“Exciting times” – overseeing a new era at Chichester Festival Theatre

2024 sees the first festival programme from Justin Audibert who took over as artistic director from Daniel Evans who is now in charge at the RSC. Mark admits he hadn’t anticipated losing Daniel quite so soon, but Justin’s debut season certainly fills him with excitement.

“I have done two years now,” Mark says, “and I hadn't been on the board before. In fact I had not been to Chichester before. My proper theatre focus before that was being on the board of the RSC for nearly a decade but actually I had spent five years away in the US. It was while I was there that I was approached and asked if I would be interested in this role. I knew of Chichester. Its reputation had gone before and they were streaming South Pacific which I was able to watch. It was towards the end of Covid times. I was coming back to the UK and I was planning to retire from my business world life and I was looking for a new challenge. But the fact is that I've always loved the theatre in different ways. I really enjoyed my time with the RSC and I had done stage lighting at school and stage lighting when I was at university as well. The opportunity to be in a leadership role at Chichester was very exciting and very appealing. It was a great board and a great team and I was excited about the fact that we were just emerging from Covid. Audiences were coming back but we were still in uncertain times. The season that was coming up was looking really good but we didn't know how audiences would behave. In fact that first season was very strong and the season after was even stronger… so I had two-ish seasons with Daniel.”

And the fact is that the theatre is now back to where Mark would want it to be: “The fact is that we have a very loyal audience and two strong seasons have brought in new audiences. We are firing pretty much on all cylinders. Last year we had a good summer and an even stronger winter season, and that's the unique thing about Chichester, that it has its curated festival season across the two stages but also the winter when it can take in the best touring shows. It allows us to have our own season but also to be really confident of giving our audiences a real smorgasbord.”

Added excitement this year is the sense of a new era: “I was not planning on having to find a new artistic director so early in my tenure but from my time at the RSC I was delighted for Daniel that he went there. But it meant that I did have to try to find a new artistic director. As chair you've got to get two things right. You have to keep on top of the financials but you have also got to make sure that you are attracting the right people, the very best artistic and executive directors.

“I do think things will be different with Justin. You don't bring someone in so that they do exactly what their predecessors did. Justin has a different background and I'm very excited by what he will do. He has a very clear vision as to what he will do with these spaces. He has a particular vision for the scale of drama that he wants in the main house and I think that vision is going to be very impactful. I think there was the opportunity to bolster the impact of the drama on the main house stage, and that’s what Justin is doing. Justin had very clear ideas for the season in terms of representations of England and what Englishness means, themes which go into the season through the ages and which I think will be really interesting. The Minerva will continue to have a great balance between new work and revivals and that's very much its strength. The power of the Minerva is that it can be a little bit more experimental. We can take in first plays and I think it can be the jewel in the crown in terms of the experience.”

The crucial thing is to balance all four aspects of the festival theatre – the winter against the summer seasons but also the Minerva against the main house.

As for Mark, he has never trodden the boards himself but he has spent, as he says, an awful lot of time on stage talking to large numbers of people in his leadership career.

As senior vice president, IBM Services & Global Business Services from 2016-2021, he was responsible for a combined $48 billion business with some 240,000 personnel worldwide straddling the consulting, digital agency, business process, application and infrastructure management services of the company. His focus was on bringing the power of technologies such as AI, digital and the cloud to transform organisations.

Before joining IBM, Mark built a distinctive record as a global business leader and a consultant to businesses and governments around the world. During a 27-year career at Accenture, from which he retired in 2011 as group chief executive global markets & management consulting, Mark led the company’s teams in the retail, consumer goods, healthcare, transport and manufacturing sectors. While at Accenture, Mark chaired the World Economic Forum Global Health Initiative Against AIDS, TB and Malaria and was vice chair of the Mayor of Seoul’s International Business Advisory Council.

From those years, there are definite principles which he now brings to the theatre: “I think as a business leader you have to be clear what your organisation is about, and it is also about being able to translate that to a very large number of people. It is about making sure that all the pieces and all the people that you hire are heading towards the same place. It is about what you want to be famous for.”

Clearly the Festival Theatre wants to excel as a regional theatre, but also it wants to sit alongside the National and the RSC on the national stage and also to be an international presence in terms of the quality of the work it produces. And in all that Mark most definitely includes the fantastic work Chichester Festival Youth Theatre does, an essential part of the overall organisation.

“We are in exciting times.”

• From 2011 to 2015 Mark served the UK Government as a founding commissioner for the Independent Commission for Aid Impact (ICAI) which oversaw the effectiveness of the UK’s foreign aid spending around the world. He was also chair of the International Business Leaders Forum which sought to connect the worlds of business and social responsibility. He has served on multiple business boards including Heidrick & Struggles, Fidessa, Computer Sciences Corporation, Alexander Mann Solutions and Atento.

Mark has had a long-standing passion for the world of theatre, starting from his time as stage lighting director at his school through his study of classics at Oxford. He remains a member of the RSC Artists Circle and Americas Board.

He is also passionate about education and aside from serving as a governor of Cranleigh School, has operated and chaired Peaslake Free School, a community-based school in Surrey for over 25 years.

• The Chichester Festival Theatre main-house season includes.

 Coram Boy, an enthralling 18th century adventure, adapted by Helen Edmundson, directed by Anna Ledwich

 A brand new production of Lionel Bart’s iconic musical Oliver!, directed and choreographed by Matthew Bourne, in a new revision by Cameron Mackintosh

 Redlands, a new play by Charlotte Jones, inspired by the Rolling Stones’ Chichester trial, directed by Justin Audibert

 A spellbinding new retelling of Cinderella by Philip Wilson

Tickets cft.org.uk or 01243 781312.