23 Sep A Sense of Direction – Harold Finley

As a child, Harold Finley played with chess sets. He would position the pieces on the board. He would observe the angles and interactions between them. He would act out stories with them. Looking back, the incoming executive director of SDUK says, it seems obvious that he was a director at heart, even if it took him a long time to realise.

Finley spent his childhood between Britain and the United States – and was certain that he wanted to become an actor. “I was a shy kid,” he says. “I didn’t like standing up and speaking in public, or anything like that, but I had this quiet burning to perform inside me. It became an obsession. Acting was my first great love. I never imagined that I would not want to act.”

So, for the first few years of his career, Finley acted – at the Edinburgh Fringe and in regional theatres, then at the National Theatre and in the West End, with a few TV and film appearances along the way. As the jobs got bigger, though, he gradually realised something was missing.

“I was in my early twenties, appearing in Peter Pan at the National Theatre alongside Ian McKellen, and I remember thinking: ‘I should be having the greatest, most enjoyable time, but I’m not’,” Finley says. “I had started to realise that there was a part of me that wanted to control the narrative. There was a part of me that wanted to be in charge of the big picture.”

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First, Finley turned to writing, penning and performing solo shows under the aegis of his company Truly Fierce Productions. Then, in 2008, he trained on the Lincoln Center Theatre’s famous Directors Lab programme in New York. It was, he says, “the most significant thing that has happened to me in my career.”

“It was an extraordinary experience,” he remembers. “It turned my world inside out and upside down. I had the opportunity to learn from the most amazing directors, and I met others from all over the world – China, Mexico, Scandinavia, Germany, Zimbabwe – who I still keep in touch with today. I came back to Britain with this absolute fire inside me.”

That fire drove Finley to write, produce and direct his best-known work to date – his play A Thousand Miles Of History, about the intertwining lives of Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring in 1980s New York, which ran to acclaim at Peckham’s Bussey Building in 2013. That, says Finley, was the catalyst for his second career as a director.

“I don’t think of myself as an actor anymore,” he says. “I think of myself as a director, a writer, and a producer. I love acting and I love actors, but I no longer have that desire to perform. Directing is my passion. I love to direct my writing. I love to direct other people’s writing. I love to build creative relationships.”

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When friends first mentioned a vacancy on SDUK’s leadership team to him, Finley thought the role wasn’t for him. He wasn’t a member of SDUK, he wasn’t sure he had the right skills, and, anyway, he was busy developing a new musical – Lulu (A Monster Musical), based on the works of German playwright Frank Wedekind.

The more he thought about it, though, the more he realised that his unconventional route into directing might mean he had something special to offer SDUK. His parents weren’t well connected in the performing arts industry. He didn’t go to Oxbridge. And, as a Black, queer theatremaker, he faced levels of systemic prejudice that his peers did not – an issue he had already attempted to tackle through work with Ambassador Theatre Group’s Diversity Forum and the Society Of London Theatre’s Inclusion and Anti-Racism Working Group.

“I wasn’t given that golden ticket into the industry,” he says. “I had to do it on my own. I had to make my own mistakes, fall flat on my face in public, and learn my own lessons. I found it hard to find mentors. I found it hard to land jobs. I was always shortlisted for stuff, but never actually got it. I’m coming to SDUK as an outsider, as someone that knows what is broken about the system, and that can offer a fresh perspective on how to improve it.”

Chatting with outgoing executive director Thomas Hescott, and with SDUK co-chairs Matthew Dunster and Pooja Ghai sealed the deal. Finley applied, interviewed and was appointed co-executive director alongside Hescott until 2022, when he will take over as sole executive director. He is bursting with enthusiasm to get stuck in.

“I want to continue the excellent work SDUK has been doing under Tom, expanding our membership and fighting to improve working conditions for stage directors across the performing arts industry,” he says. “But I also have a lot of new ideas for things we can do and events we can run, some of which I have already started working on.”

Finley’s has two priorities, as he slowly steps into Hescott’s shoes: mental health and mentoring opportunities. When it comes to the former, the lack of emotional support offered to freelance theatre workers has become increasingly apparent during the pandemic, he says, and SDUK can campaign to change that.

And when it comes to the latter, Finley believes that administrating and offering mentorship opportunities for emerging directors from underrepresented backgrounds – the kind of chances he found so hard to find himself – can have a significant impact on diversifying the world of stage directing.

“The performing arts industry is in the middle of a storm right now,” he concludes. “There’s a chance it will come out the other side better, but there is also a chance it will come out the other side worse. I absolutely believe that SDUK has a role in making sure the industry improves.”

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Harold Finley was talking to Fergus Morgan for SDUK.