The king is dead – long live the queen. There’s something reassuring in the announcement of a theatre’s new artistic director, as we all got to experience this week with the appointment of Indhu Rubasingham to that lofty role at the National Theatre. There’s the excitement that comes with a new vision at the top – along with the comfort of having the time-honoured way of doing things re-endorsed. But that comfort feels compromised this time around. Cast your gaze beyond the National, and the artistic director looks like an endangered species. This year has seen several high-profile exits from that position, often after unexpectedly brief stints in charge. Questions have been raised about the viability of this supposedly “impossible job” – and several theatres are doing away with it entirely. Should we be welcoming Rubasingham to the role – or concerned that she’s taken on a job that’s no longer fit for purpose?
Let’s get my declaration of interest out the way first. I’m an artistic director – of Camden People’s Theatre in London, a job I juggle with covering comedy for this newspaper. At CPT, too, we’ve felt the winds of change gusting across theatre’s traditional leadership model. The idea of a sole leader monopolising power runs counter to the temper of the times. Greatly intensified by the Covid pandemic – which laid bare patterns of privilege in the arts – there’s a justified pressure towards sharing power and making it more inclusive. It’s also just felt like a harder job, post-Covid and amid a cost-of-living crisis, with arts funding drying up, a beleaguered workforce, and audiences in no rush to return to their pre-2020 theatregoing habits.
In a widely shared X thread this summer, the AD of London’s Battersea Arts Centre, Tarek Iskander, itemised no fewer than 33 reasons why the job feels impossible – ranging from “chronic poor pay” and “freelancer precarity” to “charitable board models not fit for purpose”. These factors helped explain, perhaps, the year’s mass resignation of theatre leaders – Suba Das from Liverpool Everyman (after only a year in post), Gbolahan Obisesan from Brixton House in London (after two years), Roy Alexander Weise and Bryony Shanahan from the Manchester Royal Exchange (after three-and-a-half pandemic-interrupted years). In many cases, race was a factor, argued Amanda Parker in the Stage, identifying “a sector-wide failure in developing ethnically diverse artistic leadership in venue-based theatre companies”.
But the “impossible job” narrative doesn’t tell the whole story. Christopher Haydon, AD of the Rose theatre in Kingston and author of The Art of the Artistic Director, has just finished rereading the diaries of Peter Hall, Rufus Norris’s distant predecessor at the NT. “He talks in real depth and with real pain about how hard his role was,” says Haydon. Roxana Silbert is another AD who recently quit, leaving her Hampstead theatre role. “I didn’t say anything when all those articles came out saying: ‘Isn’t it hard to be an artistic director and that’s why everyone’s leaving,’” she says now. “But that’s not why everyone’s leaving. In my case, my theatre’s Arts Council grant got cut. It’s political. We should be more united in acknowledging that there is a desire to contract the arts in this country – and diminishing the role of artists is part of that.”
Hampstead has not replaced Silbert; the theatre is now run by “producer and chief executive” Greg Ripley-Duggan. This is not a unique development. At Brixton House, at Theatre Royal Plymouth, at the Manchester Royal Exchange and beyond, many theatres are trialling leadership models that do away with the AD role – and (not incidentally, as Silbert sees it) no longer feature artists in organisational leadership positions.
In her view, this is the endpoint – or latest stage – in a 50-year process of corporate values colonising the arts. Theatres used to be run as artist cooperatives: the Royal Exchange had five founding ADs. Then funders demanded financial accountability – so artistic leaders became CEOs. “And then,” says Silbert, “the amount of work you needed to do to be accountable grew and grew exponentially,” until it had to be shared, between an AD and an executive director – often a joint CEO. Throughout that period, for the same reasons, theatre boards – “which used to be made up of other people who worked in the arts” – became more corporate. “And cultures are top-down,” says Silbert. “If your board is entirely corporate, your culture is going to be pushing in a corporate direction.”
Which brings us to where we now are, with artists being demoted from CEO positions, and people who speak and think corporate taking up the reins. And yet, these new models are often being given a warm reception. The Manchester Royal Exchange is now looking to recruit a new creative director, a role envisaged as one of a trio of artistic leaders, alongside a dramaturg and associate director. Sample social media response: “This is the future. Sole AD in charge is no longer a dynamic, sustainable model. Theatres need flexible creative structures, diverse influence & experience.” When I speak to Gina Fletcher, deputy CEO at the Royal Exchange, she claims that “a plurality of voices at leadership level, bringing their own experience and viewpoints, will hopefully feel quite democratic” – a principle everyone in the arts can get onboard with.
For Fletcher, the restructure is about “freeing up [the artistic leaders] to concentrate on holding the creative vision for the organisation”. The creative director is not expected to make theatre shows. Says Fletcher: “When your artistic director is directing a show, that can feel for an organisation like a moment of loss. So it’ll be interesting to not have those moments in terms of how we work.” It used to be assumed – celebrated, even – that theatres were run by people who made theatre shows. Not any more.
When I press Fletcher on why the creative director won’t be joint CEO, she counters that the new model does include more artists at leadership level generally – and that the restructure is being accompanied by a drive for more artists on the theatre’s board. When I ask other organisations about their moves in the same direction, they’re less forthcoming. No one from Brixton House would speak to me for this article. Ripley-Duggan at Hampstead likewise demurred, although he did tell the Stage recently that he’s finding programming new plays at the theatre (formerly the AD’s role) to be “not complicated – if you have a space that is open and says it does premieres, people will send [plays] your way”. So that’s that.
For Silbert, whose job that once was, none of this convinces. “What you’re getting is the people who are running buildings are further and further away from the people who actually make art.” The idea that power is being democratised in these new models is “a myth”, she says, “because the power remains with one person, but that person is now the executive director”.
“An organisation has to be financially sustainable,” says Haydon. “But the point of the organisation is not to be financially sustainable, the point is to create great theatre. Yes, you need someone who understands the money in charge. But plenty of artists fit that bill.” He mentions David Lan, ex-Young Vic, Rubasingham, formerly at Kiln theatre and Rupert Goold, at the Almeida, saying: “They all have an absolutely iron grip on the finances, but they structured their theatres so the art was what mattered.”
None of the ADs – or ex-ADs – I speak to are against change. All agree that ADs needn’t be directors – they can be writers (like David Greig at Edinburgh’s Lyceum), actors (the Globe’s Michelle Terry) or indeed choreographers, like newly appointed Drew McOnie at the Open Air theatre in Regent’s Park, London. None are wedded to the idea of the sole artistic director; duos (like the RSC’s Daniel Evans and Tamara Harvey) and trios are welcome. And “artistic director doesn’t have to mean artistic dictator”, in Haydon’s words. “There are different ways of ensuring accessibility, accountability and transparency in an organisation – but you can have them with a single individual, or with a single job title.” Most ADs today see the sharing out of their power and privilege as part of the job. At CPT, to cite an example close to home, we’ve instituted a New Programmers Scheme to train future ADs, and invite them to curate parts of our programme.
But what’s key is that the word “art” remains prominent in the job title (Haydon: “I just don’t understand why they’re afraid of the word ‘artistic’”), and that the role retains its place at the organisational apex. That model has always worked, says Matthew Xia, AD of London-based Actors Touring Company, who is vocal on social media in favour of artists running organisations. “The buildings that are thriving, like the Bush, with an artistic director at the helm, or Sheffield theatres, and even those that are muddling through and doing OK – they’re all led by artists. And the ones that are splashing around in the water trying to find something to hold on to, they’re the ones that keep trying different models.”
Haydon is only an AD today because when the Rose tried operating without one, it didn’t work. “They went back to the model of an artistic director,” he says, “because without one, the organisation lacked a clear vision and identity” – which is where he came in. Says Xia: “I don’t want to obstruct anyone from trying any model they think will make their organisation the best it can be. But that doesn’t shake my belief that, if I were chair of the board, I’d be saying: ‘Let’s try to find an artistic director for this organisation and the right vision for it, right now.’”
The board of the National Theatre clearly agreed – but it’s not an agreement we can continue to take for granted.
