Yesterday I raced from Sloane Square to Bankside to hear two Dominics announce their theatrical plans for this year: at the Royal Court, Dominic Cooke, the incoming (but not entirely outgoing) artistic director started the morning by revealing his plans for his inaugural season, while two hours later at Shakespeare’s Globe, the other Dominic – Dromgoole – was busy pressing ahead with his second season at the helm.
The two couldn’t be more different – Cooke, with a natural reticence but exuding a gentle authority; Dromgoole, friendly but bullish and provocative — though they could, of course, easily do a job swap: after Cooke’s classical work over the last few years for the RSC, he could easily slip into Globe gear (in every sense), while Dromgoole, of course, established his reputation in new writing as artistic director of the Bush.
Of course the new story was the sexy one: what did Cooke have up his sleeve for a theatre that we all feel we have a stake in? No wonder there was a good showing of theatre critics (Billington, Spencer, Clapp, Coveney, Allfree) alongside the usual arts reporters (and in an act of the kind of inclusive democracy that is a hallmark of the Court, a turnout of the entire artistic staff, too).
But this is a theatre we all get personal about – we all have our own associations and fond memories of evenings spent here — and it was nice to hear Dominic speaking of that kind of intimate connection himself: “This theatre means a lot to me, not because I am now running it but because I went to school nearby and it was the experience of watching plays here that really shaped the way I see the world.” And, with his predecessor Ian Rickson’s final production of The Seagull currently on the mainstage which includes Konstantin’s cry for “new forms” in the theatre – “we need new forms and if they’re none to be had, we’d be better of with nothing at all” – it was good to discover that Cooke is a respecter of the writer as the primary artist of the theatre (and the primary importance, too, for this theatre to find new ones is asserted by the opening season including six first plays). But he also boldly proclaimed the need for experimentation that the Court is going to invest in by setting up a developmental studio in which writers and directors can explore ideas collaboratively – a collaboration that audiences will also be a part of when works-in-progress are presented in a twice-yearly Rough Cuts season to the public.
Another new initiative is the introduction of a new £5 ticket scheme, with 500 seats being available at that price across the run for those 25 and under, as part of what the press release calls the Royal Court’s “ongoing commitment to widening theatregoing audiences.”
Of course, across town at Shakespeare’s Globe there are hundreds of tickets available at every performance at £5 for anyone – it doesn’t get you a seat, but it gets you the best view and atmosphere, as a groundling standing in the yard. As Dromgoole said, “the £5 thing is iconic, and the energy you get from the yard is really what makes this place”.
And the energy you get from Dromgoole is what makes a press conference there. What other artistic director would refer to his first year at the helm as “a glorious mind-fuck of a year”? This Dominic definitely likes to shake things up. Speaking of that year, he said that highlights included the theatre forecourt being turned into a “field hospital” during the run of Titus Andronicus, when up to 30 people a night collapsed and had to be carried out when they were overcome – “a testament to the power of live theatre” (but also probably the extreme heat of last summer, too!). He also remembered fondly both the first night of the pirate play Under the Black Flag – which was attended by a party of 60 people dressed as pirates that night – and the last night of In Extremis, when 1,300 people cheered playwright Howard Brenton to the rafters at the curtain calls. And he also remembered the informal Jonathan Cake fan club that developed during his run as Coriolanus: “one American woman came seven or eight times, and at one performance got hold of his ankle and refused to let go!” Now that’s participatory theatre…! (Daniel Radcliffe better watch out at the Gielgud – especially since there’s going to be an onstage audience, but hopefully West End audiences may be better behaved than those at the Globe).
