A week of children’s events is planned
finish in May and would I programme from then? So I wanted to come up with something that was more of a summer fling, a bit playful. It would be a case of throwing open the doors of the theatre and seeing what the writers would like to do if they could run amok.” Featherstone hosted an initial staff meeting looking for innovative suggestions. “I asked every single member of our staff, from the ushers to the cleaners, to come up with three writers each that they would like to give the keys of the Court to, so they came up with a big list. All of the ideas in Open Court are things that they’ve come up with. “[Playwright] Caryl Churchill said she started off in weekly rep when she was 15 and loved the idea of an audience being able to see an ensemble of actors do a different play a week – so weekly rep is the backbone of the festival. That’s six plays that we wouldn’t otherwise be putting on.” By inviting her colleagues to describe how they would like the theatre to be used,
Featherstone unleashed creativity. “They came up with all these things about wanting to use the theatre differently – such as wanting to be able to surprise an audience, to come and see something they didn’t know they were going to see,” she says.
As well as enticing in adult audiences, she also discovered a desire to do more to appeal to younger visitors.
“One of the things the writers said straight away was that we’re part of a big community and the Royal Court only really appeals to a certain age group, so please can we do more for children? I found that so exciting because I’m a mother of two – and so there’s a whole week which is kids’ week where we’ll be working with local primary schools, and eight-to-11-year-olds are writing plays. “They’re doing a VIP hostage thing where they’ve written a big list of VIPs that we’re going to try and get up on stage and ask questions. They came up with a fantastic list from politicians to JK Rowling – of course –
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