What is your occupation?
I'm a theatremaker – primarily a director, with a bit of writing and occasional performing. I work freelance at various theatres in the UK and internationally.
Where did you study/train?
After studying at Aylesbury High School, I did a degree in English at Exeter University and the MA directing course at RADA. A lot of my practical training has also come from various placements and workshops: I was course assistant on the first National Youth Theatre Playing Up course; resident director at the National Theatre Studio in 2013 after being awarded a bursary for emerging directors; and I participated in the Young Opera Makers workshop at the Aix-en-Provence Festival. I like to think the training's ongoing.
What's been the proudest moment of your career so far?
Weirdly, it was probably a project on which I was working as a composer and musical director, which I don't normally do. I made music with and for a company of 70 community performers – adults and young people, disabled and non-disabled – from Dorset and Brazil, for a oneoff performance to 10,000 people on Weymouth Beach to celebrate the opening of the Olympic sailing events. At the end of the night, 2012 local volunteers waded into the sea together carrying burning torches. It was madly ambitious, completely brilliant, and an honour to be involved.
What did you think of the drama lessons you received at secondary school?
I fell in love with theatre at secondary school. I'd always loved acting, but associated it with being attractive, confident, and really good at singing, dancing, doing accents, and crying on cue. I was none of those things, but loved pretending to be other people and creating worlds in my head. But I didn't know directing was a thing you could actually do until I was older. When one of my teachers told me she thought I was good at drama, I felt validated and emboldened. And the passion with which my teachers talked about expressive, experimental, political theatre, got me hooked – even if most of the theatre on offer in the near vicinity of my home town was none of those things.
What do you think about the state of drama education today?
I don't know much about it. I'm concerned by the still-prevailing notion, mainly in the industry but I think it's still in education, that ‘classics’ refers to a very small number of plays, written by a very particular demographic, and that the work of other artists, which people have decided not to label a ‘classic’, is relegated to secondary status. I'm also concerned by the notion that seeing and dissecting live performance should no longer be compulsory – school trips were my only chance to go to the theatre, and if it hadn't been on the syllabus my parents wouldn't have accommodated me going. I hope that access to the internet and social media in this country is allowing young people (and their teachers) outside of big cities to discover and connect with a wide range of work and discourse around drama, and to find the individuals and organisations who feel like kindred spirits to them.
What would you say to a young person considering a career in drama?
Read, watch, and research everything that excites you. Allow yourself to be nerdy about things you love, and making connections between them – drama is about your unique perception of the world, and the ways you find to communicate it to other people. On a more practical note, your parents may very well have legitimate concerns about the financial precariousness of trying to work in theatre. Don't disregard them but don't let them stop you either – you're just going to have to work your bum off.
What are you doing at the moment?
I'm currently directing some Shakespeare (a ‘classic’!). I'm combining Othello and Macbeth in a production called othellomabeth, which links the two plays by focussing on the female characters of Othello and looking at how they might want to avenge the wrongs done to them through the story of Macbeth. I want to draw attention to how our toxic construction of ‘masculinity’ destroys both women and men, and to ask whether anything has changed today, particularly since we keep telling and reinforcing these ‘tragic hero’ stories again and again. After that I'm directing and co-writing a pantomime, which will be a bit more cheerful!
What impact do you hope that the work might have on young people in your audiences?
I like to make work which gives the audience space to think and feel for themselves. In the case of othellomacbeth, I would like to engage people with the beauty of language and thought and image in Shakespeare's writing, but to also inspire them to not be too reverent towards Shakespeare – it's hundreds of years old and there are ideas in his work that we need to be challenging, not replicating ad infinitum.