Artistic Planning at Northern Stage

Natalie :

I’m Natalie and I’ve been here for two years, starting in November 2020. Before coming to Northern Stage, I ran a national touring theatre company called tiata fahodzi. I applied for my role at Northern Stage because I’ve wanted to run a building since I was 17. In many ways, my career had been leading up to a job like this, in a city like this, serving the communities within a region.

Ryan:

I’ve been at Northern Stage for nearly three months and this is me returning to the North East, where I grew up. I’ve come here from Scotland, where I’ve worked in participation and engagement, as well as being a freelance artist. I was drawn here by thinking about the ways in which we can be inclusive and welcoming and bring new people into theatre. There’s something about greeting an audience in a building that I wanted to understand, as well as getting to know how we choose work for audiences.

Natalie :

The artistic planning team are responsible for all of the audience facing, curated work that happens in the building. This includes our produced work, where we engage freelance artists to make a piece of work here in Newcastle. This then gets presented in one of our three performance spaces. We walk projects all the way through from the R & D stages, right up to meeting audiences on the run and sometimes on tour too. We also work together to curate our visiting programme, made up of companies of different scales from the UK and internationally.

We programme all different forms of theatre: comedy; dance; mainstage; mid-scale re-imaginings of classics; new writing.

So the day to day is a mixture of engaging with creative activity, as well as process led work such as contracting, budgeting and liaising with different departments within the organisation. Together we all galvanise around the work, whether that be visiting or produced work. In summary, we support work to meet its audience here in the North East.

Ryan:

I love how diverse my day is. I can start by having a cup of a coffee with a freelance artist who I’ve never met before, who has perhaps worked with Northern Stage in the past or is brand new to us.

I can then go into a Revenue Pacing meeting, where I’m looking at how shows have sold and thinking creatively about how we can support the communications team.

Then me and Natalie might have a programming meeting where we talk about exciting work we’ve seen and what we could bring to our stages.

And I might wrap up by reading a script.

Natalie :

I love the first day of rehearsals or the meet and greet when staff come together to welcome our visting company to the building. It’s often super awkward and there’s no way of getting around the awkwardness of a roundtable, but I love the idea of us all coming together in that moment with the collective goal of making something happen in this city and in this building. It feels very electric, like anything is possible.

Similarly, I also love the moment when the work meets its audience for the first time. The first preview, which when I’m directing the work is absolutely terrifying and I can’t talk to anyone, but is the moment when people come together – the audience, the organisation, the artists who’ve been bleeding and sweating into this piece of work.

For me, it’s all about those moments where different types of people are coming together around the one thing and that thing is us, Northern Stage.

It’s delightful. I’d been to Newcastle once for a very brief theatre visit before my first interview, so I knew nothing about this city and this region. Over the last two years, I’ve been learning all about it and it has proved to be an amazing, delightful, rich, welcoming and warm place.

It’s possible to be in the centre of the city, in this thriving nightime ecology and economy, but then thirty minutes later I can be in my bungalow on a quiet street by the seaside. All of that is possible in this region and more. That has been a real surprise for me as someone who is from Scotland and lived in London for twelve years – Newcastle and the North East is a hidden gem.

Ryan:

For me there’s a little surprise almost every day when I am in this building. We hear all these stories about how the arts sector is struggling in this post covid moment, but actually when I come down into the café bar everyday I see it bustling with people having their lunch. Then later in the evening, often people are sitting having a drink before seeing their show. It catches me off guard just how lively this building can be on a daily basis.

Natalie:

This is a super exciting moment to join Northern Stage. We just got our re-entry into the portfolio, so we are a National Portfolio Organisation for the next three years until 2026. At the moment, we’re drafting a new strategic plan that sets out a direction of travel and the change we want to see happen in this building, city and region over the next three years.

We have a fairly new workforce due to lots of turnover in the sector over the last few years. This means there’s lots of great energy in the office and in the workforce about what is possible. There’s a real appetite for change.

I’m really looking forward to having a squad of new team members to help me refine and deliver on what I came here to do when I had my interview back in 2020.

Ryan:

I think we are looking for people who are different from us for a start!

Having a new colleague who could bring totally different perspectives and career experiences to the table will really enrich our conversations and make sure we are making the best possible choices.

Natalie:

I think we’re also looking for a colleague who loves audiences, who is going to fight for audiences in every conversation and in every decision making process. They should also love artists and making theatre happen, because that’s essentially what we’re here to do.