Tim Evans
I develop and create theatre.
Founding Artistic Director of The Factory, and Artistic Director of Night Club.
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“I’d like to point out that there is no correct way to take photographs or to make documentary films, or for that matter to write books. It’s not about correct and incorrect. Truth is something that you seek in what you do. You strive to understand the world around you but it’s not guaranteed by style.”
Elizabeth Gilbert: A new way to think about creativity
On the trouble with *being* a genius instead of *having* a genius:
…and all you have to do is look at the very grim death count in the 20th century alone, of really magnificent creative minds who died young and often at their own hands, you know? And even the ones who didn’t literally commit suicide seem to be really undone by their gifts. Norman Mailer, just before he died, last interview, he said “Every one of my books has killed me a little more.” An extraordinary statement to make about your life’s work. But we don’t even blink when we hear somebody say this because we’ve heard that kind of stuff for so long and somehow we’ve completely internalized and accepted collectively this notion that creativity and suffering are somehow inherently linked and that artistry, in the end, will always ultimately lead to anguish.
And the question that I want to ask everybody here today is are you guys all cool with that idea? Are you comfortable with that — because you look at it even from an inch away and, you know — I’m not at all comfortable with that assumption. I think it’s odious. And I also think it’s dangerous, and I don’t want to see it perpetuated into the next century. I think it’s better if we encourage our great creative minds to live.
Great talk. Don’t miss her profile of Tom Waits.
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if you cut public investment in theatre, then sooner or later there will be no commercial theatre either. Without talent and ideas nurtured in the subsidised sector, the West End will starve to death. The subsidised theatre is a pyramid of expertise and training, and the West End benefits from that just as private doctors benefit from being trained on the NHS. The difference is that in this country, all theatre professionals move freely between commercial and subsidised sectors. That cross-fertilisation is unique and fecund.
This country doesn’t manufacture much any more, but theatre-making is one activity where we can and do lift trophies. So why aren’t we more proud of this profitable industry? Why is there no coherent UK arts policy? Why has our Prime Minister, to my knowledge, not once mentioned the arts since he came to power? Subsidy is the lifeblood of the British theatre. As Tom Morris told me after his win, “It ain’t about the Tonys, it’s about backing people at the start of the journey, when no one’s heard of them and the idea doesn’t yet hold water.” No-one knows from where the next War Horse or Jerusalem will come, but it’ll come from somewhere. Except that, one day, maybe it won’t.
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