A city in the North of England. A metropolis of office blocks, peaks of shiny buildings and landmarks. From above, a stadium, clock tower, sprawling red brick houses, tower blocks, expansive green. High above, it looks like a micro-city: contained and ordered. A city with traces of its industrial past, now branded as a financial centre. Beyond the centre, the edges are distinct configurations of different streets, communities, and contexts. A city that can feel fragmented. Where after many years you still feel like a stranger.
At night, I’m cycling through the city centre. The show is coming down and I weave past theatre-goers, fur jackets and suits. It’s usually cycling home that I’m thinking about the city and my response to it. My desires and urges for the city; wills for shift and change. Each month that goes by, I wonder what I don’t see anymore, what I don’t ask anymore. There are short stints away—mini theatre pilgrimages to breathe in new ideas and energy. When I return, more hopeful, I try to open my eyes as wide as possible. What is it that I haven’t been seeing? Where do I listen harder now?
Tonight, and back to weaving through the dark streets. Past the hustle and bustle of an audience on a street after an unknown show. So much of my time and energy is spent encouraging the city to momentarily reimagine these tall, proud, public spaces. A space re-configured, an audience’s journey rethought. A form opened up, seen differently. An invitation to a different kind of conversation, sometimes urgent, other times playful, mischievous. Seeing and accessing the theatre as you never have before—the theatre is mine, yours, ours; fleetingly, temporarily.
Now I want to imagine more. The industrial buildings that are still standing—old mills, factories and warehouses—the ones not yet appropriated as offices or flashy apartments. What if they were given over to us, to art and community? I think about the histories of the enviable European production houses; taken over by artists, literally lived in by communities, shaped and honed over decades as centres for experimentation, a meeting point for the world.
Cycling through the city, I sketch out our theatre. I imagine the possibilities of claiming these spaces for performance instead. A multitude of contexts, rooms and stages for artists to create the tiny and intimate, the bold and epic. A space for being, for reflecting on the world, for asking something different of what we already know. A space that’s always open, where roots run between place and community. An imaginary transportation system, a through line, an invitation, a theatre curated by its own city.
I think about the journey to create this space and wonder if it will ever be a possibility in this country, city, context to create it. For now, every programme I put together, each project, each offering to an artist, will try, in some way, to conjure up this place.