Interview: Orla O’Loughlin, artistic director of Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre

WHEN Orla O’Loughlin was a little girl, back in the late 1970s, summers had just one pattern to them. As soon as school was over, the whole family – Mum, Dad, two daughters – would pack themselves into their little 2CV, drive from their home in Ealing to the ferry, and head for a long holiday in County Clare, the place both parents had left in the 1960s, to make successful lives for themselves in London.

In Clare, there was a huge extended family, and, as Orla O’Loughlin remembers it, “lots of parties and singing and stories, and everyone had to have their own song or story, you know? There was this sense of something very enriched going on, a feeling of people for whom their culture, and the expression of it, was absolutely central to their lives. And I think that had a huge impact on me, growing up; apart from anything else, it was such a vivid contrast to west London where we lived, and which I also loved.”

As it turned out, that impulse towards performance and cultural expression was to be the shaping force in O’Loughlin’s life, the one that led to her appointment, late last year, as the 12th artistic director in the 50-year history of the Traverse Theatre, only the second woman ever to hold the job. Small, dark-haired, and full of energy in her late thirties, O’Loughlin arrived at the Traverse earlier this week, and began fielding a formidable schedule of meetings, interviews and getting-to-know-you sessions, although it’s already a month since she moved into her new Edinburgh flat, along with her husband – a BBC producer – and their 18-month-old daughter.

“I am just so proud to be the second woman to hold this job,” says O’Loughlin, who has emerged as Traverse director after a 12-year directing career that has taken her both to the star-studded heights of London theatre – where she worked as an assistant to directors like Sam Mendes and Katie Mitchell, and with stars ranging from Gwyneth Paltrow to David Tennant – and to a five-year period running the Pentabus Theatre Company in Ludlow, which many of her London friends saw as a time of exile, but which she felt was a creative necessity.

After a convent education in London, during which she trained as a singer, O’Loughlin studied theatre and performance at Warwick University, began to create and perform a range of devised work, and sang in a band – “Ah well, at that point I thought I was PJ Harvey,” she laughs. After university she trained as a teacher and taught drama at a boys’ grammar school in London, and it was through her directing work with the boys that she came to recognise her vocation. So in 1999, she sold her flat and car, and went to the Central School of Speech and Drama to study for a one-year master’s degree in directing.

“It was just the most amazing moment. I was 26, I really wanted it, I knew why I was doing it, and that course led to this amazing period in my life, when I had all these wonderful job opportunities at the Donmar and the National, and in the West End. I also spent some time as an International Associate at the Royal Court, working with new writers mainly in Eastern Europe, and I began to realise that I loved working with writers, more than anything.

“By the mid-2000s, though, I just began to feel that my work was out of balance; I was aware that I had less and less space for projects of my own. So I decided to leave London, and take the job in Ludlow. Pentabus is a new writing company, and my whole aim there was to create the conditions in which writers can produce extraordinary new work for theatre; and I felt I had to get out of London to be able to do that – it’s something to do with being outside that London bubble, and getting a clearer sense of perspective.

“When you’re in theatre in a huge city like London, it’s easy to feel that you don’t ever need to go anywhere else. But I’ve always been very wary of that feeling.

“So when I heard that the Traverse job was coming up, I knew that I was ready for it: I wanted a theatre to run, a building to work from. My heart and soul is in new writing, and I want to create the conditions in which writers at the Traverse can thrive, and take on new challenges. And I want to nurture that independent voice that I find in this city and this country. There’s a sense of purpose about Scottish playwriting which I like, a sense of something to say or be said, a front-footed approach to addressing the audience; and there is opinion.

“After all, Edinburgh is historically a place of great thinkers and orators, philosophically and socially, and this whole country is on the brink of what may be an enormous change. So I want to create or recreate the sense of a gang of Traverse writers – across the generations, including plenty of new voices – who can really feel that this is their creative home, a place where they can test and develop their ideas about Scotland and the world, and engage in debate with other artists, and with the audience.

“So do I feel an affinity with Scottish culture, at this turning point? I feel that I do, although I wouldn’t want to get too clichéd or stereotypical about what that might mean. For myself, I maintain my absolute right to have a dual national identity, both Irish and English; and for the rest, I’m entering into the job in a spirit of openness, knowing that I’m an outsider to this nation and community in Scotland, with a lot to learn and discover.

“Yet there is something here that I feel close to, and it’s to do with that deep feeling of taking a pride in your cultural life, and putting it at the centre of things. I sense that here; I recognise it, and I love it.”