paid for it". The NT Studio was a wonderful place for a teenaged theatre lover to be. She got to make tea for the likes of Sir Peter Hall and Sir Trevor Nunn. When she started her French and philosophy degree, she did not get heavily involved in drama. This did not stop her from making a team of fellow proto-directors jealous when Sir Richard (Eyre) rolled up to give a master class and he instantly greeted Miss Sharrock like a long-lost friend. Despite her lack of enthusiasm for the rather spoilt world of the Oxford University Dramatic Society, she still ended up as its President! After coming down from university, still only 21, she became assistant director to a number of big theatrical names including Mick Gordon, Stephen Unwin and Dominic Cooke. She was lucky enough to work with Cooke on the Young Vic production of the Arabian Nights, while it toured the UK for six months: something of a drudge, and then the world for another six - a joy. The formative experience of working in New York, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Brazil while still only just out of university was yet another dream fulfilled. She then met and worked with Peter Gill, "my desert island mentor," on David Mamet's Speed the Plow starring Patrick Marber and Mark Strong. At that point, she put her name forward for and won the James Menzies-Kitchin Award for young directors. Her prize, yet another dream, was the opportunity to direct a play at BAC. On hearing of the award, she went for Waterstone's and spent two hours picking up possible plays. The first one that she read through was Top Girls by Caryl Churchill, a writer whose work she didn't know. She fell in love with it and so did her mother, forced to listen while her lovely daughter read the play from start to finish on a drive to Stratford. It was with this play that she made her West End debut at her first directing attempt. "This was totally fairy-tale, the two stars, Pascale Burgess and Hattie Ladbury, did it for no money at BAC and it was wonderful that we all made it to the West End together, along with designer, Rachel Blues". The job as Artistic Director of Southwark Playhouse came up during the Brazil stretch of the Arabian Nights tour and her commencement at the beginning of 2001 coincided with an opportunity to become associate director of Art. This kept the wolf from the door through three cast changes that included names such as George Segal, Richard Griffiths and Gary Kemp. There was also an opportunity to work with and learn from director, Matthew Warchus. Despite the constant hard work, Miss Sharrock talks about three brilliant years at Southwark and of loving the experience of running a building. She thinks that this will stand her in good stead for the future and would have no problem if she ended up in a similar role at some later date. It is not every theatre director who can happily talk of running the shop and enjoying "the shenanigans and the politicking of it all". Miss Sharrock is exceptionally proud of her time running the Playhouse and grateful for the opportunities that it has given her but knows that this is the time to move on, in the interests of both sides. She has survived three breakneck years, twice as long as her predecessor, Erica Whyman, who is now at the Gate. There have been many successes but perhaps the most surprising accomplishment was drawing Simon Callow and Ann Mitchell to this tiny theatre. This was all down to young American director Daniel Kramer who did not seem to understand that inviting the cream of British acting to appear in a tiny theatre nowhere near the West End was not the done thing. Pleasingly, Through the Leaves transferred to the West End, which was a big boost for the theatre but even better, in the Evening Standard Awards, Ann Mitchell was nominated for Best Actress with Southwark Playhouse against her name. Miss Sharrock is also delighted that A Doll's House, her final show, the 10th Anniversary production for Southwark which she describes as "a nice way to finish - this was my gift to Southwark," has been a major commercial success. It was also loved by most of the critics including a great fan of the theatre, Michael Billington. Over the last year, she has been given the opportunity to moonlight with other productions. The trustees generously allowed her a three-month sabbatical to work as assistant director to Sir Peter Hall in Bath during the summer. She has also been involved in two other pieces of freelance work during 2003. She joined new playwright, Simon Bowen on Free, as the tyros in the National Theatre's Loft season in the split Lyttelton Theatre. More recently she has been a directing Terence Rattigan's The Deep Blue Sea on tour, which has been "a wonderful experience, directing such experienced and high-calibre actors as Harriet Walter, Roger Lloyd Pack and Una Stubbs. The rehearsals were blissfully happy and my memories are of hours of laughter ". It seems that laughter is a regular by-product of Thea Sharrock's directing. She describes the recent photocall for A Doll's House as ridiculously incongruous, since the poor photographer found the cast of Ibsen's play merrily giggling when they should have been looking suitably serious. In between all of the hard work, she also manages to find time to go to the theatre to continue her love affair with drama. This year, the production that has made the most impact is Owen McCafferty's Scenes From The Big Picture, perhaps as much as anything because one of her heroes, Peter Gill was at the helm. The future is completely unknown for this very likeable but down to earth director. While there are a couple of possibilities in the pipeline, nothing is certain. It is characteristic of Thea Sharrock that her view is "if the profession wants me to stay I'd love to". The likelihood is that the profession will be falling over itself to offer her new jobs and the problems are more likely to be in choosing between opportunities than begging for them.
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