20 Dec A Sense of Direction – Thomas Hescott

When Tom Hescott, outgoing executive director first heard about the founding of a new professional trade organisation for stage directors several years ago, he thought it was a terrible plan.

“Yeah, I thought it was a really bad idea,” Hescott laughs. “I didn’t see a need for it at first. But then I went to the second ever meeting, and there were all these people there. Artistic directors, former artistic directors, West End directors, directors of shows across the country. Some people I knew, some people I didn’t.”

“I was really excited by the knowledge and experience in the room,” he continues. “I remember thinking that whatever challenge a director might face, someone in that room would be facing it as well. Any question a director might have, about anything, someone in that room would have the answer. That was what sold the idea to me.”

SDUK was set up in 2014 by renowned director Piers Haggard to “champion the role of directors across the UK, advocate for their interests and transform their working lives”. Hescott was on the board from the beginning and took over as executive director in 2017. He is now leaving after five years in charge, with Harold Finley, who has been working alongside Hescott since the summer, replacing him.

“Oh, there are a few reasons,” Hescott says, when asked why he has decided to step down. “I always said I would do between three and five years, and I have. And, although I still do work in theatre, my main source of income is television, so I’m slightly away from that world. And, I’m lucky that my career as a freelance director has grown to a point where I don’t have the time or energy a role like this requires.”

“Above all, though, I think that theatre has changed so much in the last five years, and I am no longer the right person to respond to those changes,” he adds. “When I started as a director twenty years ago, the predominant way of working was: you commission a playwright, the play gets written, you find a director’. We don’t create work like that anymore. Processes can be far more exciting and experimental, and so can the role of the director. SDUK needs to evolve to reflect that.”

***

Hescott’s main concern when he took over the role of executive director in 2017 was to convert the energy and industry of SDUK’s early years into something more sustainable long-term. There were, he says, three main goals – balancing the books, maintaining a workforce, and staying relevant as an organisation. Hescott believes he achieved all three.

“Piers instituted an effective system of financing, whereby members simply paid their dues, their subs being determined by how much they earned,” Hescott explains. “We have successfully grown the membership over the years so that SDUK is sustained financially by one source, it’s members, and is not reliant on any other income.”

“That in turn allows us to maintain our core activity, and to run projects and campaigns and do research that has helped keep us relevant,” he continues. “A lot of organisations in this sector get set up with an awful lot of noise but become toothless after a few years as they try to find a way of becoming sustainable. I’m really happy that SDUK has stayed relevant and independent.”

Hescott cites three achievements during his tenure of which he is particularly proud: SDUK’s involvement in 2018 negotiations between Equity and UK Theatre and West End Managers, which resulted in pay rises of over 20%; The Director’s Voice, SDUK’s influential 2019 report on training and career development, supported by the Old Vic, the National Theatre and RADA; and SDUK’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

“I’m really proud of the variety of things we did to support directors during lockdown,” Hescott says. “And I’m particularly proud of the fact that we worked together with Curtain Call and Freelancers Make Theatre Work to produce the Big Freelancer Report and the subsequent Routes To Recovery report. That’s another reason I’m stepping away now. I’m exhausted after Covid.”

***

There are still challenges for SDUK to tackle under Finley’s leadership, though. Hescott mentions several, from the question of directors’ intellectual property rights in a world where the traditional writer-director model is increasingly rare, to updating industry agreements to include the roles of assistant, associate and resident director.

On a wider level, Hescott continues, he wants the performing arts industry to stop being so “insular”, to start paying attention to other sectors, and to start having serious conversations about the direction of employment conditions in both – conversations he hopes SDUK can lead.

“The theatre industry’s workforce has shifted from predominantly in-house to predominantly freelance over the last few decades, and has shifted again to a gig and shared culture” he explains. “That same process that is happening now with Uber drivers and Deliveroo riders. It is a shift changes everything, from the level of risk you take on as an artist, to the rights you have, to the skills you need to survive. We’ve shifted from a few well-paid gigs to lots of small, badly paid gigs, and we need to have a conversation about whether that is a good thing. On the one hand creating lots of smaller opportunities invites more artists into a company, but the opportunity is very limited. The alternative is less opportunities for artists to engage with a company, but that those opportunities are more meaningful. There is no one way that works, but it would help if we looked to what is happening outside of our industry, as the challenges we face are repeated in other sectors across the world”

It is a difficult conversation, Hescott continues, with lots of implications around access, elitism and experimentation, and there are no easy answers – but it is a conversation that is already starting to take place because of the impact of Covid.

“Like lots of membership organisations, we were worried that lots of our members would leave during lockdown and we would be hit financially,” he says. “That didn’t happen. What actually happened is that we saw the biggest spike in our membership since we started. And I think that shows that people wanted to see change, and wanted to be part of an organisation that could help bring that change about.”

—

Thomas Hescott was talking to Fergus Morgan for SDUK.