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Sammy sighed and wiggled the fingers of his left hand in her face, wedding band glinting silver. “Alas, you’d have to fight off Thomas. But anywho, back to the discussion at hand.”
Genevieve pressed her lips together again and crossed her arms, the outrageously expensive fabric of her custom Chanel suit rustling slightly as she shifted in her chair.This had better be good, she thought.
“As I’m sure you know, the Company has been accused of being somewhat . . . elitistin recent years. We just aren’t attracting the young people anymore—and that’s an issue, my dear. Our audience grows ever more silver-haired.”
Genevieve resisted the urge to smooth back her own silver-blonde hair, perfectly styled in a neat bob. Her own creeping age was only a thorn in her side when she read “has-been” or “tired” in the reviews, the blatant sexism grating. After all, at fifty-six, she was one of the youngest directors in the company?and she was surrounded by increasingly sagging men. Genevieve was in her prime and nothing would convince her otherwise.
“And how do you suggest we bring in the children? Perhaps you’d have me selling sweets on a street corner?” she said with a sneer.
“Not at all, not at all.” Sammy chuckled and gave a placating flick of his hand, apparently oblivious to her waning patience. “We just need to start thinking outside the box. Bring in some fresh new voices. Wipe off the cobwebs, so to speak. RBC is an ancient beast and slow to change, and I’ve been given the opportunity this season to prove that progress is not only necessary, but immensely profitable.”
Genevieve’s brows knit together. “But we do Shakespeare . . . . That’s just it. There’s always a demand for Shakespeare.”
“I couldn’t agree more, darling,” Sammy replied. “Couldn’t agree more. We just need to shake things up a bit. That’s why this season, we will be including several new works written within the worlds that dear William Shakespeare created. We stay true to our roots, but also show the world that we can evolve.”
Genevieve laughed, slowly and mockingly. “Your grand idea is to do stage retellings? That idea was old by the seventies. Just put onRosencrantz and Guildenstern are Deadand be done with it.”
Sammy pouted slightly, steepling his fingers and sighing far too dramatically for Genevieve’s liking. “Oh, I do wish you would take this seriously. It’s a big opportunity, darling. It’show we convince the stuffy dinosaurs on the board that there is value in branching out. I want my legacy to be meaningful. I want to show the world that Samuel Davidson was the one to drag RBC kicking and screaming into the new age. We need new blood, Genevieve. New approaches. London Shakespeare Society worked that out a decade ago and they’ve flourished over the past years, whilst we’ve remained merely stagnant. Something needs to change.”
She bit back a groan. How she detested the London Shakespeare Society and their ideas about revolutionary theatre. Rapping a sonnet was hardly ground-breaking. She had been trained as a classical theatre director and she knew their history. Genevieve would be damned if she was going to stand by while RBC fell victim to unnecessary posturing.
In her opinion, diversity in theatre was a glorious thing—as long as it didn’t continually bash its audience over the head with its “so-called” messages. How many angry emails had she sent over the years, telling journalists to stop describing her as “that lesbian director” in all their comments? It was just as bad when they called her “that female director.”
She was just a director, plain and simple.
A director who was talented enough to recognise that Shakespeare could be modernised and diversified, without the need to sully the great writer’s work by reimagining it as some god-awful, modernist crap. Or worse. Genevieve thought of the script writers who’d insisted on rewriting “in the style of Shakespeare,” and she shuddered at the mere thought.
“Can’t we just incorporate more modern technology and market the hell out of it?” she asked, picking at a non-existent piece of lint on her sleeve.
“Oh, Genevieve, I haven’t even told you the best part yet.”
She scoffed, “And what might that be?”
Sammy’s grin was smug enough to make Genevieve nervous. Nightmarish visions of more lycra danced through her skull. “The board has agreed that if some of these new writers actually prove profitable, then they’ll consider green-lighting your little pet project.”
Genevieve froze. Surely not. There was no way. She’d been petitioning for years for them to finally take her proposal seriously. She’d grasped at every meagre inch of freedom they’d granted her.
The thing was, loathe as she was to admit it to his face, Sammy was correct. RBCwasridiculously elitist. They typically only accepted performers and creatives who had been to the country’s top theatrical schools. It was nigh on impossible to get one’s foot in the door without those credentials.
For close to a decade, Genevieve had raged against the restrictions, arguing that hardly anybody had access to the money to attend those schools. That the company was missing out on valuable talent for the sake of status.
She wasn’t an idiot. She knew that simply arguing would do nothing, so she had developed a plan. A part-time programme, fully funded by RBC, where underprivileged actors could learn the art directly from the company over the course of a year. Genevieve had appealed to the board’s desire for creative control and uniformity, pointing out that by supervising their training, RBC would be ensuring the quality of “the holy brand.”
It hadn’t worked, of course. The best she’d gotten was a quota allowance for the number of people on her team who would not be from one of the big three schools. And it was a tiny quota.
“You’re joking,” she said now, not letting her hopes rise even for a second. “Don’t screw around with me, Sammy. It’s not funny.”
Sammy shrugged. “They know they can’t control the writers and they don’t want other companies to poach the talent becausethose young actors may get more freedom elsewhere. The idea is that you can have your programme—for actors, writers, and creatives—ifthis little venture works out. That way, we can look more appealing to the public, but the board can keep its tight grasp on the brand.”
“How many?”
He checked his sleek, black phone. The latest model, of course. “Twenty actors, twenty creatives, and three writers.”
The increasingly excited director pursed her lips. It wasn’t many, but it was a start.
“And who would choose them? I don’t want it to be the case that they would have needed to have gone to one of the theatre schools anyway. I want this to be a genuine opportunity for people who need it.”
“They said you can direct the programme, complete control. If . . .”
