The chances are that most people sitting in the audience at Chichester Festival Theatre will be unaware of the vital role Amelia Ferrand-Rook has played in the production they're watching.
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00:00 Good morning, my name is Phil Hewitt, Group Arts Editor at Sussex Newspapers. Now, lovely
00:07 this morning to speak to Amelia Ferron-Rook. Now, Amelia, you are Senior Producer at the
00:12 Festival Theatre, which means you're in the position that your role is absolutely vital,
00:16 but probably 99% of the people sitting in the audience don't know that your role exists
00:21 and you are happy with that. You're not about the limelight, but you are that crucial meeting
00:26 point of every single department, aren't you? I'm definitely not about the limelight, you're
00:31 right. And yes, there are two producers at the Festival Theatre and we sit sort of in
00:39 the middle of a web that makes the shows. From Justin having the creative idea and Cathy,
00:48 the Executive Director, putting the budget together, we then contract people, do the
00:54 negotiations, talk to the designers about the design, talk to the casting directors
01:00 about employing the actors and sort of liaise with every department to bring the production
01:05 together. So once it's decided what the production is going to be, it's over to you to assemble
01:10 the pieces? Is that the right way to think of it? Yes, absolutely. I think we put the
01:14 jigsaw together of everyone that will be there on day one of rehearsals to start putting
01:18 the production together and we hopefully help steer it towards getting it onto stage and
01:24 an audience seeing it. And a key part of the steering is bearing in mind the budget, presumably.
01:29 You've got to make sure it goes to budget. How tough is that then? Because it's really
01:34 tough. It's one of the main pieces of the job because obviously we are a subsidised
01:43 company. We work towards very tight budgets and hopefully the audience feels we make very
01:50 exciting shows. But the last thing you want to do is squash creativity, but you absolutely
01:57 have to walk the budget line. So yes, that is a constant juggle.
02:01 Well, I was going to say, is it juggling or is it a jigsaw? It sounds like a monumental
02:06 headache, but you were talking about your job as being a joy to do.
02:11 It is a joy. I think the joy is seeing it as it progresses. We're so lucky that we get
02:18 the whole process. So from reading the play right in the first instance and imagining
02:24 things in your head, we work through that process and then sit at press night and watch
02:29 the show and see what the culmination of it is.
02:32 What's that feeling as you're sitting there seeing the finished product?
02:38 Oh, I'm terrible. I mean, my colleagues will say I'm terrible at press nights now. I'm
02:42 very twitchy because you have no control over anything and you have to let it play. But
02:51 it's watching audience reactions as well, I think. I think that's the positive bit of
02:55 press night, seeing how people react to something that everyone's been working on for six, seven,
02:59 eight months.
03:00 Goodness, yeah. Obviously.
03:01 And then letting it run and it still develops. I know you know from seeing things early on
03:09 in the run of a show to the end, it still changes and develops as actors take it on,
03:15 as the creative teams leave. And it's a living being, really. So it's exciting to watch.
03:22 And part of the fun and the complexity is that you are dealing with such different plays,
03:27 aren't you?
03:28 Yes, absolutely. I mean, from lightweight comedies to the musicals to Shakespeare to
03:35 heavy new drama. Yeah. And that's again, I think that's what keeps the interest there
03:39 is you're not just focused on one thing for a very long time. We get to jump around between
03:45 11 productions.