Is Josie Rourke our best young director?

Keep smiling through: Josie Rourke is fearful of possible cuts of 25 per cent to the Bush’s budget but thinks the theatre would survive
10 April 2012

Josie Rourke can remember her stage debut very clearly. "I was standing in the drama studio in the middle of a performance thinking to myself, I'm awful, she's really bad, he's in the wrong place and that light should not be green.'" It was at that moment, as a sixth-former at college in Salford, that Rourke saw her future as a theatre director.

That moment of clarity has taken her a long way, from associate roles at Sheffield and the Royal Court, to the artistic directorship of the Bush Theatre. Now 34 and recognised as one of the country's finest young directors, she is about to make her National Theatre debut.

Rourke, who is warm and eloquent when we meet during a rehearsal lunch-break, is "honoured" to have been asked to direct Ena Lamont Stewart's Men Should Weep, a demotic Scottish drama, written in 1947 and set in a grim Glasgow tenement in theThirties. In the National's NT2000
millennium poll, it was voted one of the best hundred plays of the 20th century, but it has been unjustly neglected, Rourke believes.

She is thrilled by the wealth of "fantastic, strong" female roles it contains, not least the central figure of tenacious matriarch Maggie. "I think it's really important when you go this is a play about poverty' to say it's a play about all the things poverty does to people, the warmth and the humour that it generates, the spirit of survival, as well as how it corrodes the soul, which it absolutely does," she says.

If there's poverty on-stage at the National, there's not much off-stage. The country's best-resourced theatre is a far cry from the Bush. Rourke describes her permanent home as "gorgeously shabby, and I think that's why people love it".

Since taking over in mid-2007, she has bolstered the theatre's reputation as a new-writing powerhouse, discovering exciting young playwrights such as Lucy Kirkwood and Nick Payne, as well as attracting star actors — Joseph Fiennes, Ralf Little — to the tiny stage. After cutting her teeth in some of England's biggest theatres, she responded positively to what she calls the "close-knit, bring it in from home, I'll paint that" mentality of the Bush.

She tells me that her own mother stitched the cushions for If There Is I Haven't Found It Yet, Payne's outstanding debut in 2009. "We had to wrest them from her hands so we could put the first preview up," she laughs.

Rourke's three years at the Bush have seen something of a quiet revolution. Not only has she endlessly reconfigured the actual playing area, she's shaken up the staff structure and expanded the theatre outwards, firstly by "brokering space" in the community (staging a production in the West 12 shopping centre and using local shop units as costume stores and design studios) and then by opening an online forum for writers to share scripts.

She has created the very model of a 21st-century arts organisation — but one that is unfortunately saddled with a 19th-century building, housed in cramped and inaccessible rooms above a pub. The lease runs out next year and Rourke hopes to lead the theatre to a fit-for-purpose new home, most probably in the old library building in Uxbridge Road. "Security of tenure is a boring phrase, but it's what every theatre company has wanted from the beginning of theatre companies going right back to the Renaissance," she says. "In order to have a theatre, you need to feel secure in your home."

It's not just in W12 that Rourke has made an impressive mark. During the furore caused by the Arts Council cuts in 2008, her intelligent challenge, using the Freedom of Information Act, to a proposed 38.87 per cent reduction in the Bush's funding saw her become a galvanising figure for the whole theatre community.

"Until that point in my career, I'd always been able to seek advice and for the first time I found myself in a position where people were saying I'm not sure what you should do'. I suddenly went, I've got to do something about this'. It was a moment of taking responsibility."

She feels that the Arts Council is in a "much more strong and sensible place" now, but there are inevitable battles ahead, not least as a result of the government Comprehensive Spending Review, which is bound to see swingeing cuts to the arts budget.

"I think we're all very concerned. In [Culture Secretary] Jeremy Hunt and [arts minister] Ed Vaizey [coincidentally a member of the Bush's board until the election] we have two politicians who've spoken very cogently and effectively about why the arts matter. What we need to hope is that they've been able to make those arguments as effectively within their own government as they've made them to the arts community."

She frets about the Josie Rourkes of the future, though. "When you say Are you worried about the Spending Review?' I look at the fact that I was exceptionally championed in my early career and that absolutely came from a period when the arts were flourishing and were coherently funded and those artistic directors who liked my work were able to give me opportunities. That's one of the things public funding allows."

How would a 25 per cent cut go down at the Bush? "It would be hugely damaging, but we'd keep going," she says.

What next? I suggest the timing would be perfect for her to take over at the Donmar when Michael Grandage steps down at the end of next year, but she refuses to be drawn, reiterating only how important it is for her to see the Bush settled in new premises in time for its 40th anniversary in 2012.

In fact, Rourke is endearingly reticent when it comes to talking about herself. "Culturally, where I come from, it's not the done thing! There's a big thing about not showing off. That's the great joy of directing: you're reflecting on other people, not on yourself."

She's far more comfortable promoting theatre's interests than her own. "What I would say in relation to the Spending Review is that we make art, particularly theatre, in this country like the Brazilians play football. We do it with spectacular flair and confidence and irresistible international appeal." Let's hope they're listening at the Treasury.

Men Should Weep is in rep at the National's Lyttelton (020 7452 3000, nationaltheatre.org.uk) from October 18

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