T – We first met when I directed Pride and Prejudice for Daniel when he was artistic director of Sheffield theatres. And that came about because I thought what he was doing there was really brilliant and I loved the spaces, that thrust stage in Sheffield. I had asked my agent when I was freelance to set up a meeting so I could tout for work. So we had a brilliant collaborative experience. That continued when I became artistic director at Theatre Clywd; we co-commissioned and worked together.

D – During the pandemic lots of ADs [artistic directors] buddied up with people they’d call up and say how the hell are you dealing with this? And so we were often on the phone to each other.

T – That was the seed of it, when we started to talk about how it might be to do it together – Daniel had been artistic director twice – at Chichester and Sheffield and me at Clwyd. We talked about how it might be even more exciting to co-lead.

So the RSC artist director vacancy caught your eye?

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D – I wasn’t thinking specifically about the RSC. In fact, I think we’re happy to say, when the role came up at the RSC neither of us consider ourselves Shakespeare academics or scholars, and so we wondered whether the company would even consider us. But we met with the chair Shriti Vadera, and that was an incredibly inspiring conversation. And that’s what tipped us over into thinking actually there is a huge opportunity here.

You both left brilliant positions – were there any moments of trepidation?

T – It was hard to leave Clwyd – it was my first artistic director position, it’s where I had my children. It’s a place incredibly close to my heart and an extraordinary theatre. But the RSC is the RSC and opportunities like this come up once in a lifetime.

D – I was very happy at Chichester, but ultimately I guess the same thing: the RSC is the RSC. And this job comes around what, once every ten years. So we just had to go for it.

T – I think it’s something very different for the organisation and for us is it’s the first time that ADs have been appointed from outside – so it’s a big change.

Greg Doran is known as a great Shakespearian, was it intimidating following in his footsteps?

D – It’s incredibly intimidating following Greg because he is a walking Shakespeare encyclopaedia as well as being a brilliant director. But we hope we match that knowledge with our passion for the house playwright.

One of the things we wanted to do with the season was make sure that whenever anyone was coming to Stratford throughout the year they can invariably can see Shakespeare. There’s the odd exception when there are both get-ins in both spaces.

As well as being incredibly knowledgeable about Shakespeare, Greg is also beautifully practical about him – you feel that in his productions. So whilst his reputation and CV is intimidating, he as a human is imminently approachable when it comes to the works.

Greg and Erica were still here when you arrived – what did you learn from them?

D – Gosh so much, where to start. They’ve both been so generous with their time. We had a wonderful evening with Greg where he invited us over for a meal.

I think ultimately what the message we got from them both was ‘it’s yours, make it your own’. I don’t think either of them for a second went ‘oh you have to continue this strand that I’ve started’.

T – And not just them, but further back. I sat next to Adrian Noble at a press night and he said the same: it’s yours, fly with it.

I think there is of course a weight of expectation and a history and a legacy that surrounds those letters – the RSC – but it doesn’t come from the people. The people that have been doing it on the ground are saying take it and run with it.

D – I know for Greg, John Barton and Cis Berry were such amazing influences – as they were when I worked here as an actor. So it’s great to see part of that work absolutely continuing and being reinvented.

How much does the need to make money dictate the programming side of things?

T – The money thing is always tough and we are in a particularly difficult moment in the theatre industry, and with the cost of living crisis.

Both Daniel and I are as interested in running the business side of things as we are in running the artistic. So the question of the business case of balancing the books is an essential part of any conversation we are having about programming.

Daniel Evans and Tamara Harvey RSC Co-Artistic Directors 2022. Photo by Seamus Ryan.

D – Half our income comes from audiences, the box office, so we have to make sure we continue to put on things people want to see.

T – As an organisation facing financial challenges you have two choices – cutback and hunker down, or stride forward and are ambitious and hope to drive excitement and grow and build – and we are going for the latter, but therein lies risk. So we are taking a deep breath.

D – And alongside that we’ve been having really interesting conversations with artists who really value the RSC, who want to really come and work here – and you’ll see that in some of the programme. The directors and actors who still think it’s the bee’s knees, and that’s just gorgeous for us.

There are some pro-tradition RSC audience members who ‘don’t like their Shakespeare messed with’ – how are you negotiating that?

D – I think you can’t please everyone all the time. You just have to except that and hope you’re pleasing most of the people most of the time.

I also think it is not so much traditional versus contemporary, I think people just want to see something good. Yes, you might want to see something in traditional dress – but if the acting is good and the ideas really resonated.

T – I was chatting with someone who was at RSC Friends event. He most wanted to tell me about the experience he had seeing Cowbois. It is not traditional but joyful and extraordinary and gently revolutionary piece of theatre and he had loved it. And someone else told me about the thing that had first got them into theatre and that was Peter Brook’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream – one of the least traditional pieces of theatre even now. So I think audiences are more daring and more open to the untraditional than we think: they want great theatre.

D – The company has always set those new plays alongside Shakespeare and his contemporaries – and it always did right from the beginning, or at least from 1961 when it became the RSC, and that’s definitely something we believe in.

You’ve been in the audience quietly watching since June – what have you seen that you’ve enjoyed and what hasn’t worked?

D – One of the things that was very clear to me was that Cowbois and The Fair Maid of the West were made for the Swan. The warmth between actors and audience was palpable, they both had a feeling of a romp.

I remember coming here as a teenager to see Faustus – Gerard Murphy as Faustus [1989] spat a lot and me thinking that was heaven, to be so close to the stage.

T – I liked that the actor in the prologue for Fair Maid put a copy of the original play on a shelf and sort of said ‘it’s safe, not matter how much we’ve played with it’ – there is something about that gesture that feels really key.

D – To just balance it out so it doesn’t sound all apple pie… What doesn’t work? I think in the Swan and the RST you really need directors that understand what a thrust stage needs – the entrances and exits. Having an audience on three sides is not the same as a proscenium arch – so that’s something we’ve been thinking a lot about. How we make sure directors coming into the season get au fait very quickly with the dynamic of our spaces.

T – Something we’ve been thinking a lot about is making sure that our audiences hear every word of the story. Continuing and evolving that tradition of John Barton and Cis Berry of giving actors the tools they need to be heard and understood.

T – We began with the artists, the directors and the actors that we really wanted to bring to these stages. We asked them what is the play you are burning to do, and then building from there.

D – I don’t think we are ever in the place where we think ‘oh we haven’t done King John for five years we’d better do it’. Unless there’s someone who really feels passionately about wanting to do it then I’m not sure we should do it.

T – So we’re doing As You Like It having done it last year – but the two are so different. The one at the RST was with older actors and had that sense of a reunion, and this new one in the summer going to be outside on the Garden Theatre stage, rumbunctious and hour and 20 mins and musician actors. The great thing about Shakespeare is the plays can hold such different interpretations, and we can hold them cheek by jowl.

Great that the outdoor theatre is back in action – and that there will be more spaces.

D – The idea is that we are running TOP all year round, alongside the Swan and RST – so it’s what suits the space. We can have Shakespeare at TOP – like Macbeth was here with McKellen and Dench [1976].

We are doing some work to increase the capacity at TOP to make it more viable financially – at the moment it only holds 180, so by next year we want to be open all year round.

Previous artistic directors of the RSC have been said to stand for each of its words or letters – Michael Boyd stood for company, and Greg for Shakespeare – how do you fit into that?

T – Well that leaves us with Royal… and actually it became the most brilliant provocation, and it goes us really thinking about what it means to be a royal company and also what it means to be a name that recognised across the world. How can the RSC reach across borders – whether those borders are country and class? And perhaps being a different kind of UK, which is about understanding and collaboration?

D – I think there’s a notion – or there has been in the past that the RSC has to know it all, has to be the expert. And at the moment I think we are happy and excited to see who else is doing Shakespeare across the globe, and ask what can we learn from that and how can we share what we do know and the expertise that we have with them – but not in a way that is colonial and sort of ‘we’re the RSC and go parachuting in’ but more of a two-way street that is about humility and generosity.

T – We are opening the doors wide open as we possibly can. Opening our doors to our audiences and bringing in international companies and artists. And making sure as many people from as many walks of life are represented.

Finally, how are you settling into Stratford, does it feel like home yet?

D – I’m having flashbacks because when I first lived here in 1994 I lived in the Ferry House, then I lived in 25 Waterside, and now I’m in 59. There’s a very warm feeling of returning to somewhere I have fond memories of.

My partner lives in London he’s a conductor [Tom Brady]. He’s just been up, and I’m often down in London.

T – I moved here with my husband Jared and two children, who are five and seven. We’ve been doing a major charm offensive with them as all they had known was north Wales so it’s about ice cream, pizza and swimming in the Avon. They are at local schools, and starting to build friendships.

We walked up to Welcombe Hills on Christmas Day and we took a photo with the obelisk in the background, and I had a moment where I thought yes this is beginning to feel like home.

And you’re living in the artistic director’s house, recently vacated by Greg…

T – Yes – it’s so beautiful. We had a lovely moment where one of my friends Charles visited – whose grandfather was Glen Byam Shaw, artistic director at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre [1952 to 1959]. He brought his mum who used to live here to look around – she is in her 80s and was a stage manger for the RSC and she ended up marrying one of the actors at Holy Trinity Church. So we walked around the house and garden while she shared her memories. It was wonderful, the history of the place is in its very bones.