Devils, Apprentices and Merging Artforms: An interview with Anda Winters

Devils, Apprentices and Merging Artforms: An interview with Anda Winters

17 June, 2011
by: Naima Khan

Naima Khan talks to The Print Room's Anda Winters about supporting young artists through The Devil's Festival

“We all have something to offer!” says Anda Winters emphatically in the sunny garden of the friendly Commander Bar in Notting Hill. As soon as my dicataphone has gone back in my bag, she wants to tell me about each of her 'devils' as she calls them. A print room devil, as in the time of Walt Whitman were apprentices, and The Print Room where Anda is co-artistic director has four. “Jeff shows a love of the text” she tells me, “Dan is very creative, Petra is in la la land and Hubert's dances always leave me so emotional”.

Their works, a mix of plays, dance and music, are soon to be showcased at what The Print Room are calling The Devil's Festival and it promises a brave, creative mix of events. But Anda Winters and her co-director Lucy Bailey are known for their bold programmes. These are the women who followed Pasolini's Fabrication with an Ayckbourn and most recently had huge success with Tenessee Williams' Kingdom of Earth. That last play which centres on an impending, destructive storm, was paired with an exhibition of works by Robert Polidori whose photographs inspired the set. Anda explains they're keen to continue this pairing of different art forms within a theatre context.

So every other night, The Devil's Festival sees Dan Ayling direct Martin Crimp's Fewer Emergencies which will run alongside a sound installation created by composer and singer Petra Jean Phillipson. Between their shows you can see Jeff James direct Chekhov's Swan Song after a dramatic dance piece inspired by the Haiti Kanaval and created by Hubert Essakow.

Such a mixed bill sounds hard to sell and I ask Anda what the curating process was that brought these pieces together. Her answer, I think, gives hope to a lot of young artists wondering if anyone cares what they can contribute to theatre: “The devils chose them” she says “It's not only their talent that matters but also their personality that's important. All of them are very modern in their way of thinking. I mean these plays are not really well known right? And they chose these pieces, and when we looked at what they wanted, we thought, yes, this is good.”

And so The Print Room, with confidence in their apprentices and appreciation for their hard work, will showcase their creations. With a lot of debate about what it takes to make it in the arts, an approach like Anda's is not just refreshing, it's necessary. “We don't charge them for the space and we support their ideas, we discuss and we develop them. And we want to do this every year.”

I ask Anda if The Devils' Festival is a kind of celebration of the underdog but she has a much more logical rationale for it: “We thought after spending a year with us and working really hard, we need to give them time to show their work to other people, and it'll push them a little harder.” Even in celebrating their work, Anda wants to teach them something and when I talk to Dan Ayling a little later, he explains The Print Room attitude to their apprentices.

“We are apprentices, yes, but Anda and Lucy call us Associate Artists” he explains, "they've given us the space to actually do work. As well as mentoring us in a way, they've given us the artistic freedom to flex our muscles a bit and said 'right, now go away and create', which is what we needed”


The Devil's Festival runs at The Print Room from 18th June until 2nd July. All four pieces can be seen on Saturays. Click here for tickets.


Image by Alex Brenner


Location: The Commander Porterhouse & Oyster Bar   


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Naima Khan