National Theatre: Rufus Norris is new director - Telegraph Theatre News National Theatre: Rufus Norris is new director Rufus Norris, director of Festen and London Road, will take over the artistic directorship of the National Theatre in April 2015 Image 1 of 2 Rufus Norris is to take over from Sir Nicholas Hytner as director of the National Theatre Photo: Getty Images By Hannah Furness and Serena Davies 10:45AM BST 15 Oct 2013 Rufus Norris was named this morning as the new director of the National Theatre . Norris, 48, has become the first actor and the first non-Cambridge graduate to be appointed director of National Theatre in four decades, as he pledges to bring adventure, bravery and risk to arguably the most important job in British arts. Norris, who has worked on an opera with Damon Albarn, a feature film which premiered in Cannes and a host of award-winning theatre productions, has now formally accepted the role, succeeding Nicholas Hytner, who announced in April that he will step down at the end of March 2015, after what will be 12 years in the post. .

Saying he was "nervous" but excited at taking on a National Theatre in the "rudest possible health", he has pledged to bring a fresh outlook, courageous projects and "attack" the role with gusto. Speaking at a press conference, he said the appointment was a "huge honour and privilege", adding he had celebrated by having a "nice tea while my kids took the p--- out of me". Related Articles Richard Eyre: "The National Theatre has defied its critics" 14 Oct 2013 RADA-trained Norris is the first actor to take the role since the theatre's first artistic director Sir Laurence Olivier, having worked as a painter and decorator and "played in bands" in his youth. He is also the first NT boss not to have read English at Cambridge since 1973;his four immediate predecessors (Sirs) Peter Hall, Richard Eyre, Trevor Nunn and Nicholas Hytner all did. Norris been an associate director of the National for the past two years, with productions including the acclaimed The Amen Corner and Table, performed in the Shed theatre. He also directed London Road, the multi-award winning musical.

Earlier in his career, he made his name with Festen and with a version of Cabaret, which is currently touring. Hytner disclosed the appointment, announced to staff moments before it was released publicly, was received with a standing ovation and a "roar louder than anything ever heard" at the theatre before. Norris said: "This appointment is a great honour and I am thrilled at the prospect and challenge of leading this exceptional organisation, where it has been a privilege to work under the inspirational leadership of Nick Hytner. "The National is an extraordinary place, full of extraordinary people, and I look forward with relish to the task ahead - that being to fill our theatres with the most exciting, accessible and ground-breaking work our unique and broad community of artists has to offer." He has previously spoken about the difficulties faced by black actors finding work in Britain, and pledged continue the "positive moves" to address gender imbalance. When asked about his background as an actor, Norris said he believed “hand on heart” that it was the “only way” to develop as a director, with his background giving him “an insight into the way people do their job”.

After being told he was the first non-Cambridge gradute to take the role since Oliver, he added: “Of course there have been times in my life where I’ve regretted being a painter and decorator and playing in bands for four years when I could’ve been at university. But I’m sitting here, it’s worked out. “A lot of people who go to Oxford and Cambridge are very, very clever, but it doesn’t mean they're the only clever people. “Of course I’m proud of the fact we’re breaking down what might be perceived to be a barrier and perhaps long ago was, but I don’t think it is anymore.” Hytner, whose time in charge of the theatre on London's Southbank has seen it stage money-spinning hits The History Boys, War Horse and One Man, Two Guvnors as well as the controversial Jerry Springer The Opera, announced he was stepping down earlier this year after more than a decade in the role. Hailing the appointment of his successor, he said: "I could not be more delighted that the board of the National Theatre has appointed Rufus Norris as the National's next director.

He has been a superb associate director for the last two years, actively involved in repertoire planning, and delivering a series of outstanding productions. "His work as a director is always searching, deeply considered and adventurous and I have no doubt he will bring these qualities to the running of the National. "His appointment will be welcomed with great excitement both within the National and in the theatre at large." John Makinson, chairman of the National Theatre, said the appointment was a "unanimous" and "enthusiastic" decision from the board, who were seeking someone with the "summoning power" to continue to attract the world's biggest stars. He added Norris had "rare integrity and rare breadth", and would be "brave, exciting and adventurous" in his outlook. National Theatre executive director Nick Starr will also leave next year after 12 years, allowing a phased handover of the top jobs. Shakespeare at the National Theatre - Google Arts & Culture Shakespeare at the National Theatre “Let Rome in Tiber melt, and the wide arch / Of ranged empire fall.

Here is my space.” Act one, scene one, Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare This exhibit, curated by theatre historian Daniel Rosenthal, tells the story of Shakespeare at the National Theatre through eight landmark productions. It illuminates the work of the directors and the experiences of actors and audiences using photographs, letters, design sketches, reviews and interviews. A film reflecting on the range of Shakespeare productions at the National Theatre since 1963; featuring Daniel Rosenthal. SHAKESPEARE AT THE NATIONAL THEATRE The National Theatre Company was launched in 1963 when Laurence Olivier directed Hamlet at the Old Vic, starring Peter O'Toole in the title role. The new NT Company found itself in competition with the Royal Shakespeare Company, led by Peter Hall, which was producing half-a-dozen or more Shakespeares each year in Stratford-upon-Avon, London and on tour. It wasn't prudent, artistically or commercially, for the National Theatre to devote a third of its programme to Shakespeare, as was originally intended, although Shakespeare accounted for 11 out of the 72 productions during Olivier’s decade-long tenure as artistic director.

Peter Hall became the artistic director in November 1973 and chose to direct The Tempest, with John Gielgud as Prospero, as his first production. The move into Lasdun’s new building in 1976 liberated the NT Company whose work had been confined within the proscenium arch of the Old Vic. The Lyttelton became the home for Shakespeare productions conceived to tour to (mostly proscenium-arch) venues around the UK and overseas. The Cottesloe offered extraordinary intimacy and it is no coincidence that Nunn’s revival of The Merchant of Venice (1999) was the third NT Shakespeare to be filmed after starting life in the studio theatre, gave Cottesloe audiences a ‘close-up’, televisual, experience of the text. The Olivier, an auditorium with an open, fan-shaped stage inspired by the Greek amphitheatre at Epidaurus lent itself to Shakespeare’s large casts, the ‘alarums and excursions’ of battle scenes, to political rhetoric, and the direct audience address of soliloquy.

Peter Hall and his successors – Richard Eyre, Trevor Nunn and Nicholas Hytner – have, for the most part, kept Shakespeare in the Olivier, the largest theatre, as an essential part of the National’s obligation to present classics to the widest possible audience. Poster for As You Like It, 1967 More than any other Shakespeare revival of the National Theatre's first decade, the 1967 As You Like It was an experimental production of its times. The play was to have been directed by John Dexter, who planned an all-male production with Ronald Pickup as Rosalind, but he withdrew, insisting he couldn't assemble a satisfactory cast in the time available. He was replaced by Clifford Williams who directed Pickup (Rosalind), Charles Kay (Celia), Richard Kay (Phebe) and Anthony Hopkins (Audrey), alongside Derek Jacobi (Touchstone). Ronald Pickup as Rosalind in As You Like It, 1967 Ronald Pickup recalls As You Like It. 'In the love scenes in the Forest of Arden, the theatrical form and the theme completely... penetrate each other on condition... that female parts are played, as ...

on the Elizabethan stage, by boys.' (Jan Kott - In the love scenes in the Forest of Arden from Shakespeare's Bitter Arcadia) ‘I have found much illumination in Bitter Arcadia, but this production is not designed to demonstrate specific ideas advanced in that essay… The examination of the infinite beauty of Man in love – which lies at the very heart of As You Like It – takes place in an atmosphere of spiritual purity which transcends sensuality in the search for poetic sexuality. It is for this reason that I employ an all-male cast.’ (Clifford Williams - Programme As You Like It) Rehearsal image from As You Like It, 1967 Derek Jacobi (pictured right, with Anthony Hopkins as Audrey), recalls playing Touchstone in As You Like It. Mark Wilkinson’s arrangement of Under the Greenwood Tree (sung by Roderick Horn as Amiens) – one of the songs from the Forest of Arden scenes of As You Like It. This first-night telegram to the all-male cast of As You Like It came from Danny La Rue, then England’s best-known female impersonator.

Journalist Kenneth Pearson, who had observed the production in rehearsal, for a Sunday Times preview feature headlined ‘The man who played Rosalind’, also sent opening-night greetings: ‘It must be a hit – there isn’t a Miss in it.’ Ronald Pickup (Rosalind), left with Charles Kay (Celia) and Jeremy Brett (Orlando). The Guardian critic Philip Hope-Wallace thought the love scenes between Rosalind and Orlando suffered from being played man-to-man ('If not embarrassing, they were somehow less effective'); for Milton Shulman in the Evening Standard, they lacked the necessary 'sense of romantic ecstasy'. Nevertheless, the production was a hit, giving 77, sold-out performances. Poster for Measure For Measure, 1981 In the integration of African-Caribbean and Asian actors into the casts of classic revivals at the National Theatre, Michael Rudman's Measure For Measure, for the Lyttelton in April 1981, holds an important place.

Rudman cast 28 African-Caribbean and Asian actors in his 31-strong company, including Norman Beaton (Angelo), Troy Foster (Claudio), Oscar James (Pompey), Stefan Kalipha (Duke) and Yvette Harris (Isabella). Rudman transposed Shakespeare’s Vienna to a mythical Caribbean island shortly after the Second World War. The production prompted impassioned, polarizing debate amongst actors and critics alike. In a Measure For Measure programme note, director Michael Rudman (pictured in rehearsal), wrote: ‘I thought about [the play’s] parallels with Cuba. A very loose regime, like Batista’s is followed by the doctrinaire puritanical regime of Castro. Then I thought: Measure for Measure on a Caribbean island. A mixture of Haiti and Trinidad. Mainly West Indian, because there are a lot of very good West Indian actors.

Mythical, because I don’t want too many specific political parallels.' ‘For the first time,’ reported Time Out, ‘black actors have centre stage at the National Theatre’, while The Times noted that Afro-Asian actors’ ‘entry into the citadel of British drama is a real advance.’ Interviewed in The Guardian, black actor, Norman Beaton, argued: ‘The fact that [Measure for Measure] is set in some mythical Caribbean island means that the audience are being pandered to. I don’t think that blacks in the National Theatre is some kind of… artistic liberation. The entire relationship remains paternalistic.’ Designer Eileen Diss’ ‘banana republic’ set for Measure for Measure, draped with posters of the Duke (Stefan Kalipha) West Indian World newspaper ran this feature on Measure for Measure in its 10-16 April edition, 1981. Norman Beaton as Angelo, pictured with Yvette Harris (Isabella). Professor Stanley Wells, reviewing Measure for Measure on BBC Radio 4’s Kaleidoscope arts magazine, praised Beaton’s performance as ‘a feat of classical acting of very high quality indeed’.

Irving Wardle's Measure For Measure review from The Times, 1981 Michael Coveney's Measure For Measure review from The Financial Times, 1981 Measure for Measure opened on Tuesday 14 April 1981, three days after the Brixton riot, in which tension between police and an Afro-Caribbean community convinced that beat constables were abusing their stop-and-search powers and arresting black people without good reason had erupted into violence and looting. The Lyttelton stage presented 'a carnival culture', noted Professor Tony Howard, 'and on the streets [near the NT] something very very different was happening.' Poster for King Lear, 1986 In 1968, Kenneth Tynan, the National Theatre's Literary manager, wanted Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud to alternate as King Lear and Gloucester at the Old Vic. However, it took eighteen years before David Hare finally directed the National Theatre's first King Lear, in the Olivier, in 1986.

Correspondence stored in the National Theatre Archive reveals that David Hare had first asked the National’s Director, Peter Hall, to let him stage the play late in 1974, writing ‘I would be very angry if you let anyone else do it… It’s so much better than any other play.’ Anthony Hopkins was cast as King Lear, alongside Michael Bryant (Gloucester), Bill Nighy (Edgar) and Anna Massey (Goneril). Peter Hall's letter to David Hare, 14 February 1977 David Hare's letter to Peter Hall, 16 February 1977 Peter Hall's letter to David Hare, 15 June 1978, reporting a conversation with Colin Blakely about his playing King Lear for Hare at the National Theatre. Anthony Hopkins rehearsing King Lear. In a South Bank Show documentary broadcast in December 1986, Hopkins spoke of Lear's rage, 'so volcanic and bound into some subterranean force of nature, it cracks him wide open... I have that rage.' An interview with David Hare recollecting directing King Lear at the National Theatre Anthony Hopkins as King Lear, dividing his kingdom.

Hopkins (Lear) and Bill Nighy (Edgar). The Spectator praised Hopkins' for a 'powerful and intense' performance. Three actors have since played Lear in NT productions: Brian Cox (Lyttelton, 1990), Ian Holm (Cottesloe, 1997) and Simon Russell Beale (Olivier, 2014). The last item in the Hall/Hare correspondence on King Lear: Hall's opening night postcard to Hare. Poster for Antony and Cleopatra, 1987 By 1987, Peter Hall had directed more than 40 Shakespeare productions, but had yet to tackle Antony and Cleopatra. 'I couldn't cast it... You have to find two actors who can embody what is said about [Antony and Cleopatra] in terms of charisma [and] handle some of the most difficult language in Shakespeare.' (Peter Hall) When Anthony Hopkins and Judi Dench accepted the title roles, Peter Hall finally overcame this longstanding obstacle and went on to be named Best Director at the Evening Standard Drama Awards.

Peter Hall's letter to Anthony Hopkins, praising his performance as a fearsome media mogul in Pravda, and urging him to play Shakespeare's Antony and Falstaff, 'before you are very much older.' Alison Chitty's costume design for Antony. Peter Hall gave himself a 12 weeks rehearsal period, twice as long as normal. He recalled that the extended schedule allowed designer Alison Chitty to sit in rehearsal '...sketching possible staging solutions for every scene. Then she build a [set] model and then she designed the costumes. The whole company contributed to the design.’ Alison Chitty's costume design for Cleopatra Judi Dench, pictured during Antony and Cleopatra rehearsals, recalls Peter Hall's advice on playing the Queen of Egypt Peter Hall, pictured (standing centre), in rehearsal for Antony and Cleopatra, recalls the production A few hours before the press night, Peter Hall, who was nearing the end of his 15-year tenure as National Theatre Company Director, told the company: ‘I’ve never enjoyed anything more in my whole life, and I wish it wasn’t over.’ Judi Dench and Anthony Hopkins in the title roles.

In his Times review, Irving Wardle wrote: 'For the first time in living memory, the English stage has two actors capable of doing full justice to the roles... their detail and speed is electrifying.' After playing Lear and Antony, Hopkins gave up Shakespearean acting in the theatre. 'We got the last of Tony's stage Shakespeare,' noted Peter Hall, 'and it's very sad that he stopped.' The front cover of Tirzah Lowen's fascinating Antony and Cleopatra rehearsal diary. Published in 1990, it followed the production from read-through to first night (see final panel of exhibition for details of this and other books covering NT Shakespeare productions). Poster for Hamlet, 1989 Richard Eyre’s first Shakespeare production as National Theatre Company Director became a tale of three Hamlets. The first Hamlet, Daniel Day-Lewis, walked off the Olivier stage mid-performance, and was replaced by understudy, Jeremy Northam, who was playing Laertes. Jeremy Northam played the Prince of Denmark while Richard Eyre rehearsed with Ian Charleson.

Ian Charleson had told Eyre he was HIV-positive before his Hamlet casting was publicly announced, and died less than two months after his final performance as Hamlet, aged 40. Director Richard Eyre, left, in rehearsal with Daniel Day-Lewis and Judi Dench Stage manager Ernest Hall's Hamlet show report for 5 September 1989 records Daniel Day-Lewis' unscripted exit. Excerpt from The London Evening Standard regarding Day-Lewis's walkout Some reporters insisted that Day-Lewis had walked off believing that David Burke was no longer Old Hamlet, but the “real” ghost of Day-Lewis’ father, Cecil Day-Lewis, dead since 1972. Richard Eyre makes clear in his published diaries, National Service, that Day-Lewis had decided three months before his impromptu exit not to stay with Hamlet through to the end of the Olivier run in November. ‘If you’re [Hamlet] you explore everything through your own experience,’ Day-Lewis told Time magazine in 2012, when asked about the night he walked off stage. ‘It’s utterly delusional to say you become some other person – you don’t.

But you do get to know yourself in a different way… So yes, … it was communication with my own dead father. But I don’t remember seeing any ghosts of my father on that dreadful night!’ Judi Dench, pictured with Daniel Day-Lewis, recalls playing Gertrude to his Hamlet. Jeremy Northam, (pictured right) as Laertes, was suddenly called on to replace Daniel Day-Lewis as Hamlet Two more of Ernest Hall's Hamlet show reports note acclaim for Day-Lewis' understudy, Jeremy Northam, on 7 September 1989, and give details of what proved to be Ian Charleson's final performance, on 13 November 1989; that night, wrote Richard Eyre, Charleson had 'acted as if he knew it was the last time he'd be on stage. He stood at the curtain call like an exhausted boxer, battered by applause.' ‘I [was] asking this guy to play Hamlet, a great actor, a great friend; I can’t say to the NT: “[Ian] is seriously ill, but he’s going to play Hamlet.” You could say it was irresponsible.

There was no guarantee he was going to play to the end of the contract, but it was a quixotic gesture. And because Dan had left in such bizarre circumstances, it felt consistent to take [another] risk. It was very, very disturbing because I had in effect to lie. And terribly distressing to see Ian slipping away.’ Richard Eyre, 2005 Director Richard Eyre reflects on his troubled production of Hamlet. The Sunday Times’ drama critic, John Peter was so moved by Ian Charleson’s ‘masterful’ Hamlet, and Eyre’s obituary of the actor in The Guardian, that he persuaded his newspaper’s editor, Andrew Neill, to fund the Ian Charleson Awards, in association with the National, with a £5,000 first prize for an actor under 30 for a classical performance (defined as plays written before 1918).

First presented in February 1991, the awards continue to this day, and three winners of the main prize have been chosen from NT productions: Claire Price in The Relapse (2001), Rory Kinnear in Philistines and The Man of Mode (both 2007) and Ruth Negga in Phèdre (2009). Charleson’s Hamlet, says Richard Eyre, has therefore left ‘a very good, permanent legacy.’ Richard Eyre's letter to James Adams, then Managing Editor of The Sunday Times, confirming the newspaper's sponsorship of the Ian Charleson Awards. Poster for The Merchant of Venice, 1999 For his Cottesloe production of The Merchant of Venice, Trevor Nunn, then the National Theatre Company Director, brought the action forward to the 1930s.

Half a century after the Holocaust, Nunn argued, it was ‘impossible for us to approach The Merchant… as anything other than the utterance of… a more prejudiced age that was somehow innocent of what the ultimate results of such prejudice might be.’ A 1930s setting made it clear to the audience ‘that we were looking at a time when the notion of anti-Semitic utterance and… action was becoming… part of a certain European outlook.’ Trevor Nunn, right, in rehearsal for The Merchant of Venice. he directed 'the best Merchant for many years' (The Times). The Mail on Sunday's Georgina Brown found 'every detail' of the production 'so fresh... that you watch a play you think you know on the edge of your seat.' Hildegard Bechtler, in an interview with Dr. Jami Rogers about her design for The Merchant of Venice, recalled: ‘The most important aspect of the 1930s came from me finding an answer to the floor.

Trevor said “tiling or squares”… I looked at paintings of the 1920s and 1930s and found an abstract painting which had pattern and strong lines, which was almost like a swastika, but it had deliberate thirties patterning and it did the trick. If I divided the floor up in a certain way with dark and lines and areas and made this painting on the floor with tiling, it just felt like a real floor, but it wasn't based on any reality.’ In her traverse Cottesloe design, with Shylock’s house at the foyer end, and Portia’s Belmont mansion towards the back wall, elegantly suited Christians moved across an asymmetrically patterned stage floor: ‘cream, tan and black rectangles of varying sizes’. This unidentified 1930s photograph inspired Hildegard Bechtler's costume for Portia's servant, Balthazar. (pictured right) Hildegard Bechtler's costume sketch for Balthazar. This photograph of the Cologne Artists' Carnival 1931 influenced Hildegard Bechtler's costumes for the Venetian cabaret singers, pictured right.

Hildegard Bechtler's costumes for The Merchant of Venice helped Trevor Nunn's production evoke Christopher Isherwood's Berlin. Henry Goodman as Shylock with Gabrielle Jourdan as Jessica. After 55 sold-out performances The Merchant of Venice transferred successfully to the Olivier. Goodman won Best Actor at the Olivier Awards and the production was preserved for the BBC and home video, filmed by Trevor Nunn and co-director Chris Hunt with the original cast at Pinewood Studios in June 2000. Poster for Henry V, 2003 Nicholas Hytner's Henry V, in the Olivier, in 2003 was the National Theatre's first production of this play. It demonstrated how Shakespeare's account of the English invasion of France in 1415 still serves as a barometer for the nation's attitudes to why and how it goes to war. ‘We had not long ago been at war in Afghanistan. It seemed likely that in the wake of 9/11 we would be marshalled by our leaders to go to war again.

It obviously felt like a play that would speak very directly now.’ (Nicholas Hytner) Hytner cast Adrian Lester in the role of Henry, making him the first black actor to play a Shakespearean monarch at the National Theatre. The Independent called Lester’s Henry ‘a pivotal moment’ for integrated casting. On their fourth day of rehearsal, the company read newspaper reports of a British military commander's impromptu, Shakespearean rhetoric. At a camp in the Kuwaiti desert, 20 miles from the Iraq border, Colonel Tim Collins had addressed men of the Royal Irish Battle Group: 'We go to liberate, not to conquer. We will not fly our flags in their country. we are entering Iraq to free a people... You will be shunned unless your conduct is of the highest, for your deeds will follow you down history.' Columnists instantly compared Collins to Henry V delivering the St Crispin's day speech. Designer Tim Hatley dressed Adrian Lester and his band of brothers in desert fatigues; they were trained to handle replicas of the same automatic rifles carried by British troops in Iraq.

Adrian Lester recalls playing Henry V on the Olivier stage Poster for The Comedy of Errors, 2011 Dominic Cooke’s production of The Comedy of Errors opened in the Olivier in November 2011 featuring Lenny Henry as Antipholus of Syracuse and Michelle Terry as Luciana, and was screened via NT Live to cinemas in the UK and around the world the following March. 78,000 people saw the 80 performances in the Olivier, and 45,000 people watched the NT Live broadcast to cinemas on just one night. This was the National Theatre's first production of the play and both Dominic Cooke and Lenny Henry were making their National Theatre debuts. An excerpt from Lenny Henry's documentry Finding Shakespeare '...savvy, fast-moving modern-dress production – set in a recession-ravaged city of crumbling buildings, lippy prostitutes, mad shrinks, sinister heavies and a wandering street band who sing British pop hits in Romanian... Lenny Henry...

has tremendous stage presence and combines dazed confusion and moments of furious rage with a touching sense of wonder at the end when the long divided family is finally brought together again.' Charles Spencer, for the Daily Telegraph Claudie Blakely as Adriana and Michelle Terry as Luciana in The Comedy of Errors In 2013, Michelle Terry, pictured in rehearsal for The Comedy of Errors, talked to Daniel Rosenthal about the NT Live broadcast, and her earlier experience of live-by-satellite relay from the Olivier to cinemas, as Helena in All’s Well That Ends Well in October 2009. Photographs of designer Bunny Christie's set models illustrate her and Dominic Cooke's vision of Ephesus as a contemporary city. Dominic Cooke's production hit a comic peak in Act IV, Scene IV, amid frantic attempts to bind the seemingly mad Antipholus of Ephesus, played by Chris Jarman, who described the ensuing chase in this email to stage manager Alison Rankin in February 2012, three months into the run.

FURTHER READING Bedford, Kristina – Coriolanus at the National (Susquehanna University Press, Selinsgrove, 1991) Cox, Brian – The Lear Diaries (Methuen, London, 1992). Cox’s account of appearing in King Lear and Richard III (both Lyttelton, 1990) Croall, Jonathan – Hamlet Observed (Oberon Books/NT Publications, 2001) Eyre, Richard – National Service – Diary of a Decade (Bloomsbury, London, 2003). Includes accounts of Eyre’s NT productions of Hamlet, Richard III, Macbeth and King Lear. Hall, Peter – Peter Hall’s Diaries (Oberon Books, London, 2000).

Includes accounts of Hall’s NT productions of The Tempest, Hamlet and Macbeth Lowen, Tirzah – Peter Hall Directs Antony and Cleopatra (Methuen, London, 1990) Merlin, Bella – With the Rogue’s Company: Henry IV at the National Theatre (Oberon Books/NT Publications, 2005) Rosenthal, Daniel – The National Theatre Story (Oberon Books, 2013); contains accounts of all the productions in this exhibition. The NT archive holds records of all National Theatre productions and is open to everyone to research and explore. This project is supported by the National Lottery through the Heritage Lottery Fund. Credits: Exhibit The National Theatre The National Theatre Maggie Smith as Halina in Coming In To Land by Stephen Poliakoff (born 1952), photograph by Graham Brandon, National Theatre, London, England, 1987 The National Theatre opened on the South Bank in London in 1976. The need to create a theatre to promote and support the best of British talent and expertise was not just a 20th-century preoccupation.

A national theatre had first been suggested in the 18th century by David Garrick, and Henry Irving championed the idea in the 19th century. However, it was not until the early 20th century that fundraising for the project was initiated. In 1908 Harley Granville Barker and William Archer published 'The National Theatre: A Scheme and Estimates', detailing extensive plans for the management, organisation and budget for a national theatre. Two World Wars delayed plans to open the theatre and it was not until 1962 that Laurence Olivier was appointed director of the first National Theatre company which was based in the Old Vic Theatre. In 1976 the company moved to its new home on London's South Bank under the direction of Peter Hall. The new building had three theatre spaces: the Lyttelton, the Olivier and the smaller Cottesloe. The new flagship company was soon hit by the cutbacks and funding crises of the 1970s and 1980s. Despite its relatively large budget, the venue was forced to close one of its three theatres for a season.

Under the management of Trevor Nunn the theatre has aimed to be more popular, both to recoup revenue and also to draw in a more mixed audience. His decisions to programme popular musicals such as 'My Fair Lady' and 'South Pacific' were met with fierce criticism from people who believe that a National Theatre with such a high proportion of public subsidy should not replicate West End commercial shows, but be a house that supports both innovative new work and revivals of the classics. Nicolas Hytner is now the artistic director of the National Theatre. Rufus Norris: how the National Theatre needs to change | Stage | The Guardian Rufus Norris Rufus Norris: how the National Theatre needs to change As Norris announces his first NT season as director, he talks about arts cuts, diversity, life after War Horse and enticing an audience into a ‘broad church’ Rufus Norris backstage at the National Theatre. Photograph: David Levene for the Guardian Friday 25 September 2015 07.00 EDT Last modified on Tuesday 20 September 2016 06.01 EDT Share on Messenger Close Theatres, like schools, take on the personality of the person who runs them.

Which is why Rufus Norris , six months into his tenure as artistic director of the National Theatre can’t be surprised that his every move is under scrutiny. How he behaves is the best indicator of what Britain’s most powerful theatrical institution will become. When he arrived to meet the press last week, in a loose denim shirt and leaning against a precarious table to make his season announcement, it was a marked difference in style from that of his predecessor, Nicholas Hytner , more relaxed and less dynamic. The way he answers questions also breaks with the past; where Hytner was fluently politic, Norris pauses and then answers with devastating directness. “I have a growing reputation of being a bit trigger-happy on the candid front,” he says when we meet the next day. “But I would much sooner have that. I try to be as open and honest in any given environment as I can be.” We are talking in his office at the National, where meetings are landing like planes at Heathrow. No sooner does one group take off than the next lands, with insistent demands, giving Norris barely a chance to draw breath. This, he says, is the single biggest challenge of the job. “It is a steeplechase and it never stops.

Every day, there are new and unexpected hurdles. There is no preparation for it really. You just have to get in there and do it. It’s partly about stamina. You have to be able to shift your mind very quickly.” Rufus Norris's National Theatre must celebrate the new and honour the past Read more An award-winning theatre director with hits such as Festen and Cabaret under his belt, one of his first tasks as National Theatre boss was to oversee the film of his production of London Road , Alecky Blythe ’s reimagining of a series of murders in Ipswich as a verbatim musical. He has just returned from the Toronto film festival where it was hailed as “a revelation”. News of his appointment was greeted enthusiastically within the building where he has been an associate director since 2011 and he is by all accounts the kind of man people want to work with. That said, doubters point out that he has had no experience of running a building and the National is a big building with which to start. He meets the sceptics head on. “I didn’t know what I was letting myself in for and I didn’t know whether or not I could do it. I still don’t.

I had a lovely chat with Oskar Eustis who runs the Public Theater in New York the other day and I asked him how long it was before he felt he was in the job. He said the end of the third year. That felt about right to me.” Norris’s aim is to make a National Theatre for everyone. “It’s not that every show will be for everyone,” he adds, quickly. “Not at all. But the National Theatre has to be a broad church, I would love it to be a broader church and I think it is very important that we reflect the city and the country we are in. We have to be national in terms of what we are debating, the subjects we are looking at, and particularly the people and stories we are representing.” Pinterest Chiwetel Ejiofor in Everyman, adapted by Carol Ann Duffy. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/Guardian The emphasis of his programming is on increasing diversity, on gender equality and co-production, making the audience base as wide as it can possibly be.

“But excellence has to be the first port of call so each project is judged on that.” In this respect, his direction of the opening production of Everyman , in a modern translation by Carol Ann Duffy and starring Chiwetel Ejiofor , was his mission statement. “If I was going to put down a marker and say this is what this place is about, then that would be it.” Norris, 50, is the first director of the National Theatre since Laurence Olivier not to have been to Cambridge, and to have worked as an actor. He is also the only one to have worked as a painter and decorator to make ends meet. That sense of difference runs deeper. His childhood was spent in Ethiopia, Malaysia and Nigeria, and “because I didn’t grow up in this country, despite having a very close family unit, I never really felt I belonged here”. He joined a youth theatre in pursuit of a girl, but when the girl vanished, he discovered he had found another family. “To be in a situation with lots of like-minded people where you have a sense of shared endeavour was great.” Perhaps because his upbringing made him an outsider looking in, he values the ability of theatre to explain the world around him.

“I believe in theatre because of its power to enable an audience to stand in the shoes of somebody else. It is as simple as that.” He’s instinctively inclusive, and fundamentally radical. “I have a small bum and a low boredom threshold so I like theatre that is engaging and dynamic. It’s all about eyes on stalks, the things that demand you sit forward.” His own shows have brought into the National voices not often heard – the Ipswich residents caught up in the murders of prostitutes, Mumbai slum dwellersin Behind the Beautiful Forevers , or the black worshippers in James Baldwin’s The Amen Corner – and striking visual effects. These are paramount in his next show wonder.land , already warmly received at the Manchester international festival , the new Damon Albarn musical that uses Lewis Carroll as a starting point for an exploration of the online world. Pinterest Thusitha Jayasundera, in pink and Meera Syal, in green, in Behind the Beautiful Forevers.

Photograph: Tristram Kenton/Guardian Partly inspired by what he has observed about his own children – he has sons of 18 and 15 with his wife, the playwright Tanya Ronder – it’s a bold choice as the National’s Christmas family show. Yet in many ways, the surprise of Norris’s regime is not how radical but how classical it has been. He may have brought in Stephen Adly Guirgis’s The Motherf**er with the Hat to shake up audiences and programme printers, but he also presented Farquhar’s The Beaux Stratagem . Next year will bring new plays from untested talent, but also Terence Rattigan’s The Deep Blue Sea and Rory Kinnear in Brecht and Weill ’s The Threepenny Opera. “The spine of what we do will always be classical work,” he said when we first talked two months ago. “Our heritage and how to reimagine and rework these fantastic plays is a huge part of our remit and our core audience are massively important to us.” Ticket sales are a healthy 89% of capacity. But he admits that he has been disappointed by the reception of some of the works he has championed.

“It’s tricky, isn’t it? Because you want everybody to think you are great.” He pauses and smiles, broadly. “So sometimes, when you put something on and people are a bit mealy mouthed about it … ” His voice trails away. wonder.land review – Damon Albarn musical goes down digital rabbit hole Read more The reaction to Patrick Marber’s new play The Red Lion is one of the disappointments. “It’s a beautiful play yet part of the learning curve is that plays about football, or maybe this play about football, have not caught on. I’ve been surprised by that but I have no regrets at all. Bringing Patrick back into the fold has been one of the great privileges of my working life.” The only real ripple so far was the departure of his chief executive, former Film4 boss Tessa Ross . Yet even that seems to have been accomplished amicably. “We discovered that you can’t have two people running an organisation. We thought we could manage it because we agreed on everything. In the end, it proved complicated. But it doesn’t feel like there is any scar tissue, certainly not between Tessa and me and the organisation is healthy.

From my point of view, it made me understand a lot more about the mantle of what I have taken on and made me step up to that.” Certainly, there will be plenty on his plate. At the press conference he announced that next March, the West End production of Michael Morpurgo ’s War Horse is to close, after eight years in which it has earned the National more than £13m. That leaves a considerable hole in the coffers at exactly the moment when arts organisations are bracing themselves for budget cuts of between 25-40%. This is on top of a 30% cut in real terms in Arts Council funding over the last seven years. Norris says the theatre is considering “six pages of ideas that our director of finance has come up with” of ways to get leaner, which include looking again at the question of Sunday opening, which is not always as popular as was hoped. “There’s no point in pretending we can endlessly go on growing,” he says.

“The most important thing by far is that we make sure we can fulfil the initiatives and the innovations we really want to pursue.” Pinterest Damon Albarn’s wonder.land: watch an exclusive trailer What he can’t do, he says, is pin his faith on finding another hit. “You hope, but you don’t take action on hope. Every producer in the West End is trying to grow hits; if there was a secret formula they would all be billionaires. The truth is that all the examples from this building that have done well have not been predicted. The only way to think about it in pragmatic as well as philosophical terms is to look at how you make work, and support the artist to do the best they can.” To that end, Norris’s most significant act has been to integrate the literary department and the Studio into a unified new work department. “The Studio really is our unsung jewel,” he says. “It’s a resource no one else in the theatre world has got. It gives us the opportunity to develop all kinds of work, all kinds of artists and be a resource not just for the stages here but for the whole theatrical community nationwide. It’s a question of planting seeds.” You hope, but you don't take action on hope.

Every producer in the West End is trying to grow hits Behind Norris’s easygoing manner, you sense the steel. He has a vision for the future and is working towards it, building on Hytner’s legacy, while shaping it in his own way. His predecessor will soon be working close by – running a new theatre at Tower Bridge. But a direct rival on the South Bank holds no terrors. “I’m naturally competitive,” says Norris. “Every time I see something really good, it spurs me on. And I think the more good theatre there is, the more people want to see.” His only problem is finding the time to see anything. “I work five nights a week and often at weekends. The thing I am not doing enough of at the moment is going to see other shows outside the building, but that will come.” There is no doubting his purpose, to keep the National Theatre at the centre of the nation’s culture and at the heart of its debates. “I went through a period in my 30s when I thought theatre was dying and film was the thing. Then you get a bit older and you realise that everyone has been thinking that for ever.

Theatre will never die because as a culture and as a species, the value of story is immense and that live connection between the story teller and the audience is a really vivid, vital thing.”

Question: Which actor was the first director of the National Theatre ?
Answer: LAURENCE OLIVIER