Vicky Featherstone

Vicky Featherstone (born 5 April 1967) is a theatre and artistic director. She was artistic director of the UK new writing touring theatre company Paines Plough from 1997, founding director of the National Theatre of Scotland in 2004, and the first female artistic director of London's Royal Court Theatre from 2013 until 2023. Featherstone's career has been characterised by significant involvement with new writing.

Early life and education

Vicky Featherstone was born in Redhill, Surrey on 5 April 1967, but moved to Scotland at 6 weeks old, where she lived in Clackmannanshire until the age of 7, when her father's work took her around the world. Her father is a chemical engineer and her mother a nurse. She is the eldest of three children. Featherstone was privately educated.

Featherstone studied drama at Manchester University, and soon discovered she favoured directing over acting.

Featherstone also did an MA in directing at the university, in association with Manchester's Contact Theatre.

Career

Early directorships and acting

Featherstone's worked as assistant director at the Royal Court Theatre in London in 1990 on Martin Crimp's ''No One Sees the Video''. She gained a place on the Regional Theatre Young Director Scheme, under which she spent two years from 1992 to 1994, first as assistant director and then associate director, based at West Yorkshire Playhouse, then under the artistic directorship of Jude Kelly.

She then became resident director at the Octagon Theatre Bolton from 1994 to 1996 and worked at Northern Stage, then became Literary Associate for the Bush Theatre from 1996 to 1997.

Television script editor

In the mid-1990s, Featherstone returned to TV script editing and programme development, having worked for a time as a script editor for Central TV immediately after University. Whilst a script editor at United Productions, Featherstone conceived, after attending a friend's wedding in Yorkshire, with writer Ashley Pharoah, the series '' Where the Heart Is'', revolving around the lives of district nurses in a close-knit Yorkshire community. The programme debuted in 1997.

She was also involved in the development of the pathologist drama ''Silent Witness'', first broadcast in 1996, for which she was credited as script editor for the first two episodes.

Management roles

Paines Plough (1997–2004)

Featherstone was artistic director of Paines Plough, a theatre company based in the UK that specialises in new plays and touring, from 1997 to 2004.

Immediately prior to her appointment, the company was not thriving. Featherstone appointed writers Mark Ravenhill as literary manager and Sarah Kane as writer-in-residence, and developed an atmosphere seen as welcoming to writers. Within two years of her appointment, the company had increased audiences by over 100%. World premieres of ''Anna Weiss'', a study of false memory syndrome by Mike Cullen; '' Crave'', written by Kane on love and loss; ''Sleeping Around'', a 1990s update of '' La Ronde''; and ''The Cosmonaut's Last Message to the Woman He Once Loved in the Former Soviet Union'' by David Greig, helped build Paines Plough's reputation. Under Featherstone the company was noted for its commitment to theatrical activity outside London in the UK regions, and willingness to experiment and collaborate with other theatre companies such as Frantic Assembly and Graeae. Her hiring of John Tiffany as associate director was also considered a significant contribution to the company's success.

By the time of Featherstone's departure from Paines Plough in 2004, the company was being described as "a major force for new writing" and "a national and international force in British theatre", staff had doubled from four to eight, she had turned round the company's deficit and turnover had risen to £0.5m per year.

National Theatre of Scotland (2006–2013)

In September 2003, the Scottish Executive announced funding of £7.5m for the establishment of the National Theatre of Scotland, with £3.5m for the year April 2004 to March 2005 and £4m for the following year. Robert Findlay, once chief executive of Scottish Radio Holdings, was appointed as chairman, and once a board had also been appointed, the search for the first artistic director for the NTS began.

The job of director of the NTS, combining the roles of director, chief executive, and artistic director, was advertised in May 2004. From an initial 30 applications for the post, six were interviewed. Findlay announced Featherstone's appointment on 29 July 2004 at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, and Featherstone took up her post at the NTS – then housed in an empty temporary office in Hope Street, Glasgow, on 1 November 2004.

She began building a team. This included John Tiffany, who had worked with her at Paines Plough and prior to that was Literary Director of Edinburgh's Traverse Theatre, as associate director of New Work; Neil Murray, since 1999 executive producer of Glasgow's Tron Theatre, as the NTS's Executive Director; playwright David Greig, as dramaturg; playwright and poet Liz Lochhead as an artistic associate; and Simon Sharkey, then artistic director of Cumbernauld Theatre, as associate director of NTS Learn. Featherstone and the team undertook intensive engagement with theatre professionals and groups throughout Scotland and began developing ideas and strategy.

On 2 November 2005, Featherstone unveiled the National Theatre of Scotland's inaugural programme to a packed audience at the Tramway in Glasgow, having announced it the previous day. The season included ten first night shows on the theme of ''Home'', ''Black Watch'' scheduled for August 2006, and various other productions.

"We asked 10 of our best directors to create a piece of theatre around the word 'Home' – commonly thought of as one of the most evocative words in the English language....We want people to realise the NTS relates to the people of Scotland and for people to feel that they have ownership of it. We have an opportunity to define what theatre, or a national theatre, can and should be". The 10 experimental site-specific shows were staged simultaneously in non-theatre locations all across Scotland, with an official first night of 25 February 2006. Each production was allocated a budget of £60,000, and up to 10,000 free tickets were available.

Inspired by an article she read in the Glasgow ''Herald'' shortly after she took up her appointment with the NTS in November 2004, Featherstone asked writer Gregory Burke to follow the unfolding story of the Black Watch regiment – the oldest Highland regiment, which was being merged with other Scottish regiments. The production, about a group of young soldiers from the Fife-based regiment in Basra, was developed from interviews Burke did one Sunday afternoon in a pub in Dunfermline with six soldiers who had served in Iraq. This was developed into loosely connected scenes and ultimately the finished play. Directed by Tiffany, ''Black Watch'' opened as part of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in August 2006, as a site-specific work performed at the University of Edinburgh's Drill hall. The play was an immediate popular and critical success. The production subsequently won multiple awards including Olivier Awards, has toured repeatedly since with productions on five continents, and has been adapted for television by the BBC.

Royal Court Theatre (2013–2023)

Featherstone's appointment as the first female artistic director of the Royal Court Theatre was announced in May 2012 and she took over in April 2013. She left the position in 2023.

During this time, she was asked to do a production of Samuel Beckett's ''Krapp's Last Tape''.

Recent work

From October 2024, Featherstone directed a production of ''Krapp's Last Tape'' for Landmark Productions, starring Stephen Rea as Krapp. The play premiered at the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin, Ireland, moving to Dublin's Project Arts Centre later that month. In February–March 2025 the production plays at the Dunstan Playhouse at the Adelaide Festival Centre in Adelaide, South Australia, and then at the Barbican Theatre in London in April–May.

Personal life

Featherstone married Danny Brown, a TV scriptwriter and former stand-up comedian. They have two children.

Theatre productions

''Home'' at the NTS (2006)

Other productions

References

External links

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Featherstone, Vicky
English artistic directors
English theatre directors
British women theatre directors
Living people
1967 births
People from Redhill, Surrey
People educated at the Old Palace School