Bright young thing

Thea Sharrock thrives on directing and 'likes nothing better than a crisis'

12 April 2012

When Thea Sharrock was artistic director at Southwark Playhouse a couple of years ago, the director Sir Peter Hall and playwright Caryl Churchill happened to drop by on the same press night.

Sharrock already knew the famously reclusive Churchill - she won the JMK award for young directors for directing Churchill's Top Girls a few years previously - but the appearance of Sir Peter at this little fringe venue was a complete surprise.

'People were coming up to me that night and asking, what's going on?' Sharrock says. 'I had no idea.'

The next day she received a phone call from Hall's office asking if she wanted to come in for a chat.

A few months later Sharrock was directing Harold Pinter's play Betrayal as part of the Peter Hall Company's season at Bath, and assisting Hall on two other productions. She was 27.

Sharrock was the youngest person in the country to be in charge of a theatre when she first joined Southwark Playhouse in 2001. Today, aged 28, she has swapped Southwark for the Gate Theatre in Notting Hill, former home of Stephen Daldry, and is midway through her first season.

In the first few months, she effectively ran the building from Bath where, once again, she was working with Peter Hall, this time directing two plays. One of them, Blithe Spirit, starring Penelope Keith, opens next Monday in the West End.

Woyzeck meanwhile, the second in Sharrock's opening season of three international pieces at the Gate, opened last week. Just thinking about the workload is exhausting - but the director insists she would not have it any other way.

In person she is forthright, friendly and oozes passion. She runs the Gate from a subterranean office across the road where money is so tight that buckets sit beneath sinks to catch the drips.

'I want every single show at the Gate to be better than the last,' Sharrock says. 'Not many people know it is the home of international theatre in Britain. I want us to produce work that takes amazing risks, otherwise I don't understand what the Gate is for.'

To this end, she has already brought over a harrowing piece of South African theatre, Tshepang, which featured the rape of a baby, and will follow Daniel Kramer's highly expressionistic production of Woyzeck with a play from Chile.

All three are a far cry from the very English world of NoÃl Coward and Penelope Keith, but Sharrock is the kind of person who thrives on contradiction and challenge. 'Coward is an immensely disciplined writer, and you have to learn to trust the rhythm before you can find the freedom to explore the text,' she says.

'I loved the transition from working with that on the big stage at Bath to the ambitious, cramped world of the Gate, where everything is run on a shoestring and an awful lot of love.'

Like her mentor Sir Peter, Sharrock prefers the allencompassing demands of running a theatre to operating as an independent director, and describes herself as someone who likes nothing better than a crisis.

'I like being able to take charge, tell people what needs to happen, and let them get on with it.' Although her CV suggests a well-plotted path, Sharrock says she's not a ruthless careerist, just lucky. And she is an emphatic agitator for funding to preserve Britain's theatrical tradition.

'Everyone assumes the West End is the greatest in the world, but actually, it's the filthiest part of England,' says Sharrock. 'In Germany they really look after their playwrights - in this country, we piss all over them. Still, I have enormous faith in the talent of this country.'

With people like Sharrock around, it's impossible not to share it.

Blithe Spirit, in preview from tonight, opens Mon until May 28, Savoy Theatre, Strand WC2, Mon to Sat 7.30pm (Nov 22 7pm), Thu and Sat mats 2.30pm, £15 to £40. Tel: 020 7836 8888.Tube: Charing Cross

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