A Coffee with Nathan - Coffee Morning 3.0

Our third coffee morning was with the wonderful Nathan Powell, AD of NSDF (The National Student Drama Festival) and the new Creative Director of Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse!

We hope by reading this snapshot of our chat that you can learn something new to kick start your own journey in the arts. Also you can hear the conversation in full over on out YouTube channel (https://youtu.be/XeMYgTkmrog) !

With that lets get into it...

Q: What was your first paid role in the arts?

A: The first paid job I ever had in the arts... I think it was as an actor and it was playing the genie in an adult pantomime!

Q: So from the adult pantomime can you give us a quick talk through your career from there to now?

A: Of course! So, I was always interested in story telling. I don't come from a particularly theatrical family and we didn't go and see shows that often, but I remember every Christmas as a treat with my aunty would take all of us kids to see a show. One year she took us to see the Lion King, and it was the most spectacular thing i'd ever seen in my entire life and I was like oh okay this is what story telling could be and look like. And while I was always interested in it I didn't know it was going to be my career or something i'd be involved in. I knew that I wanted to experience university after school, because I wanted to get out of London and see and experience something else. I was going to go and study business studies and had my business personal statement and why I loved business so much. Then I went to Leeds to an open day and I said to my dad that I wanted to check out what the theatre department was like so I went there and it was such a stark contrast to the big lecture hall where i'd been nodding off to people talking about business for a long time and just seeing the excitement and the buzz in the theatre space there made me pivot and I decided I wasn't going to go to university unless it was to study something that I was interested in. So I applied for theatre courses and I got the one at Leeds and had to explain why my personal statement was all about business.

So I studied at Leeds for four years, I had to take a year out for family reasons, and I didn't do particularly well in the course and realised academics wasn't for me, but it was a really brilliant introduction to making my own work. I didn't get along with the theory as much as I did just making work with my peers outside of the course. Then after I moved back home to London and thought 'i'm gonna be an actor' then realised I shouldn't be an actor because I wasn't a very good actor but I still wanted to tell stories. So I started doing some teaching work at afterschool drama clubs for primary age children then a BTEC in performing arts for people who had been excluded or couldn't access mainstream education. I did that for a couple of years as well as summer clubs and loads of wonderful community work. From that I got a job up in Nottingham at Nottingham Playhouse in their participation team.

I moved up to Nottingham and I felt like for the first time yes i'm in the industry now, and I was doing lots of outreach work, with young people, youth theatre and trying to broaden the reach of our participation programme. As a part of that job I was really lucky actually. asI got the opportunity to start doing some programming for their studio. That was a real headfirst dive into programming and producing work and exploring that side of things. I'd always been just on the making side and actually there was a real joy I got from being able to facilitate really brilliant artists coming into the theatre and making work and sharing their work with local artists. I often get much more of a buzz off of watching a show i'd programmed more than one i'd directed so I though okay maybe there's something more that i'm interested in, in this world so I can help artists make and facilitate work I could never dream of making or don't have the ability to make. There was something super exciting about offering those platforms. At Nottingham I was really pushed to explore my interests of me exploring directing and making my own work and my interests and what that meant for me so I started doing more of that and its when I started writing work too, mainly so I'd have something to direct. That was brilliant as it was a proper gorilla style education in writing, directing, marketing, how you have those conversations with venues and people that could take your work to the next level.

Then I got the opportunity to move to Liverpool which is where I am now and have been for 8 years so I came to join the most incredible company called Twenty Stories High, who I still do some work with now. They are a company that makes work with and for working class and culturally diverse young people in the city and beyond. They have regular youth theatres and participation work as well as professional touring work. I joined as their Associate Director on a two year contract and never really left. That was part of a brilliant programme called Artistic Directors Leadership programme a scheme that was build by RTYDS, ITC and four companies and it was all about getting more global majority artists into leadership positions. It was an amazing project that introduced me to so many amazing people who are still my collaborators today that I never would have met without that programme.

Side note when we talk about the reduction in arts funding programmes like that, which were a massive cohort of like 30 of us and 4 of us in full time paid gigs that transformed so many of our careers - we need more of that and hopefully a future government can help deliver that.

I stayed with them for an extra year as an Associate as they were then building their own associate model to do that and then I started my freelance career in the city and nationally as a writer and director so I was gigging a lot. Did quite a bit of writing work with Derby theatre, different directing projects and producing my own work. I carrie don developing and learning on the job and then I joined NSDF three years ago now. The National Student Drama Festival as their artistic director. It's the most beautiful company that finds space for young artists entering the industry or who have and are starting to make their way and offers them the space to connect with the industry in more meaningful ways and present their work to their peers and the industry and so they can shape the future of the industry into what they want it to be. So we run a annual festival and we just had in April our festival at Curve which was beautiful. So that's what. I do currently and I am sitting in the offices of the Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse where I will be starting as their Creative Director very soon!

Q: Thats all so interesting and I knew bits of that before but not all of it and there's some real things that stuck out to me and one of them thats probably going to surprise people, especially if they're like me and grew up outside of London is that you've actually found the bulk of your work outside of the city. I think there's such a thing of 'if you want to work in theatre you have to be in London' and you've done the complete opposite because its just not true!

A: Completely and I think actors probably find that urge more than anyone and its so note true. It's different if you come from somewhere where there is no arts infrastructure at all but cities like Liverpool, Sheffield, Manchester, Leeds have incredible arts scenes and culture scenes that you can make a career in. I think theres this idea that London is the place where all of the great work happens which is not true. All of the most amazing work I have seen has been from and all over the country there's still a snobbery attached to London and an obsession of your London debut, like what do you mean you've been making incredible groundbreaking beautiful work across the country but you're hyper focused on your London debut. I just don't think its important. Yes there are more theatres and more density but then there are also more people going for those roles and you do just become less visible there I think. Liverpool is my home now it's where my partner and I decided to build our lives and we have three wonderful children and the most interesting and wonderful thing for me is to make work for and with my home. So there's no urge for me to move to London again. I love being able to connect with people and make work that feels so local and global at the same time in the community where I live.

Q: What does your role actually involve for you on a daily basis?

A: I think a massive part of directing is project management and leading a team with a centralised goal or ambition. Thats before you think about getting into the rehearsal room thats a separate process. So the prep work, the building of a creative team, assembling a bunch of wonderful artists to collaborate on creating this thing in whatever form or way it is. That's a big part of the job that often people don't talk about much as they want to talk about working with actors and creating these worlds and characters but a massive part of that being successful is getting the first bit right and brining people together who are willing to collaborate and explore and experiment and get stuff wrong and have fun with it. But also knowing that people all work in lots of different ways and being able to manage and be open to accommodating that to achieve their best possible work os a lot of what directing is.

Then it's just fun, I love my job. I love the directing bit of my job as I get to collaborate with artists I really respect and admire and that can do things I never could have imagined was possible. So to be able to hold and facilitate that space for them to play and try new things within the boundaries that you've set as a director feels really exciting. So yeah, a lot of directing is people management and how you support people to make their best work, its a facilitating role I think.

Q: What is your favourite project you've worked on?

A: I don't think I could answer I could give you a grouping, but i'll do them really quickly so it feels like one!

I did a version of Macbeth at the Orange Tree that played at the theatre and toured to schools. Seeing it at the schools was so incredible and we went to one school that. was round the corner from where I used to live and I could see these kids who looked like me in this big sports hall fully engrossed in this version of Macbeth, and the fire alarm went off and all the kids just started chanting 'let us burn, let us burn, let us burn' and I was like life is complete I can retire, because this group of people were so engaged and involved in this play this versions of Shakespeare they didn't want to leave at the fire alarm.

There then are projects that feel significant for me in my career. One called the Spine which was all about the football academy system and it was the first project I held properly as a writer, producer and director that I made and developed and that felt like a proper piece of me. Then I did a show last year called Sucker Punch with Queens Theatre Hornchurch that toured around the country and reached so many people and I got to work with my favourite writer Roy Williams and that was really special for me as I got to collaborate with someone i've looked up to for so long. There are loads of projects that mean thongs for me for so many reasons and all of them have been working in collaboration with wonderful, giving, brilliant artists.

Q: Do you have a word of advice for the people watching who might be just starting out or deciding what they want to do? What would you say to them as they begin this journey?

A: Really appreciate the artistry of everyone around you. Really acknowledge and realise the amount of hard work, talent and skill that goes into making theatre happen. Tech rehearsals are my favourite part of any production because all of a sudden all of these people who have been working collectively but in their own spaces come together and everyone gets to see all of their brilliance for the first time. I love siting by the tech box and watching this wizardry happen around all of the dials and knobs and I think it's easy for people to see theatre and think wow these actors are incredible but thats where the appreciate ends, but there is a team of people and stage managers who you will never see who have done the most incredible stuff behind that stage. So yeah remember that there are really incredible and talented people making work in ways that you might never see and also that that might be way you want to make work. I realised quite quickly that I wasn't an actor but there were other ways to make work that weren't in my head at that time so be open and be curious to all of the forms and jobs that there are in developing theatre. As you might end up realising you really want to be a technician or a company stage manager because you love working with people. So stay curious to all of the different jobs that are available to you.

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Phew! Have you got any coffee left? We certainly haven't!

Do't forget to check out our upcoming coffee mornings and Open Office Hours to come along, chat, get advice and have fun!

We'll see you soon!

Team Flood x