Find Your Niche
One Size Definitely Does NOT Fit All
No niche is too small if it’s yours.
By Andrew Baker, Artistic Director
We believe that success is ‘doing your own valuable thing’. Start where you are, use what you have, and do what you can. We shouldn’t be afraid of having a niche and going with it.
Anyone brave (or foolish) enough to listen to me talk about theatre-making will testify that this topic is one of my favourites. There is a stigma here that needs to be neutralised and I feel it’s important to remind and reassure people that having a niche is not a bad thing.
There is a tightly held belief that being an artist or a creator is to work without limits. To exist beyond the confines of what’s definable. To not be labeled as one thing or another. For some, this philosophy works very well. For others, it can be a death trap. Somehow, ‘the niche’ has become the antithesis of creative freedom - which it isn’t - and we need to celebrate the freedom that comes from knowing your mission, valuing your community, and recognising what makes your work valuable to others.
Before I started working in TYA (gosh, it’s been over a decade already?!), I did a bit of everything. I worked as an actor and thought I wanted to never do the same thing twice, or even once for any length of time. The idea of a year’s contract in a job was met with “What’s creative about that!? two months in and you're on autopilot. There’s no play or spontaneity left”, and maybe there is some truth in that. However, the same absolutely cannot be said for a company director.
I first started directing for an amazing TYA company call The Young Shakespeare Company, and I still work for them today as an associate. It was here that I learned the value of a niche, and why having one can feel like the greatest gift.
My first lesson was this: No one is just ‘a great theatre-maker’. Theatre is far too fluxy, formless, and vast for anyone to be good at all of it. It might take some time to work out what people love about the way you work. Some experimentation must be carried out. But, it is always worth being ready to say “here it is, I’ve found it. For now, I’m going to stop searching.”
My second lesson: Theatre should always have a purpose. This lesson deserves its own post but here it is in a nutshell… The act of creation isn’t reason enough to produce a show for people. We like to think it is, and maybe once it was, but I don’t believe there is space enough in our world for it now. It’s even hard to argue that making a piece of theatre ‘just to entertain’ is good enough. This industry’s position within the wider cultural landscape is a mean one. Theatre’s popularity and reach are pressed upon by other mediums that are far more accessible and easier to consume. Theatre also puts undue pressure on itself. It’s getting so heavy at the top of commercial theatre, so expensive and unwelcoming to normal working people, that those at the bottom of the pyramid buckle under the weight. It’s far wiser not to play their game at all and recognize that Theatre is a tool and not a commodity.
Lesson three: Audiences don’t grow on their own. I’m talking about theatre audiences as a whole, which are in a perpetual state of decline. My biggest bugbear is an auditorium full of ‘theatre people’ - the echo chamber. If we don’t take theatre and offer it out, travel it to unusual and unsuspecting places, we will forever be performing to the same old faces (and they are old and getting older!). If we want healthy and expanding audiences in the future, we have to make the effort to reach fresh, young audiences today. To do that, we have to go to them. Remove the barriers, the pomp, and ceremony of ‘a night at the theatre, darling’ - instead, pop up in a playground, a school, or a community centre. Oh, and don’t charge so darn much for tickets!
These lessons led me to my niche. I make theatre that rejects THE THEATRE. I make theatre for children who don’t know they like theatre yet. I make theatre that pops up anywhere. I make theatre that is fun, affordable, affirming, and for all… I also have a weird obsession with retro video games so I make theatre inspired by that as well.
There is a fear amongst creatives of being pigeon-holed. Well, we think pigeons are highly underrated.