SHOP

Max Stafford-Clark has been one of the most important and influential influences in British theatre over four decades. This book, a reflection of his work as a co-founder of Joint Stock, artistic director of the Royal Court and then the touring company Out of Joint comes at a time when British theatre finds itself once more under the kosh. Max's book, co-authored with Philip Roberts, comes also at a critical time for the director himself. Last year he suffered a stroke. Debilitating in itself, it has not, however, stopped him from getting back in the saddle with impressive speed as shown by his involvement with Alistair Beaton's King of Hearts in March.

That same determination runs throughout Taking Stock. Taken from Max's own diary, judiciously inter-woven with interviews with some of the many writers, directors, and actors with whom Max has worked, the story it tells, fascinatingly, is of a man and a director of intriguing contradictions; one who proclaims on many pages that he isn't certain where he is going, who prefers through workshop and improvisation to let the material emerge, yet who, behind the uncertainty, seems also to have had a pretty clear idea of what he wants.

For a start, one should say Taking Stock is a terrific read. I really didn't want to finish it. And the reason it is such a page-turner is, I'd venture to say, because of the shape the book takes. Some of the credit for this must go to Max's co-author, Philip Roberts and the clarity of his linking narrative but the rest of it is down to Max's own colourful and evocative writing style. He has a fantastic turn of phrase, a great eye for detail and a certain self-critical honesty.

Here is his diary entry regarding his relationship with writer Sebastian Barry: ‘Is my input becoming too great in Hinterland? There was a moment in Shopping and Fucking when Mark [Ravenhill] said, “The trouble with this scene is I'm just writing to please you.” But Sebastian seems to relish the contributions, and I have to say the play has steadily got better.’

That is Taking Stock's strength. For anyone interested in the intestines of theatre, the book is an absolute treasure trove of insights, tips, reminiscences and lessons in the ‘process’ of how a new play comes into the world. Like a new-born baby, it is subject to an almost terrifying process of gestation. It's immediate parent may be the writer but in Max's world, the baby's midwife is the whole process between writer, director, actor, producer and last but by no means least, audience. There is probably no one in recent times who has seen more new plays into the world than Max Stafford-Clark, from his first job up at the Traverse Theatre through the setting up of Joint Stock (1974) to his roller-coaster ride as the Royal Court's still longest serving artistic director (1979-1993) to his founding of Out of Joint (also 1993) with producer Sonia Friedman.

Sometimes, inevitably, you can hear the sound of old scores being settled as in the acrimony triggered by the cancellation of Jim Allen's Perdition. An account of this clearly painful episode turns up in the chapter on Serious Money – by Caryl Churchill – threatening to overwhelm it. You sense Serious Money's own story being sacrificed on the altar of history. But the account is also a supremely educative demonstration of the trials and tribulations of being an artistic director – of the aesthetic job of shaping ideas and smoothing egos into a coherent piece of theatre at the same time as fighting administrative, political and boardroom battles. According to this account, Max fought a long and arduous rear-guard action against the Royal Court's Chairman, Matthew Evans, who plotted and planned to get him removed over more years than any artistic director should have to endure. At the time, though, many other observers also began to question Max's prolonged tenure in terms of the Royal Court's long term good. Here at least is his chance to put his side of the story.

Max's skin does seem very thin at this juncture and at times Taking Stock does feel like an exercise in self-justification – inevitably selective and partial. But it's joy is also precisely in the choices the two authors have made and the inspiring story it relates of the ‘spirit of the age’ in British theatre, influenced by Brecht, politics and ensemble.

To read once again of the heady experiments in form and audience participation during Max's time at the Traverse in the late '60s and Joint Stock's idealism and commitment in the early '70s is to be reminded how staid and conservative so much theatre has now become whilst the account of Our Country's Good's turbulent and scary nascence is a testament to the emotional bravery of his actors and of Max himself guided only by some kind of inner compass and the influence of his Royal Court predecessor and mentor, Bill Gaskill.

As Ron Cook writes of the genesis of Timberlake Wertenbaker's Our Country's Good: ‘It was a difficult process. We had a lot of rewriting, right up to the wire and during the preview we were still changing it…we didn't know how it linked. We knew some scenes, but we didn't know it worked as a whole. On the first preview…we were just going, “What's going on?” because we had no idea. At the curtain call, people were just in tears.’

As we now know, OCG went on to become one of the most important plays of modern times, a rich justification of Max's distinctive rehearsal process of intensive workshopping and research, improvisation and writer involvement.

Nowhere is this better illustrated than in his ‘case study’ account of Andrea Dunbar's Rita, Sue and Bob Too. At the end of the chapter, Max pays a stirringly candid tribute to Dunbar who died at the age of 29 from a brain haemorrhage. He writes of his return after her death to her native city of Bradford: ‘Inside the library a small room is named after Andrea. The Andrea Dunbar Room provides a word processor and a quiet space for writers who can't get any peace at home. It's an appropriate memorial, although I don't suppose Andrea would have used it much. She remained suspicious of middle-class institutions and was more in the Dostoyevsky mode, scrawling at the kitchen table whilst the bailiffs were at the door. Upstairs in ‘Local History’ there's a scrapbook that has been carefully put together about Andrea's life. There is stuff on the plays and on the film and on local people disapproving of the grim and disreputable picture that her work gives, but the final clipping is about dole fraud.’

There is the mark of an astute judge of character who for forty years has found a way to nurture individual and group talents whilst forcing them, in his own subtle image, into the public arena. Some magician, some force.