It feels like a lifetime ago. In 2011, I was appointed director of Camden People’s theatre in London, initially as a job-share with my partner Jenny Paton. Neither of us had run a venue before. Jenny was a producer; I co-ran a touring theatre company, with a sideline as comedy critic for this newspaper. We got the job as we were raising our first child, then aged one. It was a new chapter of life. We were going to make this flyblown corner of Hampstead Road a hothouse of radical theatre! But first we had to unblock the loos.
In week one, the director of an Italian production of Hamlet emailed to cancel his scheduled run. I mentioned that that would incur a small fee. He replied, protesting at my “mafia-style blackmail”. “Dear Brian. Your theater rips the little life of someone who does his job honestly and with passion. You are not worthy. What is your theater? With regret. Michele.” It was a stark welcome to life as an impresario.
