Now in its second year, Ruthie Henshall's new drama school is giving students the personal and entrepreneurial education she feels is missing from today's industry. Thomas Lydon reports.
In show business, it pays to learn from the best, and many people – including me and the group of friends with whom I used to watch her play Fantine in the Les Mis 10th anniversary concert on repeat every weekend in the mid-90s – will tell you they don't come better than Olivier Award-winning musical theatre legend Ruthie Henshall. Along with her long-time musical director and business partner, Paul Schofield, Henshall has set up a new drama school, ‘Ruthie Henshall's CAST’ (RHCAST). Based in Suffolk's Bury St Edmunds, the school accepted its first cohort in 2023.
Putting the ‘business’ in ‘show business’
The overriding philosophy in setting up the school was to prepare new generations of students for the challenges of a business that Henshall says has ‘changed exponentially’ since she trained in the 80s. ‘When I came into it, it was show business, with the emphasis on “show” – but now the emphasis is more on the “business”. Drama and dancing alone won't cut it these days, and that was a big drive for me to find a way to give students the full range of skills they'll need. Social media is a wonderful thing, and while it's true that followers are important – and we do teach how to manage this – there is much more beyond that. We can see what each student personally needs more of in their own development and can address that specifically.’
Names, not numbers
The number of students is limited to 25 per year to guarantee training ‘for who they are, not what category they fit into’, says Henshall. ‘It will never get to the point where we don't know their names, which is happening in some colleges. When you're taking 200 students a year, there's a limit to the amount of personal training you can deliver. When we were putting together our course, Paul and I asked lots of graduates what kind of training they got and what they didn't get, and what they felt they were missing. Many of them had a shock when they came into the business.’
Increased facetime
The school's validating body, Buckinghamshire New University, requires 12 hours of contact time a week. But this wasn't enough for Henshall and her team, who have upped it to 25. ‘We have five weeks of skills in the first part of each 10-week term, and in the second five weeks, we put on a production. You need 7000 hours of experience of something to become skilled at it, so we don't make students wait until their third year to perform. They put on a show every single term. Each term is era-specific, so they are starting way back, including things like Gilbert and Sullivan. Students often want to concentrate on shows like Wicked or Dear Evan Hansen, but by the time they leave CAST, each one of them will have a repertoire that includes something from every era of musical theatre.’
Starry line-up
RHCAST's first intake will graduate in late 2026, having had the opportunity to learn from a glittering roster of tutors. Faculty dancers include Ben Love, a veteran educator and soloist with top ballet companies; West End regular Jon-Scott Clark; and Laine Theatre Arts-trained teacher Sophia Walker. Holby City's Rob Ostlere, who also authored The Actor's Career Bible, teaches screen acting, while voice specialist and academic Joseph Griffiths-Bloor teaches ‘Voice for Acting’ and Katy Secombe guides students through ‘Basic Acting Audition Prep’. The music staff includes singing tutors Birgitta Kenyon, Nicholas Sheehan, Robbie Noonan and Daisy Jackaman.
The importance of the side hustle
Henshall is a pragmatist, and, having worked in the industry as her own boss at the highest level, is very aware of the challenges that await her protégés. ‘The Covid pandemic made it really apparent to me that being a professional singer, dancer or actor still isn't considered a proper job. Anyone who wasn't in a show at the time was completely left to their own devices and having to use their savings to survive. Top performers were suddenly picking fruit and driving vans. I realised kids don't just need training – they also need a side hustle, something that they can run side by side as another self-employed skill they have a back-up option if work dries up. The CAST curriculum includes specific classes in which students develop skills that could become supporting work. It might be taking headshots, shooting clips or learning sign language – whatever is realistic and suits the student best. It is something we are really serious about. They will leave college with a skill that isn't just musical theatre.’
A perfect partnership
The entrepreneurial spirit for setting up RHCAST itself came from Henshall's working relationship with co-founder Paul Schofield. ‘Paul is very creative and always has amazing ideas. We produce together and when I was deciding to do a solo show a few years back, he said, “Why don't we produce it ourselves?”. He is the sort of person who doesn't just wait for the phone to ring. We went on to talk about wanting to be a bit of a disruptor in the training area, and it was all very serendipitous because Paul's brother-in-law was looking for something to invest in.’
In the school's first year, the team offered a diploma but have since been validated and can offer a BA Hons Musical Theatre. ‘We are new in the business, but we are getting there through love and determination,’ says Henshall. ‘Seeing our Christmas production showed me what a year's training has done for our first students, which was so satisfying to see. It's been challenging, but seeing the progress the students have made really reminds me why we do what we are doing.’
rhcast.co.uk