An exciting new direction for former Hull Trucker

It’s fair to say that Gareth Tudor Price has had a difficult couple of years.

The former artistic director of Hull Truck Theatre was made redundant from his post when a new chief executive was appointed, and left the building in October 2010.

Today, in Leeds Carriageworks theatre, you wouldn’t spot that here is a man who has had two of the toughest years of his professional life.

“It’s concluded, and I can draw a line under it,” says Tudor Price, who says he is as happy and healthy as he has ever been.

As artistic director of Hull Truck, Tudor Price, along with John Godber, became one of the defining personalities of the venue. Stepping out into the unknown world of freelance work, one assumes, was a scary experience after almost a decade as the man in charge of a highly successful theatre.

“Well, I worked as a freelancer from 1983 to 2002, but I first worked at Hull Truck in 1985 as an actor in Up ‘n’ Under, so it was a wrench to leave the place, but fortunately I’ve had some interesting work since I left Hull,” he says.

The director has always had an impressive skill with a comedy script and received glowing reviews for his direction of Kay Mellor’s A Passionate Woman. When he left Hull Truck, his first job was to remount Mellor’s piece as a co-production between a theatre in Ipswich and Oldham. From there he went to his old drama school, the Bristol Old Vic, to stage a number of John Godber plays with the final year students and then to Manchester Drama school where he directed a cast of 17 in a production of Romeo and Juliet.

“With the art cut-backs, there aren’t as many opportunities as there were when I was previously working as a freelancer and it’s a lot more precarious, so sometimes there is the sense that you have to take the work you can get,” he says. “I’ve been really fortunate in that the work I’ve done has been interesting and it’s been really invigorating to go back and work in drama schools again.”

Right now, Tudor Price is directing a new piece of work from Leeds-based producer and playwright Brian Daniels. Directing new work is a return to a real love of Tudor Price’s.

A Big Day for the Goldbergs was first seen at the Leeds International Jewish Performing Arts Festival in 2010 and has been reworked by the writer. When he was at Hull Truck Theatre, Tudor Price established a number of new writing groups and was instrumental in the careers of Hull writers including Dave Windass and Morgan Sproxton.

“It is something I’ve always enjoyed, working with new writers and giving them a sense of their plays being performed,” he says.

“I’ve worked on new plays by Lee Hall, Richard Bean and lots of other writers from Hull and there is something really interesting about being involved in the early part of the process. With this script, it is a work in progress and the writer has been in the room, working on the script and shifting things around.

“It’s really interresing to be directing new work again.”

The only thing is, he’s now directing in a small studio space at Leeds Carriageworks – a come down from one of the county’s big venues.

“I love it. It’s like a return to the work I was doing early in my career, working with small budgets, small casts, bare essentials and making sure you tell a good story.”

A big day for the Goldbergs

A Big Day For The Goldbergs is inspired by Brian Daniels’ life growing up in a Jewish family in Leeds.

The play looks at modern family life in Leeds as seen through the eyes of three generations of the Goldberg family. Lucille is happy to conform to traditional expectations, but her sister Michelle wants something different – and she is prepared to fight the age-old assumptions of a provincial community to realise her dreams of joining the circus. And then, of course, there’s a typical Jewish mother they have to contend with.

To July 28, tickets 0113 224 3801.