Award winning Director Lucy Jane Atkinson talks to Darling about her experiences bringing shows to life as an accomplished theatre director at home and abroad. Think of me as a therapist for imaginary people. I help writers and actors figure out how their characters think. At heart my job is to help writers express the purest version of their idea, then translate that truthfully and imaginatively to the stage.
I’ve known I wanted to be a director since I was 8, and directed my first play when I was 17. I studied English and film at university, but spent more time with the drama society than I ever did in lectures. After graduating I accidentally formed my own theatre company, Fight and Hope, and eventually went to LAMDA to do a masters in directing. My recent work includes the award winning A HUNDRED WORDS FOR SNOW by Tatty Hennessy, and MEAT by Gill Greer.
During the pandemic I’ve created two pieces of filmed theatre, TESTAMENT by Tristan Bernays, (which garnered 13 nominations and 5 wins at the 2022 BroadwayWorld awards, including Best Director, and Best Streaming Play), and VESPERTILIO by Barry McStay, which provoked Exeunt Magazine to write “If [this] doesn’t finally make the major spaces sit up and take notice of director Lucy Jane Atkinson then we need to stage a freaking coup.”
MEAT - Alex Brenner | Vespertilio - Liz Isles | Snow Queen - Mark Senior
Being a Dramaturg
I am a new writing director/dramaturg. People always ask me what a dramaturg actually does, and the best way I can describe it is that I’m a story structure specialist. I help writers make their plays more satisfying for audiences by asking questions that push the writer to consider other readings of their work. I look at the script from every angle, searching for cracks or imperfections, and then work with the writer to try and resolve them in the most entertaining way possible.
Once the script is as solid as we can get it, I put my director hat on. I’ll work with actors and creatives to bring the script to life. I see a play through from the initial grain of an idea all the way through to opening night. My favourite thing about working in theatre is that it’s a living art. It exists only in the moment between actor and audience, ephemeral and unique. Even if you saw the same play a hundred times, you’d never see the same show twice.
Theatre is a human medium, which thrives on empathy. A lot of my work is about characters you don’t often see in mainstream plays. I love plays about women, the LGBTQ+ community, and other marginalized voices. For example, I’m currently developing a children’s show with the Watermill Theatre, working with blind and partially sighted actors and creatives to make the show fun, exciting, and fully accessible to both sighted and non-sighted audiences.
Gratitude
My work has won awards on both sides of the Atlantic. I feel blessed to be from London, the world capital of new writing. I am incredibly proud of the work I’ve created in the past few years and I’ve greatly enjoyed the success that has sprung from it. But I have felt that as a young female director, no one is willing to ‘risk’ giving me a larger canvas on which to paint. I’m very excited to be spending the next 4 months as a staff director at the National Theatre, assisting Polly Findlay on David Eldridge’s new play, MIDDLE. I’m hopeful that this marks the beginning of a new phase of my career, where I can create work on a larger scale. I feel grateful every day that, 24 years after deciding I wanted to direct, I’m making 8 year old Lucy proud.
Lucy Jane Atkinson
Director
(She/Her)
Upcoming work: JOSHUA (& ME). Feb 8th-19th, Hope Theatre, Islington.
https://www.thehopetheatre.com/productions/joshua-and-me/se-maybes/
http:http://lucyjaneatkinson.com/
@lucypapoosky
