Ruth Mackenzie: the British change-maker sacked by Paris’s artistic elite

When the British arts supremo Ruth Mackenzie was named artistic director of Paris’s Châtelet theatre she thought everyone knew what they were getting.

Her pitch for the job, approved by the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, after a gruelling four interview panels, was to reinvent the historic Paris venue – known as “Broadway sur Seine” after the previous director’s penchant for American musicals – as a more diverse and inclusive people’s theatre.

The first woman and first foreigner in the role, she was hired as a double act with Thomas Lauriot dit Prévost to revolutionise the institution and welcome new actors and audiences.

The first production when the Châtelet reopened after a two-year £28.6m renovation last September offered an eclectic cast including musicians from Ukraine and giant puppets from Mozambique. There followed a rap interpretation of Albert Camus’ Les Justes by Abd Al Malik, the first black artist to direct a play at the theatre, featuring youngsters from the Paris banlieue.

Last week, however, the revolution ate its own. Mackenzie was sitting in her office when she learned to her astonishment that she had been sacked for “bullying”. She was even more shocked, when Lauriot dit Prévost, with whom she shared an office, insisted she leave immediately.

“I was given just enough time to put my belongings in a few bags,” Mackenzie says in her first interview since being dismissed. “I was left thinking: why me and why so cruel and brutal? I can only assume it’s because I’m a woman and foreign, because otherwise why was I targeted when I was working as a team?”

There was worse to come. Later that day, Mackenzie says she was told she would be given a “civilised and generous” package to leave quietly and a joint statement would be released to the press. Instead, the following morning the theatre’s press office sent journalists a one-line email saying Mackenzie was gone.

Summary sackings are almost unheard of in France. Sitting in a brasserie in the north of Paris, Mackenzie, dressed elegantly in one of her trademark black and white outfits that match her cropped hair, is shellshocked but not going without a fight, having consulted lawyers on both sides of the Channel.

She cites cultural differences between Britain and France and a resistance to change in totemic French institutions as a particular challenge.

“I wanted to make the Châtelet a theatre for all citizens, not just professionals,” she says. “In the UK it’s completely accepted and normal that you can involve unpaid community members in the arts or welcome amateurs to the stage, but in France the idea of diversity, of giving power to new artists and a new audience is provocative. In France, you have to protect the paid professionals. It’s the sort of argument you’d hear in the UK 30 years ago.

“For example, there’s not a single cultural institution in Britain that isn’t looking at the Black Lives Matter movement and asking how it can be more inclusive and diverse, while in France there isn’t one that is.

“The London Arts Council, which I chair, has been recommending training sessions to deal with institutional racism, but when I mentioned this at the Châtelet I was told if I even so much as suggested any kind of racism, people would be insulted.

“I do understand there’s a universal fear of change and innovation, but that’s what I was brought in to do. That was my brief. And, in any case, we also kept the musicals.”

The return of An American in Paris to the Châtelet at Christmas had indeed proved a success despite transport strikes, gilets jaunes and Extinction Rebellion protests.

She is still struggling to make sense of her sacking. She says she had been informed two people from the marketing team were unhappy with her “management style” but an independent inquiry – she was interviewed on Zoom while in London laid low with coronavirus then pneumonia – cleared her of serious wrongdoing. It concluded that her failure to say “bonjour” to staff, her less than perfect command of French and her failure to turn up to a staff event to turn on Christmas lights had upset some at the theatre. Mackenzie agreed to attend training workshops and promised to take French lessons.

But hours after she got the letter citing bullying as the reason for her dismissal an anonymous source was briefing influential French media that Mackenzie had been fired for a “serious fault” connected to “management and financial problems” and that she had run up a €3m (£2.68m) deficit.

Mackenzie, 63, moved to Paris in 2017 from Amsterdam where she was artistic director of the Holland festival. She had previously directed Scottish Opera, run the Manchester international festival, headed the Nottingham Playhouse and overseen the 2012 London Olympics cultural programme.

She says she has received dozens of messages of support from creative artists, including Steve McQueen, Elizabeth Streb, Boris Charmatz and Rokia Traoré as well as Malik.

“How can Paris lose almost the only cultural leader who has put diverse artists and audiences at the heart of her programme?” Malik asked. “What message does this send to the black and ethnic minority audiences and artists of France? And to do this in such a brutal way to a foreign woman? It is not just serious, it is a dangerous message about the culture and values of Paris.”

Peter Sellars, the American director who worked with Mackenzie at the Châtelet, wrote: “Ruth has always had a taste and a gift for creating change. She is at home with new relationships and new audiences, courageously inviting institutions into a new era of transformative openness. Risk is at the heart of artistic practice, and Ruth is right there, supporting the artists and alive to the danger, the possibilities, and the liberation that lives at the edge …”

Not all of her Châtelet projects have been a success, but she points out they were all approved by the management board and, as part of a two-person directing team, she was not solely responsible for the theatre’s financial situation.

“I’m not saying there aren’t financial problems at the theatre, but there isn’t a cultural institution in the world that doesn’t have financial problems as a result of the lockdown,” she said. “And, again, this wasn’t the reason I was given for my dismissal.

“I’ve been a CEO of cultural institutions for 25 years. I know how to deal correctly with budgets and finances. We got €1m from sponsors in the first season before we were forced to close because of the coronavirus.”

She adds: “Anyone who knows me, who has worked with me, knows that I’m not in any way a bully. I do know what I want and am passionate about my work so I push people but I get good results.

“Maybe the problem is that certain French people of a certain age, colour and class think the theatre belongs to them and someone like me who is not French shouldn’t open doors to others.”

The theatre did not respond to requests for comment. Carine Rolland, the deputy mayor in charge of culture, denied a “cultural gulf” was the origin of the crisis. She told Agence France-Presse: “Ruth Mackenzie’s talent is not in question … the city must show responsibility notably when suffering, whatever its form, is expressed.”