Richard Jordan, artistic producer: "Theatre is about learning and discovery"

At SIPAM 2026, Olivier, Tony and Emmy Award-winning artistic producer Richard Jordan reflected on what makes Sibiu International Theatre Festival and SIPAM distinct in the global performing arts landscape. A prolific producer whose work spans more than 28 countries, Jordan spoke about why Sibiu feels less like a conventional market and more like a living cultural ecosystem, why young artists and volunteers are central to the festival’s identity, and why theatre remains one of the few spaces where truth can still be encountered live.

What feels different here is that it is not primarily about people desperately trying to sell. Of course, selling may be part of it, but here it feels much more like a conference built around discussion. It feels like it is about thinking, creative growth and asking what we do next. I find those conversations really valuable.

I also like the fact that people can let their hair down a little bit. In the context of a market such as APAP, for example, people can be much more contained. Here, the access is better, and the conversations feel more open.

In a way, that is the question: is the M right for market? Perhaps it should be a C, as in Sibiu International Performing Arts Conference, because in some ways it is not a market. I have met people, including agents, who clearly came here for the first time expecting to sell shows in the way they might at APAP, APAM or other markets. I like the fact that they cannot do that in quite the same way here.

What makes it work is the foundation of the festival. FITS was not set up as an arts market to sell shows. It began as a festival, with this extraordinary foundation and hope for the future, and then the conference and market elements came into it. That creates a different canvas, and I think that is to its great advantage.

I genuinely believe this is one of the most amazing festivals in the world because it is about society. When you come here and see young people volunteering, and you realise their parents were volunteers before them, and their grandparents were part of it too, it becomes a generational festival. It is a festival for the city, and then all the other layers sit around that.

It is almost like an onion: the city is at the heart of it, and then each layer comes out from there. SIPAM, the arts market, the international delegates, all of that becomes part of it, but it is not the driving heart. The heart is still the city and its people.

That foundation has not changed. The festival has not become commercialised in the way some successful festivals or fringes can become. Its essence is still in young people, in the city, in that social foundation.

You mentioned young people. What stood out to you this year?

If you wanted to see young people at the front of this festival, this year offered so many examples. You had the young actress in Valentina, who gave one of the finest performances by a young actor I have seen on stage. I thought she was extraordinary. Then there was Medea’s Children. There was also the response by young people to Milo Rau’s work, which I cannot imagine happening at many festivals or theatres, certainly not in the UK in that way.

Alongside that, you have the university programme and young artists who are going to shape the future of theatre. You have work such as Dictionary of Revolution, which also brings in a young perspective. It creates this beautiful cultural collision in the city, and that is very precious. Each year it seems to grow. At the same time, you can put those works beside Faust or some of the big international productions. Last year, for example, there was Bill Murray. There are very few festivals where you can create that kind of counterpoint.

Do you feel the festival programme is too packed?

I think the answer is that you have to discover what you want to see. At the same time, a festival like this needs to offer something that represents everyone. If you like street theatre, there is a phenomenal amount of work you can see every night for free. If you want new writing or new plays, there are options. If you want international work, that is also available.

Personally, I think the balance is good. What I would like most is a better opportunity not to feel that I have three shows I want to see at the same time and cannot get from one to another. If I could dream of one change at FITS, it would be, if you pardon the pun, that I could fit more shows in. There was so much I wanted to see this year, but the timing did not always allow it. I also like the late-night university work at 11 p.m. I think that is valuable, and I would love to see SIPAM delegates encouraged more actively to attend it. Sometimes I feel I am the only delegate in the room, and that disappoints me, because that work is part of the discovery.

Why is it important for delegates to engage with volunteers and young people at the festival?

Theatre is an exchange, as life is. You become better by talking to people, because you learn something. This year, for example, one of my volunteers, Timea, is interested in science but fascinated by travel. We had many conversations about travelling around the world, and I think in a couple of years she may put on a backpack and go to India or somewhere else. Another volunteer, Michael, wants to be a writer, so we talked a lot about writing. Sophia wants to work in international relations. Sophia also told me that one of her favourite shows was Hamlet. I asked her whether she had ever seen Hamlet before or knew the story, and she said no. That made me think about the first time I saw Hamlet, when I was 12 years old. I did not know the story either. At that moment, you are making an invisible handshake with the people who stood at the Globe Theatre in the 1600s and saw Hamlet for the first time. 

You may see many other productions of Hamlet later, but you will never forget the first one. That access, that first encounter, is extraordinary. Hearing Sophia speak about Hamlet, and then about Long Day’s Journey into Night, helped me see those productions differently. It made me a better producer, because I was hearing the work through the perspective of someone discovering it for the first time.

What does that say about the role of a festival like FITS?

It says that theatre is about learning and discovery. If your mind is nimble and open, everything you see can make you better at what you do. You may not like a particular piece of experimental theatre, but at least you have a collision of understanding. You discover something, or something blindsides you on a Wednesday afternoon and suddenly you find yourself interested in Romanian experimental theatre or puppetry in a way you had not expected.

So when people say there is a lot in the programme, I think there are a lot of discoveries. You can choose how to navigate them. Maybe one year you watch five street theatre shows. The next year, perhaps, you decide to walk into a theatre. As a presenter, I love that I can watch a folk band in a square for free, or a production of Metamorphosis, or a new play from Strasbourg, or a play from Constanța. The canvas gives me a lot of scope.

You also write about theatre. Is theatre criticism still important, and do people still read it?

It is an important question. I have written a column for The Stage for 20 years. When I started, they liked columns of 1,500 to 2,000 words. Then it went down to 1,000 words. Recently, they asked whether I could write around 750 to 850 words. So people’s attention spans for reading seem to have changed. Everything is about swiping quickly.

This troubles me, because I like long, considered writing about theatre. If I am interested in a subject, I want analysis. I want more than something pedestrian. What I find interesting is that cinema and film still receive fairly detailed review coverage, on television, in newspapers and in the press. Theatre coverage, however, has diminished.

Why do you think theatre coverage has diminished?

I think it is partly about editors and newspapers deciding that theatre is more of a minority interest. Film has a broader canvas. If you make a movie, you can release it across hundreds of cinemas on the same day. A theatre show may exist in one room, in one city.

But that exclusivity can also make a theatre event important. A small production at a festival, such as Dictionary of Revolution, may be small in scale but have something urgent to say. It may only be in Sibiu, but what it says can have a global canvas. That should be covered.

Most arts writers are freelancers now, and budgets have been cut. My primary work is as an artistic producer; writing happened almost by accident, and I found that I enjoyed it. But yes, criticism is shrinking and changing. I do not think AI is the main cause.

I am not as worried about AI as some people are. I do not believe that in theatre we are going to see actors replaced by robots. In England, we might call that a false herring. I think we are spending a lot of time on something when we could focus our attention in better ways.

There are many possible uses for AI, but we have also got carried away with it, as we did when the internet first arrived. When the internet arrived, the theatre thought it was wonderful because it could discount tickets online. But then the habit became that people did not expect to pay full price anymore. In a way, the art form was devalued, just as people now often expect hotel rooms or flights to be discounted.

If we shrink criticism too much, we create another problem: where do people get their criticism from? Anyone can be a critic now, and in some ways it is wonderful that someone can come out of a show and write on social media about it. We have more freedom of speech than ever. But at the same time, we also have more pack-like following than ever. That is a complicated contradiction.

Why does live theatre still matter in that context?

Art and theatre, unlike television and news, can still be safe spaces where you come to hear truth presented live. That is why live performance is so important and why I do not think it will ever completely go away. We need to keep fighting for journalism and for serious writing about theatre. A show may be small, but it can speak the truth. In television or film, things can be manipulated more easily. In the theatre, there is a live encounter. That matters.

What surprised you most this year at SIPAM and FITS?

I was very surprised by the level of young actors I saw. There was a level of young performance in Valentina, Medea’s Children and Dictionary of Revolution that I am not always seeing reflected in other parts of the world. In the UK, I see very good acting, but not always the same fearlessness of choice.

I come back again to the student response to Milo Rau’s work. I do not see that happening in the same way elsewhere: someone taking on a Milo Rau piece and creating that response. I think that is brave, bold, challenging and exciting. I would like to see more of that.

The other joy of coming here is that I get to see work that is not necessarily on the same international festival trail. I like the way Constantin Chiriac and the team choose work that is not simply what you then see in Avignon or Edinburgh. It is a more interesting canvas to me, especially because it draws from regional theatres around Romania.

I see work here that does not often get representation elsewhere in the world, and that is what makes this festival so interesting. If I am lucky enough to be invited back, I will be excited for the discoveries I will make next year. I take them back with me, and they inspire me. They support the growth of my own creative interests as well. So thank you, FITS.