Lynette Linton interview: 'It took a long time to see stories like mine on stage — I want to shake up the industry'

Taking the lead: Lynette Linton has bold ambitions for the Bush Theatre
Matt Writtle
Fiona Mountford17 June 2019

There’s no doubt about it: 2018 was a year of wonders for Lynette Linton. At the start of it she was resident assistant director at the Donmar Warehouse; by the end she had directed a five-star hit show at the same venue, the play of the year in many critics’ opinions, and had been named as the new artistic director of the Bush Theatre, following in the lauded footsteps of Madani Younis.

Linton, it is clear, is not a person who wastes time — and today she announces her first Bush season.

When I meet Linton, 29, she’s deep in rehearsals for the West End transfer of that Donmar dazzler, Sweat. She bubbles with energy and enthusiasm, and beams when I ask how her year of good fortune came about. “I put it down to hard work, knowing what I’m striving for and trying to work out how I’m going to do it,” she says decisively. “But there’s so much more in that. There’s luck, in that there are incredible mentors in my career, and being in the place that I was [the Donmar]. I was so blessed to be able to have that experience.”

I remark that Linton’s relative lack of experience must have made her an outsider for the Bush job. “Do you think so? I’m young but fresh. I know what my vision is,” she says. This vision, clearly articulated, is “to really, really, really build our processes to develop writers and sustain their careers. I think it’s so interesting looking at some of the incredible writers across the years, but where are they now? Where is that second play or third play or fourth play?”

To that end, she has been honing a host of talent-development schemes for the Bush, to continue its work with writers, as well as other theatre practitioners of all levels of experience. This is an area particularly close to Linton’s heart, given that the Theatre Royal Stratford East encouraged and nurtured her, initially as a writer, when she was a recent university graduate.

“The word ‘risk’ is a really interesting one to me,” she says. “We talk about it as a negative thing, when actually some of the most incredible shows I’ve seen are ones we might have called ‘risky’. So it’s about having the space where I myself as an artist can grow, but also the actors, writers and directors we’re working with know they can take risks.”

She has, she says, “always wanted to run a building”. Throughout our time together she makes reference to “15-year-old Lynette from east London”, who didn’t feel comfortable when she went into a lot of theatre buildings.

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“I felt that can start from the top, and how do I want to feel when I walk into this building?” What made her so uncomfortable? “I think that’s a very layered conversation. I would walk in and feel a way, if that makes sense. You just want to get an orange juice and a packet of crisps, and it’s going to cost you £5 and you can’t afford that, so you don’t feel like you belong.” Later on, she says: “It took me a long time to see stories that were like mine on stage, and people who sounded like me. Now we’re in a place where people are listening.

“I want to have fun and make sure we shake up the industry with these stories, by shining a light on some of the voices and conversations that may not have been heard before,” says Linton of her season announcement. It’s a cleverly crafted “jigsaw” of debut plays from all the main house writers.

“That was deliberate, to make the point that writers can spend such a long time floundering in development land. ‘Follow them’, is what we’re saying.”

Her regime kicks off with her own production — “part gig, part poetry slam, part play” — of Chiaroscuro, written in 1986 but Jackie Kay’s first play. “She’s one of my inspirations,” says Linton. “It looks at women of colour, a queer relationship, shadeism: all these things we’ve been talking about for a long time. Jackie Kay and a lot of women of colour have been around for years and we need to shine a light on that. I’m standing on their shoulders. I’m here because of them.”

Chiaroscuro will be followed by Baby Reindeer, the theatre debut of Edinburgh Comedy Award winner Richard Gadd (Monkey See, Monkey Do). Next up comes The Arrival from Bijan Sheibani, well known as a director, about the reconnecting of two brothers who didn’t grow up together, as one was given up for adoption.

Temi Wilkey’s “heart-warming, hilarious and heart-breaking” High Table examines a queer relationship between two black women and the season ends with Level Up, from actor Malachi Kirby, which is a celebration of youth culture in London. Twenty per cent of tickets will be free to young people and, in accordance with Linton’s determined pro-youth stance: “We’re partnering with a company called Mentivity, which does mentoring with young people. Me and Dan [Daniel Bailey, her associate director] are going to be offering one-on-one mentoring in leadership roles.”

As if Linton wasn’t busy enough last year, she also found time to curate Passages: A Windrush Celebration for the Royal Court. This was a series of seven short films, of which Linton wrote one and directed two, about Caribbean immigration to this country. Fittingly, the films will be released online this Friday to celebrate Windrush’s 71st anniversary.

Linton, who describes herself as “energetic, hopeful and collaborative”, grew up in Leytonstone and is of mixed heritage; her mother, a carer and teaching assistant, is from Northern Ireland, while her father, a mechanic, is Guyanese. When Linton and her brother moved to her mother’s hometown of Ballymena when she was eight the siblings experienced “blatant” racism. She later wrote a play, Hashtag Lightie, that deals with this.

Growing up, she wrote novels “thinking I was the next Malorie Blackman or J K Rowling” and also dreamed of becoming an actor “because I wanted to be in EastEnders. That was my frame of reference”. While reading English at Sussex University she joined the National Youth Theatre, which in turn led her to a “very special place in my heart”, Stratford East.

There she met the man who changed her life, writer-director Rikki Beadle-Blair, who steered her away from acting towards writing and directing. “I felt as though I had found where I belonged,” she says simply, which explains why it matters so much to pass on the baton. Practitioners of the future will no doubt refer in similarly grateful terms to the Bush Theatre and Lynette Linton.

Chiaroscuro is at the Bush Theatre, W12 (020 8743 5050, bushtheatre.co.uk), Aug 31-Oct 5; Sweat is at the Gielgud, W1, until Jul 20