"I think doing so many different jobs made me a better producer"
David Doyle, executive producer at Jermyn Street Theatre and freelance lighting designer, on hit show The Lonely Londoners, Tender at the Bush Theatre, and more. Plus: three shows to see next week.
Hello, and welcome to The Crush Bar, a newsletter about theatre written by Fergus Morgan.
This is the free, Friday issue, which usually contains a Q&A with an exciting theatremaker or an essay on a theatre-related topic. This week, there is an interview with the David Doyle, executive producer at Jermyn Street Theatre and freelance lighting designer. After that, there are your three show recommendations: two in London and one in Scotland.
In case you missed it, here is Tuesday’s issue of Shouts And Murmurs, which is a weekly round-up of the most interesting reviews, interviews and articles on theatre elsewhere…
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David Doyle has a lot of irons in a lot of fires.
Raised in Dublin and now based in London, Doyle works both as executive producer at the West End’s mini-but-mighty 70-seat Jermyn Street Theatre and as an award-winning freelance lighting designer. In recent years, he has done the lighting design for several hit fringe shows, including Daisy Hall’s Bellringers, Nathan Queeley-Dennis’ Bullring Techno Makeout Jamz, YesYesNoNo’s Nation and we were promised honey!, Nathan Ellis’ Instructions, and Rafaella Marcus’ Sap, which was co-produced by Atticist, the company Doyle runs with director Jessica Lazar. He is currently working on Eleanor Tindall’s new play Tender, which opens at the Bush Theatre next week.
At Jermyn Street Theatre, meanwhile, working alongside artistic director Stella Powell Jones, Doyle has overseen a surge of exciting activity. Operating without public subsidy, the tiny theatre has produced acclaimed stagings of Abigail Pickard Price’s version of Pride And Prejudice, Sarah Ruhl’s interpretation of Eurydice, Stephen Unwin’s adaptation Laughing Boy, Katerine Moar’s wartime play Farm Hall, which transferred to the Theatre Royal Haymarket, and Roy Williams’ dramatisation of Samuel Selvon’s novel The Lonely Londoners, which transfers to Kiln Theatre next year.
You work as both executive producer at Jermyn Street Theatre and as a freelance lighting designer. How did that come about?
It is an unusual combination. It won’t surprise you that I am absolutely obsessed with theatre. After uni, trying to stitch together a career in theatre, I did literally every job apart from performing to earn enough money. As my career has gone on, I’ve managed to drop a lot but keep the stuff I enjoy, which is producing and lighting design. Producing means you don’t get to be in the room making things as much as you’d like to be, but lighting design allows me to do that. I love flicking between the two. Yesterday, I spent the morning working on producing stuff at Jermyn Street, and the afternoon in rehearsals for Tender at the Bush Theatre. I like that balance. It keeps me interested in and excited about the work that I’m making.
It sounds stressful having to think about so many different things to me.
I was a freelancer until five or six years ago, and as a freelancer you are spinning so many plates, working on multiple projects and having multiple conversations at once. I just developed a mentality that could handle that. I think doing so many different jobs – everything from stage management to sound design to directing – made me a better producer, too. It means I understand what everyone does and can talk to them in their language. So much of producing theatre is translating.
You also run the company Atticist with director Jessica Lazar.
We found each other a few years ago and liked each other’s work and thought it sat well together. We both have freelance careers but we come together to collaborate as Atticist. At the moment, we are staging one new show a year. We staged Rafaella Marcus’ Sap recently. Next year, we are staging David Greig’s Outlying Islands.
How did you get involved in theatre originally?
It was sort of an accident. I’m from Dublin and, until I moved to London to work at Jermyn Street Theatre, I had always lived in Dublin. I studied English Literature and Theology at Trinity. I thought I was going to be a journalist. The theatre scene at Trinity is really vibrant, though, and I was drawn into it. I directed Moisés Kaufman’s The Laramie Project and really enjoyed it. Then Eva O’Connor asked me to do the lighting design for her play Kiss Me And You’ll See How Important I Am at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2012. I didn’t tell them that I hadn’t done lighting before. The first time I touched a lighting desk was in the tech rehearsal in Edinburgh. That production won an award and transferred to London and Dublin. After that, people kept asking me to do stuff and I kept saying yes and I’ve never stopped.
You worked at the Abbey Theatre as a producing assistant for two years, too.
That was my first in-house job. It was incredible. I had never produced anything bigger than a studio show before, and suddenly I was at Ireland’s national theatre working with people like Marina Carr. I learned so much at the Abbey. You have to be at the top of your game every day somewhere like that. You can’t have an off day.
One thing that working at the Abbey crystallised for me was that the artists always need to come first in a project. The artists should always be at the core of whatever it is that you are doing. In tough times, when the budget becomes tight and you have to slim things down, the budget line for artists should be the thing you never touch. That was a real principle at the Abbey and it is something I try to maintain.
What inspires you, both as a producer and as a lighting designer?
The text is nearly always my starting point for both. With lighting, I can no longer do every project that I’m asked to do, so I do the ones where I really like the script. Often, lighting is about guiding an audience through a show. On a simple level, that is just directing their gaze. On a deeper level, though, it is about pulling themes and ideas and images out of a text and making them visible on stage. In small spaces with small budgets, lighting plays a big role in that.
When it comes to producing, I’m drawn to work that has a fifth gear to it, that pushes at the boundaries of what an audience expects. Eleanor Tindall’s Tender at the Bush Theatre, which I am doing the lighting design for, is a great example of that. It is a beautifully written and, well, tender queer romance that has this messy, exciting core. I fell in love with it when the director, Emily Aboud, sent it to me.
You run Jermyn Street Theatre with artistic director Stella Powell-Jones. Tell me about that.
I had never been to Jermyn Street Theatre before I took the job in 2021. At first, I was working with Tom Littler. I was involved in getting the theatre back on its feet after Covid and trying to push it towards making bigger and more ambitious work. Tom left to take over the Orange Tree Theatre in 2022, but I didn’t want to leave. Stella and I had a conversation about running it together as executive producer and artistic director. I think we are a great match. I think we really complement each other in our roles. Every day, the person I want to talk to most about stuff is Stella.
There is something electric about the relationship between the audience and the performers at Jermyn Street. It is not just because it is close. The theatre used to be the changing rooms of a restaurant. It is in the heart of the West End. There is this improbability about it that produces a charged atmosphere. For some reason, you can stage small, intimate shows at Jermyn Street and you can stage huge, expansive stories, too, like Roy Williams’ adaptation of Samuel Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners.
The toilets are across the stage, too.
I never thought I would spend so much time thinking about toilets. We have a model box meeting later for our new production of The Maids and I have spent 80 per-cent of my time worrying about how the audience will get to the toilets. I even had to replace one of the toilets myself, so I’ve learned some plumbing, too.
Jermyn Street Theatre attracts some extraordinary artists, too.
One of the things that is great about Jermyn Street is that theatrical legends can work alongside people at the start of their careers. The Lonely Londoners is a good example of that. Roy Williams has had an incredible career and the sound designer Tony Gayle has won an Olivier, and it was directed by Ebenezer Bamgboye, who is fairly early in his career. Collaborations like that can happen at Jermyn Street.
Our new season starts with a translation of Jean Genet’s The Maids by Martin Crimp. Then Jessica Lazar is directing David Greig’s Outlying Islands, one of my favourite plays. Then it is Original Theatre and Reading Rep’s co-production of Micheál Mac Liammóir’s The Importance Of Being Oscar. Then we have Little Brother, a new adaptation from Timberlake Wertenbaker. Then we have two Edinburgh hits in Samuel Rees and Gabriele Uboldi’s Lessons On Revolution and Eva O’Connor’s Chicken. The Lonely Londoners is transferring to the Kiln Theatre, too.
The theatre doesn’t receive any Arts Council England subsidy. There are only 70 seats and the top ticket price is only £35. How do you make ends meet?
Jermyn Street Theatre was set up as a place where artists could afford to make work and audiences could afford to see it, and that is still what we are trying to do. Without subsidy, we rely on a lot of fundraising. I spend a lot my time doing that. I have tried to diversify where that money comes from. It’s a mix of individual donors, trusts and foundations. Transferring shows, like we did with Katherine Moar’s Farm Hall and we are doing with The Lonely Londoners is really helpful, too.
We have to make sure we sell all our seats, too. As there are only 70, though, we can take a few more risks and still sell out. We have to be commercially savvy, but being small actually gives us a bit more freedom in terms of programming.
Kwame Kwei-Armah recently said it was unfair that subsidised theatres were underfunded and forced to operate more commercially as a result, yet still have to fulfil the obligations that come with public subsidy. Lyn Gardner suggested theatres in that position should think about new models. I wonder what your take on that is.
There are challenges to running a theatre without public subsidy, obviously, but there is a freedom to it, too. It means we can be incredibly quick and incredibly nimble. It means we can really prioritise artists. That is definitely a huge advantage.
Tender opens at the Bush Theatre on November 19. For more information, click here. For more information about Jermyn Street Theatre’s programme, click here.
Three shows to see next week
Jellyfish - A Play, A Pie and A Pint, until November 23
Brian Logan took over Glasgow’s long-running lunchtime theatre programme A Play, A Pie and A Pint earlier this year, when Jemima Levick headed across town to become artistic director of the Tron Theatre. Now, he is staging his first production at Oran Mor: Edinburgh-based Katy Nixon’s two-handed drama Jellyfish. This year’s winner of the David MacLennan Award, the play sees Kim Allan and Ahron Ashraf play a mother and son on a night out in Berlin. You can get tickets via the button below.
Or What’s Left Of Us - Soho Theatre, until November 16
This new show from celebrated theatre-making duo Rebecca Biscuit and Louise Mothersole - AKA Sh!t Theatre - was one of the most acclaimed productions at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe. Created after the death of director and collaborator Adam Brace, it sees Biscuit and Mothersole explore grief through the medium of folk music. TimeOut’s Andrzej Lukowski called it “a beguiling mix of lairy tomfoolery, piercing intelligence and beautiful song sharpened by raw emotion” and gave it five stars in his review. You can get tickets for its transfer to Soho Theatre via the button below.
Expendable - Royal Court Theatre, until December 21
This five-handed drama from playwright and poet Emteaz Hussain and director Esther Richardson is about the fallout from the shocking sexual exploitation of young girls in northern towns and cities throughout the 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s. Focusing on two Pakistani sisters whose community is impacted by the scandal, it runs Upstairs at the Royal Court until Christmas. You can get tickets via the button below.
Episode three of my podcast A History Of Scottish Drama In Six Plays was released on Monday. It is all about the explosion of theatrical activity that occurred in Scotland in the 1970s, and focuses on John McGrath and 7:84’s famous play The Cheviot, The Stag And The Black, Black Oil. You can listen to it wherever you get your podcasts.
That’s all for this issue
That is it for this week. If you want to get in touch about anything raised in this issue - or anything at all, really - just reply to this newsletter or email me at fergusmorgan@hotmail.co.uk. Or you can find me on Twitter/X, where I am @FergusMorgan.
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Fergus