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 greatest memories, her biggest challenges and successes, and she’s up to now in 2025.
My vision for Paines Plough was…
to bring the company to an ambitious mission, asserting that a writer’s theatre historically has prompted innovations in theatre and what the medium can do in and of itself as distinct from writing for other media; to this end, to bring writers into creative dialogue with a range of other artists working in live performance, including visual theatre, site-specific, immersive theatre, music theatre and dance. This proved prescient, as the past three decades demonstrate.
I wanted to dislodge the idea of ‘serving the text’ and replace this with ‘collaborating with the text’ and encourage experimentation: the playwright initiates the textual framework for production and collaborates in theatrical processes to realise this.
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 my vision would not threaten but, rather, broaden the scope of new writing and, vitally, support writers’ careers into a future in which their roles in new theatre making would evolve into all kinds of interdisciplinary ventures alongside the staging of their plays.
Being hit with an alarming deficit due to a period of administration in which I was totally unaware of the true budgetary picture and working hard to recover this whilst remaining in production, which I did within a year.
My most memorable moment was…
There were many.
Perhaps the most vivid are the negotiations in Moscow for the tour of Augustine (Big Hysteria) with the Anglo-Soviet Association . This involved meeting just about every luminary in the Russian theatre scene (many of whom wanted visas to come to the UK via an invitation from me) in dark smoke-filled rooms.
It was 1991, 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 a long negotiation with the young self-made producer in the Maly Theatre bar, I had to explain the nature of a contract. This was all new to this enterprising communist. I had to explain that we couldn’t just clink vodka glasses and agree to find the next Chekhov together. I had to explain carefully and in detail – which was interesting in a session predicated on mutual trust and friendship – why in capitalist economies collaborating parties must set up legal terms of agreement because they might rat on each other. This proved baffling, and we had to break off this arduous conversation to get some air.
We went for a walk in Red Square, which was still light at 11pm. A crowd of young people were out scoffing McDonald’s and shakes that they’d queued literally hours for. The USA’s Big Mac had only just arrived as a symbol of a new intoxication – and it was gold dust.
I’m most proud of…
Being restless in everything I tried to do for the company; bringing it into ‘Key Organisation’ status with the Arts Council; increasing its core revenue and moving it artistically in new directions.
Working in various ways in France, including: Chalon-sur-Saône (co-producing Down and Out in Paris and London, prompted by a commission from the British Council in Paris and working with a local producing organisation to inaugurate a disused abbattoir); Comédie de Caen, where I worked as a consultant on UK new writing for 2 years, producing a range of colloquia, laboratories, workshops and productions; Theatre de Gennevilliers in Paris, where we performed Down and Out in Paris and London alongside Howard Barker’s The Wrestling School in a major UK writing festival Scenes d’Outremanche. Seeing our posters in the Paris metro was an exceptional high.
I also loved that Dustin Hoffman came to Down and Out at Riverside Studios in London and said he really liked it.
Taking risks. I’m proud to have collaborated with fantastic writers, as well as actors, the luminary stage designer Sally Jacobs (RIP), and composers Graeme Miller and Stephen Warbeck. I’m proud of commissioning many women writers and producing the UK premiere of Michel Azama’s searing play about kids in the first Iraq War Crossfire (translated by Nigel Gearing).
Employing total newcomers at the time, such as James Dreyfus (as the young Freud), and a former directing student I taught at Drama Studio, Roxana Silbert, and that we launched hers and others’ careers. Finding the Aldwych premises thanks to the indomitable Thelma Holt. Having Marie Antoinette’s real original waxwork arm lent by Marie Tussaud’s workshops on the set of Wax by Lavinia Murray.
Finally, leaving the company financially stable when I resigned, despite so many challenges in my final year in which I’d also achieved a pregnancy after a long IVF struggle.
I wish I had produced…
More.
Specifically, commissions in my last year but couldn’t stage in the end: Adrian Mitchell’s revised version of Tyger, about William Blake; a great innovative piece by Tyrone Huggins set in a late-night London independent recording studio; Goudec’s Tears by Michael Bosworth (RIP).
I couldn’t have done the job without…
The encouragement of my partner Jack Klaff; my artistic mentors; the Arts Council (who strongly approved what I was trying to achieve at the time); all my collaborators; and, of course, the company team; for the most part, support from the Board who originally chose me to be a maverick.
Touring is important because…
It reaches people beyond the metropolis and makes us humble.
Now, I’m…
mainly writing, publishing books and articles on a range of subjects for both academic and wider audiences.
Emeritus Professor and former Head of Department of Theatre and Performance at Goldsmiths, University of London where I developed and directed an international MA in Performance Making (published as Performance Making, a pedagogy for precarious times, Routledge, 2024)
Artistic Director of my company Athletes of the Heart, founded in 2003 with an Impact Award from the Wellcome Trust, with whom I make projects internationally as writer/director/maker (see www.athletesoftheheart.org).