Chichester's new play Choir is a "celebration of human connection"

SussexWorld

As associate director to Chichester Festival Theatre’s artistic director, Hannah Joss says her job is to be a filter for the bad plays that come across her desk – and an advocate for the good ones.

Transcript

00:00Good afternoon, my name is Phil Hewitt, group arts editor at Sausage Newspapers. Lovely

00:06to speak to Hannah Joss, who is the director of the next play in the Minerva Choir. It

00:11sounds super appealing, but you're coming to this from the perspective of being the

00:15Festival Theatre's Associate Director. Tell me about how those two things work together,

00:20that as Associate Director you are now directing this. Yes, I think the two roles kind of go hand

00:26in hand in a happy way. I absolutely love working at Chichester as Associate and I know the team

00:35really well now, so actually it felt like quite a natural happy step to be directing something in the

00:41Minerva and I feel properly supported by the brilliant people working at CFT. I feel lucky

00:50that I'm able to view Choir not just as the play that I'm directing with the company that we're

00:56working with, but also I'm able to view it as how it sits within the slot of the Minerva. You know,

01:02it's the summer slot, it's alongside Top Hat and I understand how it works within the whole arc of

01:09both the Minerva and Festival Theatre summer season. So we've got our summer comedy, which is hopefully,

01:15you know, someone can have a glass of rosé on the lawn, saunter into the Minerva and have a lovely,

01:20lovely evening. As you were saying, we need comedy at the moment, don't we? Yes, I think we do and I think

01:25there's, you know, it's a real, there's real appeal for audiences to spend their hard-earned cash on

01:31something that they know they're going to go and have a good time. So why, when this one passed

01:36across your desk, did you think this is the one? I think it's the special combination of really

01:42skilful, brilliant ensemble comedy writing from the writer Capri and the pairing of that with choral

01:49arrangements of pop songs running everywhere from Lizzo to Stevie Nicks to Queen. I think there's

01:58something in there for everyone and just, you know, the combination of those things and, you know,

02:01there is something really special. I know this because I've been in rehearsals now for two and a

02:05half weeks. There is something so special about being in a room with other people singing chorally.

02:11So we have eight people in the cast, they're all singing together and they're singing regularly

02:16throughout the piece and it's just a really, you know, it's goosebumps time. It feels really,

02:21really special. So you had to cast actors who could sing or is the point that they are learning to sing?

02:27They needed to sing. It was a thing, you know, it's not, you know, it was, the casting process was a

02:33brilliant one and the people that are in the room are, I'm so, I'm so deeply honoured that they're doing

02:38the show. It is a special skill set where you are able to sing brilliantly and serve the type of comedy

02:48that Caprit has given us. And there were, you know, we saw lots and lots of brilliant people,

02:53but the marriage of those two things, the thing that actually makes the play so brilliant,

02:59it finding that was always the kind of tension that we were coming up against.

03:03Well, it sounds super appealing. It's in the Manila Theatre from August the 2nd to the 30th. Hannah,

03:09lovely to speak to you, lovely to meet you. Huge good luck with it. It sounds great.

03:13Thanks so much. Thank you.

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