Jake Smith is the CEO and artistic director of Eastern Angles, the East of England’s touring theatre company. Its productions, clubs, and community events are the lifeblood of society for many in the region.
In this exclusive interview, Jake — a client of Bronia Buchanan’s BBA Management — takes us behind the scenes of his role running this organisation. He dives into his biggest challenges, his charitable vision, and the commissioning of talent for productions that spotlight the region’s heritage and future.
Finding And Falling in Love With Theatre
Growing up on a council estate in the North East, Jake sometimes felt patronised by those teaching theatre. They thought “I wouldn’t enjoy Ibsen or I wouldn’t get Strindberg,” he says. There was an air of, “Don’t give them that, dumb it down.”
In fact, his only theatre experience was amateur musicals in the backroom of a local working men’s club, which he’d visited with his dad. Because of this, he didn’t know what a play was until he went on a school tour of the National Theatre at age 15.
“They were talking about Phèdre that Helen Mirren was in,” Jake says. “They said it was a Greek play and I had to put my hand up and say, ‘What’s a play?’”
After this trip, Jake borrowed the BBC Macbeth on VHS from his local library. “I remember my mum going, ‘You’re not going to like that,’” Jake says. “And I said, ‘I will.’ I put it on and I was transfixed.”
Jake’s Career and Becoming Eastern Angles’ CEO and Artistic Director
Since these teenage years, Jake’s multifaceted career has seen him work across commercial West End musicals and support sanctuary seekers and refugees. “I’ve always been someone who didn’t want to get pigeonholed into one thing,” he says.
When the artistic director and CEO role at Eastern Angles came up, Jake knew he was a perfect match. “This really felt like I was ticking everything. It felt like a company that would be silly not to go for because it’s everything I love about the creation of theatre and it’s very much proud of its sense of place and where it’s situated,” he says.
“Being from a proud region myself, I’ve always connected with work that has a strong sense of community.” He also connects with theatre that is reflective of his working-class roots and explores “universal humanistic topics.”
When he came into the organisation, Eastern Angles was “known for being pioneering, resilient, and dynamic,” Jake says, “and they’re such great foundations to build on.”
Pivoting To Plays Covering Modern Community Challenges
Due to staffing issues, Jake’s three-month handover turned into a year. As a result, he had a particularly positive transition. “I could ask questions about the company’s history,” he says. “I could use my predecessor like a counsel to test the direction of travel.”
“The company had a tendency to produce work based on heritage, which we still want to honour, but I’ve always said we want to be writing the heritage of tomorrow, today,” Jake explains.
“What I was pitching honoured the past but very much set the groundwork to [bring] a younger, more diverse team [in] that could have those conversations out in the community.”
“When you’re reflecting a sense of place — and we produce work about the East of England — you can’t just set what you think the East of England is. You’ve got to get out there and go, ‘What are the topics that are facing people today?’”
“Some of them might not be necessarily wonderful, whimsical, or agricultural. Actually there’s a real diversity to this region now and it’s about making sure everyone feels represented,” Jake says.
Celebrating The East of England’s History and Heritage
Under Jake’s leadership, Eastern Angles has gone beyond the traditional education and syllabus that children are exposed to. The organisation uncovers “remarkable historical characters” from the area to cover in their productions and operates an afterschool club focussed on literacy and numeracy as well as three free youth theatre classes a week.
A Play About Suffragette Princess Sophia Duleep Singh
In spring 2025, the company is launching a play about Suffolk-based suffragette and Red Cross nurse Princess Sophia Duleep Singh. Sophia was Queen Victoria’s goddaughter and the last Maharaja of the Punjab, Duleep Singh’s daughter.
As a young woman of mixed heritage living in a higher class during the late 1800s and early 1900s, she provided “a real different kind of narrative to look at,” Jake explains.
He has received approval from the charity’s board to commission plays by global-majority talent. Now, Eastern Angles has a young, mixed-heritage female director; a mixed-heritage playwright; a leading historian; and a full South-Asian cast working on this play.
“When we did a reading, everybody who came, from whatever background, laughed together, smiled together at the same moments,” Jake says. “So there’s something about us being one. It doesn’t matter what the subject matter is, this is a really engrossing drama.”
A Play About a Global-Majority Male in the Care System
As another example, Eastern Angles is developing an adaptation of a book by a local author about a young global-majority male in the care system. When he is sent to live in rural Suffolk, he tries to cycle back to his mother in Ipswich. He falls off his bike, hits his head, and goes back in time to the Anglo-Saxon wars.
“It’s like a wonderful Suffolk Back to the Future that is completely heritage, completely exploring local history,” Jake says.
Eastern Angles will co-create the production with young people who have care experience and a local playwright.
“I am really excited that my first two commissions have been to playwrights from the global majority,” Jake says.
A Tapestry of Modern Mystery Plays
Looking further ahead, Eastern Angles is plotting “a big project” that will extend across all regions that the charity covers (Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, and Essex).
Jake explains that the plan is to “create a tapestry of modern mystery plays that represent our region today.” This will involve “commissioning playwrights to write a play about a place with the people of that place and then perform them in those places as well.”
Eastern Angles’ Charitable Vision
Eastern Angles is both an arts organisation and a charity. As such, Jake is dedicated to building its philanthropic vision. “There’s a real sense of being able to empower people and open the door,” he says.
“I always vowed not to be an artistic director who came in solely to direct everything. I think my job is far greater than that and the responsibility to the organisation is far greater than that.”
With this in mind, when Jake joined Eastern Angles, he pitched “radical hospitality… a radical approach to invitation and treating anyone who comes through the door like a VIP.”
“We have this thing at Eastern Angles, which is to invite, to nourish, and to grow,” Jake says. “Because without those things you can’t wonder, you can’t inspire, and you can’t innovate.”
How Training as a Counsellor Informed Jake’s Directorship
During the Covid-19 pandemic, Jake decided to retrain as a counsellor. “I was quite aware that I was in rooms with big topics,” he says, “and I think it’s really interesting to go, ‘Are you the right person to be leading people through this particular subject matter?’”
With his training complete, he is now in an even stronger position to focus on the “well-being and care of artists,” which he considers “a minimum solution that should be happening.”
“Afterwards, I went, ‘Wow, I’ve been facilitating for ages, I’ve been directing, but now I can see if someone is triggered and if I need to change course or need to stop, check in, and actively listen to what the person’s saying,” he says.
Jake’s Biggest Challenges at Eastern Angles
In early 2024, Jake received the news that Suffolk County Council will cut Eastern Angles’ core funding, which finances theengagement and participation programmes of the Eastern Angles Centre and supports touring into rurally isolated areas.. The charity has one year to prepare and will lose around £22,000 per year from the end of March 2025.
“A lot of our engagement and participation work is free at the point of entry,” Jake says. “Therefore it’s accessible.” As such, although many participants donate funds to the charity, its council funding is important. Transitioning to operate without this is one of the biggest challenges Jake has had to handle.
On top of this, as the charity’s CEO, he’s had to develop a high level of business acumen. Jake reflects that he used to “open spreadsheets and didn’t know what they meant.” On the one hand, he dedicates himself to being “a really inspired artist,” but he needs to balance this with “costing everything [the organisation is] doing.”
“It’s public money,” Jake says, “which I really, really take responsibility for. Within that as well, you want to give the audience the most value for every pound they spend on their ticket.”
“One of the things we’re really proud to do is deliver a full production, whether that be in the village hall, whether that be a full-scale theatre, whether that be in a school. We’ve done it all over, aircraft hangars, gymnasiums, the lot.”
The Serious Violence Fund
In terms of funding, Eastern Angles has secured a serious violence fund. When the organisation welcomes young people, they are often “taking them off the streets” and “giving something to do,” Jake explains.
The charity is reducing the time when these young people “may fall into habits because there’s nothing else there to entertain them,” Jake says. The aim is “to show them a different path or to come together and talk about issues that matter to them.”
“That’s one of the big things that we talk about with any age,” he adds, “allowing people their voice and listening to what they have to say.”
Becoming A Client of Bronia Buchanan’s BBA Management
Jake signed with Bronia Buchanan’s BBA Management in 2022. “I’d built quite a successful career already,” Jake says, “but I was doing a lot of the legwork.” He was balancing several teaching and theatre projects and was reliant on his teaching salary.
“Bronia very quickly in the first meeting began to channel what direction all these different routes were taking me… She was so compassionate. She was like, ‘Keep your teaching job, don’t worry about that. And then we’ll begin to take some steps.’”
“I then got an offer to do a West End musical through a director I’d been an assistant with before. I was freelance directing in the north-east. I bagged a Christmas show with my big regional theatre Northern Stage, and then the pack landed for this job [at Eastern Angles].”
“I remember sending it to Bronia and thinking, ‘I wonder what she’ll think of this,’” Jake says. “And she sent [an email] straight back. ‘Yeah, go for it. You’ve got to. Brilliant.’”
More Than an Agent
“Bronia’s more than an agent,” Jake says. “She’s like a literary manager and she really joins my creative process. Some of the work I’ve done recently has been things where Bronia has gone, ‘I think you’d be good doing this.’ And then I picked up the play and went, ‘Oh, how have I never heard of this one?’”
“She goes above and beyond. She’s made some really sensible suggestions and at times when I’ve gone, ‘I don’t understand this,’ she’s been able to go, ‘Oh, I can hook you up with this person who’ll be able to help with that.’”
Jake also likes that he can turn to Bronia whenever he feels stressed. “I had this chat with her today,” he says. “I said some stuff was going astray and Bronia said, ‘It’s not the crisis that matters, it’s how you manage it.’”
Jake knows this insight will stick with him. “You have to remind yourself as a mantra, but when you’re stressing about something, it’s not a problem, it’s a solution. And you’ll find one.”
Additional Support From the BBA Management Team
On top of this, Bronia Buchanan’s team is “really invested” in its clients,” Jake says. “They’re taking you to events, they’re introducing you to the right people so you spark great conversations.”
“It’s not just, ‘Oh, can I have a job?’ It’s engineering fruitful collaborations and relationships and feeling like you’ve got someone in your court. I think we all want someone to root for us. That’s what BBA does.”
Even the BBA Management agents who don’t usually work with Jake are interested in his work. “They come to my productions if Bronia can’t come, or just generally anyway,” he says. For example, one of the agents, Connie Hopkins, came to an Eastern Angles show to support Jake simply because she got into theatre herself via the company touring to her village as a child.
Advice For Emerging Directors
Jake’s advice to new directors is to “work from your heart, don’t compare, and find the hunch that’s guiding you to create authentically.”
This is important given the “pressure and expectation that can sometimes cloud your authentic vision,” he explains. It’s easy to think that “you should do what other people are doing because this show got five stars or an award.”
As an extra piece of advice, Jake encourages emerging directors to ask for the help they need. “‘Shy bairns get nowt,’ we say in the Northeast,” he jokes. “If you don’t ask, you don’t get.”
Lastly, “don’t be afraid to throw your own party,” Jake says. “I’m now taking over an organisation at the same age that my predecessor founded it.”
“They and their team “had the grit to go, ‘Do you know what? We’re going to stick in a place. We’re going to create the work that we feel is authentically ours. 43 years later it’s still here, there’s still an audience, and it’s a growing audience.”
“I’m proud now to run this organisation. If I got a second pop at life, I’d want — not to do things differently — but to go, ‘Actually, I’m going to do this more, set up a company, dig in, and do the work I really want to do.”
About Bronia Buchanan’s BBA Management
Jake is one of the exceptional creatives that Bronia Buchanan’s BBA Management represents. Voted talent agency of the year in 2023, BBA Management ensures that each of its clients receives the personalised support they need to flourish in their theatre, television, film, commercial, or creative work.
