Mark Fisher
Mark Fisher is a freelance theatre critic, editor and feature writer, based in Edinburgh. He is the Scottish theatre critic for the Guardian and Variety newspapers, editor of www.theatreSCOTLAND and a former editor of The List magazine. He is also chair of the Edinburgh Freelance branch of the NUJ.
1. Have you always been freelance and, if yes, since when and why?
My first job in journalism was at The List magazine in the late 1980s, initially as a production assistant and later as theatre editor. In 1992, I set up a quarterly magazine called Theatre Scotland with a group of friends and, once it was established, I went freelance so I could split my time between editing and other work. By the time the magazine folded in 1995 (hit by a rise in paper costs), I had started freelancing for The Herald where I eventually became chief theatre critic. In 2000, I returned to The List as editor, a job I did for three years before returning to the freelance life.
2. Is theatre previewing and reviewing mostly the preserve of freelancers in Scotland? And how many are there of you?
There are about a dozen of us currently active in the Critics' Awards for Theatre in Scotland (www.criticsawards.theatrescotland.com), which tries to represent all the professional theatre reviewers. The majority of us are freelance and those who work full time, such as Joy Watters of the Dundee Courier, will have theatre writing as only one part of their job. It's just about impossible to make all your money from theatre writing in Scotland and most of us will also do other things, whether its editing, political commentary, teaching, music writing or news reporting.
3. Full-time freelance football writers complain about ‘happy amateurs’ being assigned match reports, mainly because they are cheap. How extensive a similar practice in theatre?
My guess is more people think they know a bit about football than think they know about theatre so - possibly - editors have more respect for a theatre specialist. We're just a rarer breed. But, although I wouldn't say it was an extensive problem, it is increasingly likely to happen as editorial budgets tighten. There have been instances, for example, of students on work placement being used to review theatre (and other arts) in place of a professional critic. And as more work gets taken in-house, there is pressure on staff writers to be all-rounders (although that probably makes them unhappy professionals rather than happy amateurs).
4. How healthy is theatre in Scotland, compared with when you started out?
I started writing in the run-up to Glasgow's Year of Culture in 1990 when there was a big investment in the arts, which had a knock-on effect across the country as theatre companies could afford to tour, etc. That seemed to be an exciting time, both for the international names who visited Scotland (The Wooster Group, Peter Brook, Robert Lepage, the Mali Theatre all made visits to Tramway) and for the home-grown productions by people such as Gerry Mulgrew at Communicado and Michael Boyd at the Tron (now at the RSC).
As some of that money started trickling away because of local authority reorganisation (in particular the loss of Strathclyde Regional Council), a lot of artists found it harder to survive. At the same time, however, there was a strong creative energy that was, in part, responsible for the surge in cultural confidence that led to devolution.
If some of that energy has died away, it has been replaced by the arrival of the National Theatre of Scotland which, if only in terms of scale and quantity, has increased the level of theatrical activity to a significant extent. All told, it has produced 67 shows in less than four years. That much of the work - from Gregory Burke's Black Watch to Anthony Neilson's The Wonderful World of Dissocia - has been world-class only adds to the excitement.
In other words, the scene is differently healthy - and, no doubt, differently unhealthy - compared with when I started and, I'm pleased to say, Scotland remains a place where great theatre can happen.
5. What do you wish you knew then that you know now?
That Alan Cumming, Ashley Jensen and David Tennant would become world famous after their stints on the Scottish stage. If only I'd signed up the rights to their biographies at the time.
6. Any particular writers inspired you to become a critic?
As far as I remember, it was only my rampant ego that made me think anyone would want to read my opinions. But in the process of doing the job, I've become a keen observer of how other people do it and I've accumulated quite a collection of critical anthologies. Kenneth Tynan is an obvious name to drop. From the USA, I love the late Harold Clurman. And from Ireland, Fintan O'Toole is great.
7. In your NUJ role, to what extent have you encountered, this last year or so, a generally downward trend in freelance budgets and fees.
It seems to me the process of contraction began slightly before the broader economic crisis, most visibly in the closure or amalgamation of newspaper supplements, such as Ecosse in the Sunday Times, Going Out in The Herald and, most recently, Critique in the Scotsman. I haven't had direct experience of cuts in fees, but there seems to be less newspaper space to fill (which means fewer articles and shorter articles) and more being written in-house. Being freelance, it's always difficult to tell the difference between the regular up-and-down cycle of your personal work and a wider malaise in the industry, but my observations seem to be reflected in the experiences of other members of the Edinburgh Freelance Branch.
8. Scottish theatre companies appear to be ‘switched on’ when it comes to meeting the needs of the media. Is this true?
Yes, nearly all companies have a dedicated press officer and, increasingly, they are getting information out through new channels such as Twitter.
9. Proudest moment?
When I was editing The List, Jon Ronson said it was a better magazine than Time Out.
10. Funniest or most embarrassing?
One Sunday morning in the middle of the Edinburgh Festival I was sitting in a deserted office at The List when an international call came through from one of the creators of The Simpsons expecting us to interview him. The writer hadn't made it to the office, so I managed to delay him, but by the time he called back for a second (or was it a third?) time, I realised I'd have to do the interview myself.
The difficulty was that at this point I was the only person on the planet who'd never watched The Simpsons. I had to busk my way through the interview not only unprepared, but with virtually no background knowledge to fall back on, apart from an awareness that this man was very very important and many people would kill to be able to talk to him.
As if that wasn't bad enough, the phone recorder didn't work properly, so all I could give the writer when he finally got in to work was a clutch of half-remembered quotes.
