David Carey Part Two.

In this episode we continue the conversation with David covering topics including how the Central MA in Voice Studeies evolved and developed and discuss why the Voice faculty of British Drama Schools was so white. If you want to contact Robert about the podcast please do: robertprice1869@gmail.com

Transcript

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1 (3s):
Hello and welcome to the History of actor Training in the British Drama School. This is the second part of an interview with David Carey. We're going to talk a bit more this week about the course that David ran at the Central school of speech and Drama. I hope you enjoy. Thanks for listening. Hello. Hello. So brilliant. So welcome back. So you were Central so, and that was 1987?

2 (37s):
Yes. Essentially beginning, January 87. Yeah.

1 (41s):
How long did that course....I Mean, I know it gone through various changes - the advanced course...

2 (47s):
yeah. Yeah. The that year that I, I taught was the fifth year of that course. There've been four years prior to that, that had been led by Helen Winter, who was one of the Voice teachers at Central and she and another Voice teacher Margot B- were influential in creating that because now the need to create that course came about because the Training that somebody like Cicely Berry received at Central or Patsy Rodenburg received at Central and the undergraduate training in teaching of speech and Drama, which included Voice work and, and therefore produced a large number of graduates who were speech and drama teachers or Voice teachers for generations, actually - the undergraduate Training had gone undergone a shift from focusing on speech and Drama to simply focusing on Drama.

2 (2m 6s):
This was within the, as I say, sort of previous for five years. So this would have been at the beginning of the 1980s, this switch from including Voice and speech work as a central part of an undergraduate teachers Training to focusing more or less essentially on Drama had taken place. And I think, I think Barbara Houseman may have been one of the last students to receive some of that Voice and speech Training or she may have been one of the first who didn't.

2 (2m 56s):
I don't know, you'd have to ask her, but Barbara was a Fairly recent graduate of Central when I started teaching, she, I mentioned in the first term, I was just working one day a week. Barbara was doing some of the teaching for - on the course at that time Bardy Thomas, who subsequently, where was I'm the assistant principal at RADA. She also is teaching there in a number of people we were brought in to supplement the fact that I couldn't be full time, but, and these were people, you know, body was a graduate of, of central from the 1960s, Barbara, fairly confident in saying she was a graduate from the 1980s.

2 (3m 53s):
Patsy was a graduate from the 1970s. You know, we've, we've, we've got some leading Voice teachers who had come through the undergraduate Training and Margo brand and Helen Winter didn't want to lose Central's lace or any of that Voice teaching component. And so they created the advanced diploma and Voice studies, which Helen was the first course director for. And then I subsequently took that over from her and yes, in, in its initial stages, as it was known as the advanced diploma in Voice studies, that meant it was simply an internally validated course.

2 (4m 44s):
It had no external validatory process As part of its creation - Cicily Berry was the first external examiner of the course, and she remained external examiner for certainly the first year that I was a course director for it. And subsequently Patsy became a second external examiner. Andrew Wade then became an external examiner after Patsy. And then we had to change the external examiners every four or five years.

2 (5m 25s):
Eventually that that's where we that's. My, those were the principal people involved, Ros Cummins, I think Ros subsequently became external examiner Bardy Thomas was my final external examiner as part of the course, if that makes any difference to what we're talking about.

1 (5m 51s):
Well, yeah, so that seven 87 till 2003. So that's sort of 15, 15 years at 17 years. Yeah. 17, the course took over how now, of course the, the Central course that you, you ran, didn't only train Voice and texts teachers for the theater and, and acting film and television. It had other, it was a very holistic course, but ...

2 (6m 20s):
Yeah, I mean, from, from, from the outset graduates of the course, didn't just go into teaching in Drama schools, working in film and television and theater, but went into particularly business communication and, and, you know, oral oral development, communication skills, that side of things, whether that was in secondary schools or working with business people and the like, and, and that, that was always a component. Also a very, as it were a more narrow component of the course was dialect coaching.

2 (7m 4s):
The, I, I never claimed that the course would train you to be a dialect coach, but it was the foundation for many people to become dialect coaches and, and many dialect coaches who are now at the top of their profession. Of course. And that had, that had been in the course have been the case with the course in effect from its outset. I was just looking back at previous graduates and realize that Charmian Hoare, who is a leading dialect coach in Britain, she was one of the first graduates of the advanced diploma, Julia Wilson Dixon, who was teaching on the course When I got there, she was a graduate of Central’s undergraduate course.

2 (7m 54s):
And was teaching the An on the acting course, she was also a leading dialect coach as well, often referred affectionately as Julia Wilson diction. And because of her love of, of correcting or adjusting people's speech habits,

1 (8m 16s):
Wwas it a one-year course when you took over?

2 (8m 19s):
It was the one year course. Yes, it was, it was nine months and there was no dissertation at the end of it. It was, it was very much about teaching and teaching practice. And as The, as I worked with the chorus, I was encouraged to develop it, to get external, external accreditation for it. And so Two increase as it were some of the academic components of it, or to make some of the practical components, more assessable from an academic point of view.

2 (8m 59s):
And ultimately, as you know, it became an MA course. And of course that's, that's when we introduced dissertations from, from kind of a practical research point view, but it, it evolved, it seems like every five years, it kind of evolved into a different format in the advanced diploma at then became a postgraduate diploma, which was accredited by the CNAA defunct body now. And then another five years we are introduced the MA component.

2 (9m 42s):
And basically I saw that out. We were with an adjustment to the course just before I left, which, and I know it's undergone various other changes since then. So it's still An MA but I think because Central is now part of London university, they do have the capacity to oversee PhDs. It was always something, you know, in my final years, I was always kind of hankering for, Oh, I wish we could do PhDs. There, there were a number of students who I felt in, in latter years who, who could have taken their dissertation study and, or had an interest in exploring aspects of things like yourself, Robert, we're worthy of going on to doing PhDs, whether they wanted to or not.

2 (10m 35s):
So the PhD is a big commitment MFA. Now I think that's correct. Yes. Right. There's an MFA strand. So students can opt to do M a or essentially a year or an MFA over two years, the MFA clearly brought into satisfy the American market. 'cause in American terms, an MFA is a terminal degree and MAs not classified as a terminal degree. Carey now why, when a, when I was in charge of the course, because, so of course it was essentially the only course in the year In in the world Training Voice teachers.

2 (11m 22s):
It was of course of the MA many American students undertook and became very leading Voice teachers in America through doing it. It was an additional component yeah. To their, to their qualifications. But increasingly as more American qualification, School online, American institutions required students, not just to an AMA, but to have an MFA in Voice studies. And that's Central has responded in that way in order to enable its graduates to fulfill those requirements.

2 (12m 10s):
And I, and I think that was absolutely essential to do that for those purposes, you know?

0 (12m 17s):
And so is that as the Training evolves in terms of, of what it's called and, and the component parts of it are there was when I, when I took it in 2000, 2000 2003, would you say that that course was in a, in a close relation ship to the course you took over, it changed names and various things have been added, but is it sort of the same Training,

2 (12m 43s):
That's, that's difficult to quantify because, you know, w I introduced more dialect work into the course. I introduced more movement focused work into the course. I develop the academic side of things. So that things like the independent practical project, if you remember that The and the, the dissertation The assessment of teaching practice in a, in a detailed way, and requiring students to keep teaching practice files, for example, at all of those things are things that I introduced in the course of, of the first 10 years or so, the course that you experienced in 2002, 2003, I would say, was pretty identical to what students experience say in the mid nineties, perhaps with one or two additional academic components of, of requirements to fulfill things.

2 (13m 57s):
But to say that it was the same as the course that I inherited, no, I think there's a, there was a substantial portion that I would have to lay claim to.

0 (14m 8s):
And those portions that you, you lay claim to were introduced for reasons,

2 (14m 15s):
Just in response to students requirements, two requests. One is one of the components of, of the academic oversight of the course was, or any course at Central was each course had its own course committee, which was composed of a substantial number of, of student reps or, or not substantial number, but a representative number of student reps and staff, and the student reps, as you may well know, you know, conducted meetings amongst themselves and brought concerns or issues Two of course committee and of course committee, we needed to respond to those.

2 (15m 5s):
And many of the changes like bringing in additional hours for dialect coaching or additional hours for a movement work, bringing in a more consistent work and Alexandra technique. Those are the things which yes, I very much supported, but were also components that students were asking for as well. So it was a collaborative development that was run by students, you know, who are post-graduates, you know, they're the kind of average age of students was usually in the mid thirties.

2 (15m 51s):
So these are people with experience of life experience of the profession and, and had clear ambitions about what they wanted and what they felt the course would benefit from. And that's what I wanted to do as well. I wanted the cost to serve the needs of the students, of the, of the people that were being recruited. And that, that always tended to expand the more we'll work on communication skills, for example, or more, as I've mentioned, the other things that we had more of, it was always budget constraints as to how much that would, would be possible.

2 (16m 35s):
But again, you know, you, you may remember, I think Joanna, we are taught your year term and Joanna where the The at the time, the only link later designated teacher in Britain was somebody I wanted to have a teaching Linklater based work on the course of that. It wasn't just something that people knew in, in theory as it were. I know, of course, having also been a graduate of the course in, in advanced diploma days. So she knew the course from the inside as well as contributing from, from her Linklater Training as well.

2 (17m 18s):
So yeah, it's all of these developments came about both from, from my interest and from the interests of students, my sense of the breadth of what I was training people for and the benefits of, you know, something like Alexander technique or Debbie Green's movement work, and also, you know, the need for cross-fertilization with

0 (17m 52s):
Various aspects of Voice work in the professions. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's how it all evolved. And it evolved my, my experience of doing the course. And I've, I've thought about it a lot since, as, as, as one does, was of how, how well designed it was, how elegant it was in terms of construction as a course. I mean, that thing about curriculum, meaning an actual race course. And I remember, I remember sort of an anxious conversation with you. I think it was the entire group. I think it was just me early on a sort of first week conversation, but this is all saying, well, well, we looked at our course document and there was loads of things to do, and we're panicking about that. And you said, we'll just do, just sort of do them, do them one at a time and just do, do with it as it's laid out.

0 (18m 35s):
And you'll sort of find that you've, you've completed it. And I sort of relaxed. And I often tell my students that its sort of it's bewildering when you look at a whole thing

2 (18m 45s):
Laid out before you,

0 (18m 47s):
But of course, yes. If you just do what you're doing today and then, then do what you're doing tomorrow, you find you've become change. You find that you've, you've learned things. Deep thing. Yeah.

2 (18m 58s):
Yeah. It was one of it's. One of the benefits of, of academic courses is that you're required to produce a course

0 (19m 4s):
Document required. Two

2 (19m 6s):
Share that with, with your students. Yes. When those students read it for the first time, if it's, you know, we're talking about the one-year course, but imagine somebody looking at a three-year course and it's like, Oh my God, I've got to do all of that. How can I possibly live up to that or manage that? Well, yeah, you, you take ones up at the time.

0 (19m 28s):
Yeah. And then you find you've completed and then you get the opportunity to look back

2 (19m 36s):
On everything. The chief

0 (19m 39s):
Yeah. Yeah. I've got so Two, it's lovely talking to you and I'm happy to talk. Thank you. I've got to sort of thing bee's in my bonnet I suppose. Yeah. Well, I've got a lots of things in my body too, in particular today. I don't know whether you had a chance to look over or it may be of no interest, but Lambda recently has advertised for a number of posts and those posts are I think, interesting historical documents in terms of the development of teaching in the, in the, in the British Drama School because I think for the first time in that I know of they, they, they don't require people applying for those jobs to have a degree.

0 (20m 24s):
They certainly don't ask for anything like in MA and those are on this sort of desirable list rather than the essential list we may ask for things like some, some experience of teaching young people and, and they're clearly designed as job descriptions to capture a much wider group of applicants than them previously. And I, I can, I can S I can see reasons why that would be a good idea, I suppose, as somebody who, who comes from the tradition that I was trained in with you, I always felt that the, the Voice world was, was expert that, that everyone had a shared understanding and knowledge and the, that was fairly deeply layered as much as you, as you can in a year.

0 (21m 10s):
And so Voice teachers belongs to a, sort of a Guild of competence and knowledge that I felt very proud to be a part of, and that wasn't really to do with the initials often. And it wasn't due to being an MA

3 (21m 25s):
<inaudible> it's the legacy here,

1 (21m 26s):
If a hundred years of Voice Training of teacher legacy Voice teacher Training yes. If you think about, sorry, I'm just going to inter interfere here, interject that, you know, Elsie Fogarty established the Central Schools patient Drama in 1906. Think I'm writing saying within five years she had established a teacher training course, and we, we are now, well, 110 years, if you like, since that, and that teacher training course trained people, like when a third bone and Clifford Turner Rose Bruford Gretta Colson, you know, the, the, the, that, that mid century generation of Voice teachers.

1 (22m 18s):
So it, it is, it is a legacy that, that we embody and that respect, and, and yes, it's, it's, it's gone through many changes. And as you explored with, with any tastes in the The in one of your podcasts, in terms of the Drama studio, you know, the, there, there being points where people have broken away. I think again, on, on Facebook, somebody mentioned the Rose Bruford broke away from Central in order to find her School read the Colson, I suspect broke away from Central to found her School.

1 (23m 3s):
And yet they, they were, they were still part of a legacy tradition. If you like with which fed actor Training for four, much of the last century. I do think it's interesting what happened in the 1960s, because you know, the Drama center. Yes, Matt <inaudible> was, was sacked and John Blatchley resigned and the Drama center was set up because of a difference between Gwen a third and, and

2 (23m 47s):
What she perceived as the movement Training that? Yeah, Margaret was, he was producing an An. Eric was affecting people's voices, but I think it also,

1 (23m 56s):
So that lead to the Drama center downplaying Voice, Training initially as part of its work. And at the same time you had East 15 acting School being created,

2 (24m 15s):
Coming out of the theater workshop tradition and so much,

1 (24m 19s):
It's more of a improvised ator in a background where its kind of, we, we all, we all just experiment and improvise and we love each other and sorry, I'm perhaps stereo.

2 (24m 33s):
So having things here, but there's a, there's a little bit of that sixties. Ethos of, yeah. We, we, we, we it's, it has to be real man. You know, it has to be authentic. It has to be truthful

1 (24m 45s):
And that's, that's all about

2 (24m 47s):
What is real authentic and true

1 (24m 49s):
Can mean. It feels like this man. And, and so one is Voice is being attacked,

2 (24m 58s):
Essentially. Misused, if not ultimately yeah.

1 (25m 0s):
Lab used. And I, when I started working at the RFC, I

2 (25m 7s):
Encountered the number of actors who trained

1 (25m 11s):
In,

2 (25m 11s):
In the late sixties, early seventies experienced that

1 (25m 15s):
Actors, but who'd basically received no vocal Training. And then,

2 (25m 21s):
And there was that danger in the sixties and early seventies of throwing the baby out with the bath water

1 (25m 29s):
That Training the need for physical

2 (25m 35s):
Development of the Voice in terms

1 (25m 37s):
Of healthy usage and the aware and the actors awareness of what might be

2 (25m 44s):
Healthy usage and what might not to give them choices about how to use their voice over a long period

1 (25m 52s):
And certainly over periods of, of performance

2 (25m 58s):
That might lead to vocal

1 (26m 1s):
Damage that, that

2 (26m 3s):
I wasn't being the actor or actors weren't being

1 (26m 7s):
Served to help them professionally in that way. And this is my concern with,

2 (26m 14s):
So what you're presenting in terms of the current Lambda situation is if actors are not being given a Training, which enables them to feel confident with their vocal usage,

1 (26m 31s):
Two sustain them through a career of health

2 (26m 35s):
Is the awareness of how to use and produce their Voice

1 (26m 39s):
Voice in a sustained way over, you know, a six week performance

2 (26m 45s):
Period, or if you're in the national, the RSC are the globe over months of performance, how to deal with working outdoors in the, in the globe. You, you need a skills level that you can feel confident with and therefore you need people who are working with you to feel that they are skilled in their work to provide that foundation for, for a full-scale act in Korea.

2 (27m 26s):
So it's a kind of roundabout way of addressing what, where I think you were going, but go ahead.

0 (27m 35s):
Well, my, my sort of fear or theory is that the skill of is required in order to teach those skills is, is, is misunderstood and sort of under underrated, really. So I think that the people teaching in Drama, Schools mostly both in Voice departments and other departments, but of course I know the voice of the Voice world well are very skillful and very delicate. It's very nuanced activity. And that, that for whatever reason, that that doesn't seem to be the way,

2 (28m 10s):
But there is also a perception out there that actor Training is a elitist or is serving elitist. And, you know, I, I, I don't know where or how that's come into the conversation entirely. And I know I can, I can understand from black British or, or people of color point of view, I can understand why that's perceived. Absolutely. But in, in terms of the conversations around, Oh, people like Damian Lewis or Benedict Cumberbatch, you know, acting is just full of posh boys and posh girls who, you know, just came through a university, you know, private school and universities.

2 (29m 6s):
I'm not entirely sure where that's come from. And I, I do wonder whether some of that is a result of the fact that the bees have skyrocketed in the last 15 to 20 years and that, you know, the people that I was working with as a, as a young teacher, or even at RADA, when, when you and I were both teaching there, th th there was a much more cross section of, of society in the student intake than maybe there is now. And, and, and within the profession then maybe is now, I don't know,

0 (29m 45s):
Hello everybody. This is me after the interview, just inserting myself into my conversation with David to mention that as a clarification, that although David is completely correct, of course, that Drama School fees have risen over the years at the moment in the UK, somebody who's studying a course, a degree in Drama or a degree in as taking an acting, Training had a trauma School it does pay currently exactly the same amount in fees as people doing any other degree. So Drama, School, Drama School degrees, Drama School trainings are no more expensive than, than other degrees. That's true for undergraduate degrees that may not be true for postgraduate degrees.

0 (30m 29s):
So something like the MFA at Central may, may cost more money than an MA or an MFA somewhere else in another subject. But in terms of BA degrees, the fees are identical. Now students tends to pay for their courses via loans and the student's ability to pay their loan back. And this was something that David pointed out when we discuss this section after the podcast had finished, is affected by the, the, the possible earnings they receive after graduation. So in terms of fairness and equity, that may also be relevant in that the graduate actor, maybe slightly less likely to make a good income than a graduate vet, for instance.

0 (31m 11s):
And now that's returned to the conversation with David.

2 (31m 15s):
So there's this perception that actor, actor Training, maybe Voice Training in particular is the elitist. And that of course comes from this emphasis that was in Voice teaching on RP, right up until at least the beginning of the century, if not beyond which, you know, I know where it came from, I understand why it was there, but it was never something that I wished to maintain. And, and certainly, I think you will bear this out and in the training that I was offering, you know, I, I was, I saw all accents and dialects as having equivalent value in, in terms of training of Voice, you know, you, you work with a Glaswegian in Glasgow, you, you want that Glaswegian actor to have full access to their vocal instrument in their own accent, not just in our P so, you know, it's a, it's, it's an interesting area.

2 (32m 29s):
I think technical skill is also something which is often kind of, Oh, it's technique. Well, it's that it's, it's somehow seen as a barrier to truth. And that again, takes me back to the sixties and, and this focus on, well, what is truthful? What is real? And I think that there are different definitions of, of truthfulness. I think if your voice is coming from your center and your instrument is open and free, and, and you're really connected to what you're saying, then that is truth. And that can be a truth that is dangerous for people to express.

2 (33m 12s):
You know, if you have a strong opinion and you express it fully, it's, it's, it's dangerous to hear as a lot of people are scared of the black lives matter movement, because people are expressing things fully and passionately, and often very much from their core. And, you know, I applaud that, but, you know, for, for people to be scared of that, I think, well, that's, that's just voices being heard.

0 (33m 48s):
Yes. Well, I agree. But, but that there is this sort of, I think bewildering politics of technique where somehow the, the, the, the debate around R P and L and a very reasonable criticism of, of a very old fashioned approach to RP. I mean, as you say, when, when I was training with you, I think as a cohort, we were fairly, ah, kind of radical in our own way and certainly about associate linguistic issues. I felt that way. And I, I felt that we were being offered a particular and specific skill, which of course, I think what maybe people don't know is that at that point in time, and actually until fairly recently at the end CDT demanded that I just be taught to RPS.

0 (34m 30s):
There would be things would come through from the national theater saying that young actors were not able to do it. Sometimes black actors, like Patson Joseph would say that he was concerned that other younger black actors weren't being, so there was a whole load of stuff, certainly around, up mostly as a, as a tool to, to work in.

2 (34m 49s):
And that was,

0 (34m 50s):
That was sort of simple. I think we were finished with that debate and she, in about 2002, I think it was built and somehow people have extended that, or extrapolated that into, into the idea that there's an aesthetics around breathing well or releasing shoulder tension or the set of the jaw, which I can sort of just about be curious about as an idea, I can just about think, well, the particular set of somebody's body is connected to their lived experiences and to their culture. But I also think there's a politics of expressing yourself of being an hat, being able to do that. Yeah, absolutely.

0 (35m 30s):
And that won kind of trumps.

2 (35m 31s):
Yeah. And I think it's, it's, it's, it's a, it's about offering choices. It's not about changing people

1 (35m 40s):
And making them something other actor Training is about offering Training that gives an individual choices as to how they express themselves in any given role

2 (35m 56s):
And that they are open to what the role is asking of

1 (36m 0s):
Them, not just about

2 (36m 2s):
Bringing themselves to it, but what is the role asking of them to bring? And I think a lot of acting today because we see so much of it on film and television is, is actually about actors being themselves in situations.

1 (36m 21s):
They, they are, they are cost to be themselves. And so the same,

2 (36m 28s):
Actually what they are required to do is use their imagination to become the

1 (36m 35s):
Character. They are playing to imagine them

2 (36m 38s):
Selves in the character's situation. But a lot of theater

1 (36m 43s):
Actually asks actors to imagine them selves, to be other than they are to, you know, to imagine what it's like to be a woman of Troy who has been devastated by war, had their whole culture destroyed and to have their children dashed, to pieces on rocks and shields and have throats slit

2 (37m 18s):
And to be sent into slavery,

1 (37m 23s):
Of course, aspect of all of that, our part of the society today. But very few of us have experience of that, or necessarily the imagination to put ourselves into that experience in a way that is truly authentic. We can perhaps do it and say, Oh, I can imagine myself as a 21st century person in Iraq, maybe feeling like that. But what if you're asked

2 (37m 55s):
To put yourself in a historic

1 (37m 59s):
Situation and, and bring yourself to that period, we need to research

2 (38m 6s):
That you need to discover

1 (38m 8s):
And on earth aspects of lived culture and, and the rules

2 (38m 14s):
Oh. Of, of people at that time and what, what they're experiencing.

1 (38m 18s):
I was worried. You read, you know, Homer, you read Shakespeare, you read the writings of,

2 (38m 27s):
You know, whatever culture you're an expert

1 (38m 31s):
Lowering in order to bring yourself out of your own

2 (38m 37s):
21st century mindset and physical set, emotional set into something other, into something bigger.

0 (38m 49s):
Yes. And that whole notion of, of transformation or things that collect around the activity of transformation is in itself becoming problematized. It was that seen as being problematic, both in terms of the profession, but also in some way that I can't quite figure out politically it philosophically it's it's it, that in itself is contested by, by people who are now often running Drama Schools from it and not, not always from the, the profession of Price.

2 (39m 22s):
Yeah. I mean, I, I certainly can, I certainly can see a time in the near future where transformational acting is doesn't exist anymore. That, that, and if the anything that we do is made contemporary, whether that's Shakespeare or Aristophanes's or Stephanie's, or any checkoff to put on a chore, wonder what Samuel Beckett would say. We, we know that the Beckett foundation is, is very clear about, you know, you do not change back.

2 (40m 6s):
It's a stage directions. You do not change anything, but we are, we're perhaps going to see this a little bit of a shift there in the near future, just because society and culture is changing. So the transformational acting and, and plays that made sense in their period just don't make sense anymore, unless you make them into some kind of contemporary version of themselves. And I think we might lose things because of that, but we potentially will gain things because of that, that, you know, I remember at one point, Trevor Nunn was, this was about 1990, but he was very concerned that Shakespeare would not be around in the next a hundred years, that Shakespeare would never get on the phone.

2 (41m 2s):
Again, that may not be the case because Shakespeare becomes contemporary realized that actually people, you know, the, the, the organization that I've been working with most recently, the Oregon Shakespeare festival was party to a development called play on which pioneered the translation in inverted commas of Shakespeare's plays into a accessible version of themselves for modern audiences. We've, you know, Chaucer, or we can barely read.

2 (41m 43s):
And the original these days has to be translated for us. We read those stories in, in modern English, Shakespeare. We were nearly at a point where that period of English language is barely readable by young people today. And, and so it's, it's, it's a barrier to them, you know, tell them that we've got a Shakespeare project. Next term, it's not met with excitement. It's met with fear because Shakespeare is, Oh my God, I never understood Shakespeare. I don't know why we did Shakespeare at school. I only just said the word, I didn't understand them.

2 (42m 26s):
You know, that's, that's an, that's an issue for, for young Drama students. And I, I entirely understand that, you know, you, you read interviews with, with students, we worked with ourselves with Robert up, back in the two thousands and they talk about, you know, that Shakespeare project. And I was, I was terrified of it. And so it's, it's, it's kind of endemic for, for young people to have that sense of, Oh, it's a, it's a barrier to, to, to really embracing classical text.

2 (43m 7s):
I don't think it needs to be still, but I understand that it is. Yeah,

0 (43m 14s):
No, we understand the anxiety too. I mean, my, my experience is that with people who are inclined towards the imagination and inclined towards ideas and, and tend towards being curious about the many possibilities of being a human being when well taught or well-directed or well held those people almost invariably full for the text of that kind of quality is the problem. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, and, and The the external form of the language, I think for me is not isn't is not so much of a worry as losing what the behaviors that, that language is, is exploding and capturing.

0 (43m 54s):
That's the thing that I don't want to lose. I don't want to just live in a, in a, in a world where art has to say one or two things over and over again. Yeah. That's, that's, that's the part of it that I feel is, is really threatened. We, I didn't want to keep you too long with it. I'm loving talking to you, but there's, so my final BMI bonnet, one of the major criticisms leveled at the modern Drama school, and one which is clearly reasonable is that it's, the faculties are not diverse.

2 (44m 25s):
Sure. Yeah.

0 (44m 28s):
Used about that because my sense of, of the world of actor training and of the people that I trained with the teachers I had, and I think now we would, we would probably go as far as to say that those, those institutions therefore have become institutionally racist. So there's an institutional rate is a thing people will say. So as somebody who was involved in Training actors and at a very high level, I'd love to know what your thought is about the, the nature of faculties, about the diversity of the, of the faculty and what was sort of happening during that period that you were running the courses Central.

1 (45m 5s):
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, I, I think inner Two to take a kind of overview of, of things. I mean, it, it, it is to do with overall the, the British society is both historically and systemically racist that I think we have to accept that that racism is built into the History of, of British culture. And it's only within recent years that that has been questioned and that governments have been attempting to address that.

1 (45m 56s):
But, you know, from maybe the mid eighties, you, UK governments have been making tokenistic efforts to address them. And, and initially it was, it was in the form of equal opportunities. Yes. That if only we provided equal opportunities, then we could say we were addressing the issue. Yeah. And, and essentially that is a tokenistic effect. And I'll, I'll come back to that in terms of how that played out in, in Central during my time. But, but that, that means that the School like, Central basically made inadequate efforts to attract and retain students of, of black people of color background and teachers of that background.

1 (46m 58s):
And so this leads to essentially a lack of role models. And this, this is where the great concern is there's a lack of role models or anyone interested in developing a career in acting as a whole or directing or being a Voice coach or teaching In Drama Schools 'cause, if you don't see people of color black British people, people from An Indian or Muslim or

2 (47m 35s):
Asian background of East Asian background, you know, you're, you're, you're not going to feel, Oh, there's a career that's open right.

1 (47m 43s):
To me. And also compound that with The.

2 (47m 49s):
So I'm just being asked to take on RP. Well, that's the epitome of white Brittany.

1 (47m 58s):
It is, there's a lack of access for young people coming into the Training to feel that there's a place for them in teaching as actor trainers. So that's,

2 (48m 17s):
That's the thing that's for me is that the kind of overview aspect of it to answer things from, from the Central point

1 (48m 29s):
View, when I, when I was there, Central certainly introduced An equal opportunities policy. And

2 (48m 41s):
So it was, it was built into the recruitment policy, you know, people of any race, gender sex, you know, so, you know, you, you got

1 (48m 53s):
That. There is your policy, but it requires more than a policy in order to instigate real dynamic change. And I, you know, I was keen to recruit people if they applied, but the efforts to encourage applications from people of color and black Britains was again from

2 (49m 27s):
Central institutional point of view is, was essentially tokenistic.

1 (49m 30s):
At that time. There may have been the education department itself, as opposed to

2 (49m 38s):
The acting department. I can't speak for the acting department, but the education department itself, I know I was involved in some outreach work to local schools

1 (49m 48s):
In London. I know that they

2 (49m 53s):
Placed advertisements in the Voice, the only black British

1 (49m 59s):
Newspaper, I think still

2 (50m 1s):
The only black British news.

1 (50m 4s):
So in an effort to encourage applications, but yeah, that's, that is essentially just papering over a problem and, and it didn't solve it

2 (50m 17s):
An and I deeply regret that we couldn't actually get more applications. I did. I did look

1 (50m 29s):
The number of applications or the number of people of color that I took onto the course. I think it ended up being something like 18, how to, of a, roughly 220 over my 17 years. So nothing like the 10% or 15 or 20% even this one might want to have of that number at least half were from overseas. So there were a number of people from Nigeria, South Africa, Japan, Singapore.

1 (51m 10s):
So I, you know, a very small number of, of British black or Asian, East Asian people applying. And I'm being recruited onto the course of those only Two went into British actor. Training a, one of those was Claudette Williams who has, was the first black British Voice teacher. I think in the whole of Britain to be recruited, to teach young actors.

1 (51m 50s):
She, she was recruited in the 1990s and she was still teaching at Central. She has had a lengthy and a great career as a Voice teacher, and Central ever since she was recruited and she was a student of mine, the other is Lisa Akerson who taught at Lambda for a while, but subsequently developed a career in Training in business work. And, you know, so all of that as being a much more lucrative outlet for her talents.

1 (52m 31s):
So, you know, it's, it's, it's a very sad story and, and one that nobody should feel proud about. So yeah, I, I think it, it, it does come down to really making very strong efforts to address the situation. And I, I wanna bring in here as an example, the work that's being done most recently at the Oregon Shakespeare festival in America, because they in American theater have pioneered EDI Training equality, diversity and inclusion.

1 (53m 16s):
Thank you, Rebecca, my wife, equality, diversion, and work.

2 (53m 28s):
And I'm from the top down, there was a very strong development of EDI work within the institution. It took the artistic director and his leading

1 (53m 45s):
Stuff to commit to EDI Training

2 (53m 51s):
Throughout the institution, not just for the actors or the designers or the Voice,

1 (53m 60s):
But for the whole administrative stuff,

2 (54m 4s):
An down to, you know, your, your ground workers, your, the, the people who shifted

1 (54m 10s):
The scenery. Yeah. Who I thought the components of, of theater making. So across the board, and then

2 (54m 20s):
It was actually built into our contracts that unless there was a commitment to EDI that, that we embodied and undergoing Training then, you know, basically,

1 (54m 33s):
So you might as well leave.

2 (54m 36s):
And so we, everybody had to undergo two rounds, at least two rounds

1 (54m 42s):
Of Training managers, and Two undergrowth undergo even more in depth, EDI training.

2 (54m 51s):
And as I said, this is, this is a pioneering work In

1 (54m 56s):
American theater. I don't see

2 (54m 58s):
Anything like it happening in British

1 (55m 1s):
Theater yet.

2 (55m 3s):
I did actually just go on the Central Schools website and look up.

1 (55m 7s):
So what they've got in terms of their

2 (55m 13s):
Equality and diversity policies, and they have a very detailed,

1 (55m 18s):
Nailed set of targets. It's a, it's an action plan

2 (55m 24s):
Or eradicating racism within the institution in terms of its recruitment of staff and students, and owning up to institutional racism itself.

1 (55m 35s):
Drama you know, that it's, it's it's back in the day when I was there. Yes, they would.

2 (55m 42s):
So we ha we, the staff had to, there had to be, you had to fill out

1 (55m 49s):
For

2 (55m 49s):
Government purposes, you had to prove that you were recruiting

1 (55m 55s):
Wide diverse section of society for your stuffing. But at the time I was there, all that diversity

2 (56m 5s):
Went into administrative

1 (56m 8s):
Stuff, the acting teaching

2 (56m 10s):
In the educational stuff. I cannot think of a single non-white person who was on Central staff while I was there. I may be mistaken, but I, I cannot think of them and the same at rod.

1 (56m 26s):
Well, while I was there, but I do recall one instance, when at Rhonda, we had a black Canadian visitor who was with us for a month or two, I think, and he undertook Voice warmups for us with the acting students. And I remember the, the Atari

2 (56m 52s):
Relief and enthusiasm, right.

1 (56m 56s):
And kind of welcoming that are blacks

2 (57m 1s):
<inaudible> and the Asian students on the chorus at the time,

1 (57m 4s):
I was just, Oh my God, thank goodness. This is somebody who's like us, who is teaching us. And, you know, it's taken RADA another 10, maybe 15 years to, to realize, Oh yeah, this is something we can learn from that, that we, we, we, we need to have people of color teaching

2 (57m 32s):
And, and, and we need to enable them to be recruited.

1 (57m 36s):
And that may mean going back,

2 (57m 38s):
You can looking very analytically. How do, where did those people at, where are those people

1 (57m 43s):
I'm going to come from? Because there, until

2 (57m 47s):
Usually there weren't any courses for Training acting teachers yeah. That work with Training Voice teachers that were for Training movement teachers that were for Training Alexander technique, teachers of a Training acting teachers. No, they weren't until recently there weren't any

1 (58m 3s):
Of those courses. And so you came to being

2 (58m 9s):
An acting teacher from being an actor.

1 (58m 13s):
And if actors were white predominantly then,

2 (58m 20s):
So acting teachers were predominantly

1 (58m 24s):
White today.

2 (58m 24s):
So we have a much more diverse acting community. So let's go out and get your Patterson Joseph's. As I think Robert down,

1 (58m 32s):
It was to come in and teach on the courses, or maybe we actually go and recruit those people more actively.

2 (58m 42s):
I don't know what's being done today. You know, it's, it's over 10 years since,

1 (58m 46s):
So I've been in acting school work, but I, I, it it's about that active outreach. It's about the systemic working through

2 (58m 57s):
From the top down a commitment throughout any Academy,

1 (59m 2s):
Two eradicating racism. And in all its forms that has to take place that may have led what Lamda has been doing to recruiting people without qualifications at a high level. I am, I can understand that, but you may not be your student's at the bar in the best way. So maybe what you actually need to commit to is training your staff. In non-racist behavior of, of uncovering the unconscious bias that, that exists of eradicating the, you know, the microaggressions that, that are there in people's language, whether they're conscious of it or not.

1 (59m 52s):
So, you know, it's, there, there has to be a multi-purpose attack on, on Drama institutions, if this is going to be addressed, it seems to me.

0 (1h 0m 6s):
Yeah. And I think, I think that that work has begun. I think that that part in the past year, 2020 for all of that stuff

1 (1h 0m 14s):
In the last year. Yeah. I mean, the principal of Central resigned because of the racist comments or apparent racist comments that he made. And the Central has really shifted a bit in the last six months. It seems to me, I don't know. I mean, this is just my impression, but yeah. The, the irony of two old white guys talking about this is not lost on me. Robert

0 (1h 0m 41s):
No, no, no me, no, no, no, no, no. I, I completely agree. Good. Well, we are moving to the end of our conversation David but I, I wonder, I like people to give me some, some story, something that pops into their heads, there's been some lovely things about, about Yas in it. And it's always seemed to me, the Sicily barrier is somebody for whom you have a well with whom you have a particular relationship. Would that be an accurate thing to observe? Oh, yes. So I wonder if this is, yeah. I wonder if this is something that just pops into your head. If I was to ask you to say a memory of Sicily, something she, she said to you or something you saw that had an effect on the trajectory of your understanding of, I suppose, of your life's work for her as your teacher.

0 (1h 1m 28s):
I know she wasn't your teacher at Drama School

1 (1h 1m 31s):
No, but she, she was my mentor. Certainly. Yeah. I, I think this is for me, there's, there's something about the essence of, of her work, which I've tried to emulate, which is there's a rigor and there's, there's a purity of focus on the truthfulness of expression of, of language not being overlaid with Lowery, venous of unnecessary over expressive, witty that expressivity is, is, is about being truthful to ones in our core, not Two what one overlays it with.

1 (1h 2m 24s):
And I think one of the things that I remember most about watching Cis in rehearsal was that she would actually close her eyes and listen for her. It was in listening to what she was hearing, not watching what she was seeing, that informed how she could help actors bring their full and true expressivity to the work that you, you, you can hear it in the Voice. And for some reason, I think that's also related to see, this is just bloody minded down to earth, this of, you know, suffering fools, not gladly that, you know, if, if, if you come up with a sound that sounds fake, she'll call you on it.

1 (1h 3m 25s):
And she may well use an expletive in which to do that. And so that's why it's so present in my memory that I'm using the present tense to talk about her, even though she died a couple of years ago. And so, you know, it's or a year ago, actually, so it's it's vital. Yeah. Hmm. Great. Well, David, it was lovely to talk to you. Thank you so much. Thank you for a great interview. Oh, well, no pleasure. Can't wait.