Protecting Theatres
This year’s Theatres’ Trust Conference, held under the title Protecting Theatres at the New London theatre last week, began with an extra item in which as Conference Chairman Mark Shenton interviewed Rupert Goold, former director of Headlong and now Artistic Director of the Almeida Theatre.
Some are calling for the end of artistic directors and that companies should be run more democratically, but Goold declared that any company needs a lead artist. In making work for an audience, you can’t articulate success—only do it. He asks himself what he can do to intervene rather than just present, of his interest in changing the space not just using a set, of the growing cost of touring and the need to create an event if you want to get into the newspaper.
As with this lively addition, the official programme didn’t always follow the lines expected.