IT is a familiar scenario. To gain employment, the employer would prefer you to be experienced, but how do you acquire experience unless you are given the opportunity?
Young theatre directors are no different in facing that dilemma, and Toby Frow is grateful to a certain Esmee Fairbairn for being given his chance to take a step up the ladder.
The 27-year-old Londoner is one of six recipients of an Esmee Fairbairn Foundation bursary, a £50,000 sum that enables a theatre to support a blossoming director and the show he is directing.
"The scheme has been a unanimous hit, including this show," says Toby, whose production of Arthur Miller's A View From The Bridge has transferred this week from the Midlands to Leeds in a joint venture between the Birmingham Repertory Theatre and West Yorkshire Playhouse.
"This kind of scheme is essential really because normally if an artistic director gives you a chance it will be on an Ayckbourn or Bennett four or five-hander. That is not to denigrate Ayckbourn or Bennett, but what you really want as a young director is something new or the chance to use all the resources of a big-scale theatre show like this one," says Toby.
"It's very nebulous as to what directors do to get work, but these bursaries help to bring down barriers, and artistic directors such as Ian Brown at Leeds, Jonathan Church at Birmingham and Sam Walters at the Orange Tree in Richmond are open to providing such opportunities, so the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation has been a real bonus for the business."
Toby, who has directed lunchtime shows for the Stephen Joseph Theatre summer season in Scarborough for the past two years, and he believes the need to allow young directing talent to bloom is being recognised.
"It's happening more and more. There's Rachel Kavanaugh at Birmingham Rep, Femi Elufowoju Jr at the West Yorkshire Playhouse, and artistic directors are realising that their task is so big, bringing in a young director can help them," says Toby.
"Maybe the oligarchies have gone and the regions can be the training grounds - in the best sense of the word -- of young artists."
A View From The Bridge, West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, until November 22. Box office: 0113 213 7700.
Updated: 10:04 Friday, October 24, 2003
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