‘Gill said I was good, that I could go all the way’
David Oyelowo, actor
I am a child of immigrants and the arts are often not what immigrant parents aspire to for their children. That is very much the case for Nigerians. I have two brothers and the idea for my parents was to have a lawyer, a doctor and an engineer. But doing drama GCSE gave me the opportunity to play Seymour in Little Shop of Horrors. I found a muscle, a passion, a desire that I had no other way of knowing was within me. I remember exactly what it felt like because I felt the same way half an hour ago – when I was in the rehearsal room for Coriolanus. It was like being at the centre of my calling.
Nothing about my upbringing pointed me in that direction. I loved watching TV and films, but because there was scant representation in a meaningful way of Black people, it simply didn’t seem a path to be followed. But a teacher of mine, Gill Foster, really believed in me.
I was on my way to Oxford Brookes University to do a law degree combined with fine art – that alone shows you I shouldn’t have been a lawyer. I was taking a gap year, partly because I was putting it off, when Gill bumped into me. She said: “David, I wouldn’t say this to all of my students, but I think you have what it takes to do this professionally.” She told me I should go to drama school, helped me with my application and audition. I was growing up on a council estate in Islington. Shakespeare felt like something for posh people. Without Gill, I would not have even known about drama schools, let alone got a scholarship to go to Lamda.
Gill gave me access to a world that felt inaccessible. She even helped me get into the National Youth Music Theatre, where I met my wife, and where the bug for acting increased. When I was 15, I compered the very first National Theatre Connections – it had a different name then – with Sandi Toksvig. It was my very first time on the Olivier stage and I’ve been trying to get back to it ever since.
The only way you can tell if you’re good, as an actor, is other people’s opinions. When someone you trust tells you you’re good, it gives you the confidence to keep going. And that’s almost always a teacher, someone who comes alongside you, as Gill did, and says: “You’re good. You can go all the way, and I’m going to help you.” I’m meeting her for lunch on Wednesday.
• Coriolanus is at the Olivier, National Theatre, until 9 November
‘I only had one line and I forgot it’
Es Devlin, set designer
I went to my local primary school, Freda Gardham school, in Rye, East Sussex. When I was seven, we had a brilliant Australian teacher who turned the lights off and explained that we would hear more in the dark. She taught us the meaning of the word syncopation by singing it, and she cast me as a crow in a Christmas play of Snow White. My mother had a ribbed yellow plastic sunhat which she origami-d into a beak. She feathered the edges of a black cape with her zigzag toothed pinking shears.
Although the crow only had one line, I turned up for rehearsals each evening after the school had closed. It was my first time in the school after dark. During the day, the teachers enforced a strict no running no shouting policy en route between classes. At night we ran wildly shrieking, capes flying through the low-lit corridors. It was the same building, the same teachers, but everything felt different: different rules applied.
I didn’t pursue acting in the subsequent school plays. I think on the night, I was so overwhelmed I actually forgot to say my one line, but I have never forgotten the anarchic quality of those evenings at school after dark. They taught me that people and places were not fixed but could transform completely when new terms of engagement were applied.
• Congregation is at St Mary le Strand, London, 4-9 October
‘I named a character after my teacher’
James Graham, playwright
Coming from a post-industrial mining town in north Nottinghamshire, I wouldn’t be a playwright if it wasn’t for my school. We were the first cohort in the district to take a show to the Edinburgh festival and the first year in our school to do A-level drama. I remember boxes arriving with scripts by Brecht and Beckett and Churchill. It was a real collective feeling, with both students and teachers learning how to do it at the same time.
It sounds soft and pretty, in this former mining town – the kind of place that doesn’t always lean into lads being expressive and creative. But I don’t remember feeling any opposition. The head of the football team played Romeo. I remember the school bullies being impressed.
We know there are so many barriers to access, to making and seeing theatre. Some of it’s psychological, some of it financial, but if you’re just not introduced to plays, to pantomimes, to Shakespeare, to dance as a young kid, then you’re less likely to care about it as an adult. And we know all the things art can improve: the mental wellbeing and sense of being part of a community, filling your heart with empathy and feeling.
I’ve kept in touch with my A-level teachers: Karen Promosso, Angela Martin and Martin Humphrey, the head of drama. They always come to my shows. It was a delight to see them all at Punch, at the Nottingham Playhouse. They brought along a new generation of drama students. I feel very connected with them still, 20 years on. In fact, I got to name a teacher in my first ever film after Martin Humphrey. He was played by Rafe Spall.
The fact that we’ve dropped the ball on the one area in our life when everyone should have equal opportunity to make art is heartbreaking. If I was in my teenage years now – given the 25% drop in hours devoted to creative subjects, the loss of drama teachers, the loss of funding – I worry I would have slipped through the net.
• Sherwood is on iPlayer
‘The doors opened to another world’
Sally Cookson, director
I was taught by nuns until I was 16. There was no drama whatsoever, apart from a production of The Princess and the Pea when I was six. I was cast as the princess. My mum made me a raggedy dress for when she gets caught in a storm and they don’t believe she’s a princess. I was thrilled to bits.
But it was a mortifying experience. There’s a scene where the princess sleeps on a bed of 25 mattresses, and the pea is placed under the bottom mattress. She has to toss and turn because, being a real princess, she’s not comfortable. I was directed by my teacher to absolutely go for it, to make the audience really aware of the discomfort, so I did. I was outraged when the audience fell about laughing. I thought they were all making fun of me. I came off stage, burst into tears, fell into my mother’s arms and vowed never to go on stage again. So it took me a long time to come around to the idea of theatre.
My school was quite academic and I was not an academic child, so I didn’t really find my place until I went to my local sixth form college in Twickenham, which had an incredible drama department. I got cast as Lucy Brown in The Threepenny Opera, and the doors opened to another world. The music got under my skin and, for the first time in my life, I found purpose and value. I was doing something I was good at. Again, my mum made my dress, which I have kept. My children now have it in the dressing up box.
My drama teacher was this scruffy old socialist who had worked on a farm all his life and smoked fags in class. He made me believe in myself and that is something I am eternally grateful for. I’m sorry I lost contact with him. I don’t know what I would have done without that sixth form and the youth theatre I joined. Lots of young people from that college went on to drama school. That’s what being a teacher’s all about, isn’t it? Inspiring the love of a subject.
It makes me so sad that drama isn’t valued in schools now. It’s given so many people a lifeline – and it’s just brilliant fun. It lets you muck about and fail. We’re all terrified of failure. As a director that is looming all the time. But to make good work, one has to be able to fail. The brilliant drama teachers understand that. Unless you’re allowed to get things wrong, you’re not going to get them right.
• Wonder Boy, a Bristol Old Vic production, is touring until 23 November
‘I got applauded. It was a shock’
Clint Dyer, deputy artistic director, National Theatre
I wouldn’t have found theatre had it not been for my school. I went to a really rough one in the London borough of Newham, one of the poorest boroughs in the country at the time. But we had a small drama studio. It was new – and new for us was something beautiful.
No one had named it back then, but I suffered terribly from dyslexia. A lot of teachers thought I was being obstinate. But Miss Fabian didn’t. She used literature, poetry and theatre to engage with kids who were being misunderstood. She instilled in us the idea that words could somehow benefit us in a way that doing science couldn’t. Ambitions were low for us. Our education hadn’t been stimulated in a way that encouraged us to believe we had a life beyond labour or shop work. But throughout my time at school, I saw Miss Fabian picking people out.
I was asked to perform in Fings Ain’t Wot They Used T’Be, which was an old Theatre Royal Stratford East play that Joan Littlewood created. We only did two or three performances, but when my character left the stage every night, I got applauded. It was a shock to everybody, including myself. Acting is like the gateway drug into a world of artistry. You suddenly feel you can move around in the world. We had actors come into school from Theatre Royal Stratford East. They encouraged us to understand Shakespeare in a way that felt like they were trying to turn on the light inside us.
Stories allow us to see ourselves, to educate ourselves on how we communicate with others. If we take away the arts, we force people who don’t have the same capacity for the same type of learning into a scenario in which they are going to fail. The whole school experience will be based in failure. That, to me, is unconscionable.
• Death of England: The Plays is at Soho Place theatre, London, until 28 September
‘Let me mess about and dress up!’
Duramaney Kamara, sound designer
I loved acting at school and, to be honest, I didn’t want to do anything that was essay-heavy. Let me mess about and dress up! Just enjoying it made me want to carry on. But when I was in college, the cuts started getting heavy. I remember there was pressure to do subjects that would get you a normal job. You were always told music and drama were never going to be stable careers. That plants seeds of doubt and makes you less able to pursue something with an open heart.
In secondary school, Mr Hunter was always encouraging us to try to never feel stupid. At City and Islington College in London, Jack Davis was very encouraging, just like: “Do what you need to do.” I remember one time, Lucy Davies from the Royal Court was in the audience at a school performance, and that led to me doing a youth show with them. I got to shadow sound designers.
Before that, I didn’t even know the role existed. I got to watch the composers get on with their day, and I was like: “I’m doing this stuff in my bedroom, but you’re doing it for all these people.” It showed me what was possible. I guess I was lucky, but I shouldn’t have to be lucky. There’s still an untapped demographic that don’t even know drama schools exist or can’t afford to go.
Acting as if the arts are unimportant is like acting as if emotions are unimportant, as if certain ways of expressing yourself are unimportant. There are so many things we can’t say or express – but we can find in how we paint, in how we sing, in how we portray a character. People find peace in finding a way they can express themselves. That should be encouraged from as early as possible.
• Barcelona is at Duke of York’s theatre, London, 21 October to 11 January
