The Art of the Artistic Director

Shortlisted for the Theatre Book Prize 2020

How do you decide what stories an audience should hear? How do you make your theatre stand out in a crowded and intensely competitive marketplace? How do you make your building a home for artistic risk and innovation, while ensuring the books are balanced?

It is the artistic director’s job to answer all these questions, and many more. Yet, despite the central role that these people play in the modern theatre industry, very little has been written about what they do or how they do it.

In The Art of the Artistic Director, Christopher Haydon (former artistic director of the Gate Theatre, ‘London’s most relentlessly ambitious theatre’ – Time Out) compiles a fascinating set of interviews that get to the heart of what it is to occupy this unique role. He speaks to twenty of the most prominent and successful artistic directors in the US and UK, including: Oskar Eustis (Public Theater, New York), Diane Paulus (American Repertory Theater, Boston), Rufus Norris (National Theatre, London), and Vicky Featherstone (Royal Court Theatre, London), uncovering the essential skills and abilities that go into making an accomplished artistic director.

The only book of its kind available, The Art of the Artistic Director includes a foreword by Michael Grandage, former artistic director of the Sheffield Crucible and the Donmar Warehouse in London.