OK, I'm starting by stating the date which is February the 7th 2024 and the location, which is the Riverside Studios. My name is Susanna Herbert and I am interviewing Rachel Tackley who is the Creative Director, Riverside Studios. Rachel, would you introduce yourself and briefly explain your relationship to Riverside Studios?
I hate this because there's so many things I could say and so many things I couldn't so I'll pick out what might be interesting. So, I've been the creative director for Riverside Studios for probably nearly coming on four years, maybe 3.5 years, started just as pandemic hit and my original agreement was that I would come and “help out for it” unquote whilst the theatre was undergoing some difficulties and I'm still here. I'm not sure if I'm still helping but I'm still here.
OK, so you were invited to come and help in what capacity?
Well, as Creative Director. So the short story is that I was on the board just for a few months before I was asked to resign from the board and come and help out because the, so I was on the board pre-pandemic. I, then, as the pandemic hit, it became apparent that the trustees were in a bit of a pickle because the previous Creative Director who was, actually I think his title was Artistic Director, was William Burddett-Coutts. And he was, no, there was a lot on, everyone was, you know, running, running around, wondering what to do next. Of course, William has two other big companies that he was running at the time. So, I was asked to come and help out for a bit to get the company and the Trust through a...
It had only just reopened, I mean, literally only just. I think it opened in November 2019, we opened in November 2019 and I think I started at the beginning of 2020 if I've got my dates right, and so because my background is in theatre programming and producing, it's not like they just asked any random member of the board to come. It was, it was basically to do that, to help programming and, I guess at the time, we only thought the pandemic was three weeks, didn't we? And then it turned out to be a lot more. So yeah, here I still am.
So how did you first become involved? You talk about becoming a trustee, but if you were elsewhere?
Yeah. So how did I become a trustee? That's quite simple because the, the Board of Riverside Trust, so the Riverside Trust were looking for a new Chair. And, Greg Parson was my Chair of English Touring Theatre where I worked a few years before, and he asked me what I thought. He came and we had a coffee in town, and he asked me what I thought about him potentially going for this trusteeship. And we started to have a brief discussion about some of the issues that he knew the Trusts were facing, and some of the things that he would be facing as Chair of the Board and because I'm never really short of an opinion then we shared a lot of, we had a long conversation about, you know, what the Trust was thinking of doing etc, etc. Anyway, he decided he was going to apply, and he did get appointed and then he asked me if I would join the board and, and I said yes.
OK, so can you describe the first time you walked in? I suppose there'll be more than one first time, first time you walk in as a punter and the first time you walk in as a, I suppose somebody who's responsible.
Well, the first time of course was the old building. I used to cycle across Hammersmith Bridge every day and this was going, oh God, this was 100 years ago when I was a student and I was living in Shepherd's Bush and going to college at Roehampton University, so cycling over Hammersmith Bridge every day. And I honestly thought that Riverside Studios was too cool for me, and too cool for school, and I couldn't possibly go there. But then, and I and I'm probably misremembering this, but as far as I remember it, the, my tutor at Roehampton was on the board here at Riverside and he was, and I wish I could remember his name because he was really responsible for kind of giving me a sense of what I actually wanted to do. I knew I wanted to work in theatre, I knew I didn't want to act and, but what did I want to do? And, and it was, this was a time when the GLC was being abolished and everyone was doing free concerts at County Hall. And I got very politicised in the kind of arts management political way, and everyone was demonstrating and everyone was trying to free Nelson Mandela and, you know, all of that. And I just loved it and that's kind of why I thought Riverside was too kind of cool because you had to be, like, incredibly politicised and incredibly front footed and very, very trendy.
Anyway, I kind of got over myself and came here and saw a production of something and, you'd know better than I would, but it was, it was Complicite, Theatre Complicite and it was, I think it was pre Lucy Kavrol, so I can't, I can't remember the name of the show, but I saw Katherine Hunter playing a character of somebody in this show and I just thought she was extraordinary, absolutely extraordinary. And I thought, oh my God, that's, that's kind of where I'd love, you know, God, can you imagine how brilliant it would be to end up at Riverside Studios? Obviously running it because I was ambitious. And so that was the first time I came, at least I think it was it, it was certainly one of the first times. I'm pretty sure I came to see Michael Clark versus a Teapot at some point, dancing.
And this would have been the 80s?
Yes, let's be kind and say late 80s (laugh). But it would have been, yes. And I saw Cheek by Jowl here for the first time. So, Complicite, Cheek by Jowl, Michael Clark, those, I think achingly trendy at the time, companies were all here.
And the one thing I didn't see, which is the one thing everyone else saw, it was Miss Julie which I didn't see here but, yeah, so that was the first time I came when it was old Riverside and then I came here when it was a building site. William showed me around and we did a tour of the building, it wasn't quite hard hat, I think it had just stopped being hard hat and the, there was a, yeah, I did a tour as a potential new Board member. But the company hadn't moved in so the first Board meeting was at the church just down the road and I, I remember getting in thinking, I don't know how anyone knows their way around this building because it was just white corridors after white corridors, and it took me six months to get, to get the nerve to come a different way from my car to my office because when you're downstairs in the dressing rooms, it's just a labyrinth of all the stuff that goes on down there. And, yeah, you have to, you have to know where you're going or take, and actually, you say take your phone but it doesn't always work down there. So I think it's a bit like Hansel and Gretel, you need to take kind of crumbs with you so that you can follow your route back. So, yes, and I thought my feelings when I came into it and it was a building site, you could still see that it was, you know, you could see what it was going to be, but it wasn't quite that yet and I thought it was extraordinary. One of things I did think was how nice William's office was. I mean, it is extraordinary, it's not this office, no, Tony's got William's office now. I don't quite know how I let that happen but, hey, I think I was generous because when I started, I was only doing a day or two a week and because of the pandemic, not all of them were here. I was like, you know, doing a lot of work from home and I think when we all kind of started to move back, I was still only doing a couple of days a week. So it seemed a bit mad that I would move into William's gorgeous office overlooking the Thames and Hammersmith Bridge, and whilst Tony sat in my, I'm not complaining, this is a very, very nice office and my balcony does overlook Hammersmith Bridge so what’s not to love.
[8.57] Well, you've answered quite a lot of the things that we're going to cover, so I'll come back to them. But you touched on the impression that Riverside made on you when you were younger. What do you feel now is distinctive?
That's a really interesting question. I think what we've tried, what I've tried to hang on to, is that sense of it being something other than what is already on offer in London, and that's a really hard thing to pin down. And maybe you can only then define it by what it's not. And, and also, it's not always possible to do that all the time. I think I always look for work that is, that has got something to say, and I know pretty much every theatre in the, in the country would say that. But it's not, it's, it's much easier to define Riverside by what it's not. And what it's not, is it's not a producing house, so we are subject to the availability of work that is being produced by the people, and so that makes sometimes choices very easy because there's no choice or very little choice.
But I think work that I'm drawn to is, it has to, because of the financial situation of Riverside, be self-financing. So we are essentially, at the moment a hall for hire, and that makes programming quite difficult, because we are then only able to programme work that can, that has raised its own money and is kind of ready to go. Or work that's so, kind of, at the extreme young grass roots level that it doesn't need a lot of financial support, that we can just, you know, giving space, time, energy and enthusiasm to a project sometimes is enough to get it off the ground. So I think Studio Three for me is about that kind of cutting-edge work, new work, some of which is very early doors. Bitesize Festival is, is absolutely about new, new work, and we do support very young producers through the enormity of putting on a show, but we don't have any money to put into it. So I always say to people, we have no money, and so we, what we can give you is time and effort and enthusiasm and space, and if that's enough for your project, that's great.
But what it isn't is somewhere that can take on, that can commission work. It's not the Bush or the Lyric - we’ve reasonably small studios, so it's not a place where we could put on massive work in terms of big, fully fledged musicals or anything like that. So I guess my my passion is always, I'm always drawn to the kind of political with a small P, and community-focused, and something that I, do you know, I love a good cry in the theatre, so anything that's going to make me laugh or like, make me cry. I just think, well, if it makes me laugh and cry, then the chances are it's going to do the same for other people, but I’m also very aware of the fact that I don't programme work that's just for me because it's not, you know, its audience isn't exclusively middle-aged white women. So, I'm very aware of trying to programme to the extent that I can, work for a diversity of audience, and that sometimes means that I give that decision-making ability to other people in the organisation.
So with Bitesize, for example, I don't get in the way of Bitesize, I just, and therefore, when colleagues want to, you know, my various colleagues over the years have programmed it, and I've helped and supported, but I haven't offered a judgement or an opinion. Obviously, if I thought they were doing something absolutely horrendous, then, then I'd step in. But you know, it's not, it's not for me, it's, so I think they're better placed, you know, the younger generation, in a better place to decide what is provocative for them and what's inspirational for them, so I stay out of that largely. Doesn’t mean to say I don’t go and watch it, I love it, but, yeah, so I'm answering about 1000 questions here, I realise.
So, what is Riverside? It's, it's kind of, it's a, it's a bit kooky. I like kooky. I think we do good kooky. And when it's at its best, it's provocative and inspirational, and crowd-pleasing. You know, when we're at our best, we sell hundreds of tickets every single night, and people come and have a good time. I love the fact that you can come here and eat, drink, see a show, go to the cinema, watch some comedy, and that there's, you know, there's always something, that I would imagine that people could come and see if they're, you know, sat at home and they just want to wander down the Thames, and walk in. There's, there's, I hope there's something, that's kind of, so it's kind of rooted in its community but that, you know, God, look at the community around us - it's really, really rich and really diverse. So there's sort of, I don't feel like my programme is, programming is curtailed to a certain audience or certain demographic.
Would I like it to be infinitely more trendy? Yeah. Would I like to have lots of money so that I could programme and make work that I think is, you know, ground-breaking and giving the creative envelope a good shove? Absolutely, absolutely I would, you know, that would be my first prize. But as I say, it's much, it's much more reactive than that. And that doesn't mean to say that I'm not talking to some amazing producers who are producing such work. But yeah, it would be so much, you know, it would be great to do it yourself and then just do, you know, to be able to do a number of productions a year that you could commission. So I, I think part of my job at the moment is persuading the people who I know are producing extraordinary work, or who are likely to produce extraordinary work, to think about Riverside first. Because, of course, there's lots of other places you could go, instead of Riverside, so I think, yeah.
Part 2: Rachel Tackley, 7th of February 2024. Let’s go back in. What’s Riverside offered to you that you might not have got elsewhere? So what impact has it had on your life?
Well, that’s interesting, isn't it? If I was being flippant, I would say it’s given me a lot more miles on my car and on the train, because actually I live in Cambridgeshire so getting here is, yeah, it’s a journey. My, when I very, going back to work kind of post-university, I worked, I used to run a, a, what didn’t I used to run? I used to be the finance manager of – God knows why they gave me the job – of the Half Moon Theatre in – well, I know why they gave me the job – of the Half Moon Theatre in the Mile End Road, which was a commune proper, deeply rooted in its community, in the kind of community of the East End of London. And I loved it, and it was the, my, along with Riverside and being Head of Drama at Channel 4 – I told you I was ambitious – that was, was my dream job. And that kind of really got me fascinated by community theatre and I loved the fact.... But then it’s kind of like my background has been both in producing and programming in Commercial Theatre as well as not for profit.
And the thing that I love, one of the many things I love about Riverside, is that it gives me an opportunity to kind of play to my three strengths, which is Community Theatre, Commercial Theatre and not for profit Theatre. And I love that, and I love the fact that it's not exclusively either of those three things. Here's me again defining what Riverside isn't, but it's yeah, the opportunity to enable, if you like, work from, or from both kind of fairly commercial and also heavily subsidised, potentially international companies, and, but in a place that is rooted in its community,
It's very easy having run theatres regionally. It's much easier to be a community theatre in Chichester or in Milton Keynes, or where you know physically where you are, and there's probably not another one within at least a 20 mile radius unless you start, get to some of the bigger cities and it’s, I love the challenge of Riverside. Riverside is really hard. I mean, it's really hard. It's really hard to programme. It's really hard to make it work financially. It's difficult and it's awkward, and the buildings, bits of it are really annoying, things that we didn't get right when it was being rebuilt. And all of that is very, very difficult but I just love that challenge. I'm a real, you know, goat climbing a hill in a very Capricorn kind of way. And if you put a wall in front of me, then I have to find a way around it, or through it or over it or something and I love that. I love the awkwardness of it. I love the fact that, you know, part of me does love the fact that we've got no money and never have had any money. I walked in when there was a huge great deficit and, you know, just being able to pay the bank every month was a real, you know, hats off to us moment. It's like, oh, thank God we made the interest payments, you know, and that challenge is really exciting. It's also incredibly debilitating but it is exciting. So I love, I love the fact that I'm absolutely exhausted because I love being busy and I love a challenge. And my God, this keeps me busy, and it's been challenging.
Wow, yeah, I'm sure there could have been, um yeah, easier theatre jobs.
Yeah, totally. You know, and especially when you think you've only come to help out for a bit and suddenly you go, we owe the bank how much? How much?
Talk me through that. At what point did you realise it's not going to be helping out for a bit?
Oh, do you know, that’s a really interesting question, because I was sitting in the cafe here, post Covid, or at least one of the gaps in the many Covids, and a Board member, Tim Lafoy, who, I think was still on the Board then and he lives the other side of Hammersmith Bridge. And he wandered over the bridgeh and I was sitting downstairs in the cafe having a coffee with a producer, and he wandered over just to sort of say hi and how was it going? And it hadn't, I don't think I've been here, maybe I'd only been here a few months, maybe 6 months, and he said, how's it going? And I said, Tim, I think you're gonna have to take this job out of my cold dead hand. And he went, that's interesting. So I guess I, I guess I knew pretty quickly that I loved it, even though it is hard, and having gone through the administration process or having you know, going through it and when friends and colleagues asked me how it's going and isn't it awful? And I said, it's really hard, what it is is, you know, keeping your, keeping your venue open whilst you're in administration is really hard, but it's not miserable. It's never miserable here, it really isn't. The team are amazing and if someone's, we've all got each other's backs. Everyone's working incredibly hard, and we've all got each other's backs, and so it's never miserable, but it is hard.
I'd like to know about the people, the people here, I think, memorable colleagues that suggests that all the ones you don't mention aren't memorable at all.
Memorable, did I say memorable colleagues?
No, it says memorable colleagues on the crib? sheet
Sorry, it's your question. We’re such a small team that, you know, you pick out memorable colleagues and you've covered 90% of the team here.
So can you talk about any of the people?
My memorable colleagues? Obviously, the archive department are a bit dodgy but (both laugh), well, obviously, my key colleague is Tony Lancaster who's the exec director and together we're jointly CEOs. And even though he hasn't been there, here more than, I don't know, I'm guessing 4.5/5 years, he's, with a, one or two notable exceptions, one of the longest service members of staff and I'm not that far behind him. So what I'm trying to say is that almost everybody here has been hand-picked by the people who currently run the place and that, it makes it kind of extraordinary because we haven't really inherited people. A few people we have inherited, thank goodness and not everyone's sort of starting from scratch, but I would say 95% of the team here have been here less than 4 years, and sometimes considerably less, so everyone's been recruited in, from the same perspective. Nobody ever, there's very few people that have worked here kind of in the heyday of, you know, in the 80s and 90s, although a couple have, so everyone's new and everybody understands where we are. Nobody's, nobody's misled about what the situation here is. You know, the kind of we don't have any money has been the first thing we enter any kind of interview with. It's, you know, it's we all know we're all in it together, we're not keeping anything from anyone. So all, in that way, all of our colleagues are the same and so yes, Tony is the exec director and he essentially works on the kind of business and management and structural and finance side of things and I work on the creative side of things. But the truth is that I could, you know, Tony could do 70% of my job and I could do 70% of his.
So there's a big, if you had a Venn diagram, then our little circles would overlap a lot and we talk about everything we don't, other than, you know, decisions you make quickly and move on from then, we don't make significant decisions on anything without discussing it, sometimes endlessly, and without looking at a million different options and then asking some colleagues and then deciding. But often the decisions that we make, there's no choice. I mean, you know, we're rarely looking at, you know, which luxury yacht are we going to buy this week, it's the opposite. It's like we have to do the only thing that we can possibly do, most of the time.
So I'm going to rephrase that a little bit, but you've got, what performances or exhibitions stand out in your time? I'm going to add to that what days or incidents, and I am guessing that the time when you were told Rally for Riverside has done its best but it's failed, you're now in Receivership, would be one of those. But if you like, you can start off with the performances or exhibitions, but I don't want us to lose track of the administration moment.
OK, so golly, there's loads but real standouts are probably Operation Mincemeat, which I'm a huge fan of, and obviously it's gone on to be incredibly successful and that's actually when you know your question about what is Riverside, that its place is not to be the kind of you know, the seed bed for that, although it can be but, you know, the seed bed for Operation Mincemeat was the diorama. It then went to Southwark Playhouse, and then Riverside was next and then the West End. So it's like we're not, you know, that's where we are on the trajectory. So I loved that. You know, we did, a production called Cages here, which was fascinating. I don't think it got nearly the recognition it deserved, because it was sort of where film and... Well, let me say this, when, it was a show that was brought over from LA and when I watched it on screen, there was a character in the play which was a play, and it was kind of play, come musical, come concert, come film, come real life. There was a character in the piece that I thought was real, but it was a hologram and I just thought this, I thought, was pretty mind blowing, and in terms of what it can do for the industry and how the next step and I'm not saying it's the answer to everything, it's not the answer to anything, it's a really great idea that's fascinating and interesting and it will get moved forward, but I don't think that as an industry we were quite ready to look at it. It's like we have to be, like it has to be a perfect concert, it has to be a perfect musical, it has to be a perfect play in order to get the five stars and the rave reviews and it was imperfect but it was absolutely brilliant how do we take the next step with augmented reality or virtual reality and how, you know, what are the, what can it do, and how do we learn from this and how do we go well that works and that didn't so we'll change that and move that. So I loved the audacity of doing that particularly in a space that was, you know, that Riverside has to be moulded, those studios have to be moulded into individual spaces for every single show and every show is different.
And again, it's yeah, it's hard work to turn it into a experiential, yeah, an experiential place where you could come in and have a different experience. So I loved Cages, loved Operation Mincemeat. Of course, Ulster American, which we've just done, was extraordinary, extraordinary and incredibly successful and I loved it, saw it a number of times. It's really strange how quite often one's experience of these things is altered by how one feels about the people who are doing it. The people who produced Cages were really lovely, the people who produced Operation Mincemeat were really lovely, the people who produced Ulster American were really lovely. And when I say produce, I mean in and around on the stage management, the creative team and the producers, and then you can have something really brilliant and if it's got, you know, someone complete arsehole in it, then you just think you sort of go off wanting to go and see it really. So there haven't been many arseholes at Riverside in the last few years, I'm very glad to say. I do have a strict kind of no wanker policy, I really don't, really don’t want to work with difficult people because there are lots of very talented, not difficult people. I always think it's a question of degree, you know, if you're 10% annoying and 8% brilliant, then I'll go with 8% brilliant, and they're not annoying, thanks very much.
Anyway, other things that I have loved, we did a show by Tim Walker called Bloody Difficult Women in Studio Three, which was about, Gina Miller and Theresa May and the Daily Mirror and we, I loved that because we were we were threatened with legal action and that caused quite a, quite a stir for a while, when we thought we were, I don't know, we thought we were sailing fairly close to the wind, but I didn't think we were sailing so close to the wind that it was going to be libelous, everything was in the public domain and it was a great show and I really enjoyed working on that.
Bitesize, I just love, maybe I love it because I don't programme it, but I love the energy of it and the fact that we do usually three shows a night and tickets are incredibly cheap, and just people who are starting out can do their first production here or the second production here. And when you think about it, Riverside, you know, Ken Branagh's company who might have been called Renaissance I think it was, started here and you just think, look at it, you know, look at Ken Branagh now, and what was lovely was that when Ken Branagh did, when we were screening his film Belfast, and because he'd also wanted to do a show here during lockdown, which I think got as far as going on sale and we were going to do the Browning Version, which he was going to be in but then his staff, well his team, half the team caught Covid and it just couldn't then fit into the timescale. And he has been fabulous to Riverside, he did a little thing, little intro, for Belfast, which we’ve put on screen and people that have worked in, started out here, you know, people like Ian McKellen coming back and doing talkbacks for us or introducing films for us or you know, Trevor Nunn came and did an introduction to his screening of his production of Othello when we had Othello in Studio Three.
So I, there's been lots of stand outs. I've seen more foreign language films in Riverside than I've ever seen in my life, which I love. Didn't think I would but do. I love, I love the weird stuff that we've done. So when Eddie Izzard was running, was going to run marathons in every capital city in Europe as a post Brexit moment, comment, and actually nobody could travel abroad, so she came into our River Room, our little room facing the river and ran a marathon every day in January. And, and running a marathon not being enough for you know anyone else, then went straight from our River Room into Studio Two, which was completely sealed off because this was lockdown, and no one was allowed other than Eddie and her team in the River Room and then went directly into Studio Two and did a live – oh, the marathons were all live-streamed – and she interviewed people, culminating in George Clooney, like running a marathon on a treadmill.
Yeah, so it's like today's Paris, so there were pictures of, you know, the Arc de Triumph or, you know, whatever, Eiffel Tower, and then the next day was Rome, so there was the Coliseum and etcetera, etcetera. And as she ran she was basically like a radio, I mean, nonstop talking and running a whole marathon. And she ran 32 marathons, I think, in 31 days and then after every single night, then went and did a stand-up routine, which was recorded and live broadcast, literally, I think all over the world, in Studio Two. And that's a really weird thing to do, I mean, I think it's a fabulous thing to do and it's, in the way that we were all kind of working our way of, how do we carry on working in Covid or, you know, on the edges of Covid and so I've really loved the kooky stuff that we did. Winnie the Pooh did a, was here, actually at the time when we went into administration, and they did a beautiful thing in the foyer for their kind of opening night and invited families along, and it was almost like a 100 acre wood appeared in our atrium. And you know, that was stunning and I loved the production because it was, it was a really difficult time for everybody here and it was kind of like therapy: you could go and watch, I don't know, maybe it was 60 minutes of Winnie the Pooh, maybe it wasn't even that long straight through, it was just like things are getting too hard, I think I'll just go and watch Winnie the Pooh (laughs). You know, Winnie the Pooh bobbles along and he, you know, goes to look for some honey and not much happens and he meets a bee and, you know, and it was just wonderful, and so lots of lots of different things for the strangest of reasons and I'm sure ....
You've taken me straight to administration then, tell me, tell me about that. I mean, you don't need to go into every detail, but ...
Well, that was hideous, it is hideous. We so nearly didn't. We so nearly didn’t, we tried so hard to find the money, the money being the money to pay back the enormous debt that we had with the bank.
How much?
£24 million. You know, I joke when my friends say what are you doing? Why Riverside and I was going, I don't know why I'm going to, you know, work in a theatre with a £24 million deficit, in the middle of a Covid pandemic, it's like you've got to be a bit insane. It's like, yeah, well, they chose the right person there, didn't they? So, so it was hard because we were hitting the, we were like a skimming stone, it just takes off in the end and you think, actually, maybe we'll be all right. We're going to you know, it looks like so and so might give us some money, or might make some kind of extra borrowing. The bank were incredibly supportive and many times, as we kind of hit the water and bounced up again, it was because, because they were, you know, were enabling us to stay open despite the enormous deficit. And there were a number of people we spoke to about, about buying the building, about making large donations, or, but this was Covid, you know, and, and everybody was sympathetic and everybody was supportive, but nobody actually wrote a cheque.
And I would say right up until, right up until the day it happened, we were having, Tony and I were having meetings, we're not going to say with whom, but with some parties who we really thought we gonna, wade in. And then sometimes no is a really horrible answer. But sometimes if it's kind of, you know, just get on with it, you know, it's like rip the plaster off, it's gonna hurt. And it was a bit like that, like, for a long time, we just were ploughing on with every avenue we could possibly find. And the bank you know, the bank were incredibly supportive: we knew their support was going to run out. And it was, we were, we were kind of like swan-like, trying to glide across the water whilst underneath, you know, we were in a, Tony and I were panicking. We were worried. We were stressed. We were anxious, but again, having, having kind of each other in this scenario, and other colleagues that were aware of the situation. Because it's really hard: you want, you want to tell the team that things are really, really hard, and you've got people coming to you and asking for things that you know you can't possibly provide and, and coming up with great ideas that normally you would want to fund and, and all you can come up with is that, you know, we don't have the money at the moment or, you know, let's just keep talking about a particular project or particular idea. And sometimes you want to go, you know, you have literally no idea how much money we don't have.
[23.38] Yeah, and of course, since then, you've had to.... uncertainty is a fact of every day.
Yeah, yeah, there's.... So the way that I feel at the moment is the lead up to the decision was, was very, the lead up to it was very, very long, but we genuinely thought we were going to fix this. And I'm a really driven, determined person. I was going to fix this. I was going to save Riverside Studios, and as was Tony, this was what we were going to do, and to find, to suddenly realise that you just can't, that the hole is too big, that it's too difficult. Actually, I’m getting a bit emotional now, but it's, you know, it's, it's, that's hard, because I, I don't set out to fail. I, you know, I always set out and we were so nearly there. Yeah, so it was a, it was a bit of a smack in the face when we had to go into administration. Then you had to, we had to tell everyone, and telling the staff was really hard, really hard.
[24.52] Were you tempted to leave.
No. No. Some people and friends ask me why I'm still here (laughs). I think it starts off with: ‘why the fuck are you still at Riverside, Rachel, it's not your train set anymore?’ one friend said to me, and it's like, well, I don't want to leave. I love it here. The team are fabulous, there's so much more that we can do and we haven't, we haven't failed. We failed to, for the original trust, you know, we failed producers that we've worked with, and we failed the bank and, and that's extremely difficult, but it's still open. We haven't failed the people of Hammersmith and Fulham, we haven't failed the, you know, the producing community, the industry. And I think I'm, I'm still absolutely determined that Riverside will come out of administration and will survive.
[25.46] You mentioned Hammersmith and, Hammersmith and Fulham, you, the relationship between the theatre, the Arts Centre and the Borough, it's quite complicated. Do you know how, how you relate to Hammersmith, this place?
I do know how we relate now. I know that when I was on the Board briefly, and when I started working here, there was no relationship. There was the opposite of a relationship. There was an incredibly antagonistic. There was a cultural, Hammersmith and Fulham were writing a cultural development plan just as I arrived. I’ve got a copy of the first draft in my, it's one of the things I do I, I run a mostly paper-free office, but it's the one bit of paper I keep because it's got my scribbles on it: doesn't mention Riverside. I think it mentions Riverside once, but only, this is, look, if one wants to be kind, you'd say, well, Riverside wasn't open then, but everyone knew it was here, and everyone knew it was about to be opened. And there was an incredibly antagonistic, I, and I have my own view as to how and why that happened, but. And it was widely understood it wasn't, you know, wasn't, everyone knows, and I just thought that's really weird. Why? Why isn't there a much more collaborative and collegiate? I think, I think a lot of it has to do with some personalities involved. However, I then decided, well, this is ridiculous, we need to do something about this. So Tony and I slightly tried to mount a charm offensive in Hammersmith and Fulham, which for a long time didn't really get anywhere because nobody really wanted to talk to us. We invited everybody to everything and we, and in the end, I did get to speak to Stephen Cowan, who's the leader of the council.
And it just sort of started to thaw, not as a result of that, of that move, literally at a kind of, an event that was for Arts organisations, I think, in the Borough. And we just started to take part in conversations and we started then, once you, once you nose your way in and you make sure you're on the invitation list, and then we started to put, we put together a kind of business, the small kind of business consortium, of businesses are along the Thames Path from kind of the pub, down by, it it The Dove, The Dove, and then all the way to kind of River Cafe. And there were a lot of really fabulous businesses literally facing the river, but also just one or two blocks back, and which we kind of ran on behalf of Hammersmith and Fulham and they, because now, of course, and old Riverside used to back, the back wall used to go straight onto the river, so there was no path in front of Riverside, you had to walk behind it, much as you do now with Fulham football ground. But as part of the redevelopment, we've got this path that now we can walk in front of Riverside and so there, now there's renewed interest in that. And I know how long. how long is the path and how long, you know, can you walk literally along the side of the front of the river? So there was a kind of riverfront business organisation which we, which we ran, for which we still, and you know, host here: those kinds of things. And then, and then when things were going decidedly tits up for the organisation, of course, we wrote to Hammersmith and Fulham and said, we're literally going to have to close fairly soon, and we really need to talk to you because we really need you to be aware of what can happen. And relations were already thawing, and were much more positive and actually, Hammersmith and Fulham have been brilliant, you know, for this, through this whole process, and I genuinely believe that they want to keep Riverside as a functioning arts and community centre and I, yeah, there, there's now, it's like we're part of the, we're kind of in the gang now, So that's, that's been incredibly positive, really hard when it, you know, before that existed, because you felt like you're battling people who are on, who should be on the same side as you. And now we're all on the same side, so good.
[30.35] So you have the support, or at least not the hostility of the Borough. What about the immediate surroundings? You’re, you’re in a residential area, you've got people, families, schools. But you're also a massive sort of transport hub just up the road. What, what is this area? How does it connect to this particular building and artistic ambition?
Well, if you look at our immediate audience, if you like,or our community around us, then we've got some, some big social housing estates, some really big social housing estates and, very close to us. And then we have some with, with it, you know, the, the social deprivation that that brings. And then we have some extremely large, very beautiful houses in kind of Chiswick, Putney, Fulham, Barnes. And then, and my, historically, one defines one's kind of target audience as the kind of doughnut around, we are the middle, and, you know we are the hole in the middle, and, but actually, I would say at least 40% of our doughnut’s fish, because, of course, we've got the Thames River that, you know, that runs past us. So on the opposite side of the bridge – and my God, I didn't think I'd ever be so engaged into what happens to a bridge going over the Thames as I have been whilst I'm here – so we, so yes, very, very mixed demographic.
And as I, you know, said earlier, that's kind of what I love about this, because it's not one size fits all. And what that means is that when we programme work, I think really carefully about the, the first thing I think about is who it's for, who's going to come and see it and why. And if I can't answer that question, then I don't programme it unless I haven't got anything else, in which case I, probably not, just because we need the money. But, but it's yeah, it's, so you know, it's not really answering the question in any depth, but we have, we have a kind of community team and we have a Dive In programme which reaches out to people on their local estates who can get very, very cheap, if not free tickets, to a lot of what we do. We make sure that there is, there are always tickets available, or at least offered at a kind of really low entry level, and fully aware that some of the tickets for Ulster American were, you know, incredibly expensive. It didn't alter the fact that there were some very, very cheap ones on offer when we went, first went on sale. And, and, and that, that's really important, it's not just something that, we don't have to do. It's not like Hammersmith and Fulham are giving us any money to run our community department. We're doing because we think it’s important. We're not supported by anyone.
You don’t have Arts Council funding?
We don’t have Arts Council funding, we have literally no funding. We do have some some generous donors who've given us, you know, sums of money and, and some founder members that, to enable that. But we, and we have things like, you know, you can round up your ticket price on the website so that, then money, money then goes to our Dive In programme. But it's, it's, you know, the staffing of that is all, you know, funded and paid for by Riverside Studios. And it's really vitally important, vitally important, to me and Tony that that didn't get swept up in the administration. When everybody's looking at what each penny buys you, and where we're spending each penny, then it's really important that that didn't get wiped off the table, which would have been very easy to do. It's like, oh, well, that that's gonna, you know, that's a loss-making thing because what we're doing is subsidising tickets. But producers have been incredibly generous in terms of, they know that, they know the conversation is coming. And, and mostly it's, it's offered up as, and also it's, it's very, if you've got a show that, that, you know, we quite often find that the gap... Previews tend to do, to do well then, then there's the press night, and everyone works up into the press night, and everyone's like hoorah, hoorah. The day after the press night before the reviews have kicked in and before the (if they're good) before the audience, then then it's a great time to go: actually, people in our local community who otherwise wouldn't afford to go to the theatre – come and see it.
And we do find that in having done this, you know, so many times now that there are certain points when we can offer tickets to people in the, you know, in our Dive In membership. Our Dive In membership is anybody who lives in Hammersmith and Fulham can be a Dive In member, if your house that you live in is below level something, I want to say G, but I don't know what, I don't know if it is G. Basically, if your if your house is..
So it’s kind of means-tested
Yes, it's kind of means-tested as in where you live (your residence) not necessarily what you earn. But one assumes that if you live in a small flat, that is not, you know, not worth as much as a huge five bedroom house in Barnes, then that is means-tested in that, in that way,
[36.24] This, I know you're very close, this is, this is young people? Just one question, I suppose, and then there are two more questions both of which can be compressed. So your work, the Riverside’s work with young, do you get school children and students?
Yeah, we do. Yeah, we do. We have, we have good relationships with the schools, the local schools. And when there's anything that is relevant to the curriculum, we're very mindful of the fact that the schools and parents don't have the money to be sending their kids to, you know, on school trips for everything, transport is incredibly difficult, you know, we're very mindful of all of that. We do. So, yes, we do, we do subsidise school tickets, and we also try to encourage independent theatre going for the kind of 14-plus. So we do schools groups, in terms of young schools and primary schools. And we do that, not only in the shows that we do, but in the exhibitions that we do, and the talks that we do, and the workshops that we offer. And then we do things in the holidays. And again, film plays a big part here, in the cinemas. We can do age-appropriate screenings during holidays, and we can, we do, we're really good at kind of wrapping round. What really thrills me about programming Riverside is when you can wrap around something that's happening in the studio with an exhibition and something's happening in the cinema, and we can be really cheeky with that, so that we, you know, we did, London Chamber Orchestra came a few weeks ago and did, and played a live orchestra to a film for, you know, for, for families and young people, it's it. And then face painting and, you know, offering......
We're going to be doing some, (not for kids, actually) we're going to be doing some tea towel stitching, some subversive tea towel stitching, which sounds incredibly fabulous, which it’s going to be, I'm sure. So it's, it's how do we use the whole building? It's not just about what the shows that we put on on our stages, but it's like, what can we do in the atrium? What can we do in the River Room? What films can we show, how we can, how can we build it up to be something that's more than the sum of its parts.
[38.50] That leads me on to the difference from the old building because speaking to Peter Gill, he had very strong memories of, I suppose, almost a free for all. There would be some drum kits which he thought were probably nicked from the Apollo (RT: Sounds about right!). But some curator said my son uses them with his band, and that turned out to be the Sex Pistols. And there was a whole load of, of, of a sort of, it was open in a way that I'm not sure is possible now. But do you have any thoughts when you look at the great kind of anecdotes of the past?
Yeah, totally. And that's kind of something I really strive to enable. I think it's different now because you can't really go and nick a drum kit from the Apollo anymore. Sadly, I don't think you'll get through. But do we, we’re very, I try to be incredibly generous with things. I can't be generous with money because we don't have any. But actually, when you haven't got any money, then you go, what have we got? Well, we’ve got space and we've got time, we've got energy, enthusiasm, so let's give that. And things like, we do lots of workshops here, lots of readings. And, and if it's a, you know, if, if it's an emerging theatre company and they want to do something new, and we can, and if it's easy and cheap to give, then we'll give it and encourage it. We, you know, things like, I'm thinking about the producer network that started. You know, in, in, in theatre we're not very good always, necessarily getting together and creative team particularly – there's nowhere for people to meet creatively. And so we're, you know, we have done and will continue to do more kind of workshops and coffees and wines and get togethers, and people just coming and kind of finding, particularly young people who are emerging into the industry.
We had a producer, you know, many producer networking meetings where they could just come along and meet other producers. And we've got, I've got a workshop that I'm determined to do, to host here, where a really fabulous emerging company are putting together – I can't tell you any of their names because that would just be wrong if it doesn't happen – but really, really achingly cool people who want to come and do something here, and I just want to enable it. And I've said, you know, I can't pay anybody to be here, but if you can find someone else to commission you and then, and what you need is a space in London to make that work, then we'll try everything we can to make that work. And we do that a lot, you know, if the space is empty, particularly if it's empty at the last minute. Because obviously, if I can get in anything in there that will pay me money, then that's what I have to do. But if it's empty at the last minute, then we're very good at going OK, you use it, do something.
[41.54] So I mean, an example would be, you've got lots of young people working here, like as waiters, waitresses and cooks. Do any of them, have they come to you saying well, I'd actually like to.....
Oh, yeah, we've got one of our, one of our box office team has got her play on at Bitesize Festival. I think tonight, actually, this evening. So yeah, and that a lot. We, one of, another of our, our front of house team that runs writing, creative writing workshops, and a lot of, a lot of the team downstairs and box office, front of house and food and beverage, a lot of them are creative people. They're artists, directors, designers, dancers and, yeah, I'd say pretty much all of them do something or other here at some point. It's very, you know, one of our one of our waiters curated an exhibition here in the summer of local artists’ work, because that's something he wanted to have a go at, so I'm like, fine, off he went. One of our front of house team did an exhibition here, which is part of our heritage, and Black and Gifted.
Yes. So we, we have this samazing team of people, and I do, sometimes I go, Oh, my God, so and so's a dancer. Oh well, I must go and ask him what he thinks about this dance company I've never heard of, because he probably will know better than I will. So yeah, it's, it's really organic in that way, which I love, and, and try hard to encourage.
[43.32] I love hearing that. Yeah. The final question is so open. I think I'm just gonna ask you to say whatever you want. But it's what difference, if any, do you think Riverside has made? And what differences do you see over this period that you have been involved with? So I suppose there's two different time scales there.
I think that the ‘what has Riverside enabled ?’- an an, an answer to that might be one of them, one of, we've never really had a big ta-da for opening this new building because it was about to have this big ta-da, and then Covid hit. And then the shit hit the fan. And, but we have had many ta-das on press nights. And what I love is when on those press nights, the people that I know that come up to me, and walk through the door and go, oh, my God, this place is amazing, I used to work here when I was in my twenties. And the number of people who used to run the bookshop and did an exhibition here, were, were in something that was on stage here, or saw their first ever production here, or. And the number of people in the industry that I meet who, when they know I'm at Riverside go, oh, my God, I love Riverside. I saw such and such a show there, or I literally started the bookshop there. Or I used to programme the cinema. Or, and I think, so there are loads of people who have gone on to have amazing careers in the performing arts industry and arts management industry. So that's a definite kind of historical ‘what have we achieved?’ Miss Julie - people talk about all the time. I so wish I'd seen it, it's so frustrating I didn't. And I think, I think it was a, it was always a place where weird stuff can happen, and I think, and I hope it still is, probably not to the extent that it used to be. But then it's easy to condense 10 years of history and find four amazing things and go, those are the four gr..... and then you think, Oh my God, that's amazing, but it's not even one a year, do you know what I mean? Or one every two years?
And so these things take time, you know, seeds must be sown, and I think that's what we're doing now, despite the fact that we're in an administration and then in a difficult time. We're still continuing to sow the seeds of that kind of creativity, and that boundary-breaking and all, not boundaries, but giving the creative envelope a really good shove. And it's, and I, and I hope we're a little bit naughty. And I hope that we can do kind of, you know, strange things. And I think that what we want to do is enable extraordinary artists to make extraordinary work. And sometimes that work ends up on our stages. And sometimes it happens in a, you know, in the cabaret room on a Tuesday night.
And sometimes it happens in the atrium when someone's painting to music and people are watching. Or it's in, when people come and, you know, set up a knitting circle in the in the bar and cafe, because why not? It's here, and it's a lovely view and, etcetera, etcetera. So it's not, programming isn't at all just about what happens on, in Studios Two and Three, or indeed, the films that we show. It's the people who run film festivals who, you know, use the cinemas. It's the people who run cabaret nights that use the River Room. It's the, the, the people that work here that create work here or make work or enable other people's work to be here. It's so giving as a building, it's extraordinary in that level in that, in that regard, there's so many spaces where stuff can go on. You had people, you know when, before the offices were upstairs, were let out, we had people rehearsing in there. We, Izzard did a, did a first production of a kind of rough version of, of, of her production of Hamlet up there in an office, and you know that it's....., and who now knows where any of that is going to end up? But if it, you know, if you don't give the space, then it just won't happen, so I hope that we're still doing that. But goodness only knows, you know, if any of the people are going to turn out to be the Sex Pistols, or, you know the new equivalent thereof. I have no idea. You have to, you have to cast the net wide and, and hope, hopefully some, you know somebody will be accepting an Oscar and go ‘Well, of course. The first time, the first time I was on stage, it was at Riverside Studios’. You know, who knows? It's bound to: if you offer, if you offer up space and you make enough stuff happen, then it's kind of like I see my job a bit a bit as a kind of like a huge coffee filter and all these ideas and the people and the creativity, and like, I want as much of that to pour in as possibly I can. And then I add a bit of a filter before it then goes into a narrower part of the of the filter. And then there's a, you know, the next filter might be money or availability or instinct or something, and then, and then it goes, and so you end up with lots and lots of stuff coming in. And then, of course, what we see on the stages is just the tiny bit that comes out of the bottom and that, but there's still this enormous stuff that's going around in all our other spaces that, you know, doesn't really get seen and reviewed, and, but that's what so gorgeous about being part of a community. Because we have two communities here that we're part of - one is the local kind of Hammersmith and Fulham community, and the other is the, is the industry, and I think it's really important that we speak to both of those communities.
Thank you, I could print that.
