By 9.20 I’m normally having breakfast with my wife, Bob (short for Barbara), who is a theatrical tailor. We live in a very old and very rambling house in Berwick, by the river, but our kitchen is tiny, so it’s normally one of the warmest rooms in the house.
Coffee is an essential part of my morning. In the summer I have a coffee and a cigarette in our courtyard, as that’s the only time of the year it gets sun in the mornings. On a sunny morning, it’s like being in the courtyard of a Tuscan villa.
I walk to work every day as I only live about a hundred yards from the theatre. We are really lucky in Berwick to have such a beautiful theatre, just like a little opera house. My desktop background is a photograph of the Main House, packed full of people for a show. It’s an important image because it reminds me what it’s all about. Bringing people together in a communal space is unusual these days. Most of the public buildings in Berwick are now flats, so we’re one of the only places where the community gathers and sees each other.
Our offices have an amazing view, right out over the ancient roofs of the town and across the river towards the southern hills. I sometimes see seals in the river. It’s a view that’s always changing, and I find it deeply inspirational. We’re very lucky to live and work in such a beautiful town.
I don’t really eat lunch usually. Work in a theatre is about constant deadlines, so there’s a lot of time pressure. We have around 650 events a year, from workshops and classes to theatre, film, comedy, dance. I used to work as a producer for festivals and on touring shows, where you spend your time arranging and promoting a single large event or run. In a busy theatre like The Maltings, you’re effectively running a festival every week.
A theatre is heavily departmentalised; it’s really five different business rolled into one. One of my day-to-day jobs is to ensure that we are continuously improving the way we work across all of the departments, giving my team the tools they need to achieve their own goals in each department. All of our senior team are very experienced professionals who are at the top of their game. They make it look easy, even when we have hundreds of people in the building every day and fifteen events in a week. I’m really proud of them all.
My principal role is to lead our organisation towards a strategic implementation of our vision – or in other words, to ensure that we are continuously improving the way we work. In reality, this makes for an incredibly diverse and busy working life, since my responsibilities range from HR to building maintenance, negotiating service contracts to artistic programming, financial management to putting up posters, representing The Maltings at functions to picking up litter.
I spend a lot of time on the telephone negotiating with agents and promoters to ensure that we get the right deal for every show. Theatre deals can be very complex, and the consequences for getting the deal wrong can be serious, so it’s important that I’m on the ball.
Some nights I can get home for six or seven o’clock and have dinner with Bob, who loves to cook, luckily. But if we have a full house in, or a show which I want to see personally, then I stay at the theatre until around ten or eleven pm.
The most exciting thing in theatre is a full house. There’s a unique magic to a full theatre and the whole building is full of energy on busy nights. On many Friday and Saturday nights, particularly if we’re well sold, I wear black tie and open the door for our patrons. It’s an old theatre tradition, and it gives me a chance to meet our audience – and for them to have an opportunity to give me any feedback about what we do.
Audiences are all different, but they all come here for similar reasons. I firmly believe that a night at the theatre is essentially about an escape from the day-to-day reality of life to a more magical place, so we all do our best to ensure that everyone has a good time and enjoys their evening.
I like to read a book in the evenings if I can find the time. We don’t have a TV, so it’s nice and quiet, particularly after the bustle of work. Bob might do some knitting – our first child is due in May – or we might watch a DVD.
Our bedroom is about fifteen feet away from the river, so I can usually hear it running under the old bridge as I drift off to sleep. It’s a comforting sound, but it makes me think that the Tweed will still be flowing long after I – and the theatre – are long gone.
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