Natalie Ibu is about to make her Nationwide Theatre debut directing a brand new play in regards to the Brontë sisters, however the Kardashians preserve creeping in. “I’m continuously evaluating them, as a result of they’re the final word disruptors – they usually’re additionally three sisters with a brother that nobody actually remembers. We might not like what they stand for, however they’re profitable and beautiful at what they do,” she says.
Ibu is nicely conscious that some will see this as an appalling slight towards the Nineteenth-century daughters of a rustic clergyman, who disrupted the canon by producing among the most necessary novels within the English language. She means no disrespect, both to them or to those that know and revere their work, “however the concept that we will’t discuss in regards to the Kardashians in the identical breath because the Brontës I discover deeply offensive,” she says. “Our audiences are cultural shoppers who go wherever they discover one thing they like. I need them to be followers of theatre in the best way that they’re a fan of Harry Kinds.”
It’s Monday morning on the week earlier than rehearsals correct start, and a day of pre-production consultations lies forward for Ibu, who strolls in from her Airbnb clutching a takeaway espresso. Underdog: The Different Different Brontë was dropped at her consideration after it received Sarah Gordon the Nick Darke playwriting award in 2020. And although it was very completely different to Ibu’s ordinary work – together with a current hit present for younger individuals, Protest, she thought: “Sure, we’ve got to do that.” It’s a co-production with Northern Stage, the place Ibu has been inventive director for the final three years.
The underdog is Anne Brontë, who died at simply 29 having by no means fairly achieved the success of her two older sisters. The play explores the function that sibling rivalry performed in her eclipse, notably with Charlotte, who altered Emily’s poetry, and is thought to have suppressed Anne’s novel The Tenant of Wildfell Corridor for years by vetoing a second print run after the primary version offered out.
In a key scene, Anne berates her sister for gazumping her novel Agnes Gray with Jane Eyre. “Charlotte has this nice line, ‘I’m telling you, the novels couldn’t be extra completely different. Mine is unusual and gothic and intense. Yours is … life like.’ She is making a narrative that excuses what she’s executed. However it additionally makes an necessary level: that male writers tread over the identical floor, with countless tales about kings, and nobody questions them. So why can two girls not write in the identical area?”
It’s a query that resonates strongly for Ibu, who prides herself on being a little bit of a disruptor, too. Why, she asks, when 51% of the inhabitants are feminine, “so we’re not a minority, are we nonetheless made to really feel marginal – that there’s not sufficient room for us? And I really feel the strain of that throughout all my identities. It’s intersectional,” she provides. “While you’re additionally black and queer and working-class it solely turns into extra heightened – that feeling of not being allowed to be my full self as a result of my worth is barely from one perspective.”
Ibu, who has simply turned 40, went to Northern Stage after six years on the helm of tiata fahodzi, a British-African heritage firm specialising in new performs. When she joined, the pandemic was nonetheless lingering, so her preliminary programming was on-line. Her first reside present was Jim Cartwright’s 80s traditional Highway, relocated from Lancashire to the north-east. “I used to be partly saying, ‘Your tales are my tales, too,’ and I used to be proud that fifty% of that forged have been world majority, as a result of world majority individuals have been a part of the north-east story for many years.” Different successes embody Claudia Rankine’s The White Card, in regards to the liberal artwork world’s blindness to white privilege.
Born and raised in Edinburgh by a mom who was a psychiatric nurse specialising in geriatric care, Ibu had “a really energetic passion life, as a result of my mum’s a single mother or father and I’m an solely baby. So I feel it was half socialisation, and half actions for me to do when my mum was working.” She joined a younger writers group on the Traverse theatre, the place she noticed inventive director Philip Howard in motion and, by the age of 17, she had determined that she needed to be inventive director, too. “There was one thing in regards to the vitality of it and the best way that he held the area that made me go, ‘That’s the job I need’ – despite the fact that I didn’t actually know what it was.”
Her college careers advisor pointed her in the direction of a level in theatre with arts administration, which gave her an all-round grounding however not within the kind of theatre she needed, because it was targeted on efficiency artwork. Undeterred, she utilized for a constructive discrimination grant from the Arts Council and landed a trainee directorship at Nottinghamshire-based New Views simply as she was finishing her remaining thesis. She attributes her single-mindedness to her childhood. “As the one black child in my avenue, the one black child in my college, being the one one is just not uncommon for me. So shifting by a world wherein we’re advised there aren’t many people is just not as alienating because it might need been had I grown up in a distinct place or household.”
Her subsequent ambition, she says, is all about scale. “I need to attain as many individuals as attainable as a result of I consider that theatre modifications individuals and folks change the world – and scale allows me to try this,” she says. “Theatre is my activism, so why would I limit that to 50 individuals in a studio?”
It’s an ambition that she acknowledges might ultimately take her out of theatre altogether. “I’m not saying, ‘Goodbye, I’m off, right here’s my resignation through an interview within the Guardian.’ However you already know, even when organisations are doing brilliantly, theatre is unique. It comes with guidelines and etiquette and a historical past of excluding individuals. It does make me marvel if I must be reaching individuals of their entrance rooms, or on their telephones. As a result of nobody goes, ‘I’m not carrying the best factor to observe Netflix.’”
This thought brings her again to the problem of bringing three Victorian sisters again to life for as broad an viewers as attainable. An Instagram trailer for the present presents a mouthy trio in lippy matching their silky scarlet blouses. Ibu and Gordon “squealed with delight” to see younger girls tagging their buddies with it as an evening out to not be missed. Individuals with a longtime relationship with the Brontës are welcome, she says, nevertheless it’s additionally for the 17-year-old woman who thinks they don’t have anything to say to her.
“My very own relationship with the Brontës started with this play – I’m very sincere about that,” she provides. “For thus lengthy, I used to be ashamed of all of the issues I didn’t know: all of the books I hadn’t learn and the performs I hadn’t seen. I now suppose that’s my superpower as a pacesetter and a creative curator. The form of issues that is perhaps perceived as weaknesses are literally an perception: I’m your viewers.”
