A Hastie Return

The new artistic director at sheffield theatres is seeking talented playwrights who will speak to a new generation. Meanwhile he chats to Tony Greenway.

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An hour before I speak to Robert Hastie, the new(ish) artistic director of Sheffield Theatres, I manage to get hold of four tickets to the Harry Potter and the Cursed Child stage show in London. This is good news and bad news. On the upside, my children will be thrilled. On the downside, and aptly for Harry Potter, it means that £360 has been swiftly magicked away from my bank account. If our seats were in the stalls, this would be OK; but we’ll be about as far away from the stage as it’s possible to get: in the balcony, about halfway back. We’ll be so far up, we could have a game of Quidditch. Hastie sympathises. ‘Congratulations on getting the HP tickets, they’re like gold dust, he says. ‘But, ouch. That’s got to hurt. Going to the theatre can be an expensive business.’ And that is why he recently announced that Sheffield is dropping its lowest ticket prices, scrapping its booking fees, offering 10,000 £15 tickets across the new season and telling drama or performing arts students in Sheffield that they can come to the Crucible stage for free. ‘For me it’s about how do we open our doors as wide as possible,’ he says. ‘There are lots of reasons why people go, or don’t go, to the theatre and price is right up there among them.’