27 Apr The 5 Minute Chat with SDUK’s New Executive Director Thomas Hescott

This week’s 5 Minute Chat is with Stage Director’s New Executive Director Thomas Hescott 

And on Tuesday May 2nd Thomas will be in conversation with his Agent Dan Uztan from UNited Agents at Century Club.  Want to know more about the Director/ Agent Relationship? Want to know how to get an Agent or if you need one? Come along :  Tickets here 

SD: How are you feeling about your new role at SDUK? 

TH: I’m inspired by the conversations I’ve been able to have and the plans we’ve started to put in place. There is huge support for SDUK, and everyone I meet really wants to see us grow and succeed. I’ve now been at the job for three months (someone pointed out today I’m reaching my 100 days in office moment!) so I’m starting to see those initial conversations grow into tangible concrete plans which is very rewarding.

SD: What are you most excited by?

TH: Back in 2014 I attended one of the first SDUK meetings. Before I got to the meeting I thought the whole idea sounded terrible, but when I arrived I was immediately struck by the range of experience in the room. There were artistic directors, former artistic directors, people working within the fringe and independent sector, there were directors of big west end projects, directors who worked outside London, outside the UK, there were assistants and associates, and we were all in the same room. For the first time, ever. I genuinely don’t think we had ever all been in a room together at the same time before.  I looked round the room and thought that any question or problem any of us had, someone else there had probably encountered and had an answer.

That spirit of our collective voice is what excites me most. I’m mainly here to listen to our members and then facilitate new ways of working, ways that help tackle the inequalities of our industry.

SD: Any Fears?

TH: Within my professional life I’m not a massively fearful person, so there aren’t that many fears I have around SDUK. I am aware though that for the first time in a while I’m not just looking out for myself, but am part of something much bigger. When we’re freelance, we can spend quite a bit of time asking people what they can do for us. Leading SDUK that question has changed to ‘what can I do for you?’ It’s a much healthier question, but it comes with responsibility and I’m aware of that responsibility.

SD: What do you want for SDUK?

TH: I’ve been clear since I started that I don’t want SDUK to reflect the industry as it is now, but I want us to reflect and lobby for the industry as we would like it to become. SDUK needs to challenge preconceptions about working practices. So often things are the way they are because that’s how it’s always been, and no one thinks to question it. I set up a working party to investigate questions around diversity both within our own organisation and within the industry as a whole. They are looking at everything including gender equality, BAME engagement, best practice for directors with disabilities, and they’re looking at regional engagement. They have already started feeding back to me ways SDUK can make a real difference. It’s just one example of how I’m able to listen to the collective voice of our members and help facilitate change.

We don’t do this alone, and much of my work to date has been about joining up conversations between organisations. There are several collaborations with other organisations we’re going to announce soon.

SD: Are you finding balancing this new role alongside your Directing commitments?

TH: I have a terrible fear of professional monogamy. It’s great that I can jump between different roles, as they all feed into each other.  When I started out there was a small group of Artistic Directors who had stayed in the same venue for decades and had built up an echo chamber around themselves. Thankfully those days seem to have gone and directors are much more open and collaborative. It’s no different for me. If I suddenly shut myself away in the SDUK office and never directed again I’d be a very poor advocate for working directors.

SD: You have had an incredibly varied career and have made the vast jump to working in both theatre and TV, do you have any advice for directors out there wanting to make that same jump?

TH: It wasn’t as much of a jump for me as it might have looked like from the outside. I have always been interested and engaged in TV as much as I have theatre. As a child, I was a member of the Television Workshop in Nottingham, and through them appeared in a fair amount of TV as a child actor.  As a teenager, I made my own films using a camcorder my school had and as a student I spent some summers as a runner on TV dramas. I’ve always loved screen as much as stage, it’s just that my professional opportunities very quickly became purely about theatre. In the last couple of years, I’ve rekindled my love of working on TV drama, and it’s been one of the best things I’ve ever done.

I’m passionate about new writing, but also love working on things that reach a bigger audience than much of theatre reaches – TV gives me the chance to explore stories that millions of people engage with. That’s exciting. It’s not that either forms of storytelling are better, they’re just different. I love that variety.

I’m often asked by directors how to make the jump, and I’m never sure what to say, as there isn’t just one way. I made a short film (as much because I wanted to as anything else) and started sending it to producers who brought me in for some shadowing. Then the BBC and DUK announced a scheme to mentor directors onto continuing dramas and I was offered a place, which gave me a way in. I’m very grateful that the BBC and DUK have supported me in this way.

I think the only advice I have is to make the leap into TV with some integrity. I’m not interested in people who want to do it just for the money – you need to be passionate about the work. It’s easy to look down at TV drama, especially continuing drama – but it’s a powerful form of story-telling that reaches millions of people. You’ve got to want to be part of that conversation.

SD: Finally, when your passion is also what you do for a living, how do you wind down? What do you like to do in your rare moments of down time?

TH: I’ll let you know when I figure it out. That’s terrible, isn’t it? I’ll be honest I’m not good at ‘real life’. I’m much better at work than life so I stick to work. It’s an appalling example to set, and anyone new to directing should ignore my example entirely – it isn’t healthy, it’s just who I am.

Thomas Hescott / Executive Director