Tamara Harvey and Daniel Evans became co-artistic directors of the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2023. The pair’s first programmed season is now in full swing, with Tamara directing a new production of Pericles. What’s On chats to her about the play’s appeal, and the joys and challenges of her new shared role...

You’re co-artistic director with Daniel Evans - what are the benefits and the challenges of collaboration? 
The wonderful thing is, I feel that I discover a new benefit every day. We’re in a new phase of our co-artistic directorship, because it’s the first time that one of us has been in rehearsals. Having been an artistic director on my own at Theatre Clwyd, I know the enormous challenge, both for me and the organisation, when I go into rehearsals. Having Daniel able to hold some of that, and therefore being able to be more focused in the rehearsal room than I think I’ve been since 2015, when I took the post at Clwyd, is just extraordinary. 

It’s a cliche to say: leadership can be lonely -  and that’s just not true when there are two of you. The challenges are as they would be in any new partnership - just figuring out how the other person works, how they make decisions. Daniel and I have known each other for years and have worked together in different ways, but this is the first time we’ve done this job together. Within each of those challenges there’s always something new to be discovered.

What were the driving forces for you as you put together your first season of shows at the RSC?
We really wanted to make sure that we were offering a broad range of work - not just comedy and tragedy, but the political or the personal - and that we’re bringing the most exciting artists to our stages, and being led by them in terms of the stories that they felt passionate about telling. 

One of the things that’s really important to us is that we are telling stories that have a resonance and vitality to them, in this moment, in the world. Sometimes that’s really obvious - Kyoto clearly engages in a very immediate way with the climate emergency, which is the biggest crisis of our times - and sometimes it’s more subtle, or more nuanced, or more joyful. In The Merry Wives Of Windsor, Blanche McIntyre, the director, has done a beautiful job in bringing the play into this moment and making it feel like it’s absolutely a story of our times. 

The other thing that we really wanted to do was make sure that we were reaching across borders. I think we both feel very acutely that in this moment in the world, when nations are in some ways becoming more and more isolationist, the arts - and theatre in particular - has a duty to reach across borders and engage with international artists and international audiences.

Can you provide a brief outline of the plot of Pericles?
It’s the story of a young man who is trying to figure out who he is in the world, and what kind of leader he wants to be. He gets buffeted by the Fates - often by storms at sea - so he encounters all these obstacles, and has to keep getting up again, and keep trying to find his way in the world. 

It also becomes the story of a young woman who has to do the same - has to figure out who she is, and how to carve her own path, and equally gets buffeted by the Fates and met with all of these horrific challenges, and somehow similarly finds a way to keep moving forward.

What in particular drew you to the play?
I think that there is something really important now about this story of endurance, and tenacity, and survival against the odds. I’m interested in a story where the man in the end falls down, and the woman keeps going - it’s her who reaches a hand and pulls him up. I think in 2024 there is something really powerful about a story that has our protagonist encounter many different forms of leadership, and different types of leaders.

I love Shakespeare’s late plays because I think there’s a kind of confidence that playwrights have late in their careers. You feel it in other playwrights as well, when they’ve had their big hits, and they kind of stop trying to please people - there’s a kind of ‘devil may care’ in the writing.

In this post-pandemic world, the theme of loss and reunion, I think, will always have a potency for those of us who’ve lived through lockdown.

Why do you think Pericles is so rarely performed? 
It’s funny because these things go in waves - actually Pericles has been performed more in the 21st century, I believe, than it was in the 200 years preceding it, so it might be getting a bit of a revival.  

I think I’d be lying if I said I knew! I’m in week four of rehearsals, so I’m in the heat of it, thinking ‘Why isn’t this done more often? This is great!’

What’s most surprised you during your relatively short time in-post at the RSC?
So many things! I think that one of the things that I hoped - and didn’t know for certain - is how open and excited the company, the staff, the freelancers, and the audiences are to the idea of a new chapter, and to the notion of transformation and evolution. 

There’s something in the very roots of the company that is radical. Back in the 1870s, when the Flower family said ‘We should have a theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon,’ that was a deeply radical idea... 
There is, absolutely, in the DNA of the company, a willingness to take chances, and to be radical, and to try new things.

How does the collaboration process with Daniel work on a practical level?
I’ve got two small children, a six-year-old and an eight-year-old, and I think it is still challenging to be a parent or a carer, to have caring responsibilities in the performing arts. Actually, I think it’s challenging to do it in any industry. 

That’s a really important part of the reason that I wanted to do this job with Daniel - I know he also passionately believes in the importance of making it possible for people to have children and work in the arts. Doing it with him makes it possible for me.

It’s a curious one for me, because I’m quite a private person… Unless we keep talking about it and keep finding ways to navigate these challenges, we’ll continue to lose brilliant people from the profession and have a less rich, less complex variety of voices telling the stories on our stages.

What is the most significant change you and Daniel have so far made? 
I don’t know if it’s the most significant, but the simple fact that Greg Doran [the RSC’s former artistic director] had this ambition to do Shakespeare’s canon across 10 years. 

We are approaching the programme from a different angle, by saying we’re going to be artist-led and choose which stories we tell depending on the stories that artists are most passionate about. That simple difference actually has a sizable effect on what plays we might do, and what stories we might tell. 

How would you hope the RSC will look in, say, five years’ time?
I hope it will be a space anyone and everyone can walk into, and that every show - and this is no small ambition - feels like a ‘must see’.

Feature by Jessica Clixby

Pericles shows at the RSC’s Swan Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon until Saturday 21 September