10 Jan SDUK Blog – Welcome Tanja Raaste

A brief break from our ‘A Sense of Direction’ blogs this week, to introduce you to our new General Manager, Tanja Raaste:

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Although I only became a theatre producer after forays into other careers, I now realise that those puppet shows I put on at 10 (making everyone I knew attend – and pay for a ticket), and the plays I wrote for my soft toys may have been an indication of things to come. 

After studying Government at Essex University with a view to becoming a journalist, I decided instead to go into market research.  After a couple of years, I moved into producing business events – I wanted to get out from behind the numbers and the desk!  However, after a while, despite working on interesting events such as nanotechnology, R&D and wine e-sales, something was missing, so I took a sabbatical, where the idea was to travel and to find a new direction.  I ended up finishing a play I had been writing and returning to London to stage it.  I figured how hard could it be to produce a play? 

Then, sitting in the audience, watching the show on the last night of the run, I realised I didn’t want to go back to my old life and my old job.  I had no idea how one became a professional producer, but I decided to find out.  I knew I needed training, a foundation in theatre (until this point I had just nodded sagely when my director said he wanted to do a scene ‘in the style of Mamet’, having no clue what he meant).  So, I secured a place on a new MFA producer programme at the California Institute of the Arts, and even more importantly, a full scholarship which allowed me to take up the offer. 

CalArts let me exercise the right side of my brain like never before, and I also had the opportunity to do a lot of extracurricular producing in the Los Angeles theatre community, working with The Museum of Jurassic Technology and the Center for New Theatre amongst others.  I also found an unofficial but instrumental mentor in the head of the producing programme, and I started to find my feet as a creative producer. 

On my return to London, I set myself up as a freelance producer with my company Nordic Nomad. Having found it relatively quick to establish myself in Los Angeles, it came as a shock to find a more closed industry over here with many people unwilling to take a risk with an unknown who wasn’t part of the circle.  So, it took time to build a body of work.   

Looking for another income stream, I accepted an engagement to put together a business course for artists funded by the European Union.  I realised that both artists and actors usually have little training in the business side of what they do, so I decided to create a series of workshops for drama schools called ‘Business Skills for Performers’.  I am still running these around 15 years later as a visiting lecturer to many drama schools.  I am also in the process of making some of the modules self-study e-courses. 

I have now worked as a freelance producer in Los Angeles, the UK and Europe.  I love making a show happen, seeing its shape emerge from the mists of possibilities and firm up into something tangible.  I have worked in dance, theatre, opera, and festivals, and I have always been drawn to outdoor, site-specific, interactive and new work – anything that brings the work to new audiences.  Essentially, I discovered that my passion was for these new audiences; people who might not be in the habit of ‘going to the theatre’ so, wherever possible, I like to bring the show to them.  Traditional audiences have been dwindling, and I saw this as one way to bring people back to theatre. 

If we attract more people to theatre, then theatre thrives.  As a producer, I often had to work within tiny budgets, where no-one was being paid enough.  Working with all this amazing talent, who then went home with two pounds fifty and a packet of crisps… was just wrong.  So, one of my goals is to work towards engaging new audiences, towards raising the perceived value of theatre and the arts, and therefore making it a more viable career choice for everyone. 

I am originally from Finland, and I realise that I still have a European – a Nordic – take on many things:  That the arts are important for their own sake; that people should be paid well; that there should be equality of opportunity; that we should adopt working practices that support us and don’t lead to overwork and burnout; and that rest and renewal are vitally important – especially if we want to remain creative. 

As a producer, I understand the pressures of being in charge: of having everyone look to you for answers, for carrying the weight of budgetary constraints, and of having the weight of the production on your shoulders.  It can be both scary and thrilling, and I am very excited about this next chapter, of getting to know you – the SDUK members – and doing what I can to make this an even better industry for all of us.