What is a highlight from your career?
So many to choose from! Picking just one, my time as head of Education at Theatre Royal Stratford East had many highlights. Stratford East is my spiritual home. It has a wonderful history as a genuine community theatre, putting learning at its heart since Joan Littlewood took it over in 1953. I would often meet older actors who told me they'd been in Joan's youth theatre. I wonder how many artistic directors of theatres today run their youth theatres? A great youth theatre show does many things, but perhaps the greatest is to celebrate community. I wrote and directed Summer Night's Scream, alongside a brilliant artistic team, and a group of young people with extraordinary talents and dynamism. We adapted the original Shakespeare, delighting in how the poetry of the original chimed with the everyday poetry of hip-hop and East London vernacular. The result was a show that lifted the roof every performance. That group of young people, now into their thirties and forties, keep in touch with each other. Yes, the show was a huge success, but, perhaps more importantly, it represented a celebration of the youth theatre's unique collective identity – something they cherish to this day.
What do you think makes a good teacher?
There isn't one recipe for being a good teacher – each of us finds what fits our character and our strengths. Having said that, I don't believe that educating through fear works, and there's far too much ‘stick’ and not enough ‘carrot’ in education across the world. If our learners are demotivated, then they can't learn. ‘Chalk and talk’ and ‘sage on the stage’ modes don't work either. A good teacher designs learning experiences using a full range of techniques and is adaptable in the moment. For me, the main aim of education is for the learner to understand themselves and their place in the world. Although of course future employment is important, a narrow focus on the workplace, as if every learner was primarily a cog in the economic machine, is reductive, and contributes to the escalating mental health crisis amongst young people. At its heart, good teaching means encouraging genuinely intrinsic motivation from your learners. Building rapport is key. Drama has many features that can inform all teaching. It engages mind, body and spirit, and therefore provides a toolkit for diverse learning styles and ways of thinking.
What changes would you like to see in the world of drama education over the next 5 years?
It has been incredibly frustrating seeing drama, and the arts more widely, marginalised. I want to see radical change, with creativity at the heart of the school curriculum, and given proper recognition and respect in further and higher education. STEM must become STEAM – with the arts on parity with other subjects. Our university drama departments can become engines of innovation and should be given sufficient research funding to develop substantial, meaningful relationships with artists, arts organisations and the world of learning wherever it occurs. We are very well placed in the UK to pioneer ways of harnessing the arts to create positive change, particularly given the implications of the climate crisis. The future of the planet depends on a paradigm shift: from unsustainable increases in the quantity of stuff to promoting quality of life. Our wellbeing is inextricably linked to how we make meaning through the stories we tell, the songs we sing, the spaces we design. Internationalism – cultural exchange – can be, as Leonard Cohen (almost) put it, ‘the crack in everything that lets the light in.’ Currently, I'm working with Talking Hands Hearing Eyes, a group of Deaf Ethiopian actors running online schools' workshops about deforestation. Our aim is to support them to become a sustainable business. Again, dialogue across difference is crucial.
How does it feel to have won a Lifetime Achievement Award?
Truly humbling, but I want to resist the implication that I'm retiring! Winning the award gave me an opportunity to helicopter out and look at what's been important to me in forty years' immersion in drama education. One main reflection has been that my career has been centred on collaboration. I have had the opportunity to work with a dizzying array of extraordinary people, and so it makes me feel uncomfortable that awards emphasise individual recognition. I strongly believe the team is greater than the sum of its parts. The element of my work I'm most proud of is that I'm an inveterate learner. I have never run out of curiosity to find out how drama can promote learning. It's those collaborators – artists, educators, students, audiences – that have consistently given me fresh insights. So, the award is another beginning. These days, what gets me out of bed in the morning is to find ways for drama to foster intrinsic motivation to address the mental health crisis. And that's a lifetime's study.
What advice would you give to theatre students who look up to you?
Don't look up. Don't look down. Look across and reach for genuine dialogue. Also, emphasise the strengths you bring and don't dwell on supposed weaknesses. A weakness is just a strength that hasn't yet been tuned up. There are key strengths to develop if you want a purposeful career in theatre: curiosity; reliability; a strong sense of values; generosity; and playfulness. Technique is great, but don't let virtuosity get in the way of connecting with audiences.
Is there anything else you would like to tell our readership?
We live in a VUCA world: volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. The pandemic, the climate crisis, economic instability, social media and so on can make us feel we're drowning in anxiety. Drama is an extraordinary tool for wellbeing. It brings communities together, promoting empathy. It enables us to be in flow, leaving our day-to-day troubles at the door. At its best, it can promote equity and understanding across differences. It can promote profound learning to counteract an education system obsessed with testing. When all the components are brought together, it can create those memorable, uplifting moments that make it good to be alive.
Applications for the Music & Drama Education Awards 2025 are open until Friday 16 August. Find out more at musicdramaedawards.com