BWW Interviews: Sarah Frankcom on THE SKRIKER, Maxine Peake and the Manchester International Festival

The Manchester International Festival returns on the 2nd July bringing the best in theatre, music and the arts into the heart of the Northern Powerhouse. Ahead of the festival, Artistic Director of the Royal Exchange Theatre Sarah Frankcom spoke to BWW:UK about Manchester's thriving art scene, the Festival and working with Maxine Peake in her revival of Caryl Churchill's The Skriker.

So why did she want to revive this 1994 play now? "The Skriker was written at a time when climate change and environmental kind of crisis were just starting to be more widely known about and a lots of the things that Carol was sort of writing about as a warning really now is really the world that we live in."

She's also looking forward to working with Maxine Peake again, who performed in Masque of Anarchy at the last festival and was Hamlet in the critically acclaimed 2014 production: "It's a fantastically challenging part for an actor and it's got collaboration between a choreographer and a theatre director and a performer at its centre." Frankcom says Peake brings an incredible talent and enthusiasm to a production: "[She brings] fearlessness, hard work and she's quite the most hard-working actor that I've ever worked with and has a work ethic that's kind of unbelievably brilliant."

Frankcom thinks Peake works best when the brakes are off: "It's a very physical part and it requires her to access the parts of herself in the acts that may be she's not used in quite a while."

Frankcom, who joined the Royal Exchange in 2008, is a big fan of the international festival. "It allows an entirely different kind of work to be seen and accessible. It's actually a very good way of Manchester being able to display and demonstrate a Manchester attitude and a Manchester sensibility around the value of culture and the importance of arts and cultural projects that have risk as part of their DNA."

Manchester is in the middle of a massive investment in the arts. The £25 million Home arts centre enjoyed a star studded opening in May, and last Christmas the government announced plans for a £78 million "ultra-flexible" arts centre The Factory on the site of the old Granada Studios. This is great for the city, says Frankcom.

"It's really important to kind of get behind the aspiration a bit because actually it's not a gesture that's being built on nothing. It's being built on the fact that Manchester audiences support and get behind the culture that's there for them and are very passionate about it."

Franckom's excited for the future: "There are quite a lot of really interesting hub theatres and there's some really exciting emerging artists and companies. I think that there are a lot more theatre makers now who are more interested in kind of the experimental ideas, exploration and of making work."