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[0:00] Gordon Cox: Welcome to Stagecraft, Variety's theatre podcast, your backstage pass to revealing conversations with stars, creators and industry leaders, on Broadway, off Broadway and beyond. I'm Gordon Cox. On this episode of Stagecraft, I'm talking to Alex Poots, the Artistic Director of the New York City arts institution, The Shed. The Shed isn't Broadway, and it isn't even devoted solely to theatre — it's a multidisciplinary arts center in the Hudson Yards neighborhood of Manhattan. But since it opened in 2019, The Shed has been home to some of the city's buzziest theatre productions, including Straight Line Crazy, the David Hare play about Robert Moses starring Ralph Fiennes, and last year, the world premiere of Here We Are, Stephen Sondheim's final musical.

Currently, The Shed is hosting a production of King Lear, co-directed by and starring Kenneth Branagh, who comes to The Shed by way of a long relationship with Poots in his previous roles including Artistic Director of both the Manchester International Festival and of New York's Park Avenue Armory. Now Poots is in the virtual studio with me to talk about his long relationship with Branagh, his philosophy of theatrical programming, and how The Shed's work fits into the broad and varied New York theatre landscape, and he lets us in on what we should look out for in the future as The Shed and its work continues to evolve. Hey Alex, thanks for joining me.

[1:30] Alex Poots: Thank you, Gordon.

[1:31] Gordon Cox: So it sounds like, from an outsider's perspective, it seems like King Lear, which is up and running and coming toward the end of its run — actually it ran for about 50 performances — it seems like it's been a great big hit for The Shed. Am I right about that?

[1:46] Alex Poots: Well, yeah. I mean, it's been 10 years in the making, so I guess we've had some time to think about it. But yeah, what I love of Ken's vision was that he was very focused on making a Lear for our times, for the audience's times, and for thinking about how to pay respect to the original work but also to bring it into the 21st century, and using some of the practices of our century. You know, it's very cinematic in its presentation, it's very experiential.

[2:26] Gordon Cox: Yeah, it's short. It's two hours, yeah?

[2:30] Alex Poots: Indeed. It's two hours. You know, I think Ken was very mindful that a lot of audiences — not all audiences, but a lot of audiences — a two-hour piece of intense theatre is a fair chunk. And I think he was looking — as we did together with Macbeth, which I did when I was in the UK in Manchester — we were looking to create a very intense and cinematic, fast-paced piece of theatre.

[3:01] Gordon Cox: Right, yeah. That Macbeth that you mentioned, we in New York had a chance to see when it was at the Armory, and that was very immersive and very expansive. They used the whole Armory, it felt like, as you wandered along the moors. And it was very muddy, it was a very visceral experience.

[3:20] Alex Poots: Yeah. No, I mean, we built that in Manchester in a deconsecrated church, which is where the mud came from, because it was actually there in the church. And there were holes in the roof, so when it rains, it was actually wheeled back then. And I was lucky enough to be made the artistic director while I was in Manchester of the Park Avenue Armory. So we brought it and adapted it for a New York audience, which is a great treat.

[3:45] Gordon Cox: Yeah. And so tell me more about how you think these two pieces are related, the Macbeth and the Lear. I'm sure it's interesting to see Kenneth Branagh take on this role after having played many of the great Shakespeare roles, including Macbeth and also Hamlet.

[4:03] Alex Poots: With Kenneth Branagh, you have someone who did, I think, his first King Lear with Gielgud, and then, you know, has worked with all of the great Shakespearean actors of our times. So you have someone there who has a very profound and rich and longstanding understanding, and is very adept with these huge texts by Shakespeare. So one already at the start of either of those projects, one feels in very good hands that, at least with what his objectives are, he will realise them at the highest level. And I think both pieces were straight through, there was no interval. The idea was that the text would be the core of the piece, but it would be a very physical piece. And I think both have that physicality.

When Ken first described his vision to me for Macbeth, I dared suggest that, given he was going to be performing the lead role, I suggested, you know, perhaps you would want to have a co-director on that. And he was quite open to that. And so I introduced him to Rob Ashford, who he'd not met before. And one of the reasons why I thought Rob might be a good fit was that Rob, you know, comes from a choreographic training. You know, I mean, he studied with the great Jerome Robbins. There's that kind of canon running through him. And so I thought that by pairing them together, you know, Rob would bring a lot of things that Ken would want. And Ken had so much already that Rob would appreciate and not necessarily get in the way of.

And that relationship worked so well that I was very keen and we were very fortunate that Rob was able to be reunited with Ken for the New York run, which so Rob joined us in earlier this year. And really, there was quite an advancement in how the piece evolved from London into here.

[6:06] Gordon Cox: From London to here. Yeah, that's interesting. And what is, what do you, how do you describe the effect of condensing the play that, because we all tend to think of Lear as this big, epic, sweeping, you know, you're in it for four hours kind of play. And what is gained by kind of condensing it down and experiencing it all in one go like that?

[6:28] Alex Poots: Well, I think one thing is it focuses it in very much on the family, on this father, the three daughters, their husbands, and then, you know, the immediate surrounding cast who are in the play. You can really follow that plotline, the plotline that he has mapped out with that. I think also for a lot of audiences who are not used to a four-hour piece of theatre, we felt that it was for these times, particularly, we had a programme for young audiences with, for tickets under $30, you know, we wanted to make a piece of art that had all the richness and all the layers of metaphor and meaning in it, but that could be appreciated within a two-hour format. And that was very much Ken's, Ken was clear about that from day one, wasn't something that he kind of drifted into.

By coincidence, Macbeth was just a little over two hours as well when we did it. And I think, you know, there's room for all kinds of King Lears, you know, I've savoured and cherished my three and a half to four hour King Lear, but I think there is room and a place for Ken's King Lear, and we're very, very proud that he really made this piece with us and for The Shed.

[7:55] Gordon Cox: Yeah, and the cast is young, he is surrounded by recent graduates of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and what, tell us a little bit about that dynamic and what that kind of brings to the piece.

[8:01] Alex Poots: Yes, I mean, I think, you know, there's, for your listeners who know the piece, you know, there's this huge tension between, you know, the older generation, the King, and this much younger generation, but the piece ends with one of the members of the young generation saying that, you know, look at what you've given us, look at this world you've given us that is in far worse shape than when you received it. Obviously echoes to the present day, and so I think Ken very much wanted to bring in a very young cast to highlight that generational divide and that sense of what world have you given us, as a kind of a touch point for how audiences might relate to this piece in our times.

[8:54] Gordon Cox: Yeah, can you say a little more about how the piece was tailored specifically to The Shed? The Shed has a kind of unique performance space, and tell us a little bit about what you were able to do with this production in that space.

[9:04] Alex Poots: Yes, you know, unlike a lot of theatre pieces which are made for the preceding march, and so the audience are on one side and the actions on the other, The Shed is almost like a wide screen. In fact, we built the stage reaching, thrusting out into the audience, so the front of the stage is surrounded on three sides by the audience. We're blessed with a theatre space that was designed for a contemporary theatre practice, so we have 570 seats, you know, I always say every seat is a perfect seat, there's no seat that has a bad sight line. But also critically, in terms of your question, the piece as it moved into The Shed was made far more experiential. You know, much of the action, the actors are walking through the audience onto the stage or off the stage and into the audience.

We have, I think for the first time ever for a theatrical piece, we have Dolby Atmos surround sound. If you listen carefully, you could hear different sound effects, including the voices moving all the way around the space, both around you and behind you as an audience member. Because there is no preceding march, we could really use, there were no wings, so the actors could use the full width of the theatre space, which in itself made the piece more cinematic. And I think, you know, the light, we could position the lights very precisely, so you couldn't ever really see the lights' sources, you saw what they were doing, the lights, they would illuminate things. So it really did look as if you were in this piece, rather than observing it from behind the preceding march with the lighting rigs. So it was quite immersive in that way.

[11:06] Gordon Cox: Yeah. And what are the metrics? The Shed operates somewhat differently from a commercial Broadway production, where a big hit is in part largely defined by the number of tickets it sells and its popularity. And of course, that's one element to success with some...

[11:23] Alex Poots: What are some other metrics by which you measure success at The Shed?

[11:53] Alex Poots: Why are there different reactions to the piece? Because he's really pushing forward what a Shakespeare play can be. That's not to say he set it in a contemporary time. He set it in a very ancient time. In fact, some feel it's both ancient and extremely futuristic in the way it can be seen and felt. But I would say that, from my perspective, I'm always looking for those artists who are, you know, at the top of their game, whether they're at the start of their career, early career talent, or very established. I love both kinds of artists. But an artist who's really pushing things forward, taking risks, experimenting, and critically, who are very inventive, you know, and they're very proficient and skilled not only in the practice, but in how they push it forward.

And so, you know, whether it's a piece of theatre or an interdisciplinary work, we do a lot of shows that really come from music, theatre, visual arts, and create a synthesis of this in the discipline and in the art form. And so that was my first, you know, that was really the first litmus test for this piece. Having worked with Ken before, I knew what kind of artist he was. So I felt very confident in his, not only his abilities as a great director and performer, but also his appetite for pushing things forward. And also, you know, his grasp of history and his experience with some of the great Shakespearean actors, to know where a piece can go and how to push it forward.

[13:38] Gordon Cox: I'll have more with Alex right after the break.

[13:42] Gordon Cox: And now, back to my conversation with the artistic director of The Shed in New York City, Alex Poots.

[13:53] Alex Poots: King Lear is one of those kind of big, starry New York City theatre productions that isn't on Broadway, but feels sort of Broadway adjacent. Like, there's another version of this that could have ended up on Broadway, right? That production could have ended up on Broadway. The same was true of some of the other productions that have been at The Shed. You know, there was the Ralph Fiennes' Straight Line Crazy, which was also a big hit for you. And then, of course, Stephen Sondheim's final musical, Here We Are. Like, that was a big success and featured a ton of Broadway talent. I wonder if you could just tell me a little bit about how you think about the theatre programming at The Shed in relation to the commercial Broadway sector and where the work sits in relation to Broadway.

[14:32] Alex Poots: Yeah, I mean, I think there's definitely some overlap, as you rightly point out. I think the two pieces that you identified, for me, one of the things that really attracted me to the Ralph Fiennes piece was the fact that this was about, you know, the great New York urban planner, who was a very controversial figure, you know, who has made New York both great, but also quite unfair in many ways. And, you know, the gap between the haves and the have-nots, he accentuated that gap. But he also built the roads, built parks, hundreds of swimming pools. So he's a complex figure. The idea that we would have Ralph come and play that character in this new neighbourhood of Hudson Yards, I thought was very interesting, you know, because we are also in a neighbourhood, you know, that has many positives, but that has many detractors.

And I thought this was an excellent piece to, not only to be focused on that piece, but what is the piece saying about the neighbourhood, the city and the world around us? And actually, I guess what was also underlying my point was, can we really talk about gentrification in such a small area, but isn't, you know, most of Manhattan gentrified? Isn't that happening in cities around the world? And so that, you know, I think the intent behind the programming of that was as significant as what its commercial success would be, because we knew, of course, it was going to be, it had such a great run in London. We were very clear that it was going to, likely to be very successful in New York. But I think why I chose that piece over other pieces was for the reasons I just gave.

And I'd say for, here we are, I have to say, the Sondheim last ever musical, there were, I heard on the grapevine, there was quite a few people who had been, who that piece, you know, the discussion has been had. And, you know, there was discussions people were having about, well, you know, about the script, about the music. And I have to say, the moment we were called about this, I sat down with my colleague, Madni Yunus, who worked extensively on that piece, and he needs a good call out for that. But I sat down with him and I said, Madni, this is crazy. This is Sondheim's last ever work. Whether it's completely finished or not is kind of irrelevant. You know, Mozart's Requiem, which was far less completed than Sondheim's last musical, which, you know, on one day he said was completed and another day he wasn't quite sure, but it was pretty much there.

You know, Mozart's Requiem is one of the most played works of art in the classical orchestral canon. And how on earth could we not just say yes to this? So our reply was not, oh, let's get, send us a script, you know, we want to hear the music, it was just, yes, we will do it. We are a New York organization, a new one. Sondheim actually came to one of our opening shows. He came to Björk, who was in residence for a month. And I went to see him at the bar afterwards and thanked him for coming and introduced myself. The idea that we might have the chance to world premiere his last ever musical was just a gift for us. And I make the same decision every day.

[18:14] Alex Poots: And where do you think of your theatre programming in relation to all the other programming that The Shed does? Because The Shed's kind of rubric extends to all sorts of disciplines.

[18:26] Alex Poots: Yeah. I mean, again, I think that the continuum through all of it, and let's take Sondheim's piece as an example. This was a very experimental work he made. He made his last musical was effectively an adaptation of two films made into a two-act musical, one that is largely sung in the first half and one that is largely spoken in the second half. Highly experimental format for someone at the end of their career to still be searching, reaching out for something new, trying out new things. You know, The Shed is the home for that kind of spirit, that kind of artist, those kinds of collaborations. And, you know, just to say, you know, in the hands of Joe Mantello and his colleagues and that amazing cast, we were so fortunate to have such a visionary director to realise the potential of that piece, because that's not always the case.

I mean, a piece can have a lot of potential, but if it's not unlocked, it can lie dormant and somewhat flaccid. So, but I would say, you know, whether it's that or our current show, Luna Luna, which is, again, I mean, a highly innovative group show, if you want to call it that, in the visual art world. This Andre Heller, who commissioned it in the late 80s, commissioned, you know, 10 to 15 of the greatest living visual artists of that time, whether it's Jean-Michel Basquiat, David Hockney, Sonia Delaunay, you know, Keith Haring. I mean, just giants of the time, many of them from New York. And he asked them to make work for a fairground format. So you were getting these incredibly important works of art made by leading artists, but in a format that was really for everyone.

I mean, who won't go to fairground? You know, in what way is that not an inviting invitation to come? You know, this, you know, I always say, you know, the shows I try and do, try and have as many doorways and as many windows for people to walk through, people to look into even before they've bought a ticket, but just to feel welcome, to find entry points for many different kinds of people. And so I've always got my eye on that sense of invention, but also that sense of openness and access.

[20:53] Alex Poots: Yeah. And how do you think of The Shed fitting into the New York City kind of landscape that includes arts institutions like the Park Avenue Armory, which of course you have experience with. And now there's the, you know, Perlman Arts Center downtown. And these are, you know, sort of multidisciplinary, broad ranging arts organizations that are all sort of colleagues in a way that include theater programming, but also include all sorts of other programming as well. How does that relationship?

[21:20] Alex Poots: Well, I mean, first of all, deep respect for both of those institutions. I'd say that what probably differentiates us from them in the complementary way is that I'd say we're the only arts institution in New York, certainly that can both present visual arts, performing arts, and pop culture at a high level, but also bring them together in total artworks. That combined with a fierce kind of interest in invention, in, as I said, pushing the art forms forward, I think that cocktail hopefully makes us unique. That was very much the intention from the start that we would be additive to the New York cultural landscape rather than trying to cannibalize anyone else's patch. I was trying to find a new patch.

And I think, you know, the same could be said for many leading cities. You know, there's not, there's always room for people who want to innovate, try new things, you know, because there's a place for celebrating the past, you know, maintaining the canon of the past, you know, whether it's a museum or a place that really specializes in recreating works from the past, which is important as well. But I think, you know, the more risky end of new work.

[22:47] Alex Poots: The Shed opened not immediately before the pandemic, but pretty early. It was maybe a year before, maybe less than a year before.

[23:08] Alex Poots: Oh, ten months.

[23:09] Alex Poots: Ten months, yeah. And it's been a challenging time to be any sort of arts institution, much less a brand new one. And I wonder if you could just tell us a little bit about some of the challenges that the organization has had to face since 2020.

[23:21] Alex Poots: I mean, we have to admit our timing wasn't perfect.

[23:25] Alex Poots: How are you to know?

[23:26] Alex Poots: Yes. No, but I mean, literally, we were ten months, we'd had our first season, which was from April to December. And we were about to announce our second season within like a week or so. And we got, like everyone else, it closed down, which, of course, was hard for everyone, extremely hard and painful for everyone.

[23:49] Alex Poots: It was, dare I say, even harder for a new arts organization because we barely got going, you know. And, you know, so we were just starting to build an audience. We were starting to build a donor base. We were starting critically to build an identity. And people, you know, were just starting to know about The Shed and then we got closed down. But, you know, I'm having, it was quite, it was a relatively Herculean task for my colleagues, my amazing colleagues and I to open The Shed. So this was just another Herculean task to try and push through COVID and a pandemic. And, you know, I always look at the positive of things.

[24:31] Alex Poots: What we actually did was I got together with our colleagues at the Armory at St. Anne's at Brick in Brooklyn and the National Black Theatre up in Harlem. Did I say St. Anne's?

[24:51] Alex Poots: I think I did.

[24:52] Gordon Cox: Yeah.

[24:53] Alex Poots: We would meet every week to develop regulations for both safe performance, to keep the audiences safe, you know, rules and regulations that we could develop with, that we were developing with New York State, with and for them. And we spent like nine months doing that. We started almost immediately. And, you know, we then all went about putting on the first shows that New York, that we were part of New York's opening. And by pure coincidence, ours landed on the 30th of March, which happened to be the first live performance with a live audience in New York in 2021. So, but I mean, there was a group of us who really did that across those first two months. And, you know, I think we're very proud that we were a small but an important part of the reawakening of culture in New York.

So that was our kind of our next, our second Everest. And then, of course, you know, there was a third that we had to mount, which is that really, although we were able to get opened, it took at least a year after that before audiences fully came back. And so that was a kind of a third wave of challenges. But I'm pleased to report that, you know, over the last couple of years, we've really, you know, we've adapted. I'd say one of the things we've done is to do fewer things, but to try and do each one really, really well. To look at projects that can maybe sit in our venue for longer. You know, we've got Luna Luna for almost five months. Most exhibitions last about three months. So we have different calibrations of shows.

You know, some will last four weeks, some will last five months. You know, we're blessed with this building that is extremely versatile. We're even more blessed with an amazing staff who are extremely dexterous and ambidextrous and able to handle quite complex shows that are interdisciplinary and hopefully bring new ideas and new shows to New York's cultural scene.

[27:10] Gordon Cox: You have one of the newer theater venues in the city. What does that mean for, in terms of the capabilities that you have with the space that we will most often be seeing theater shows in? What does it, what are you, how flexible is it? What sort of things are you allowed to do in there that you might not in a more older, more traditional theater?

[27:28] Alex Poots: Yeah, so great question. I had the theater design because I was lucky enough to start before building started. So I had the theater designed with a grid that goes across the entire ceiling of the Griffin Theater. I also had the ceiling raised by five feet. So those two things were quite critical. One, it increased our capacity from 300 to 575, which is a really great number in New York because there's quite a lot of 300 seat theaters, did not want to start competing with them. There's not many 550, 600 seat theaters. So that was one kind of quite practical thing. The grid across the whole ceiling allows us to face in any direction in terms of where the audience are facing. We can also do as we did with the effect with Jamie Lloyd and his cast.

You can have audiences on both sides with a runway stage running down the middle. You can also be in the round, which is what we'll be doing with the Brothers Size next year, Terrell's play. And so, and our seating is fully breakable. So it can be deployed in one seating bank or in four in the round or two, as I suggested, the effect where it's on either side of the stage or critically no seating. And we've done shows where it's a promenade or it's in standing up. It can also be a 750 standing pop music venue. We've done gallery shows in there with digital art because you want a blackout situation. So it's one of the city's most versatile live spaces because it's not even just for performance. You can also do visual arts in there.

[29:19] Gordon Cox: You mentioned the Brothers Size coming up. Tell us a little bit about what's coming up for the show.

[29:25] Alex Poots: Well, so this is coming up next year. I have my good colleague, Madni Younis, to thank for this. He developed a relationship with the Geffen Playhouse. And so we have co-commissioned and co-produced the new Brothers Size play. As you'll know, the playwright Terrell won the Oscar for Moonlight, which is the script that he wrote. This piece is actually from well before.

[29:53] Gordon Cox: Yeah. It's, what, 10 years more? It might be more.

[29:57] Alex Poots: It might be 20.

[29:58] Gordon Cox: Yeah, I think it might.

[30:00] Alex Poots: And you know, it has not been done in this city for over a decade, which is very surprising for such... I mean, it was an instant classic, certainly when we remember it coming out. So it's a real joy to be partnering with the Geffen Playhouse, you know, who have now, I mean, it's such a great hire to get Terrell to be their artistic director. He's such a towering talent in the field of both playwriting, but also his taste is exemplary. So we're thrilled to be working with them, and that will be coming to the theatre next year. That is a good example of, you know, we'll go from King Lear, which is, you know, it's kind of end on with the seats, but then we have the seats splay out so that it's on three sides of the thrust. This will be completely in the round with seats on all four sides facing in with just a cast of three, and it's an incredibly moving, powerful, poignant story of our times.

[31:05] Gordon Cox: Is there anything else coming up that you can talk about?

[31:08] Alex Poots: Yeah, we have a show about Christo's The Gates, which is in our gallery level four, and that is both celebrating some of his unrealized projects that never made it, which is always interesting to see those projects that never quite came through alongside the 20th anniversary of The Gates, which was this, you know, I mean, again, a show which redefined what an exhibition format could be, you know, placing those gates, those flags in Central Park.

[31:45] Alex Poots: I think millions and millions of people went to that exhibition, you know, he kind of redefined what an exhibition can be. So we're interested in exploring how he did that and what we can learn from it.

[31:57] Gordon Cox: And how, in general, do you imagine the work at The Shed evolving in the future? How do you see it continuing to grow?

[32:05] Alex Poots: I mean, our focus will continue to be on those artists that are really innovating their disciplines, either within a discipline or across disciplines. That's very much, and we will take risks time and time again with artists who do that. We hope that audiences are excited going on that journey with us. You know, not every show can be perfect. The goal is not for it to be perfect. The goal is for it to be of the highest quality, but critically, really looking into the future and trying to see where that discipline can go and, you know, forging new paths forward rather than doing the important work of looking back at the treasures of the past and remounting them, which I don't want to disparage. That is as important. But both need to be happening for a healthy culture to be present in the city, I believe.

[33:03] Gordon Cox: Well, we will look forward to seeing all the ways in which that work continues to grow and expand in the coming seasons with The Brothers Size and beyond. Thanks so much, Alex. Nice to talk to you.

[33:14] Alex Poots: Well, thank you, Gordon. It's been a pleasure.

[33:16] Gordon Cox: That was Alex Poots, the Artistic Director of The Shed, where King Lear runs through December 15th.

[33:21] Gordon Cox: If you enjoyed this conversation here on StageCraft, help us out. We'd so appreciate it if you would take the time to rate and review us on your favorite podcast app. It really does help. Or tell a friend about StageCraft. Find past episodes and subscribe at all the places you get your pods, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and on the Broadway Podcast Network, a great place to find more theater for your ears. Until next episode, find me on Instagram and Twitter, and now Blue Sky, I'm giving it a shot, at Gordon B. Cox on all of those. You can also check out my newsletter about international theater. It's called JQuies, and it's at gordoncox.substack.com. Thanks for listening, and see you at the theater!