02 Aug Memories of Piers

These memories of Piers Haggard, SDUK’s Founder, have been compiled by Thomas Hescott.

Thank you to all who added their memories and good wishes.

Thomas Hescott

I first heard the name Piers Haggard in a coffee shop in soho. I was there with a fellow director and we were moaning about the state of the industry. My friend asked ‘have you heard about this guy Piers Haggard, who is getting directors together to try and do something’ and I rolled my eyes. That’s all we need I thought – I assumed he was a 25 year old Oxbridge grad who had just figured out that we weren’t living in a meritocracy. Or maybe he was an old trades unionist who hadn’t had the career he wanted and was looking for someone to blame.

The last time I saw Piers in early 2020 I shared these assumptions and he seemed highly amused. I was of course totally wrong about Piers. Not only had he had a hugely successful career, he’d actually had three successful careers – in theatre, TV and film.

Piers did for theatre directors what we couldn’t do for ourselves. We had been programmed to moan in private, but to never speak up too loudly – for fear of being told we were just bitter – that we were just moaning because we weren’t successful enough. It took a senior director like Piers, to use their considerable success and their voice within the industry as a platform for us all and to speak out on our behalf.

There are a great many stories of Piers going into battle for us, ruffling the feathers of theatre managers, and of the big unions. But what we speak about less is the great curiosity and generosity Piers had for all of us directors. In the early years of SDUK Piers answered every email, every phone call, met every director who contacted him, and immediately got behind whatever their cause was, or whatever their challenge. You could invite him to any screening or press night and he’d be there. He was fascinated by all his fellow directors, and he taught us not to view our fellow directors as the competition but rather as our colleagues.

Matthew Dunster

I buzzed off Piers when I met him at an SDUK AGM – that energy and enthusiasm and how he made me feel, in the presence of some superstar directors, that my voice was as interesting and useful as everyone else’s. I loved that he was up for the fight. When I wanted to take on a big, big producer via The Stage Newspaper, Piers was fearless and supportive. And he shielded me – he was prepared to take the brunt of any stuff that came back at us. And he resolved the whole thing beautifully. All directors owe him a great deal.

Kate Saxon

When I met Piers, I was so bowled over by his energy and vigour. Such an enabler of others too. Piers single-handedly birthed SDUK and then, with the same unblinking, tornado spirit, propelled others to cultivate it into a sustained life.

‘Why?!’ I pondered, ‘Piers isn’t even a theatre director! Why does he care? And he’s retired, isn’t he?!’

Yet here he was, personally ringing every theatre director he could find a number for, and telling us we absolutely must meet, together, and take our craft and our careers seriously. That it was time for us to tell each other what we earn! (Never a ‘thing’ before.) And what we don’t like about our industry. That it was time to change it.

I went to that very first meeting. Lots of us did. From directors who were starting out, to long-established ‘names’. I can only assume everyone in that room was just as fascinated by this tour de force as I was.

And that was it. Piers simply, passionately, and single-handedly inspired us all to start talking. And to DO something. Extraordinary. New and uplifting. Why had we never done this before?

Piers collared me to ask if I was interested in being SDUK’s Chair. ‘Yes’ I said. How could I possibly refuse? And I carried on working with the tornado. I smiled every time I’d been on a call with him.

I have so much respect for that tornado spirit. The passionate advocate, the enabler, the motivator. Truly one of a kind. What a legacy he leaves behind.

Jemma Gross

When I worked for SDUK I  remember arguing with Piers a lot as we often didn’t see eye to eye, but it was always with affection and respect for each other. My first real encounter with him was at the second meet up before SDUK came into being, when directors were debating about striking as a way to get more pay. He looked at a bunch of us ‘younger’ directors and asked us what we thought. I remember saying that for SDUK to really work and if a strike were to happen he’d to convince us ‘younger’ lot to support it otherwise what was the point.

He called me that night and asked me to join the board.

I remember needing to bring my child to a board meeting and he wanted cuddles

I remember he suggested I chat to other mum directors to get advice and told me not to give up

He taught me if you want change to happen then you have to act.

Jonathan Humphries

My memory of Piers at Drama Centre was of his generosity with time, advice and encouragement. I was a lowly first year, an extra on his production of Epsom Downs. At every opportunity I cornered him and he was always kind, thoughtful and supportive, sharing his experience and advice over a drink at the grimy Fiddler’s Elbow in Chalk Farm.

Later at SDUK it was his positive, energising sense of what should be possible for directors pay and conditions that stays with me. In particular I will remember his impassioned and forceful presence in the negotiating room when we were working with Equity to get more money out of UK Theatre. It was a long and incremental process, which required Piers to be ‘insulted’ and ‘disgusted’ by their offer time after time (more than one storming out of the room) until we managed to make significant increases in the minimum pay for directors.

I feel honoured to have known and worked with him

Robyn Winfield-Smith

Piers was an Actual force of nature. What I remember most about the early days of SDUK was his galvanising spirit, his brilliant sense of story and strategy, and – perhaps more than anything – his sheer curiosity and generous willingness to learn. He had such vigour and vim, underneath everything he did, and he was so adept at bringing people together and inspiring folks to collaborate and unite and share energy with each other towards a common cause.

When I think of Piers now – even in spite of the years of colleagueship and friendship that followed – I still think of the first night he brought together a whole slew of directors, from all stages of career: I’d been invited by Lucy Bailey and I had no idea who this ‘Piers Haggard’ was, but I remember showing up and being slightly overawed at all these rather wonderfully high-profile people all in the same room as each other – and I remember how beautifully he articulated the need for and the ambition behind something like SDUK, and how warm and approachable he was: he instantly had my loyalty – and by only a meeting or two later, his energetic fire and vision had already attracted a passionate founding Board and concretised the notion of SDUK into something tangible, something that was garnering support from all over the directing profession, and something that had already lifted the fees of the Young Vic through the strength of the moral mandate that he had so clearly expressed in one of our early meetings. What a hero, and what a visionary. And, of course, what a cheekily fun individual – how else could he elicit quite some much fondness and laughter from us right now?

Justin Audibert

Piers was a true inspiration. He had integrity in abundance alongside a fire in his belly for justice but he always debated with a twinkle in his eye. He was impassioned but never earnest.  He cared about art and artists in a wonderfully warm and generous way and he believed deeply in making our industry kinder and more accessible. I was very lucky to know him so early on in my career. He modelled what true leadership should be and although he will be missed, his legacy will live on with those who continue his fight.

James MacDonald

For me there’s no doubt that SDUK only happened because Piers willed it. It was entirely his idea, sensing a moment in which he could win political battles he’d first fought 30 or 40 years earlier. But also there was something about theatre directors being challenged to take action by someone from outside their usual bubble – someone who should by rights have had much less reason to act than they did – that made the whole thing possible. Even the fact that Piers was of an age where he might well have been putting his feet up acted as a kind of gentle reproach. And perhaps the clincher was that the person engaged in this game of herding arrogant director-cats was immensely charming, drily witty – and self-deprecating to a fault. My generation of theatre directors, the ones who started out in the heyday of Thatcherism, had never shown the slightest interest in organising politically. And it took seduction by a charismatic old lefty coming in from the world of film to shift that self-absorption – finally we started to listen to each other and imagine working for the collective good. Only Piers’s modest, stealthy charm could have made this happen – he was indeed a very special human.