Kip Williams has become the youngest artistic director of Australia’s leading stage company, Sydney Theatre Company (STC), after a unanimous board decision that ends months of speculation.
In a statement, Cate Blanchett, who was co-artistic director of STC with Andrew Upton from 2008-2012, said: “This is wonderful news, not only for STC but for the whole theatre community. Kip’s appointment marks an exciting new chapter.” Regular STC actor Hugo Weaving said: “Kip Williams has consistently been making some of this country’s most stimulating and powerful theatre over the last five years ... His keen intelligence, consideration, tirelessness, youth and rare skill as a theatre maker make him the obvious appointment.”
Williams, 30, was appointed interim artistic director in August, and told Guardian Australia he was “thrilled and humbled” to take on the gig permanently. “Those are probably the major emotions coursing through me right now! It’s amazing.”
Williams flew back to Sydney from Melbourne to officially accept the role on Wednesday, after a “very involved” and “rigorous” process which involved a number of interview rounds.
Williams said he was looking forward to repeating “one of the great successes” of Upton and Blanchett’s tenure as co-artistic directors: the development of major new Australian work, such as Andrew Bovell’s acclaimed adaptation of Kate Grenville’s Secret River, directed by Neil Armfield. “If I were to look back at the end of my time at the company, if I could have contributed to the Australian canon with some new Australian works ... that would be something I would be incredibly proud of.”
He also said supporting cultural and gender diversity in Australian theatre would be “a big part of my overarching philosophy in the job”.
“I’m really committed to seeing female theatre makers supported in bigger spaces and with more resources,” he said. “The company has some great [cultural diversity] initiatives at the moment ... As the face of Australia changes, our stories have to reflect that.”
He said STC was part of an “industry-wide change” that’s occurring around diversity. “[There seems to be] a critical mass of practitioners, both established and emerging, who are genuinely committed to shifting the game in that way,” he said. “And to be the artistic directory of a company of the scale of Sydney Theatre Company, who have a tradition in birthing the careers of some of our most esteemed theatre makers – it’s such a privileged opportunity to be able to do that at a point in time when the industry is having such an important conversation.”
The artistic director’s job was left open in May when the British-born artistic director Jonathan Church stepped down from the role just nine months after being appointed. But there’s been no shortage of speculation about who would fill his shoes.
Speaking recently to Guardian Australia, Upton and director Simon Phillips both praised Williams as a “fantastic” and “terrific” director. “I shouldn’t really venture an opinion about casting that role in STC, but I love his work,” Phillips said.
In a statement on Wednesday, Upton said: “The board has made an excellent choice. Kip is the sort of unique talent that is rare to find. Confident in his own creative voice and a terrific collaborator, he has an incredible track record already and is on the cusp of a magnificent career”.
Upton gave Williams his first engagement with the company in 2011, inviting him to be assistant director on his production of The White Guard. Williams fulfilled the same role for Richard Cottrell, Benedict Andrews and Armfield, before being appointed STC directing associate in 2012, and resident director in 2013.
In 2015 Williams won the Helpmann award’s top prize of best director for his fresh spin on Suddenly Last Summer for STC, praised in this publication as “intense and electrifying”. This year, he oversaw acclaimed runs of All My Sons and The Golden Age, and was nominated for a Helpmann for his direction of STC/Malthouse’s co-production of Love and Information.
“I’m very fortunate that I have a relationship both with the established artistic community and, by virtue of my youth, I’m deeply connected to the emerging generation of storytellers,” Williams told Guardian Australia. “I think that that’s a really exciting position to be in – particularly given that so much of the responsibility of an artistic director is to develop new voices.”
Williams is equally passionate about supporting the small-to-medium theatre sector, which lost out dramatically in this year’s funding round after cuts to the Australia Council. “I was heartened to see the mainstage companies present a collective front on this most important issue,” he said, of the recent #IStandWithTheArtsCampaign. “[The major] companies know better than anyone that our entire theatre ecology dries up if we don’t have a vibrant independent sector and a vibrant small to medium sector. They’re the training ground and breeding ground for new and young artists, and they’re the places where new stories and risk takers can really cut their teeth.”
STC’s chairman, Ian Narev, said the appointment of Williams followed an “extensive” review of an impressive shortlist of candidates from Australia and from abroad.
“Through our deliberations, we always returned to the notion of STC being an artist-led company with a distinctive heritage and voice ... Kip is a visionary artist who spoke to us about his love for the company, and his practical vision for how it can use its strong foundations to reach even higher artistic standards for audiences, artists, staff and the community.
“The esteem in which he is held by colleagues, from the country’s leading artists to those just starting out, is clear. All of us on the board were unanimous that Kip was the standout choice.”
• On 4 November this article was amended to correctly identify the writer and director of STC’s adaptation of The Secret River
