The History of Actor Training in the British Drama School.
The History of Actor Training in the British Drama School.
The Drama Centre 1963 - 2022. Annie Tyson. The rise and fall of this influential school.
In this episode Robert discusses the Drama Centre with Annie Tyson who describes the four pillars of teaching that underpinned the foundation of an acting conservatoire which, along perhaps with the short lived Old Vic School of Michel Saint Denis, could comfortably stake a claim to be the most radically influential institution in the history of professional actor training in the United Kingdom. Annie also talks about the decisions and events which will lead this special and precious school to close its doors in 2022.
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So anyway, long story short, the school finally pitched up in chalk farm in this Methodist Church, and all of the students arrived. And the myth is that, yeah, came into the room and everybody was expecting, you know, some sort of,
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you know, speech of welcome and how marvellous they were and how brave and how courageous and what an achievement this was. And all he said was to work. Hello, and welcome to this week's edition of the history of actor training at the British drama school. This week, I'm thrilled to have as a guest Annie Tyson. And he is a remarkable acting teacher and director currently at Rada, formerly at the drama centre and before that rose Bruford and he is going to talk to us about the history of actor training the drama centre,
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one of the most influential and radical drama schools in the history of British theatre school, which is Annie articulates brilliantly always demanded that its students bring their brains to their hearts.
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And he will also take us through the tragedy of the drama centre, which is that it's due to close its doors in 2022 for good when the current second year graduates. So, sit back and enjoy
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and his account of the four pillars of training of the drama centre, and many other things besides.
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And he is is here to talk to us about the history of actor training, particularly in the drama centre, although our conversation may go in other directions.
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Because Annie, you you trained at the drama centre, and you taught at the drama centre, and I believe you ran the drama centre. I did, I trained there as a student. And then I taught there.
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I worked as an assistant to during cannon briefly and then I went off and worked as an actor, worked in rep worked in radio, TV, so on so forth. And then I having it's it's some it had it had the school exerted such as sort of, sort of strong pulling power on one, that in order to kind of play around farro and find your own life and be who you were, you kind of have to leave it behind, you know, and I made a very conscious decision to kind of shut the door on the school very, very firmly.
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So that I could go off and kind of develop my own work both as a teacher but particularly as an actor.
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And then about 15 years later, I came back to the school, basically to see some productions, and we were living not far away from it. And we used to pass it quite a lot. And I'd say to Angus, my husband, who also trained at the trauma centre, in fact, that's where we met, we're in the same year. And could you give us dates, just so to fill us in on date? So when if you don't mind? Okay, so when were you there? It's fine. 1970
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is when I trade great. When was it founded at 63. So I was in a pretty, very early stage, I was in the kind of ninth year of some of its existence. And we were all
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caught by the group that by the note by the number of the groups. So the the first group that broke away from Central, I'll talk about that in a minute, and was group one and then group two group, I was I was group nine. And
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I'm still in touch with a few people from that group, one or two of whom have one or two people have died, actually, which has been a bit of a shock to hear in, in mind of mortality, but some of us are still alive and kicking and
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buggering on, as you say, and
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I
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then I haven't gone back to see a few productions. And I had a phone call from Christopher fetters the principal, asking me if I was interested in coming and doing a bit of work at the school. And I
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I sort of I had got into teaching quite substantially by that time. And I
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I sort of my first thought was, no, I don't think I can and then I thought no, this is stupid. Why wouldn't you want to go back and work there now a lot of waters passed under the bridge.
Unknown Speaker 4:37
You know, you've you've kind of developed a way of thinking and practice which is massively influenced by the school hugely, but you know, I encountered lots of other things as well. And, and I thought it would be a good thing to do it would be good to go and put something back and to be part of it because I firmly believe that the school was
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hugely, hugely important.
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So I went back with the proviso that I could only do a certain amount of work because they did have some active work happening, and some other performances, and he just went to 9070. And now we're in. We're in 1980, something 88, maybe 8888. Yeah, could be. And I went back a little bit, but I couldn't stay there for too long because I, I had other work, I had acting, and I had a teaching commitment elsewhere, which was, you know, was difficult to renegotiate around what drama centre wanted me to do. But anyway, after that, a little while after that in about
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98 it would be I think,
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I went back on a much more permanent basis. So I was asked to go back and do some work more work there. And that in and I was free to do it. And that developed into more work and more work and more work until finally,
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when the school when the management of the school the principal should principalship at the school was taken over by Vladimir Meriden.
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I was asked whether I would be I would apply to
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be the course director of the acting course. And Vladimir, that for the first year of his
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appointment. But then he he wanted to develop other things in the school, he wanted to develop a couple of Emmys. And he'd really reconstituted the directors course. And he just didn't feel he could kind of hold it all together and run the acting course, which was like, you know, it's 24. Seven, really, and, and so I applied for that job after a bit of soul searching, thinking, Well, you know, that is going to be a big commitment, that's going to be the commitment of my life. But I thought, actually, I think I can bring something to this, I think it's, I think I've got something I can bring to this. And I know I could work with Vladimir. So I applied for the job. I mean, it wasn't a shoo in, there were other Africans, but I did get the job. And I was the course director for 10 years. And I would get for the world. And it was, it was really exciting. It was a very exciting time to be at the school because there was a sort of new
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leadership.
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And it was
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it was really challenging, but it was incredibly exciting. And I think that what we have, and I think what we did, in that time that we were both there for those 10 years, which that we were able to
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carry the torch forward, we were able to maintain the fundamental principles of the school that we both so strongly believed in. But also we were able to move it a little a little more into
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something slightly less rarefied, let's say and, and actually open the windows and let the light in a bit
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of Vladimir change there too, was his connection. The other historical connection. Yeah, he was on the direction.
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That after
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me, and he arrived after I'd left as a student. And
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so I've got a you know, I've got a strong, passionate connection to the school.
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A comprehensive one. So that's really interesting. So if we take that period when yourself and Vladimir, both graduates of the school with a particular commitment to it find a way to
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evolve it's it's practice to some degree. What was it that you were taking forward? So what's in it? Hopefully, some people will listen to this podcast who don't don't know us or who don't know about the drama centre.
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I have a sort of a strange sense of the drama centre from watching a documentary in the in the 80s. I think there was a TV documentary about the school. Did you see that? Yes, it is. Yes, yes. Yes. Yes. So that's why I sort of sat in my mind a little bit. notorious documentary. Yes. There are lots of lots of stories around that documentary.
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None of which was that the I think that one of the
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that the guy who was producing it
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withdrew from it because
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the DEA or directing it, he withdrew from it.
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And somebody else took over and a lot of they wanted the kind of sensation what they considered to be the sensational stuff. You know, they wanted good stuff.
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As opposed to the kind of really interesting sort of rather work a day rather, you know, day by day kind of,
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you know, life of the school, you know, what they wanted, you know, to see students having nervous breakdowns and taking their clothes off and, you know, having kind of success or not success or, you know, being told that they were going to have to leave or whatever, whatever, whatever it was, and, and I think, caused quite a lot of ill feeling.
Unknown Speaker 10:32
Although there were, there was some interesting aspects of that documentary that that kind of nailed what life was like at the school. But it wasn't the whole story, not by any any stretch of the imagination, not at all. No, it, it was very good Telly. And I had no interest in being an actor at the time. And I remember being gripped by I've tried to find it, since I've never been able to track it down. It's something I'd love to love to see a brilliant documentary,
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video, oh, once we've got COVID
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sort of, you know, backed into a corner if not gone all together, because that's not going to happen is it? And I'm going to
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ask my brother to transfer it sort of onto some sort of digital mechanism that he can do that allows my brother in law to either onto a CD or some sort of player that that can be played digitally, but it is possible to do.
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So I will let us
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That was my understanding of the dramas and I had a little sense of the drama centre as a just a person in the world. And then, of course, I became an actor and I would meet actors who train there. In fact, one of the first actors I worked with a lot was called Debbie leading and Debbie was a drama centre graduate and the school had a sort of mythic resonance in her. And then when I started teaching, I became I came to understand the trauma centre more and more, and I met people like you and other people, rather and, and I remember, Adrian James, who taught he's outside saying to me once, if you wanted to have a drama school, you needed acting teachers from the drama centre and voice teachers from the Central School of Speech and Drama. And I I sort of saw, I started to understand something about the relationship between different parts of our history, but perhaps for for our listeners, I think that's why they called him podcasts, you could take us through the thing that you were evolving with Vladimir? So what are the key principles of the of the drama school? And how do they sit in the relationship with the history of the postwar British drama school?
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Well, I mean, I think the first thing to say about this is that drama centre, that you're quite right, there are a lot of myths about trauma centre, many of them Miss, some of them have a grain of truth in but one of the, one of the great stories about drama centre, which is a true story is that it It came
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as a result of a student revolution. And the drama centre
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came into being as a result of
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a new kind of new wave of teaching that was happening at the Central School of Speech and Drama, which was very well known for being very fundamentally rooted in vocal technique, vocal virtuosity and text. And but
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in the,
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somewhere around the late 50s, early 60s, the 1960s, somewhere around there.
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The
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Gwyneth Fairburn, who was the the principal of Central at that time appointed a man called john blatchley to the staff, who was a bit of a kind of new wave radical
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had a very distinguished career as a director, but had been massively influenced by
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Michelle Santoni. And the Michelle Santoni Theatre School and the company Dickens in France and and i think he'd been
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at some Denny's school in Strasbourg
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where he met his wife now I may be getting my facts mixed up here. I've got them down somewhere. But he met his wife Catherine please.
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And and he was appointed to the Central School and he said yes, I'll come but I want to bring certain people with me. So he brought with him Yat Malmgren, who was an extraordinary
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teacher and dancer he had his background was then in was in classical ballet but then in in in solo dance work in character dance work.
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You know, the physical
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equivalent of Ruth Draper's monologues. And also wanted to bring Harold Lang into the fold, who was at Central who was a great adherent of Stanislavski. And he also wanted to bring in Christopher fetters who had a
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kind of social, anthropological and political, cultural
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hinterland kind of landscape in his work. And,
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and at the time, that, you know, there had been a massive kind of swing in what had been going on in the theatre. it you know, through the mid 50s onwards, you had the development of writers like Osborne and Pinto and Wesker. And all of the work of the Royal Court, you'd also had the work of john Littlewoods Theatre Workshop,
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you'd have to visit of
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Brett's company from Berlin, there was a huge amount and the beginning the establishment, the beginnings of the establishment of the National Theatre, which was underworld 30 season at the old, which run by the RSC. And you kind of were beginning to get a bit of a sort of tsunami of change in the British theatre, and students who were training certainly at the Central School, and were very interested of this change, and they wanted to be part of that and they want to be, they want you to be trained for those. For those
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those new things that were happening, and and just Amanda were just mentioning to,
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sorry, Annie, just to say just just in terms of the history not mean to interrupt, it's probably worth mentioning to people listening that the the Old Vic school sundanese school, I think john batchi, was actually the Old Vic school to had closed, it had a very, very short life, I think six years. And then there are various conflicting histories. But so that school had disappeared. So there was no innovative school in the UK at the time.
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wasn't really a school, that,
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and I'm sure I'm sure all of the people who weren't Roger and central and London at the time and are turning in their graves certainly sees it say this. But it may be fair to say that there wasn't a school that was really, really dealing with what the theatre mean. And
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that actually, you needed to have an environment where you could deal with the kind of emotional robustness and the physical the physicality required by these new plays from
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some teachers who seem to have some answers to these to these problems that needed to be solved. Anyway, To cut a long story short, it's an interesting story, but you know, with, with the demands of time,
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they kicked off, they kicked off their work at Central and the students, many of the students many, many, many students were absolutely thrilled by these, these approaches by the rigour of the approach by the seriousness of the approach by the sense of, of the act of being an artist and being important being being somebody necessary with it with a process or the rigour and, and the ability to bring your brain to your heart.
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But unfortunately, there was a bit of a falling out. And
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the goodness serban at Central was very act, she thought that the movement work that Yat was doing was excess was damaging people's voices. And now
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I'm not sure who knows if that were true or not. But the you know, the received wisdom is that wasn't that that wasn't the case. But that she actually took against his work. And she sacked him as a result of that, but actually felt completely undermined and said, Well, if he goes I go, and Christopher Fettes is the same Howard Lang the same so they will up sticks and went, and the students
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went bananas basically, and
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demanded the reinstatement of the staff that wasn't going to happen. So they
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they met in somebody's somebody's living room, and they decided that they wanted to be taught by those people because those people seem to be training them for the theatre of the late 20th century.
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And that they
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they
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asked whether the teachers would be willing to to teach them.
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It's a more complicated story in that there's a very complicated story with how they got their funding and how they got there.
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They got their grants, and so on and so forth. But the myth is that people got on their mopeds. And they they went around North London looking for premises. And they finally picked up it with its this Methodist Church, this big commissioned Methodist Church in short farm, or I think maybe they're being used for some services. And they were allowed to have one room in that. And then they could park themselves out in various church halls around the area. But the school was formed
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out of a student revolution that students want to
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do you know, the story of somebody spitting at Gwyneth urban in the foyer and actress spitting out Gwyneth Thurber, in the foyer of the embassy theatre. That's Yes, that's
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highly emotional, and, you know, people highly emotional. And
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it's,
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it's the, it's the,
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it's the first instance of a successful foundation of an institute as a result of that action. And also, it comes, I think, the sort of secession, it can come from fear, as Vladimir once said, it comes from fear, as well as courage because your mom and dad leaving you. And for many, many students, the departure of these teachers were seemingly so inspiring and so
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demanding, and asking, you know, a huge amount creatively of the students that was very thrilling with their departure, there will there's bound to be, you know, a huge amount of anxiety, and acting deals with emotion,
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and desire. And therefore, you know, learning how to act can be a bit disturbing, you know, it's going to, it's going to that kind of examination of what your capabilities are is going to be, it's going to do things to you. And then you need an environment where that's going to be endorsed and held up and in a in a in a safe space and
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felt to be important.
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So anyway, the school finally pitched up in chalk farm in this Methodist Church, and all of the students arrived. And the myth is that, yeah, came into the room, and everybody was expecting, you know, some sort of,
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you know, speech of welcome and how marvellous they all were, and how brave and how courageous and what an achievement this was. And all he said was to work
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two ways,
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which is fantastic, thrilling story. And oh, yeah.
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And I think what what made the school very different, was that
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it believed that the core of the work was more than just a skills and craft training. All those things are, although that is absolutely vital. It wasn't simply to open you up emotionally and physically and imaginatively. But as I think I said, a minute ago, and it's not my quote, it might be Simon Keller's, quote, or it might be Vladimir squid, but it was actually to get your brains into your bodies, and thinking, the notion of being transformed by an idea of something
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surrendering to an idea
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is at the heart of, of, of, of acting. And that training was going to push the students to think harder about what they were trying to do harder than they'd ever imagined before.
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The school was always asking the question that question why, why why bother? Why do it? Why might it be important?
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So, you know, it was, I think it's true to say that it was one of the most influential and radical drama schools and not only for the rigour of the the kind of
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thinking part of it, but but for the integration of its elements. And I can talk a little bit about that.
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And it is yes, work the work on what he called character analysis,
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which absolutely places the actor as somebody who is a transformer places transformation is absolutely at the heart of the acting process that you make yourself. Just as a you know, a potter a ceramicist will make something extraordinary out of a piece of clay, you you the act of the role actor or the clay and you're going to make yourself into something
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and you know that the rule claims
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is kind of chaotic. But what yarts work did was that it converted it into something logical and focused on the meaningful energy of character. And it's a technique that is based on sensation. It's not based on
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you know, it's not based on kind of intellectual kind of,
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you know, academic thinking it's absolutely on sensation. And Kenya, specific sensations and, you know, generalised, generalisation being the enemy. It's very, very physical, and yet was particularly keen on Stanislavski because Stanislavski theory of physical actions, everything said and done in the play having a very specific objective that governs the character that absolutely chimed in, with what he was trying to do. And, and he came from, he came from a physical background, he came from a dance background. Does he know Lobban? Were they did he actually know? Yes, yes. Yeah. Yes, he did. He'd been a dancer. He was Stockholm in 1916. He trained first actor and then as a dancer.
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But his he's made his real gift receipt for the creation of character solos. And he took these characters solos all over the world.
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And you mentioned Ruth Trey, but it did yet, reference her specifically. He referenced her a lot. He used to talk about Ruth Draper a lot. Because we used to have a writers and I create to create our own monologues and solos. And he would mention Ruth Draper a lot in terms of tempo in terms of vocal quality in terms of in terms of her her ability to really economically physically transform. And I mean, I don't know if there any films out there I've got some CDs of her and they are remarkable. I mean, they are beautiful. And yeah, I haven't knew so Ruth Draper was just again for our listeners to to fill in. It was a
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incredibly virtuosic and and renowned monologist, who worked entirely through apparently she never wrote anything down, although I know David Mamet sort of says she was a wonderful dramatist, as well as a performer. So she developed these these completely remarkable solo performances where she would often pay play multiple, multiple characters. Yes. And yeah, you can listen to them on iTunes, they are remarkable. And you can create in your imagination, all the other characters as well, the character doesn't play. And that was what was wonderful about what is wonderful about your stellar work is that you're not just creating your own character, your own original character transformation, but you're also creating in our minds, the other characters in our case, it is it is what it works. It is absolutely wonderful. Anyway, 14, he joined the ballet use at Dartington Hall in Devon.
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And he ended up in Brazil where he stayed for seven years. And me Sorry, so when Mercia dungeon Hall, darting to the hall in 1940.
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So check off Michael check off it gone. The effect is still there. So there's a connection. Yeah, yeah. But his own dancing career was cut short by injury. And he, he
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continued to he started to work as a teacher and choreographer. And according to my information here, he worked on a choreographer. He was a choreographer for Peter Brooks Tempest, for example. And he taught at the stage company at the Royal Court. But the most significant event in his development
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was when he was invited to join Rudolph Levin shortly before his death, and golf club and was evolving a theory called movement psychology, which combined the Jungian theories of a man called William Carpenter carpenter, with his own
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movement through the efforts, and he entrusted this work to yet and that's what started to develop. And he had his own studio in Covent Garden in the early 50s.
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Sean Connery, Anthony Hopkins, dng lento were among the students. And then he taught a bit at Rada out of the Central School and then
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and it is, it is extraordinary work. The idea is that
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everything is said and done has a very specific objective. And that it's, it works through sensation, and that that he
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does the kind of character topology, I mean, I won't go this is a whole nother podcast, you get somebody much more
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than I am to talk about it because I've just found out
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what it does. If I can kind of
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You know, pull it all together. But what it does, which I found utterly
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indispensable, and is indispensable in my own thinking, although I don't always use it with students who don't know the work
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is that it gives you a language, it gives you a vocabulary that takes you to a physical sensation really quickly.
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And
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it can seem to people who've not experienced the work, it can seem like some sort of kind of, you know, secret society or code.
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But actually break it down if you started and it isn't, if you sort of break it down. It all makes absolute sense.
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It's logical and human and the physicality of it and the sort of way the body works in space to transmit for which then goes into action.
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I mean, it goes back centuries, there's a, there's a remarkable book
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called gesture and action by Henry Simmons, who is either Sarah Siddons brother or son or nephew or something anyway, and goes back to the
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1800s. Or, yeah, of the late 19th century, mid 19th century.
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And I have a copy of it, and it's got these engravings that in it, have characters in particular positions with their, with that bodies in positions,
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which are to do with emotional states. And they, it is extraordinary, it's entirely recognisable.
Unknown Speaker 31:43
And you know, you can just look at people on the tube, well, not on the tube at the moment, because what is going on the two very much, but you can look at people in situations, you can look at people, and you can actually see where they're at physically. So yes, work is, what their inner landscape is, by how they, how its manifested itself through physical sensation. And that's what Yes, work was all about.
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And it was rigorous and specific and demanding. And very, very much linked to the Stanislavski of work, which was the second pillar of the
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drama centre training.
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And Harold Lang was brought in first to work with with the sort of standard landscaping principles, but
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ultimately, that became the work of Dorian cannon, who was my teacher, who was Hargens
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main sort of main woman sort of protege. So you have a kind of direct from
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to Hargan
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through Doreen to to work at the drama centre
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and indeed through door into door to D who tragically has left us recent things.
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Yeah, that
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but that you that the Stanislavski and principles that all are really rather the, the,
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the ultra hearken principles, right from Stanislavski, which are much less Strasburg in and we we did have a drama centre, we did have a Strasburg inspired acting teacher called Ruben idiv, who was who was wonderful in his own way.
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But the difference that that Reuven was very much influenced by the American method, which tends to work very much on the inner on the inner landscape and the inner emotions of the inner, you know, inner contacts, and, and personal identification, and things like emotional memory.
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It juxtaposed with
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it was the hardest work by Doreen, which is much more to do with
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all of the fundamental questions of Who am I? Where am I? When is it?
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What do I want? Why do I want it? Why do I want it now? What are the circumstances? What is the thing that I need to overcome? And what are my relationships, which is the kind of really the act is alphabet for me, there isn't anything else there are those questions, which you can do and move into
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any kind of work that to Danny do? Yeah. Do you know, do you know where outta Hargan got that work from what's the route from does he come via the the group theatre? Is it is it a part of that lineage? comes from the group theatre? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, and she will be it is American methods. Yeah, way. Yeah. One of one of the lines with the American myth.
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Through Polish lasky from Stanislavski to from Polish levski new the American method, but it is it is less internalised and Strasburg. It's more outgoing than Strasburg. It it, it puts a lot of reliance on a lot of emphasis on the surrounding circumstances and the imaginative living in those given circumstances and how you're affected by that your surrounding circumstances time and place place particularly.
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Where's Strasburg?
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You know, the received wisdom about Strasburg is that it's much more internalised
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the image, of course, you get, you get wonderful, wonderful actors, actors like Brando, for instance, who, you know, in his earlier earlier days have this remarkable kind of inner intensity. And
Unknown Speaker 35:54
the sort of Strasburg word could could get you to a kind of intensity and an a sort of emotional truthfulness, the problem with it would be that you could get stuck. If you didn't feel it, you couldn't do it. And I think that to Harken is much more in the territory of gearing. And, you know, trust that the emotional will as it were, if you're really doing what you say you're doing, and you really are affected by what is coming out to you off your stage partner on the circumstances, then you surrendering to the idea of your emotions. If you are an emotionally robust and open and generous person, your emotions going to take care of themselves. And actually, experience as an actor, that's been the truth. When I've tried to get the emotion going inside of me, it's never worked. When I when I've been stimulated by something else or surrender to something else. It's come for free. And so, you know, yes. And Doreen No, it was Dorian, your teacher was when you were in there. Yeah. Yeah, she was my teacher. Yeah. Yeah. How many years into the early history of drum when she arrived?
Unknown Speaker 37:10
Was she particularly
Unknown Speaker 37:12
early on? I think, pretty early on. Okay.
Unknown Speaker 37:16
Pretty pretty early, first or second year of its life. Okay, great. Um,
Unknown Speaker 37:22
and then the third pillar is the work that Christopher did,
Unknown Speaker 37:29
which he called analysis. That all sounds a bit intellectual, but actually, it was extraordinary. And I think
Unknown Speaker 37:38
it's probably fair to say him, as kind of influenced me more than anything really, I think, because he really got into the why, of of it. So his classes, I mean, he directed plays as well.
Unknown Speaker 37:56
My first rehearsal exercise, when I arrived at drum centre, as a student was with Christopher that was the baptism of fire.
Unknown Speaker 38:03
I think all of us who were involved in that have never forgotten it is in a good way. It's a good thing. But actually, I mean, it laid the foundation for kind of, well, you know, we're not messing about here. We're having to really
Unknown Speaker 38:18
say what we mean mean, what we say commit to the idea, and do it. And mean, what was it as Spring Awakening by Frank, Vedic and
Unknown Speaker 38:29
Okay, well, that's, that's quite a one.
Unknown Speaker 38:33
Yeah, that's it work. Anyway, his work really was in this class called analysis, which was, um,
Unknown Speaker 38:41
it was a kind of
Unknown Speaker 38:43
journey through the great movements, the great events and movements and sort of political, cultural, social happenings throughout the ages that gave rise to particular kinds of theatre and that the theatre was a particular expression of, of what was going on, at the time, why it was necessary. And it was sort of social and anthropological and cultural and political. And you got did you have to use your brains, you had to engage with ideas. You had to do a lot of reading. But it wasn't academic. It was, it was sent to us, it was emotional, it was intellectually kind of thrilling.
Unknown Speaker 39:29
And so you would look at a particular period or historical period, so you might look at the Greeks. You might look at the idea of the city state and why the theatre was an important
Unknown Speaker 39:43
instrument in kind of creating the community as the city state.
Unknown Speaker 39:51
You might look at mediaeval theatre from the point of view of
Unknown Speaker 39:56
the of the Christian story.
Unknown Speaker 40:01
The story of our salvation if you like,
Unknown Speaker 40:05
being told in the vernacular needing to be told in the vernacular because of course, nobody could read and nobody could understand Latin. And, you know, people needed to understand you know, what their face actually was. And so, the Bible was revealed through through these extraordinary mystery plays that were written in the in the demotic, you know, it written in the language of the day, and very funny
Unknown Speaker 40:30
and that you might move through
Unknown Speaker 40:33
and look at places that release salt. So, you might look you might move through and look at Spanish Golden Age, for instance, drama centre was looking at the Golden Age long before anybody else was
Unknown Speaker 40:47
this the sort of come Kami tragedy, comedy, comedy tragedy of things like live stream and deliver de Vega plays, and the the kind of epic nature of those plays and the sort of poetic nature of those plays, to express the kind of society that was, you know, tussling with
Unknown Speaker 41:10
personal freedom, but also Catholicism and, and
Unknown Speaker 41:14
a belief that, you know, that, that that the king could save you, even as the King Safia like a sort of days and you know, Empire and a society in in decay and collapse and
Unknown Speaker 41:27
whatnot. And then one might look at and then we certainly looked at
Unknown Speaker 41:34
French classical place, the place of Racine and corny how you translate that how translated those myths as big stories into something that was very contained, very structured, highly emotional, but incredibly, sort of
Unknown Speaker 41:50
powerfully contained within it within a language structure.
Unknown Speaker 41:55
Can I just check? So Krista, so this this sounds to me in a way,
Unknown Speaker 42:01
like you can X to sundanese ideas of style? Yeah. Was Chris. Just connected to some extent was that what was Christopher Fettes? His background? What was his line?
Unknown Speaker 42:14
Well, now that's interesting. I think he'd been in the army I think he he'd worked for Joan Littlewood for a while he certainly worked at the Royal Court. And he was at Jeff, with john little wooden, I think, and I'm sure that somebody who's listening to this podcast will pull me up on this and get me to get my facts straight. But the legend is that that Joan got rid of him because he was too posh.
Unknown Speaker 42:39
He fit in with, you know, with her, her rough and reading
Unknown Speaker 42:45
not as she used to call them. But he was influenced by Joan, and he was enormously inspired her politic and in fact, Joan Littlewood is like Joan Littlewood in the Theatre Workshop is an enormous influence on the drama centre.
Unknown Speaker 43:00
Massive, massive influence her work with lobbying,
Unknown Speaker 43:06
and championing of Stanislavski Stanislavski and principles anyway, and her ability to look at classical plays through to very new and contemporary eyes, which is something that Christopher did, and that was part of his analysis.
Unknown Speaker 43:22
Just to just to move it forward in terms of time when Vladimir took over.
Unknown Speaker 43:27
We were also looking at the notion of Well, actually, I think it probably happened with Christopher as well. But he would look at great big movements like the romantic movement, for instance, and how that leads you to a revolutionary sensibility.
Unknown Speaker 43:42
You might look at I remember, we did one project on Tristan and his older it was an absolute disaster. I was in it, it was humiliating, we were just such so rubbish. But it was all about the death wish, you know,
Unknown Speaker 43:56
you know, what the desire leading to leading to the death wish, which is is absolutely going to take you down down the road to plays like pains of youth and
Unknown Speaker 44:07
will eventually Second World War. I mean, you could argue it ends up with with the death camps. I mean, yeah, that's that side of romanticism. It's very, very, you know, you're looking at you looking at tough stuff. This is what I mean. The school demanded that you bring your brain to your heart. You know, why are we and how did we get here, and the
Unknown Speaker 44:29
much loved and much very necessary, fourth pillar, as a, say an antidote to all of this, but it's not really necessary. It's the work of john blatchley, which has massively influenced by
Unknown Speaker 44:44
breath. I'm hugely influenced by soldini. And brought in mask work and comedic work and some clowning and animal work and, and the the, the really physical
Unknown Speaker 45:00
Difficult difficult different kinds of physicality to yaps work, but but the sort of
Unknown Speaker 45:06
embodied play, but we call that what a body play now, I think, is the embodied play. Yeah, exactly that. And, and they weren't, they were extraordinary classes and led led to some wonderful comedic breakthrough. So remember, my husband's doing him a mask, a mask, character, mask character, and he was, he was an IRA, an IRA.
Unknown Speaker 45:32
You know, he was an IRA bomber, a very, very, very inefficient, and he put the bomb in the wrong places bomb didn't go off. And he was in effect, he was doing this mask mask character in a phone box trying to get through to somebody to get them to stop it. And it was it was it was hilarious, absolute. It's about a serious subject. But he was absolutely hilarious.
Unknown Speaker 45:54
These four pillars, and actually what was what was extraordinary was that they were integrated, that they didn't cross fertilise all the time, so that you at its best, the training, you never, you never kind of get at its ideal best. And you didn't kind of put things in a box and they go well, I take that off, I've done that. You had to do it all the time. And you had to link in
Unknown Speaker 46:24
everything, and it's pennies would drop, possibly not till after you'd finished your training, you know, you suddenly think that's what that was that at the links? Oh, that's interesting, because that links with that. And,
Unknown Speaker 46:39
and I think that I would say, when did I leave this entity?
Unknown Speaker 46:45
You know? Well, 4040 something is on the stuff for me that is still making sense.
Unknown Speaker 46:54
In a in a richer, deeper way. And I think that the kinds of actors that the dramas sent to produce were people who put themselves on the line. They were very political, they were very, they always ask questions, they got bit of a reputation of being mouthy arrogant gets at times, which we were, I mean, you know, the downside is that, you know, you're taught by very charismatic, extraordinary, challenging,
Unknown Speaker 47:22
eccentric, inferior, infuriating people. Sometimes, absolutely. You know, you just wanted to walk up to somebody, I think I'm never going back and other times, phenomenally warm and compassionate. And understanding, you know, it was, it was in a volatile mix of personalities. And, and I don't know where that was leading. What was that? Where was that going? Like
Unknown Speaker 47:50
that, you know, that the problem is that it's something is so excited. You think that you're the only you're the only people who know anything about anything. So, you know, the was a very strong tendency to sort of dis dis an awful lot of stuff, and didn't think about anything. And drama centre was the, you know, was the Holy Grail. And that was the only place to train and it was it was some, and that everybody else was were ignorant sort of fuckwits who just did singing and dancing, you know, I mean, it was absolute nonsense. But it could, it could lead to a sort of siege mentality.
Unknown Speaker 48:30
Mm hmm. And it did you know, drama centre actors still are, you know, political, opinionated, passionate,
Unknown Speaker 48:42
not afraid of speaking out. Not afraid of asking why I think I
Unknown Speaker 48:49
think probably what has been inculcated in relatively recent recent years is the
Unknown Speaker 48:57
openness to
Unknown Speaker 49:01
a sense of humour and an openness to, you know, other thoughts, other ideas, there's more than one way to skin a cat and
Unknown Speaker 49:10
a sort of relaxation,
Unknown Speaker 49:13
about about things. But it was it was serious endeavour, and Sarah devere that believe that the telling of stories, whether it be in the theatre that was favourite, on television, or on film on the radio was a serious,
Unknown Speaker 49:30
a serious endeavour that mattered, and that
Unknown Speaker 49:34
it was your responsibility as an artist to do it, as well as he possibly could. And as truthfully and as honestly, and as bravely as he could. And it's producing remarkable actors. Yeah, fierce, fierce, fierce actors. Um, so I'm aware that we am aware that we're going to lose you and I think we'll we may, and I'm hoping that I'm gonna keep on doing this podcast with you.
Unknown Speaker 50:00
20 years and will fill in more and more details and more and more gaps and really come to document this this extraordinary thing. The drama centre is going to be one of my main focuses. So the three I'm looking at, rather as an example of along with central the first sort of academies, lambda is as a as one of the music academies that evolved into a drama school along with the Guildhall and Webber Douglas. And then drama centre is one of the what I'm going to call I don't think I made this up, but the experimental schools along with rose Bruford and East 15, as example, sort of complete ideas. Yeah, so if we could, if we could move forwards just just for a bit, so we have, we have that that extraordinary place built on four pillars, and the thing that struck me listening to you is that the simple division of a training between sort of voice movement and acting doesn't work at all they're like, sounds like all of those people are all involved with the whole picture, they may have a particular focus it, it doesn't really work with that particular kid in particularly in terms of,
Unknown Speaker 51:08
you know, separating out the physical, physical life from your acting life. I mean, that really, really doesn't, doesn't pertain at all. And for some years, the vocal training it the vocal training at drama centre was wasn't wonderful. It wasn't great. And I don't know whether that's because yeah, too, you know, yet who could hold a grudge? And they could or they would graduate?
Unknown Speaker 51:32
And, finally, can I tell you, can I tell you something that I realised for many, many years as a voice teacher, which was my sort of first work, I realised that that acting teachers and movement people sort of had it there was something in the room that I didn't understand. And I've reached the conclusion that it comes from this sort of scar that that sits in the history of central and the trauma centre, which is voice people we were sort of blissfully unaware of, and no one told me that story. So I could sort of see in people's eyes, something they actually didn't understand. So I'm not at all surprised that, but yeah, yeah, they're
Unknown Speaker 52:09
they didn't, you know, he, he sort of didn't really, you thought he's, I think he thought that if everything was connected was truthful, your voice would work? Well. No one would like that. You'd like to think that. I mean, honestly, I never. Yeah, I've heard you say, photos that you know that in your elected and the vocal work at grammar Centre for some years was a little bit behind the other work, but it certainly caught up.
Unknown Speaker 52:37
Yeah. So. So moving forward. I guess the other thing to mention to people listening is that that given the drum centre is one of the main focuses of this exploration. It's also one which is coming to an end. I mean, my understanding is that the drama centre is
Unknown Speaker 52:53
closed. Yeah, I was rather hoping we wouldn't have to talk about this.
Unknown Speaker 52:58
Because I think we have to talk about it. I might cry.
Unknown Speaker 53:03
I get very angry.
Unknown Speaker 53:05
Yes, um,
Unknown Speaker 53:09
how to just, yes, it's going to close. That's there's no point in sort of fighting about this. It is good to close.
Unknown Speaker 53:18
Like all drama schools, the drama centre had to ultimately to guard its funding and guard its students fees, students fees, funding, when there was such thing doesn't like now the student grants and student loans rather,
Unknown Speaker 53:33
it had to ally itself with an academic institution. And, and it resisted this for quite some time, it allied itself with the University of Central Lancashire, that was quite a good relationship, but I don't know why there was a falling out. I've never got to the bottom of it.
Unknown Speaker 53:53
And so they allied themselves with then London Institute, which is transmuted itself into
Unknown Speaker 54:00
this sort of juggernaut called the sort of BMS called the University of the Arts, which was, which was
Unknown Speaker 54:08
a federation of major art colleges, one of which was the Central School of
Unknown Speaker 54:15
Art and Design,
Unknown Speaker 54:16
which had a kind of a very, very well had had a very well thought of design course, theatre design course.
Unknown Speaker 54:26
And it had film in its art in its fine art course. And there were various other areas that were sort of linked.
Unknown Speaker 54:37
And when the school is
Unknown Speaker 54:39
joined, it was going to be incredibly challenging, because
Unknown Speaker 54:48
the
Unknown Speaker 54:50
modus operandi was entirely different to an art school
Unknown Speaker 54:55
way of working, which is the studio culture, was he you know, you do your thing and you go into
Unknown Speaker 55:00
The studio and you do your bit of pottery or you do your painting, whatever, and then you go away and you do your cultural research and you maybe take it home, you do a bit of work on it, but you may be going to the studio once or twice a week. And then you have, after six weeks or so you have a kind of rigorous criticism from your tutor. And you're basically basically your set projects, and it's all on a to do with independent learning. And
Unknown Speaker 55:30
what it isn't, is 12 hours a day, or even 10 hours a day, or even six hours a day.
Unknown Speaker 55:38
five days a week.
Unknown Speaker 55:40
No number of students isn't
Unknown Speaker 55:45
trying to broker that marriage between the art school culture. And I remember somebody in our academic fair saying to me when I was course director, well, of course, of course, you can get a degree without turning up.
Unknown Speaker 55:59
And I said, Well, no, not not at not acting course you can't, you've got to beat that. Because being in the room does not distance learning. And, and you know, there were problems over the the the trauma centric sort of professional discipline code, you know, we couldn't, you know, there was ructions from the the college lawyers and the students, you couldn't impose that if students didn't want to turn up, then they need to turn up. You think what, what what, so you had to do quite a big job. And it was mainly Vladimir's job to do it, which has succeeded and extraordinary well, of actually
Unknown Speaker 56:35
getting the school to be part of that environment, which in the greater scheme of things was very interesting, because there's lots of interesting stuff going on, in the art school in the Central School that we could look at, that we could engage with, that we could have an opinion about. The problem was that
Unknown Speaker 56:54
the work of the acting course and the directors course of the two Emmys that it started, well, you know, they were full on, we have to do the work that you can't just not do it. You have to do it day after day after day. Because it's a slow burn. It's incremental. It's like a spiral that you, you don't kick something off, you carry it with you all the time, and you keep reinventing it reinvestigating, going deeper, and so on. And that happens all the time. And it's expensive.
Unknown Speaker 57:24
And we had two heads of college, who
Unknown Speaker 57:33
bought into the school for different reasons. And that is absolutely the extraordinary work of Vladimir Meriden in in it kind of bringing them on side. I think there was some reluctance, but they could see they could absolutely see the value of it, the worth of it. The reputation of the school was extremely good. The Alumni list was you know, impressive. And they wouldn't, you know, they're not above cannibalising the alumni list for their own ends. So
Unknown Speaker 58:05
I think the problem started really when
Unknown Speaker 58:10
the a new head of college arrived who
Unknown Speaker 58:15
kind of is one is being careful about what one says, didn't get it.
Unknown Speaker 58:22
Absolutely didn't get it, and could see that it was eating money that it was taking up in it that it was utilising a lot of college subsidy, that it was a costing far more than the student fees, that it was what made you that university takes a massive top slice of those so
Unknown Speaker 58:42
that it was taking up too much space. You know, that is art that all the art students didn't have enough space? Well, they did take hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of art students. So it's hardly surprising.
Unknown Speaker 58:54
But for a very small faculty, it was the hours for too long, it was costing far too much and it wasn't sustainable. And I
Unknown Speaker 59:03
wondered what questions to be asked. So we useful questions to be asked about
Unknown Speaker 59:09
what you could make leaner and meaner and more effective.
Unknown Speaker 59:16
And there were questions to be asked about income generation perhaps.
Unknown Speaker 59:22
But the problem was that the senior management of the college
Unknown Speaker 59:31
did didn't like the school. I
Unknown Speaker 59:36
just didn't like the school. And
Unknown Speaker 59:39
I could offer all kinds of opinions as to why that might be, but I won't. And at the moment, that might be for another time. But it not like the school and they systematically started to asset strip it and undermine it and it became very, very unpleasant indeed.
Unknown Speaker 1:00:00
And this is the unforgiveable thing, they started to weaponize a lot of the
Unknown Speaker 1:00:07
what you might call socio political concerns to do with mental health to do with race to do with gender to do with all of that they started to weaponize those against the school. Now, this is a school that had made a point over the years of taking a diverse cohort, obviously, enough, nowhere ever was, but also students from really disadvantaged backgrounds, working class backgrounds. You know, it was a school that took that took students that didn't get into any other schools, because they were interesting, because they were different. Because, you know, it was it had a school for reputation for taking a very interesting and diverse cohort. And it was the kind of review of the school undertaken by somebody who knew nothing about training a performance academic, or an arts academic.
Unknown Speaker 1:01:03
See, there was an appointment made
Unknown Speaker 1:01:10
of somebody internal to actively had voiced her dislike for the school. And even though the advice was given us to not be a clever appointment, that advice was ignored.
Unknown Speaker 1:01:25
And it sort of went downhill from there, really. And it was announced as a result of this report that they, they were going to, in spite of,
Unknown Speaker 1:01:36
in spite of
Unknown Speaker 1:01:38
assurances that they were going to keep the Emmys and that they were the foundation course wouldn't be touched. Foundation was the first to go. And then it was announced that the school would close.
Unknown Speaker 1:01:51
So at the moment that 30 are going through the second year, but they haven't recruited the first year. So it's got two more years of life. And
Unknown Speaker 1:02:02
there is
Unknown Speaker 1:02:07
it's very difficult to stay
Unknown Speaker 1:02:13
civilised and calm about this. Because it seemed to be
Unknown Speaker 1:02:22
based on
Unknown Speaker 1:02:25
not just sustainability, but there seem to be something else going on as well. It seemed to be some sort of very odd walked politic going on at that normal amount of
Unknown Speaker 1:02:38
jargon.
Unknown Speaker 1:02:40
But the worst thing about this was that there was never any cogent debate about it. We would all have I mean, I've, I've just, I've just thought what
Unknown Speaker 1:02:52
I've got to get out of here.
Unknown Speaker 1:02:54
I was no, I, I wasn't the cost director anymore, I'd let that go. But I was certainly working there a lot as a free lunch sort of running between there and Roger was a bit mad. And I, I just thought I
Unknown Speaker 1:03:09
I'm going to have to go. Because my mental health has been really quite severely affected. And I'm not I'm somebody who actually knows pretty robust. I mean, I'm, you know, I don't I don't let things get to me. But my goodness me this was
Unknown Speaker 1:03:24
this was this was pretty hideous.
Unknown Speaker 1:03:27
And there was no debate. And I kept asking, could we can we talk to you about what it is we do, why, what why we do it in the way we do it, why it is successful, why it's evolving all the time, and why we are actually doing some of the things that you're asking us to do, in terms of, you know, of our philosophy and ethos and equality and diversity and so on. And divers met on one occasion, I was met with rolled eyes, at which point title that's the point title. Note that this is not a fight, we can win. We can't win this.
Unknown Speaker 1:04:02
And you see we're not
Unknown Speaker 1:04:04
we're not in the same we're not in 1963.
Unknown Speaker 1:04:09
We're not in that place where those students just, you know, got on their bikes and left Central and with a great deal of hard work and and heart searching and soul searching began a new school. We're not in 1963 We're in 2001 are we now 20. All I can say is that the school has had the most enormous impact. And its legacy is in its graduates in its alumni in the extraordinary actors and they don't have to be household names. I mean, I know loads and loads and loads of actors who are out there when they can even now that you know, they're making films making work, they're making content, they're doing stuff. They they're you know lots and lots of jobbing actors who crop up in theatre crop up on television, you know
Unknown Speaker 1:05:00
Do you think? Oh yeah, group sounds so. And then of course, there is a bit. There are other big names there are that there are the kind of big, big names. But there are directors, there are writers, there are filmmakers, there are people who there are wonderful teachers. I don't think there's one major drama school in the country that hasn't had some teaching from the drama centre, injected into its veins. And it's had an extraordinary effect and its legacy is,
Unknown Speaker 1:05:30
is those people and it will, it will kind of live on I think, through those people and through the students who are still bravely clinging on by their fingernails and demanding that they get the training, or they get something of that training that was started, you know, nearly 60 years ago.
Unknown Speaker 1:05:52
Great. Well, okay, Andy, thank you so much for speaking to us about the history of the drama centre. I think we'll talk again, lovely, lovely to see you. And you too, and
Unknown Speaker 1:06:05
it was great.