Anna Furse was the Artistic Director of Paines Plough from 1990-1994. We sat down with her to celebrate her time at the reins, to ask about her time with her greatest memories, her biggest challenges and successes, and where she is now.
My vision for Paines Plough was…
to bring the company into a mission that understood that new writing at its best has always suggested new ideas about theatre and what it can do, i.e. that strong and innovative writing tends to push at the edges of envelopes; to bring writers into dialogue with a range of other artists working in live performance, including visual theatre, site-specific, immersive theatre, music theatre and dance.
This was actually prescient, as the past 15 years can demonstrate, and my vision would remain always that writers collaborate in theatrical processes as well as initiate the textual framework for production.
I also wanted to take the company into European collaboration and international touring, both of which we achieved, and to work on the middle-scale which we also achieved.
My biggest challenge was…
convincing the more traditional new writing community that this was the way forward and the future of UK theatre and that it would not threaten but broaden the scope of new writing and support writers’ careers.
My most memorable moment was…
There were so many. Perhaps the negotiations in Moscow for the tour there with the Anglo-Soviet Association that involved meeting just about every luminary in the Russian theatre scene (many of whom wanted visas to come to the UK via an invitation) in darkened smoke-filled rooms.
This was 1991 and in the very early days of glasnost. There was nothing to eat except bread and caviar (!) and cheap champagne (that doubled as very effective toilet cleaner).
In one long negotiation with the young self-made producer at the Maly Theatre bar, I had to explain the nature of a contract. This was all new to the communist of the day. I had to explain that we couldn’t just drink vodka and agree to find the next Chekhov together. I had to explain carefully and in detail (and why, which was interesting in a session predicated on mutual trust and friendship) that in capitalist economies, collaborating parties need to set up some legal terms of agreement because they might rat on each other.
This proved really baffling, and we had to break off these arduous conversations to get some air.
We went for a walk in Red Square, which was still light at 11pm, and where young people could be seen eating McDonald’s – that they had queued hours for – because McDonald’s had only just arrived.
I’m most proud of…
Being ambitious in everything I tried to do for the company; bringing it into a ‘Key Organisation’ status with the Arts Council at the time; increasing its core revenue, and moving it artistically in new directions.
Working in various ways in France, including in Chalon-sur-Saône (co-producing Down and Out in Paris and London with them), Comedie de Caen where – as artistic director of Paines Plough – I worked as a consultant on contemporary new writing in the UK for 2 years in a range of colloquia, laboratories, workshops and productions; Theatre de Bennevilliers in Paris, where we performed Down and Out in Paris and Llondon alongside the wrestling school in a major UK new writing festival scenes d’outremanche.
I am proud to have collaborated with fantastic writers and actors, the luminary stage designer Sally Jacobs and composers Graeme Miller and Stephen Warbeck on most of these. Giving James Dreyfus his first professional job as the young Freud; commissioning lots of women writers; producing the UK premiere of Michel Azama’s searing play about the effect on kids of the first Iraq War Crossfire (translated by Nigel Gearing) and the poet Adrian Mitchell calling me in tears after the preview saying it was too powerful to watch. Having the real waxwork arm of Marie Antoinette from Marie Tussaud’s workshops on stage of Wax by Lavinia Murray; employing total newcomers at the time, such as Roxana Silbert and that we launched hers and others’ careers; bringing an unforeseen deficit to zero within one year without ceasing production; finding the Aldwych premises, thanks to the indomitable Thelma Holt; Leaving the company financially stable when I resigned, despite so many challenges in my final year, in which I also achieved pregnancy after a long struggle. Taking risks.
I wish I had produced…
More.
And Adrian Mitchell’s revised version of Tyger, about William Blake that we commissioned but couldn’t stage in the end.
I couldn’t have done the job without…
the support of my partner, my own artistic mentors, the Arts Council (who believed in what I was trying to achieve at the time), my collaborators, and of course the company team as well as the support – for most of my time – from the board, who originally employed me and encouraged me to be somewhat maverick.
Touring is important because…
It reaches people and makes us humble.
Now, I’m…
Professor and head of department of theatre and performance at Goldsmiths, Universirty of London, where I also lead an international laboratory MA in Performance Making (with Graeme Miller); I am co-director of the interdisciplinary centre of the body at Goldsmiths and curator and chair of the performance research forum. I am artistic director of my company Athletes of the Heart, with whom I create a range of projects internationally as writer/director/maker (see www.athletesoftheheart.org).