David Lan is a man of many talents. A trained social anthropologist, documentary filmmaker – and actor, he somehow started yet another career, as artistic director of the Young Vic, nine years ago. He hasn’t looked back. With risk taking successes such as Debbie Tucker Green’s Generations, a play less than 30 minutes long with crates for seats and real cooking on stage, he doesn’t seem to be in any hurry to stop pushing the envelope. He tells Joy Francis about his love of the unique, the impact of new technology on the theatre and his plans for the Young Vic’s 40th anniversary.

March/April 2009

David Lan

You have trained as a social anthropologist, an actor and produced documentaries. What impact has your eclectic career had on your role as artistic director at the Young Vic?

I didn’t go down the track that many people in theatre went down. I started in the theatre pretty much by chance. I was very surprised when they gave me the job and I think they were a bit surprised the day after they had given it to me. I only produce work here that I really want to produce. And in the nine years I have been doing it now, I don’t think we have put on anything because we had to, to balance the budget or because it would sell well. We run this theatre with everybody in the company entirely behind the work that we do whether it is in the main house or in the smaller theatres. I’m not a career artistic director. I’m doing it because it enables me to do something that really interests me. By working with younger people, and thinking about how you can plan a season of work which is commercially viable within the context of a subsidised theatre, but which also allows people to do adventurous things, is what I really enjoy. Sometimes you pull it off, sometimes you don’t. But that is the objective. While at the same time being able to bring in artists, directors and designers who are, without exaggeration, the best in the world is brilliant. The only priority we have is that the work is exciting and engaging to its audience. And we want our work to be seen by the widest possible audience. It is triggered by the pleasure of being in an audience that is black, white, young, old, rich, poor, partly London, partly from all over the place. So the fact that I have got here by a circuitous route, has been useful in that everything you’ve ever done is useful to you in some way.

You were appointed back in 2000. Nine years on, what do you think are the key qualities to be an artistic director?

You’ve really got to take pleasure in other people’s work. The largest part of my work really is trying to create the circumstances for directors to create their vision. We recently came back from a trip with eight directors to the Maly Drama Theatre, St Petersburg. They do some fantastic work, but that theatre is run by one artistic director who pretty well directs all the shows. That theatre is just about him. That is a perfectly good way to run a theatre if the work is good. We aren’t doing that. We are doing something different. We run a theatre that is eclectic and which is about a range of work and not just about one director or one writer’s work. We are trying to encourage people to be brave and dream. Another thing is that we are a bunch of producers here. The senior people in the company are all engaged in the question of art and finance. If we have a show that is successful, that is brilliant and means we can make another show or give someone else the chance to do something. So its success with an audience is very important and its success in newspapers is a way of reaching your audience.

In the past two years you have staged some multi textured plays and have taken risks. Generations by Debbie Tucker Green was a 20-something minutes play at full price, and In the Red and Brown Water by Tarell Alvin McCraney was performed in water. What is the pull for you to take these kinds of risks?

Producing Debbie’s play in that way was complete lunacy really. We put the most incredible amount of resources into it. We bought people from South Africa. And because it was so complex, we only did a limited number of performances. The obligation is on me to try and deliver the play in the best circumstances. The only thing that matters is the relationship between the work and its audience. That is why I emphasise the financial aspect because any risk we take is based on the fact that we try and run the company in a way where we can do crazy and creative things. In the Red and Brown Water is another example. If I had to list ten of my favourite shows that we have done in the time I have been here those two you have mentioned would be on the list. I just love the fact that they are so rich and complex and they took the audience into something different. I don’t think I’ll see anything like those two again and that is why you do it really.

American playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney’s The Brothers Size has been produced twice at the Young Vic and his In the Red and Brown Water - all in the space of a year. Isn’t there a risk that you are perceived as giving too much attention to an American writer over British talent? What is your response to that possible perception?

When I read Tarell’s play The Brothers Size I thought, this is the sort of work I want to produce. I have to trust that and go with what I think matters in the moment. As for him being American, more and more I feel I’m just not interested in that. We live in the world, together on the planet, for better or worse. I’m interested in people who live in London, but I don’t feel a special responsibility in that respect. I just want to work with the best writers and directors we can work with or the best or ones I have a strong feeling about. I was born in South Africa, my grandparents came from Lithuania and Russia, and I have been here for a long time so what am I? I want this theatre to be a theatre of the world.

Your tenth anniversary as artistic director at the Young Vic is next year. Any plans, and how do you think you are going to top what you have achieved so far as the past few years have been impressive?

I can’t think in those terms. I can’t think about the ‘topping’ thing. Let’s just do the next thing and we’ll try and pull it off. I never want to do the same thing twice. Maybe the next thing will be the worse year we’ve ever had. It’s actually the 40th anniversary of the theatre next year. The fact that I’ve been here ten years isn’t of any interest. We are thinking about how we can have a 40th anniversary without saying 40 - ever.

What do you think are the possible opportunities and challenges facing your theatre in the near future?

There is something very interesting happening, which is the very powerful intervention of new forms of technology. I’m just beginning to be sensitive to it. Audiences are so fast now and educated by film and TV; the relationship we have to the music through iPods. The consequences of these changes are unimaginable. And the theatre is beginning to pick that up. The next show we are doing has Katie Mitchell’s directing. It’s an English Opera Dido and Aeneas [ After Dido ]. She has completely taken the thing apart and uses a lot of film, much in the way she has worked before at the National Theatre. I’ve sat in on her rehearsals and thought, I have no idea what they are doing in this room but it is very interesting. Another thing that I think is challenging, important and the future is how more and more people from different historical, cultural language backgrounds are saying let’s do something together. You live in Pakistan and I live in London. Is there a way that we can be authentic and do something new? It is part of the work that we are doing. We are so much in each other’s pockets now through the internet, through Skype. We have such powerful access to other people’s experiences it has got to be a good thing. The theatre needs to respond to it - somehow. It’s a big challenge, but an exciting one.

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