The Bush is a place for adventure, risk and joy. This beautiful, tiny room crammed above a pub, and jammed into the loudest, maddest corner of West London simply shouldn’t work. And yet, it’s produced some of the most distinctive and significant playwrights and theatre makers of the past four decades. It’s done this with such regularity and aplomb that I have come to recognise our improbable geography as part of our huge creativity.
Since becoming Artistic Director the history I’ve heard of Bush triumphs, scrapes and scraps have made more and more sense. A tiny team of people cannot produce a dozen plays a year without casualties. The people who work at the Bush are a byword for unbelievable hard work, resource and passion. That passion has, over the past forty years, drawn the Bush through into the ridiculous and the sublime. It’s also produced some of the great plays, and great nights out in British theatre and, I believe, some of the great stories of the past four decades of British theatre.
We want you – our audiences and our staff and artists past and present – to help us assemble the history of the Bush. The story of the past forty years will be a story of groundbreaking premieres, it will be a story of the early careers of some of our most important artists and will also be a story of survival. The Bush hasn’t survived to be proud, or conventional, or safe. It survives to be loud, sometimes angry, and always loving. It’s time to acknowledge and celebrate those qualities.
For all of these reasons and more we are proud to be working with Third Millennium Publishing to produce a lushly illustrated volume in celebration of the Bush’s 40th year of shaping the future of British theatre, and I encourage you to buy now to reserve your copy and have your name included in the list of subscribers at the back. Our aim is to create a book as vivid, as varied, and as vital as the Bush itself.
Josie Rourke
Since becoming Artistic Director the history I’ve heard of Bush triumphs, scrapes and scraps have made more and more sense. A tiny team of people cannot produce a dozen plays a year without casualties. The people who work at the Bush are a byword for unbelievable hard work, resource and passion. That passion has, over the past forty years, drawn the Bush through into the ridiculous and the sublime. It’s also produced some of the great plays, and great nights out in British theatre and, I believe, some of the great stories of the past four decades of British theatre.
We want you – our audiences and our staff and artists past and present – to help us assemble the history of the Bush. The story of the past forty years will be a story of groundbreaking premieres, it will be a story of the early careers of some of our most important artists and will also be a story of survival. The Bush hasn’t survived to be proud, or conventional, or safe. It survives to be loud, sometimes angry, and always loving. It’s time to acknowledge and celebrate those qualities.
For all of these reasons and more we are proud to be working with Third Millennium Publishing to produce a lushly illustrated volume in celebration of the Bush’s 40th year of shaping the future of British theatre, and I encourage you to buy now to reserve your copy and have your name included in the list of subscribers at the back. Our aim is to create a book as vivid, as varied, and as vital as the Bush itself.
Josie Rourke
