03 May A Sense of Direction – Tom Littler
Tom Littler fell in love with theatre – and with directing – as a teenager growing up in Devon in the late 1990s. He threw himself into student drama while studying English at Oxford University, then embarked on a prolific professional career – as founding director of theatre company Primavera Productions, as an assistant to Peter Hall at the Theatre Royal, Bath, and as an associate director at Theatre503 – that has seen him earn a reputation for carefully reviving forgotten classics.
In 2017, he took over as artistic director of Jermyn Street Theatre – a 70-seat studio in the heart of the West End – and spent the next five years converting it into a mini-but-mighty producing house, with hit productions including Noel Coward’s Tonight at 8.30 and August Strindberg’s Miss Julie. In late 2022, he left Jermyn Street to take over from Paul Miller as artistic director of Richmond’s Orange Tree Theatre, where he is currently staging a revival of Somerset Maugham’s The Circle.
How did you become a director?
I was lucky because I went to a school that offered GCSE and A-Level drama. I fell in love with rehearsal rooms. I was never interested in performing – I knew that was something I couldn’t do – but being in the position of helping other people perform was always very exciting.
I didn’t know anyone in the industry, though, so I read books about directing and biographies of directors instead. I suppose that taught me that the route into directing was to go to university and direct as many plays as you can there, so that is what I did.
Who or what was the biggest help along the way?
The very first person I assisted was the director Alan Strachan. He has an encyclopaedic knowledge of plays. He loves plays and he loves actors, and he runs the nicest rehearsal room. It was warm and open and funny. He was incredibly kind to me. He made sure I got paid. He made sure producers looked after me. He helped me get my first agent. He introduced me to people. He championed me.
What work are you most proud of?
I’m most proud of two periods of work. There were a few years – the early Jermyn Street years, when I was doing a lot of other freelance work, often abroad – when my personal life was very difficult. I’m very proud of the work I made then. I’m also proud of the work we made at Jermyn Street during the pandemic. It was miraculous how the theatre industry managed to adapt.
What work are you least proud of?
Without naming specific shows, I guess it would be work where I haven’t had the time to do the prep beforehand. Doing your homework allows you to be free within the room. It means you can actually respond to what is going on in the room, instead of staring at your script. Weirdly, not knowing the text makes you more text-bound, but the more you study the text, the less text-bound you are.
Who – or what – is your biggest theatrical influence?
I spent several years as Peter Hall’s associate. Even in his later years, when his energy was lower, he was an astonishing presence in rehearsals. It was like being in the room with the brightest lightbulb you’ve seen in your life. I think he has to be at the top of my list.
Is there a show that you really want to stage?
There won’t be any musicals in the programme we are about to announce, but I would love to do an in-the-round musical at the Orange Tree at some point.
What is your financial situation?
Well, I’m now one of the incredibly lucky people that gets paid full-time to direct plays. That was true during the second half of my time at Jermyn Street, but during the first half of my time there, I was paid part-time, and I was freelancing, and I was teaching at Cambridge, all at the same time.
I’m now 38, and it probably wasn’t until I was in my early thirties that I made pretty much all my income from the theatre. Before that it was the usual mix of directing and assisting and teaching and tutoring and anything I could get my hands on. I was very fortunate, because I had the ultimate middle-class safety net of knowing that I could have gone home to my family if everything had gone horribly wrong. I never did, but a lot of people were a lot more exposed than me.
What do you enjoy most about directing?
The atmosphere of the rehearsal room. It was what got me into directing in the first place, and it remains the thing that I love. At its best, when a rehearsal room is playful and relaxed and collaborative, it is a great pleasure.
What are your frustrations with directing?
Money. We continue to have to be incredibly financially mindful at the Orange Tree. In this country, we work in a compromise between the continental model of subsidy and the American model of embedded philanthropy. It is great that we are not beholden to stakeholders, but it does mean that our funding system is really very weird and quite difficult to navigate.
What fills you with dread about the future of theatre?
I worry about the role of the artistic director. The role of the director itself is a relatively new job, and the role of the artistic director is even newer. There is a trend of artistic directors being appointed underneath CEOs, and I think that is concerning. When theatres don’t have theatre at the centre of their vision, that is worrying.
What gives you hope for the future of theatre?
The way in which people coming into the industry now are sound designers, but also directors, and also producers, and also performers. I know in many cases that comes from necessity, but it is absolutely amazing. I think they call them multi-hyphenates. I am a very traditional, boxed-in, text-based, plays-and-musicals director. The next generation will have none of that, and that is inspiring.
What are you working on at the moment?
We are about to open my production of Somerset Maugham’s The Circle, and we are about to announce my first significant chunk of programming in May, and it has lots of lovely things in it. My next show as a director will be this Autumn.
ENDS
Fergus Morgan is SDUKs resident blogger.