Interview with Stephen Bailey, Artistic Lead at Vital Xposure

Grace Joseph

What is it like to take on a leadership role at an established organisation? What responsibilities do you have towards legacy?

Taking over a company is a strange and unfamiliar experience for me. It’s important to clarify my role and responsibilities: I am the Artistic Lead, not the Artistic Director. This distinction may be more lexical than functional, as every company operates differently. However, at Vital Xposure, I set the ‘artistic plan’ and oversee the activities we deliver, while CEO responsibilities lie solely with my Executive Director. This division means I have fewer management and operational duties than others might. I still contribute to larger vision elements and public-facing communication. Given that we are an arts company, the artistic strategy is crucial, and much of the company is dedicated to implementing that plan. Additionally, I report to our Board and key funders, primarily Arts Council England.

Assuming this role involves significant trust and responsibility. Like many theatre organisations, Vital Xposure was founder-led. Julie McNamara, an Arts Council-funded artist, established Vital Xposure to preserve her practice when individual artist funding was cut. She led the company for ten years before stepping down in 2020. For a long time, Vital Xposure’s artistic identity was synonymous with Julie McNamara. Now, it cannot be. Julie’s leadership was marked by an ambitious political focus on marginalised voices and social justice, which resonated with my practice. I aim to preserve these values while recognising the diversity of Vital Xposure’s work, which extends beyond traditional ‘disabled’ narratives. Our stories explore intersections of gender, class, race, and disability, reflecting the complexities of human experience. We now formalise disability as a lens through which we shape our stories, ensuring our work remains inherently disabled but on our terms.

I didn’t feel equipped to step into the exact role Julie had, where she nearly always wrote and directed the work. My skills differ; I prefer collaboration and variation, and I lack her extensive track record. Vital Xposure has always been a radical company, dedicated to platforming outsider voices and lesser-known topics. I don’t feel qualified to address such a variety of themes alone or be the sole voice in an arts landscape grappling with representation. Given my background, I’d question centring my White, male, middle-class experience in the company. Additionally, I believe genuinely developing other artists rather than solely focusing on my own practice needs to be a part of artistic leadership.

My focus is on crafting a distinct identity for Vital Xposure—one that can extend beyond my tenure. While creative practice is important, making the company essential, relevant, and connected is perhaps even more so. Vital Xposure faced practical challenges beyond the lack of an artistic identity outside of Julie. There was a general lack of recognition and awareness, exacerbated by the sporadic nature of our work and amplified by Covid-19. The last show to tour in 2022 was a Julie McNamara legacy project. Many arts venues across the country were unfamiliar with us or our work outside of Julie. Remedying this has required significant effort, but we’ve made progress, and I’m proud to have expanded Julie’s vision to a wider audience.

Our disabled-focused practice presents unique challenges, particularly in accommodating various access needs and experiences. These challenges are social and linked to societal treatment of disability, compounded by limited resources. We work with more disabled artists than most companies in the country, with a majority-disabled team and significant disabled Board representation. However, the processes and structures for running arts companies were not designed with disabled people in mind. Recently, we’ve been working out access for our Board. As these are voluntary positions, no government funding covers them. Demanding members foot their own access costs would undermine our inclusivity, so these costs come from our core budget. Achieving our goal of a 75 per cent+ disabled Board will mean significant access costs, roughly equivalent to an additional research and development project per year. This raises wider ethical concerns: if a disabled-led company struggles with these costs, can we expect non-disabled organisations to appoint multiple disabled Board members? Our politics and mission compel us to make this financial sacrifice, but the broader industry is unlikely to follow suit.

How has a salaried position shifted your directing practice? What does this role allow you to do?

My role at Vital Xposure is three days per week, providing an income slightly below what I would expect from my previous freelance practice, but certainly higher than if I were working freelance part-time. My 0.6 contract pays me the equivalent of 4.5 main stage shows at my last rate, which says more about the underpayment of artists than about receiving a generous salary. This role significantly impacts me financially and professionally. There’s an irony in that a director’s career path often involves stepping away from creativity to secure a steady income. Essentially, I have gained a large portion of secure income, a far greater safety net, and due to working three days per week I can supplement my income in and outside of the industry.

Theoretically, I should have the capacity for freelance work. I’m still working out how to balance this, mainly due to the access barriers and nebulous employment processes for freelance directors. I now have the advantage of a stronger contact list and increased recognition, though I have yet to see how this translates into opportunities. I’m consciously thinking about my freelance career as a chance to expand my practice. While disability-led work is important, I entered this industry with broad ambitions in directing and the scope of works I wanted to create. I’m now returning to these ambitions, though there are challenges due to the scarcity of freelance directing opportunities and the demand for safe, commercial projects. In pitching for these projects, questions about my suitability and how my practice transfers often arise, despite the core skill of theatre direction being consistent.

I have mixed feelings about centring myself as a disabled artist. The current oversubscribed and underfunded training system for directors is nearly impossible to crack without having something special about you, often related to representation. Consequently, I spend a lot of time discussing my neurodivergent identity, more so in a theatre context than in any other part of my life. This journey has led to improved self-acceptance and introduced me to wonderful collaborators. However, anti-disabled discrimination remains a reality, and identifying as neurodivergent has created as many barriers as it has removed. I’ve faced challenges about my suitability for roles, particularly in leadership, with questions about trust, competency, reliability, and skill frequently raised in relation to my neurodivergent identity, despite a strong track record.

By example, in 2022, I won the Royal Theatrical Trust Sir Peter Hall Director Award, one of the most prestigious career-advancement schemes. Despite this, my win has sometimes been dismissed as disabled inclusion rather than a testament to my ability, and I received low industry engagement and attendance around the resulting production compared to previous winners. This has negatively affected my profile and career advancement. While it’s difficult to attribute my situation solely to my disabled identity, I am certain it plays a significant role. Presenting myself as a disabled arts leader might intensify this association and perpetuate exclusion. It feels like the disabled identity foregrounded in conversations is for the benefit of stakeholders, not me. While it may be an asset to access some opportunities, these feel like they’ve dried up now I’m ‘established’, and identifying as disabled instead leaves me vulnerable to exclusion, especially given how unformalised hiring processes are for lead creatives. While I am trying to be hopeful, it is possible that holding this role will limit my horizons long term.

Lastly, I want to comment on the invasiveness of this approach to disability ‘representation’ by the industry. Under the 2010 Equality Act, my disability should not define my employability. As someone with an invisible condition, I should have the choice whether to disclose it or not. Instead, the industry has pushed me to be incredibly public about my disability, forfeiting privacy and emphasising my perceived differences. This is often framed as empowerment, but it only benefits me if it truly empowers rather than hinders. Given my struggles to obtain basic access accommodations outside of disabled-led spaces, I question where the benefit lies. Ableist attitudes are prevalent in society and the arts industry, and I cannot always rely on the promised support. Underemployment and slow career advancement are common for disabled artists, making me acutely aware of how I might be treated differently if I had not disclosed my disability. The main beneficiaries of welding disability to my professional practice are myself, in terms of disabled-specific opportunities and funding, and non-disabled organisations, who get to report better stats. However, when interfacing with these organisations I am never sure if this engagement is solely for how I affect diversity, which invariably means a lack of interest in sustained collaboration.

There seems to be more and more funding dedicated to access and digital technology. What do you make of this development?

I’m all for innovation and change. At Vital Xposure, we’re exploring potential developments through our VX Labs programme. One key angle to consider is expanding the traditional theatregoing experience to overcome significant access barriers. As a touring disabled-led company, we face two major challenges. No matter how extensively we tour, we can’t bring our performances close to large segments of the population. This is especially problematic for disabled audience members who may have limited mobility. Some audience members, due to distance and cost, cannot access a theatre building regardless of where we perform. This intersection of access, geography, and economic circumstances excludes many from participation. Additionally, touring mandates might exclude disabled employees for whom the logistics are too challenging, even with adequate resources. If the traditional touring model doesn’t serve our entire community, could a digital or virtual version be a solution? Environmental concerns also come into play. Arts Council England challenges us to reduce our carbon footprint; without a building, our main carbon costs are access (e.g. taxis, additional personnel) and touring activities. Thus, beyond advancements in traditional performance accessibility like captioning or audio description, there’s potential to reconceptualise rehearsal and performance to widen participation.

However, I caution against excessive enthusiasm. Perfect access isn’t just a technical modification away. Small steps are possible, but even these might create new access challenges. There’s huge faith in technology as the future, but I remain circumspect. We must balance the propaganda of success with actual efficacy. For instance, the National Theatre is proud of its captioning glasses, yet I’ve heard little positive feedback from Deaf audience members. Despite significant press coverage touting their success, disabled voices are excluded from narratives around access through tech, which is particularly ironic when discussing access features. There are also ethical concerns regarding access to technical resources and the privacy trade-offs often involved in technological advancements.

We do sometimes overlook genuine, significant shifts. Captioning has become more feasible and cost-effective, with projectors expanding potential. Audio description has similarly advanced. Although in-ear systems are sometimes disliked, a direct line to an audience’s ear, especially if used for all audiences, is an exciting new method of communication. Recently, I worked with motion sensors to manipulate sound, making movement or dance more accessible to visually impaired audiences. Accurate dance description is challenging and can become overly clinical. However, by considering movement as abstract and thematic, developing something that sonically replicates this is an intriguing approach that embeds accessibility into performance. We used SOMI-1 sensors, and data from these sensors altered sound based on movement. While not a perfect one-to-one access, it offers a way for audiences to engage with the performance on their terms.

Research and experimentation in small-scale theatre face challenges due to limited resources. The motion sensors I mention required significant investment and caused stress on our technical team. After previews, we realised we needed to explicitly demonstrate how the sensors worked. A workshop briefing participants on the function of the sensors yielded positive responses, leading us to incorporate a demonstration at the start of the performance to guide the audience. Essentially, I question the ability of an organisation of Vital Xposure’s scale to really lead the way in innovation.

The transition from research to practice can be confusing. For instance, I participated in a scheme for disabled artists where we were given VR headsets with sessions on their potential. However, I never gained a clear idea of how to create work with them. As a creative, I lacked understanding of the production process and received no guidance. Despite this, it likely appears in some report as significant engagement with disabled theatre makers.

While I’m keen to explore new avenues and have seen modest successes, we are not at a performance revolution point. Any application for access needs rigorous testing to ensure it truly advances disabled engagement. There also needs to be discourse around the value in an obsession with technical ‘progress’. One standout example is Back to Back Theatre’s The Shadow Whose Prey the Hunter Becomes (Battersea Arts Centre, 2022), which offers a provocative commentary on tech in theatre. The production, featuring learning-disabled actors, highlights the gap between ‘normal’ human intelligence and them as soon to be dwarfed by the gap between humans and AI—a far more ambitious concept than simply using a VR headset.