19 Jan A Sense of Direction – Cheryl Martin

Born and raised in Washington DC, writer and director Cheryl Martin fell in love with theatre through seeing shows in her home city – including Morgan Freeman in the musical Gospel At Colonus – in the 1980s. She went on to study at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, then travelled to the UK to study at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and decided to remain on this side of the Atlantic.

Martin has lived in Manchester for the last three decades, working as a poet, a singer, a performer, a playwright, and – after completing a crash course at Contact in the early 2000s – a director. She has worked at Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre, Manchester’s Royal Exchange, and the Oldham Coliseum and, in 2015, founded the LGBTQ+ global majority production company Black Gold Arts. This January, she has taken over as artistic director of Leeds-based, radical company Red Ladder.

How did you become a director?

I was living in Manchester and writing a lot of radio plays. The directors kept complaining about their endings, so I did a course at Contact to think like a director and understand why they were complaining. John McGrath [then artistic director of Contact] encouraged me to start directing, then hired me to be his associate director in charge of new writing. That’s when I started solo directing.

I kept performing and writing, but I realised that I was actually happiest when I was directing.

Who or what was the biggest help along the way?

John McGrath for always encouraging me to direct. That course at Contact taught me so much.

What work are you most proud of?

I try to stand by all my shows and the creatives that worked with me. I’m very proud of Black Gold Arts, which I started with the dancer and choreographer Darren Pritchard in 2015. We got £1000 and put on four shows and called it a festival. Everything grew and grew from there.

We were part of the Eurovision cultural festival last year. We won an award for an outdoor festival we ran at the Whitworth Art Gallery. We platformed a lot of queer, global majority artists who have gone on to do national tours and run companies themselves. I’m really proud of that.

What work are you least proud of?

I made an outdoor show with young actors at Contact. I made the mistake of deciding everything before I met the kids. Some of them were disabled, and simply couldn’t do what I had designed. They were younger and didn’t feel like they could complain. I still feel bad about it. You should never have really fixed ideas going into a project.

Who or what is your biggest theatrical influence?

I was really influenced by some of the shows I saw growing up in Washington DC, like proper Noh Theatre and Kabuki Theatre, not that I really do anything like that. More recently, I spent several years judging the Total Theatre Awards in Edinburgh, and that really opened my mind about what was possible. It encouraged me to be much more adventurous.

Is there a show that you really want to stage?

There’s two. I abandoned a PhD on Edward Bond, but I still love his play Early Morning, which is a wild, crazy play about Queen Victoria having an affair with Florence Nightingale. I did it once with students, but I would love to do it with professional actors. The second is Venus by Susan-Lori Parks, which is about a woman from a South African tribe that was brought to Europe and exhibited in freak shows in the early nineteenth century. It’s a remarkable play about exploitation and collaboration. Again, I did it years ago with some kids, but I would love to do it again.

What is your financial situation?

I could only make directing work by taking other jobs. I did part-time jobs that paid the bills, then freelance work made up the rest of my income. It always pretty dodgy, always bit hand-to-mouth.

What do you enjoy most about directing?

As a director, I am there as a resource for actors. I don’t try to micro-manage and I never give negative notes. I’m just good at recognising what looks really good on stage. And I love those moments when the cast sail beyond me and start doing brilliant things on their own.

What are your frustrations with directing?

My biggest frustration right now is funding. It is getting harder and harder to find funding for projects, especially charity funding if you are a black organisation, to be absolutely frank.

What fills you with dread about the future of theatre?

My biggest worry is buildings and organisations closing because they just don’t have enough money. Oldham Coliseum has had a terrible time, for example, and so has Contact. The closure of organisations or the cutting back of opportunities means that working class voices are disappearing from theatre. I am all for diversity, of course, but particularly for diversity of socio-economic background. Right now, I am really worried about the lack of opportunities for working class artists.

What gives you hope for the future of theatre?

That people make theatre anyway, even though it is difficult. People don’t get into theatre to make money. They get into theatre because they feel a compulsion to do it, and they won’t give up.

What are you working on at the moment?

I have just taken over from Rod Dixon as artistic director of Red Ladder Theatre Company. It is a big challenge and a huge responsibility to take on an organisation with such a long history.

Whenever people found out about my new job, they would say how wonderful Rod is and how wonderful Red Ladder is. My goal is to keep it wonderful. I want to keep doing all the great stuff that Red Ladder is already doing, and add a few more things in, too. And stage some big, wild plays.

ENDS

Fergus Morgan is SDUKs resident blogger.