Director credited with giving National Theatre a golden decade of hits will leave along with closest colleague Nick Starr
Sir Nicholas Hytner, who has presided over what has been, by near universal acclaim, a golden decade in the history of the National Theatre, is to step down as its artistic director by March 2015.
He said: "It's been a joy and a privilege to lead the National Theatre for 10 years and I'm looking forward to the next two. I have the most exciting and most fulfilling job in the English-speaking theatre; and after 12 years it will be time to give someone else a turn to enjoy the company of my stupendous colleagues, who together make the National what it is."
Hytner, 56, has been credited with making the National an artistically vibrant theatre that has produced strings of popular hits, such as War Horse and The History Boys, and become a place where Britain can hold a mirror to itself politically and socially, whether through bold new commissions that inquire into the state of the nation, such as London Road, or by timely revivals of the classics, such as Hytner's own version of Henry V, which played as Britain and the US invaded Iraq in 2003.
One of his chief achievements was persuading the firm Travelex to sponsor cheap seats – so that many tickets for the National's largest stage, the Olivier, are £12, less than a West End cinema ticket. During his tenure the theatre has also begun transmitting its work in cinemas, bringing productions to a wider audience.
Hytner's resignation comes as no surprise: he has repeatedly said that a decade is about the right period for an artistic director to preside over what is, with the Royal Shakespeare Company, Britain's most celebrated theatre.
He has also signalled in the past that the optimum time to depart would be after the National's 50th anniversary, which falls this year, and the theatre's current £70m redevelopment, which sees its smallest stage, the Cottesloe, transformed and renamed; the creation of a new riverside bar and gardens; and a new education centre. Work is due to be completed in 2014.
Hytner's closest colleague, the theatre's executive director, Nick Starr, has also announced his departure in 2014 to make way for a new senior manager to work with the incoming artistic director.
The pair will continue to work together, Starr told the Guardian. "We have plans, but it's not quite the moment to speak about them," he said. "We have a wonderful working relationship, and we don't want it to end yet."
In an interview with the Guardian in November, Hytner signalled his desire not to become a freelance director, as many former artistic directors of theatres have done, but to continue working as an artistic director and producer in another guise – leaving open the intriguing possibility that the pair aim to run another British theatre.
"I doubt I'd want to be a freelance director again," he said. "I like producing too much." Asked whether he would found a company bearing his own name, he said: "No not that. I'd want to continue to do something that wasn't just about me. I'm a director and always will be, but I love the relationship I have with directors, writers I have never worked with directly, and actors I have never worked with."
The search is now on for Hytner's successor – which will be one of the most hotly fought recruitment processes in the arts, with no shortage of potential contenders such as Dominic Cooke, until recently artistic director of the Royal Court, Tom Morris, currently revitalising the Bristol Old Vic, and Marianne Elliott, associate director at the National.
Adverts for the job will be published next week and a new artistic director announced, it is hoped, by the autumn. It is anticipated that Hytner's successor will be in post in early to mid-2014 as "director designate" with a period of overlap until Hytner's last programmed works are played in March 2015. The new director's programme will take over in April 2015.
John Makinson, the National's chair, paid tribute to the "two Nicks", saying: "Nick Hytner and Nick Starr have led the National Theatre to undreamed levels of creative and commercial success over the past decade."
Makinson will be joined on the search committee for Hytner's successor by the novelist Kate Mosse, the British Museum's director Neil MacGregor, the Film4 boss Tessa Ross and the producer and agent Peter Bennett-Jones.
via The Guardian World News http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2013/apr/10/sir-nicholas-hytner-national-theatre
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