04 Aug SDUK Blog – Abigail Graham

I want you to imagine you are a 24 year old doing your first assistant director job. The director is pretty formidable; perhaps they’re also the artistic director of the building. On the first day, the director read out the Equity safe space policy. But you notice they always speak over you, or cut you off mid-sentence. Nobody says anything. I guess this is just how it is for assistants?

You notice that the director treats the men in the company differently to how they treat the others – the men are given airtime, others are not, and when they try to speak up, they are quickly shut down. A male actor is given freedom to make choices and praised for doing so. A female actor is told that they’re doing it wrong and they should do it like this. One day you discover her crying outside stage door, or in the green room, or on the tube platform. She says that she is ‘being made to feel like everything is her fault’. What do you do?

The perpetrator read the Equity safe space agreement out to everyone. Also, they are your boss. You have the lowest status in the room. But bullying is never OK. Who do you speak to? Them? The CSM? Or do you just keep your head down, do what you can to look after the actress and try to get away unscathed?

Let’s imagine another situation: you’re 29 and directing your first studio show, in an Off West End venue with no actual infrastructure. The leading man in the company constantly undermines another actor. He seems fine with it, but it’s making you a bit uncomfortable. What do you do?

Now, in this situation, you have a responsibility to set the working culture. But let’s be honest, you don’t want to upset the balance of this already sensitive relationship. Do you leave it or do you ask him to treat other people how he would like to be treated?

Finally let’s imagine a situation where you’re directing your first main-stage show at a regional theatre. You’re mid thirties now, been around the block a few times. You’ve done your prep and are ready to go. The leading actor is old enough to be your dad and his face is on the poster. The closer it gets to running the play, the angrier he gets. He calls all of your offers ‘hopeless’. He starts shouting at you; you calmly stand there and ask him not to, he apologises. The company of actors check in with you, asking if you’re OK, you shrug it off. It’s part of the job right? At one point he gets so angry that another actor has to restrain him. Nobody makes their best work in an environment with this much tension. One of your collaborators points out that you are being bullied and you should ask for backup.

But what if you’ve internalised the ‘young female director can’t handle difficult older actor so it’s her fault’ narrative? This isn’t that. You know this isn’t that. OK. You go to the artistic director to put in a ‘bullying in the workplace complaint’. He folds his arms and replies saying ‘if you’re going to use language like that, then you’re his manager.’ The conversation is shut down.

We need to have the very difficult conversation around bullying in theatre. It can happen downwards: from director to assistant; director to actor; artistic director to director. And it can happen sideways: from actor to actor. And upwards: actor to director. Whatever direction it happens it makes it impossible to do our best work, to collaborate from a place of openhearted vulnerability.

So what can we, as directors, do?

We set the cultures in our rehearsal rooms. So, whatever is going on outside the room, my hunch is that we do possess the power to make our rooms spaces where everyone is safe to be brave.

Bullying doesn’t just affect the victims. It affects everyone in the room. We’ve all heard stories of toxic working cultures in leading theatres. And I bet most of us have been in rooms where bullying has happened. Bullying distracts us from our work and creates a culture of fear. I mean, it’s obviously wrong, but it also makes the workforce miserable. People who work in bullying cultures are more likely to take sick days. Surely it’s better for everyone and for the work if the environments are open and everyone feels able to contribute ideas – we’ll make richer work that way. Right?

It’s made more complex because the majority of us are freelance. We get in, we get out. And it’s made doubly complex by how poorly paid we are, and how much greater the supply of directors is than the demand. But surely, regardless of the length of contract or your role within the project, everyone deserves to be treated with dignity and respect?

The pandemic made many of us rethink our practice; for me I knew that artist wellbeing has to be at its centre. I recently directed Merchant of Venice at The Globe. I knew that, in order to dive into this knotty play, artist wellbeing had to come first. We didn’t touch the play until we’d worked out what we all needed to make our best work. And because everyone was looked after and was respectful to each other, we were able to have the difficult conversations this play needed, where everyone had a voice and a stake in the work. In turn, the collaborative sense of ownership for the work yielded tangible, emotional and impactful results. It made the show better and we all had a great time making it. So, it’s a no brainer really isn’t it?

My hunch is that we all need to work together to create an industry where bullying is no longer acceptable. When I say all, I mean artistic directors, producers, directors, actors, technical and stage management, creative teams and front of house staff. It happens in every single avenue of our workplace.

Maybe, on the first day of every rehearsal period, we could include sessions that educate about what bullying is and what our responsibility as bystanders is, so it’s not on the victims to sort it out.

Imagine you’re the 24-year-old assistant and on your first day on the job you learn about how bullying can happen in all directions and it’s on all of us to sort it out. You know that everyone in the organisation is on the same page as you. You know who to go to, and what to say. How much easier would that have been?