Welcome to conversations with Alan Dix my name is Ian Beasley and I'm going to be interviewing
Alan who is currently the chair of the Hull Truck company. He's an eminent theatre director who has
worked professionally for decades internationally and nationally he started his career in Bradford
with the university's Theatre in the Mill, then he set up the Major Road Company and he's currently
the consultant and artistic director for 509 Arts based in Bradford. So Alan tell us how it
all started? Oh my word that's a long time ago it was I came to Bradford from South London
and I came when I was 19 and trained as a teacher at Bingley College of Education just
up the valley and I was going to be a science teacher but I did one drama workshop I thought
oh this is for me and changed all my courses and the rest as they say is history really. I ended up
teaching for a few years and was deputy head of a special school in Bradford
and then I went to the Edinburgh Festival and I thought oh this is all right this is a bit of a
24-hour party I'll do this for a living and of course theatre isn't like that at all but by then
it was too late and I'd start I started working in theatre, set up a theatre company, ran that for a
couple of years and then got a job at the Theatre in the Mill. Actually I mean I think one of the
things that I find really interesting about your career is that you took theatre out of the theatre
and took into spaces that we wouldn't normally associate with, you know theatre productions but
also to give access to people who perhaps didn't have an experience with theatre. I think that's
always been at the heart of what I've done really it's been an important part of the theatrical
experience I didn't really know what theatre was when I was growing up in council state in Southeast
London. We didn't get much of it you know didn't turn up in our local community centre. So
the idea of actually giving people access and the opportunity to to to experience it and participate
as well really became an important part of my career and still is actually we still make work
that is drawn on people's lived experiences and and quite often involves community members making
work and that's the thing that really works for me. Yeah I mean, I noticed that one of your
most prestigious and renowned productions was in The Piece Hall yard which I believe was based around
the floods in Calderdale? It was, I've done quite a lot of work on climate change sort of
as a consultant I've worked with a company called TippingPoint and run big conferences
in Oxford and at the university there and other places and I said to Jenny who I work with
I want to do a show about climate change in West Yorkshire. So we decided to do that and work with
the people of Calderdale to kind of explore their experience of having that devastating flood that
kind of went through seven different towns and villages right down the valley and made thousands
of people homeless. I mean it was lucky nobody died actually because it was so devastating. So we
spent a year making the show there we interviewed hundreds of people, we recruited a choir of 350
including children from primary schools. We recruited an orchestra from of local musicians
and we rehearsed them endlessly and dancers from the local college as well who were brilliant and
we put together a kind of multimedia show in the peace hall as they opened it up and it
was a big show. It was a big very, obviously with a cast that size it's got to be big but the
great thing was it was as they reopened the peace call after spending 14 million pounds doing it up
and making it look the way it should look after years of neglect so it was wonderful. It was
recognised by a prestigious organisation? Yeah we got an award from the Royal Philharmonic Society.
Which is? I'm not sure what that is. Well it's a big classical music
organisation and they give up prizes every year. I mean we're kind of
the outliers most of the people get awards are classical musicians opera
companies and that kind of thing. So it was quite a surprise to us to get that award but it
was a wonderful experience of course, I managed to be in Australia when they gave the award, so
I wasn't there. So I get the impression that it's very important that the work you do
is located in the place with the people and the community? It is actually well spotted, it was
I really don't believe in just sort of parachuting in and doing something with a group of people
who don't know who you are then going away again, you have to get to know the communities
you're working with and the reasons why you're doing it. I don't believe in the artists
working on their own in a kind of vacuum and then presenting their work as if it were.
And after we did Calderland in Halifax, we then moved over to Batley and
did a show called the Batley Variations. Which we originally wanted to call it variety but they
said that that would have been used a hundred times and they didn't want it anymore and we
did a show about the people at Batley you know the people batley are kind of, you know they're
ordinary everyday folk like you, like me, like anybody and it was about their lives with one
major difference and that was it was only a year after the murder of
Jo Cox. So that kind of brought a different perspective on things but it was about
the fact that everybody has something to celebrate in their lives. I think that's what I believe in
more than anything else. And when you look back at your career would there be any one
production or any one sort of event that you're involved, in which you thought yes this is the one
that's actually establishing me now? Oh I don't think I ever thought that, everything was like you
know at the time of making work you don't, it's just something you're doing that you believe in
that you want to do that you hope people will love and enjoy and participate in and will
be meaningful. The most important thing really is to not do something that people don't want to see
you know, it is really important that you kind of work to a standard and I think I've always
wherever we've worked whether it's in the Alhambra in Bradford or Theatre in the Mill
in that tiny little studio or in a big space. You know we have done shows in Warwick Castle.
You know the important thing is that you have you give the people who are involved in, the
opportunity to work with the very very best kind of artists and practitioners and makers of theatre.
I think Meal One, we first started talking about doing it three years ago and we did a bit of
research r&d on it and that was great and we had a really good time at the Theatre in the Mill
again and and then everything had to stop. We got we got some money to start rehearsals
on it again last September and that all had to stop and we three times we tried to start working
on the show and three times we've had to stop. Partly because Mind the Gap works with people with
learning disabilities and they're quite vulnerable and have to shield you know
so you can't cut any corners but more generally in terms of you know the
regional theatres that I work with Leeds Playhouse and Hull Truck Theatre
everything's been on hold massively and obviously the furlough scheme and a lot of the government
support has really helped keep things together and actually both of those organisations have managed
to not make anybody redundant. Which has been remarkable absolutely remarkable but of course
nobody knows what the future is going to bring the one thing we don't know is how keen audiences
will be to come back into the auditorium to sit there and watch a show you know and my hope is
that they're thirsting for it. But again you say I think you're probably the man to take this on
with your experience of producing stuff that's not in the theatre so i hopefully you've got
the experience and the drive to say well actually we can work around this we can do it. I think
certainly Hull Truck is talking about doing an outdoor show down by the docks, in the summer
this year which would be a first for the theatre and I think lots and lots of theatres are
going, oh we can do things differently and actually you know we now have the technology.
When I first started touring theatres in the 70s and 80s, it was you know, you have a van load of
gear you know the lighting and the sound equipment took up nearly all of it. I don't know how I had
hardly any room for the set but now all that kit you know collapses down into a few boxes and it's
and you don't need a massive power supply and that kind of thing. So everything is much more flexible
you don't need the complexity of a theatre space that you used to have and so I think people
have began to realise that actually we can do things differently and that also means working in
with different kinds of artists as well you know visual artists and photographers like yourself and
so on. I'd quite like to ask you what's your favourite film? I know that's a difficult
question! A film that has resonated with you during lockdown, one that's either sort of touched on a
you know a past memory or something that's actually cheered you up? Well I'm sure
you if you're anything like me you've watched 100 films actually during lockdown but last week I
watched a film called The King, which I actually really liked and it was a new take on Henry V
and it kind of it took away all the jingoism from Henry V and made it into more it made
It more into a gritty dirty everyday kind of story and it was quite gory as well but you know
the other thing I saw which isn't really a film which I absolutely loved was Tamsin
Greig playing Malvolia in the National Theatre's production of Twelfth Night. Which they streamed
and that was beautiful and actually to Malvolia is traditionally a male character and Tamsin Greig
is obviously not a man and she did it brilliantly she did it absolutely brilliantly and it just made
you realise how how flexible characters can be in these kind of very fluid times that we live in.
So the next one would be your favourite book well i mean it could be a children's book, it
could be a comic, it could be a classic, you know which is the one that you've again enjoyed
in this last so we'd say 12 months? Well actually the I've watched the film of this book in the last
12 months because I wanted to revisit it but it's a classic book and it's Catch-22 by Joseph Heller.
Which I think is one of the great anti-war films uh books, one of the great anti-war
books. It describes a futility of war in a way which is not loaded with meaning
it just points out the absurdity of the lives of the people caught
up in a wartime situation and how everybody's trying to get through something. Which is an almost
impossible situation to get through and I think it's still relevant today I think we live in a
very dangerous world and actually sometimes you have to be able to look at things in
a different way, in order to get through them. In fact it feels like we're caught in Catch-22.
Yeah and finally it's a a piece of music or pieces of music that have?
Ah well you see I kind of went round around with this one you know because obviously being a child
of the 60s and 70s I had more music to to consider than I could possibly include but in
the end I settled on a piece of music that probably I go back to more than anything else
any other piece of music, when need it and it's got no words and it's jazz and it's
Kind of Blue by Miles Davis, which is a classic of its kind and you know and I think it changed
music actually I think it, changed the way people listen to music. Well it's my pleasure
if not a delight, to be able to say that the university has awarded you an Honorary
Doctorate for your influence, your impact and your continued work in Bradford
with the theatre and community projects that you do, so I'm very pleased to say that you are now
an Honorary Doctor of the University of Bradford. That's very very wonderful and thank you very much
indeed!