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The Giant and the Bear: Jon Spooner as ringmaster

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Articles

Moving in

Earlier this year Unlimited Theatre became the resident company at the West Yorkshire Playhouse (WYP). Jon Spooner, Unlimited Theatre’s Creative Director, and Sheena Wrigley, West Yorkshire Playhouse’s Chief Executive, reflect on the relationship.

Jon Spooner and Sheena Wrigley
4 min read

Why are you doing this?

SHEENA: We were looking for fresh ways to engage with artists and companies, ways that would bring broader creative influences, practices and voices into the theatre building.

JON: We were thinking about ways to make our work more regularly visible and accessible to our audiences and our work place more creative for us, our collaborators and producing partners.As a company, a group of artists, we'd spent many years feeling like visitors in other people's houses – having to take our shoes off at the door, ask where the bathroom is, hide in our room if we wanted to watch “our” TV programmes. And while we've always made and toured our work with partners throughout the UK and across the world, our physical and spiritual home has always been Leeds.

SHEENA: The Playhouse and Unlimited had a regular relationship that extends, through individuals, back about 15 years into the two companies. We were genuinely interested in how we, as the Playhouse, would have to adapt and rethink elements of how we work if other companies make our building their home.

JON: The questions we were asking were: “What can Unlimited offer to audiences and artists that the Playhouse currently doesn’t or can’t?” and “How can the Playhouse help Unlimited to achieve what we can’t on our own?”

What are the benefits?

JON: The greatest benefits to us so far have been the easily accessible, frequent, creative conversations with people who have experience and expertise that we don't. Just by being in close proximity to each other and keeping our (literal and metaphorical) doors open I think both our companies are already learning a huge amount.

SHEENA: Unlimited bring a fresh creative energy into the theatre. It’s fun. They are visible and present, often provocative and questioning of how things are being done and why. The perspective of the outsider who lives at the heart of your family is a valuable one. Sometimes it’s just good to talk to someone creative who knows you well and who thinks differently to you. The tension between the needs of our two companies offers an opportunity for growth and learning, as long as we both have the humility to absorb that.

What are the risks?

JON: That through lack of communication or empathy we might simply fall out and stop being helpful/creative together. It's vital to remember that, for all our shared interests and ambitions, we remain separate organisations with very distinct programmes and personalities.

SHEENA: There is an interesting tension that arises between Unlimited’s more overtly process driven approach to their artistic programme and the Playhouse’s pragmatism in delivering over 500 performances a year. Communicating with the wider Playhouse staff team why Unlimited are living with us and the nature of the relationship takes time and the message needs repeating. Explaining why people had to move offices to accommodate another company was an interesting practical test. Being able to adequately assess when, as the West Yorkshire Playhouse, we can’t do something because we really don’t have the people, money, or space, and when we just need to try harder to find a creative solution.

JON: Importantly too, we’re only at the beginning of a relationship with James Brining, the incoming Artistic Director, who’s essentially inherited us as the first of what will be many artists living and working in the building. From our early conversations I’m feeling massively positive and excited about going on another new journey with him, but I’m equally live to the possibility that we might discover that we simply don’t ‘fit’ each other creatively or practically.

SHEENA: Developing a mutually respectful artistic dialogue; being clear it’s not a one way relationship where Unlimited provide the art and WYP provides physical resources or plays the less interesting support role.

And what are you most looking forward to finding out together?

How we each like our tea brewed. What that funny ticking noise is that keeps one of us awake at night. How to not be annoyed that the other one squeezes the toothpaste in the middle rather than from the bottom.

Jon Spooner is Creative Director of Unlimited Theatre and Sheena Wrigley is Chief Executive of West Yorkshire Playhouse.