We today announce Robert Hastie’s final season as he steps down after eight years as Artistic Director, with new productions running from summer 2024 to spring 2025 in the Crucible Theatre and Tanya Moiseiwitsch Playhouse.
Robert Hastie, Artistic Director of Sheffield Theatres, said: “It has been an honour to lead this wonderful group of theatres for the last eight years, and to work alongside such a committed, talented and kind collection of people. There is nowhere like it – the range of theatre spaces, and the multiplicity of local and national relationships Sheffield Theatres enjoys, make this place a whole cultural ecosystem, and it’s been a joy and an education to work at its heart. The bumper season we announce today reflects the variety and quality of great nights out and opportunities to join in that our audiences rightly expect of us.
I have loved working here. I will miss crossing Tudor Square and bumping into actors on a break from rehearsal, young artists on their way to an R&D workshop in our Talent Development space, lines of schoolkids queuing noisily for a matinee in the Lyceum, passers-by keen to stop me and tell me what they thought of last night’s show in the Crucible. The immense privilege of working in a city that loves its theatre is something I will never forget. Every time I’ve introduced a new director, actor or designer to our stages, it has been with an enormous sense of pride in the warm welcome I know they’ll receive from our staff and audiences. It’s inspired me to programme adventurously and eclectically, to invite world-class talent whose work I admire, to make productions of my own that I’m hugely proud of, and to dedicate resources to nurturing the next generation of local artists who are already beginning to make their presences felt on stages in Sheffield and beyond. Above all to see no useful distinction between the value we place on work that connects with our local neighbourhoods and that which achieves national and international acclaim. I’ve had the great good fortune to have been supported in all these endeavours by a dedicated board of trustees chaired by the great, much-missed Bob Kerslake, and by successive Chief Execs Dan Bates and Tom Bird and Deputy CEO Bookey Oshin, true champions of the theatre who have taught me so much about compassionate leadership, and who have become dear friends. I’m beyond excited to see where Tom and the splendid senior team take the theatres next, as they begin the search for a lucky Artistic Director who is about to discover that this is one of the best jobs in British Theatre.
For now, I’m looking forward to a thrilling final season that mixes bold new voices with global classics, risk-taking work for younger audiences with innovative new musical theatre, and family entertainment with chances to get involved in an inclusive participatory programme. I’m delighted to fire the starting pistol with a new production of Chariots of Fire, adapted by Mike Bartlett from the iconic film about the Paris 1924 Olympic Games, as we countdown to Paris 2024. It will be an epic way to say goodbye to the stage – the best of its kind in the country – that I’ve been lucky to call home for the last eight years.”
Tom Bird, Chief Executive of Sheffield Theatres, said:“Rob’s contribution to Sheffield over the past 8 years has been colossal. He has brought to Sheffield Theatres a rare combination of electrifying ambition mixed with a warm and humble personality. Rob’s achievements here are too many to mention in full, but they range from the intrepid ROCK / PAPER / SCISSORS, to the deeply human The York Realist, to a gorgeous Guys and Dolls. With Standing at the Sky’s Edge, he led the team that crafted a theatrical holy grail: a show that simultaneously empowers a specific place and achieves astonishing commercial success elsewhere. In line with the values of craftsmanship and friendliness that Sheffield holds dear, Rob is both a master of his art, and absolutely lovely with it. He leaves these theatres in rude health, and the city with an even bigger heart.“
Robert Hastie joined Sheffield Theatres as Artistic Director in July 2016, having previously started his career as an actor by performing on the Crucible stage in Edward Bond’s Lear. His time in post has seen Sheffield Theatres produce 72 new productions and welcome hundreds of guest productions across its three auditoria. Theatre made in in the city has been experienced by hundreds of thousands of audience members, in Sheffield and around the world.
Hastie’s tenure has enhanced the organisation’s reputation for being a top producer of new work. The last eight years have seen several landmark productions that have gone from sold-out runs in Sheffield to successful futures in the West End and beyond. Standing at the Sky’s Edge, first staged in 2019 and revived in co-production with the National Theatre in 2022 transferred to the Olivier and then to the Gillian Lynne (co-produced by Various Productions), where it recently opened to stellar reviews, carrying multiple awards in its wake. Everybody’s Talking About Jamie (2017) and Life of Pi (2019) both started life at the Crucible before moving on to the West End and major UK tours with commercial producers; Pi subsequently crossed the Atlantic to Broadway, and Jamie became a feature film distributed by Amazon in 2021. Last year Sheffield Theatres’ production of Accidental Death of an Anarchist transferred to the Lyric Hammersmith and then into the Theatre Royal Haymarket, featuring an award-winning performance from regular Sheffield Theatres leading actor Daniel Rigby.
During Hastie’s leadership, shows started in Sheffield have collected a total of 9 UK Theatre Awards, 7 Olivier Awards, 3 Tony Awards and 3 Stage Debut Awards, and Sheffield Theatres has twice been named Theatre of the Year by the Stage, as well as winning the Stage Award for Achievement in Technical Theatre. In addition to UK Theatre and Olivier Awards, Standing at the Sky’s Edge won the South Bank Sky Arts Award for Theatre, and was presented with an honorary degree by Sheffield Hallam University.
His first season began with his own acclaimed production of Julius Caesar (2017), which transformed the Crucible auditorium into the Roman Senate; he followed this up with a companion piece, Coriolanus, with Tom Bateman (2020). As well as Shakespeare, Hastie’s programming for Sheffield Theatres has included plays by Moliere, Brecht, Ibsen, Chekhov, Miller, Sowerby and Tolstoy; the regional premieres of modern classics by Caryl Churchill, Nina Raine, debbie tucker green and Peter Morgan; and major musical revivals of The Wizard of Oz, Kiss Me Kate, Guys and Dolls, She Loves Me and White Christmas. Hastie’s production of The York Realist starring Jonathan Bailey and Lesley Nicol, co-produced with the Donmar Warehouse in 2018, earned an Evening Standard Award nomination for Best Director. Other co-productions have included work with Theatr Clywd, ETT, Paines Plough, Clean Break, the Unicorn, Lyric Hammersmith, the Bush, Stockroom and Theatre Centre, with whom Sheffield Theatres annually produces a new play for young audiences which tours schools across the UK. Especially important have been the producing partnerships developed with Sheffield-based companies Utopia Theatre and Roots Mbili.
New work has been a central strand of Hastie’s tenure, with world premieres or new adaptations from writers including Chris Thompson, Peter Gill, Lolita Chakrabarti, Kate Bowen, April de Angelis, Chloe Moss, Oladipo Agboluaje, Steve Waters, Ryan Calais Cameron, Kieran Knowles, Ray Castleton, John Rwothomack, Charlie Josephine, Tom Basden, Nina Segal, Eve Leigh and Hannah Morley. A key relationship throughout has been with Chris Bush, appointed by Hastie as an Associate Artist of Sheffield Theatres, who has worked extensively across all three stages with professional and community companies. Following several large-scale Sheffield People’s Theatre projects, Hastie commissioned her first full length play for professional performers, Steel, which was directed by Rebecca Frecknall in 2018. This was followed by Standing at the Sky’s Edge (2019), lockdown musical The Band Plays On (2021), and the ambitious trilogy ROCK / PAPER / SCISSORS (2022). Commissioned as the centrepiece of the Crucible’s 50th anniversary season in 2022, these three plays by Bush were performed simultaneously in the Crucible, Lyceum and Playhouse in a theatrical first that saw cast members racing between venues.
Hastie collaborated on this epic undertaking with co-directors Elin Schofield, one of the first directors in The Bank Supported Artists programme, and Anthony Lau, with whom he has enjoyed a close working relationship since his appointment as Associate Artistic Director in 2020. The three were named joint Best Directors at the UK Theatre Awards in 2023. Hastie and Lau also shared directing duties on the first major reimagining of Boublil and Schönberg’s Miss Saigon, in 2023. Hastie and Sheffield Theatres have also benefitted from the work and support of Artistic Associates Caroline Steinbeis and Wendy Spon, Resident Associate Director Javaad Alipoor, and returning directors Mojisola Kareem, Paul Foster and Kate Hewitt, casting director Stuart Burt and designing artists Ben Stones, Janet Bird, Jessica Hung Han Yun, Mike Walker and Georgia Lowe, along with the talents of so many brilliant casts and creative teams.
Beyond the stages, talent development has flourished, most especially with the opening of The Bank in 2019, a new space dedicated to nurturing local artists, generously enabled by a donation from Jo and Chris Hookway. Each year a new cohort of artists are supported, with alumni now forming a significant part of the Theatres’ programme. Participation has also grown over the past eight years. Sheffield People’s Theatre, the multi-generational participatory company has broadened its reach, having regularly featured alongside professional casts on the Crucible stage – most memorably in Standing at the Sky’s Edge – whilst also breaking new ground with their own productions, and expanding into groups for younger members and adults with learning disabilities and/or Autism. A new strand of community co-created work – born out of a major push to connect beyond the organisation’s walls during the pandemic – continues to enrich Sheffield Theatres’ spaces over the year.
Sheffield Theatres’ work to improve access and representation for deaf and disabled audiences and artists has accelerated in the last eight years. A co-production with fingersmiths of My Mother Said I Never Should (2019) rendered the play simultaneously in spoken English and BSL. Training programmes to develop better BSL integration in performance, and collaboration with ground-breaking Audio Description company Hear the Picture, have pointed the way to more creative accessible performances. Most recently, Sheffield Theatres’ six-year collaboration with Ramps on the Moon partners culminated in Hastie’s 2022 production and tour of Much Ado About Nothing, with fully integrated BSL, Audio Description and captioning.
Recruitment for the new Artistic Director will begin this month, please see website and social media for further announcements.
