Winner of Best Actor in a Musical for his role in Oklahoma! at the Young Vic, Arthur Darvill said that youth theatre was essential for his career, and that is it ‘not taken seriously’ because it is ‘so intangible.’ Claiming he would not have won the award without his youth theatre in Birmingham and the teachers he had at school.
Discussing his teachers, he says he is ‘standing on [the] shoulders’ of ‘those people whose passion it was to enthuse and give us the opportunity to play and get stuff wrong and to create and be free.’ He claims that the youth theatre was great for ‘people finding their voice’ and for ‘kids who don’t fit in who need community and friends’, not just those who went on to become actors.
Beverley Knight won the award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role in a Musical for her role as Emmeline Pankhurst in Sylvia at the Old Vic, and said that if it wasn’t for Wolverhampton Youth Theatre she would not have received the award, as that’s where she learnt her craft. ‘Whether those kids go on and have a career in theatre or not, you cannot tell me there is no value in those youth theatre groups because you are honing and shaping powerful and confident minds for the next generation and the next,’ she says. ‘I am begging this government and subsequent governments: Don’t turn up your nose at the arts.’
Bush, winner of Best New Musical for Standing at the Sky’s Edge, alongside artistic director of Sheffield Theatre’s Robert Hastie, mirrored this sentiment, saying: ‘The world is changed by the stories we tell, and if you don’t get access to those stories, you are being denied access to the world.’