Interview Time
Alice de Sousa - Greenwich Playhouse
This month we caught up Alice de Sousa who runs, directs, advertises, drives and generally turns Greenwich Playhouse into a force of nature to be reckoned with.
We asked her about her beginnings, the good stuff in the middle and where the future will be taking her and the Galleon Theatre Company.
1.You've been behind Greenwich Playhouse above our hostel in Greenwich for a successful number of years now. How did you get involved with the site and what have been the most difficult challenges - with regard to getting the playhouse to where it is today?
In December 1992 my partner Bruce Jamieson and I became aware of a function room above an allaying but charming pub, then called the Prince of Orange, which was occasionally used for music and comedy events. The opportunity had arisen to turn that space into a small theatre club but our acting commitments were taking us all over Europe and the time was just not right.
In December 1995 we were both now based in London and the venue was offered to us once again. We took it on and between late 1995 and 1998, presented some thirty eight plays. It was then that Interpub bought the site and refurbished it into the multifaceted and exciting building it is today. The theatre re-opened with a new name, Greenwich Playhouse, in May 2000 with a production of Hamlet. In the last seven years the venue has gone from strength to strength and today it is considered by the media and many audiences, to be one of the best producing, small scale venues in London.
I sat with Tarantino and Jude Law
The greatest daily challenge is always financial. How do you keep a small theatre, (also a registered charity), with no revenue funding and only 84 seats financially sound? Building overheads rise at merciless rates as do the costs of staging theatre productions. Further to that, the reduced seating capacity and general economic down turn mean that, even with sell out shows we always stand to make a loss on in-house created productions.
The rewards are obviously artistic, deeply personal and involve the immense creative freedom which running your own theatre offers. You can do what you want, when you want and with whom you please!
2. When was it that you knew you wanted to be in the theatre and what would you say was the performance that inaugurated you into this way of life?
Performing has always been in my blood from a very early age. It is impossible to pick one defining performance or character that solidified all that for me. Theatre has been a part of my life for some thirty years - no indeed before that. After all these years I am still learning and still finding it all incredibly challenging and deeply rewarding. Daily it stretches me as an artists and as a woman – so I guess, I am ultimately very lucky indeed!
3. You recently attended the Cannes Film Festival to finance feature films that you have written and later produce, such as the modern re-working of The Duchess of Malfi. What was the most random and fun thing that happened to you in the South of France and what are the future projects, that you would like to see money invested into?
Cannes at the time of the festival is extraordinary - from the parties to the opulence, some are exciting but the great majority are just bad taste. The night we arrived we were immediately invited to The Playboy Party and then went on to another party where I sat with Tarantino and Jude Law. I was also nearly run over coming out of the market place by George Clooney's and I had a sandwich with Malcolm Macdowl.
The eleven days were spent holding between 8 and 10 daily meetings and then attending networking and wild parties until the early hours of the morning!
The wildest thing I saw this year was at the Highlands and Islands Party, which is held in a castle high in the hills overlooking Cannes. There was an over made up woman in her 60s, clutching a very worn teddy bear, whilst all around her were huge, bearded Scottish men, dressed as Vikings dancing to Scottish music!
4. One of the most recent productions you starred in was Thankfully There Is Moonlight. Tell us more about your extensive involvement in the play, the demands of adapting and producing it and also, when we can expect to see you take to the stage again?
Thankfully there is Moonlight! continues! The London theatre scene is the most diverse, competitive and challenging in the world. In order to remain at the head of the game you have to constantly reinvent yourself and your work. I became aware that there was no company in Britain that specialised in introducing unfairly neglected, Iberian plays and stories to the London stage. In 1995 I went off to the academically excellent King's College in London and did a Master's degree in Portuguese literature. This provided me with a wealth of information which I have since been able to develop through my own translations and adaptations into full scale, world premiere theatre productions.
The critical acclaim from productions like Thankfully there is Moonlight! has brought the Greenwich Playhouse and me, international media recognition. I've also won two awards in America, several writing awards in the UK and last month I was short listed for a very prestigious award organised by the Portuguese Foreign office.
5. It's become something of a tradition now to invite our interviewees to recommend their top 5 books – the reads that have inspired them along the way. What would your choices be and why?
1. Shakespeare's Complete Works – there can be found not just the greatest and most timeless plays ever written, but also the very essence of the human soul in all its greatness and wickedness.
2. The Lusiads by Luis de Camoes - Portugal's national epic poem.
3. The Origin of the Species – for obvious reasons.
4. Christina Rossetti's poetry.
5. A Good Man in Evil Times by Jose-Alain Fralon. I have just finished reading this book about a grossly over looked WWII humanitarian figure who saved in excess of 30,000 lives – Aristides de Sousa Mendes. He was repaid for his act of extraordinary courage and humanitarian altruism with social and professional humiliation and abject poverty. I am researching his life story and intend to turn it into a play which will be staged at the Greenwich Playhouse in 2008!
