Stage and screen

Three Trinity storytellers talk about finding inspiration, next chapters, and the future of the arts in a post-pandemic world.

Rupert Goold CBE (1991)

Q Describe your path since leaving Trinity. I started out as an assistant director to Sam Mendes at the Donmar Warehouse, then went to Salisbury Playhouse, freelanced for a few years, became Artistic Director at Northampton theatres, then Associate Director at the RSC, founded Headlong Theatre Company and since 2013 have been Artistic Director at the Almeida. I’ve squeezed in a few movies and musicals along the way.

© CHRIS MCANDREW Q Did anyone in particular inspire you? How did you get started? My mentor was Jonathan Church who was Artistic Director at Salisbury Playhouse when I arrived as a trainee and believed in me enough to let me direct. I owe him everything.

Q What current and forthcoming projects are you excited about? I’m working on a new play about post-Soviet Russia and the rise of the oligarchs that is chilling, and a new musical with Elton John that is warming.

Q What’s the piece of work you’re most proud of? In terms of legacy, it’s probably a production of Macbeth with Patrick Stewart that went to the West End and Broadway. The film we made of it in 2010 is still the one studied in most schools, which I’m very proud of. I also made a Turandot for ENO that was absolutely murdered by the press which I adored!

Q As we move closer to a post-pandemic world, what does this mean for performance, productions, and artists? What does the future look like? I think audiences are desperate to come back. The pandemic reminded us how much we miss live performance and the communal humanism of theatre. It also accelerated the gold-rush of streamer-led film and TV being made in the UK. There has never been a better time to be a writer, technician, or performer in this country in terms of opportunity. I hope the Government continues to offer incentivising tax breaks for work made here because the arts are of incalculable financial and reputational value to the nation, particularly in this post-pandemic, postBrexit landscape. Above all though, I want to see the desperate and self-defeating cuts to arts provision in schools ended. Every child deserves and needs access to culture as they grow up, it should be the first line of the curriculum.

Spring Awakening – dir. Rupert Goold – Almeida (Dec 2021 – Jan 2022).

© MARC BRENNER

almeida.co.uk @AlmeidaTheatre @Almeida_Theatre

Q What advice would you give to aspiring writers, actors, and directors? There are too many directors, far too many actors and nowhere near enough writers. By which I mean face up to the odds and the precedents at each step of the way as honestly as you can and look for the gaps and opportunities. You may have to take the long way round but as long as you keep moving that’s ok, there’s no point arriving before you are ready. Also, if you can use even a tenth of the time you spend worrying about how to get on doing something creative instead, you’ll get there in the end. Q Who from the history of stage or screen do you wish you had worked with or could work with, and why? Jean-Luc Godard or Paul Thomas Anderson, to understand how they balance what is pre-planned with what is discovered. That equilibrium is the intuitive mystery of directing.

Isabel Adomakoh Young (2012)

Q Describe your path since leaving Trinity. I read English at Trinity. I knew I loved stories, and live art, and working with people, but I was by no means one of the determined young actors inviting agents to university shows!

Justina Kehinde cast me in For Colored Girls at Queens’, and my love of performing was rekindled. I fitted plays in as best I could around academic work, then did an internship at a literary agency in London. I signed with an acting agent when that ended, but with more to learn, I joined the National Youth Theatre Rep company, a nine-month programme incorporating training and three productions with professional directors. I got to play Lady Macbeth in a West End theatre, which was an unbelievable thrill.

Just a week after Rep ended, I was catapulted into the Royal Shakespeare Company; ensemble and understudy roles (I fulfilled the spear-carrier cliché with pride!) allowed me to learn fast. The pandemic spurred me on to develop my audio career – as the only thing that can be done remotely – then lately Foundation, an Apple TV adaptation of the sci-fi books by Isaac Asimov, has taken me to Limerick, Tenerife and Prague.

Q Did anyone in particular inspire you? Cush Jumbo’s versatility in her one-woman play Josephine & I always sticks with me. I was mesmerised by her capacity to bring a story alive and keep the whole room transfixed, alone. I grew up loving Josephine Baker too, so I felt this lineage of women of colour performers.

Q What current and forthcoming projects are you excited about? My first TV role was in Heartstopper, a Netflix adaptation of these lovely comics about two boys who fall in love at school, and that’s being released now, so I’m excited for the responses to that, especially from young LGBTQ people seeing some of their stories told with real heart and authenticity. Also, our drag company Pecs Drag Kings, formed with other Cambridge alumnae, turns 10 next year, so there’ll be some great anniversary shows and parties around that.

Q What’s the piece of work you’re most proud of? In summer 2021 I played Juliet at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, which had been rescheduled from the year before. I was nervous when I got the role, then even more nervous finally going into rehearsals 18

© LILY BERTRAND-WEBB

isabeladomakohyoung.com @Isabel_ay @bellefrog

© DAVID JENSEN

Curtain call for the cast of Romeo and Juliet (2021).

months later. Post-lockdowns, safety was a distant dream – both in terms of confidence in my capacity, and literal safety from the dreaded bug. Thanks to a brave and gracious team, we eventually opened a great show under the evening sky, with the much-missed exhilaration of a live audience… and I won a Black British Theatre Award for Best Lead Actress!

Q As we move closer to a post-pandemic world, what does this mean for performance, productions, and artists? What does the future look like? The lockdowns reminded people how important film and TV are culturally, and the recent years’ boom seems to be continuing in those sectors, but unfortunately theatre has taken some huge hits, live audiences being a complex prospect these days. So, venues and companies are struggling to rebuild. A lot of the all too scarce financial aid has gone to big institutions, so I fear theatre’s losing freelancers rapidly, especially ones without family privileges to fall back on. That said, grassroots is lighter on its feet and more responsive – people will keep making art. We have to, now more than ever. I do hope that that time for self-reflection will spur necessary change across the arts, too. Q What advice would you give to aspiring writers, actors, and directors? Keep notes! Document what you notice, what you read, people with unusual habits, good stories from the pub, what you made of a film you just saw. My Mum calls it ‘the compost heap’. Actors, the best thing you can do is know who you are and what you’re about, to prepare for an industry that will try to define you. Because so much – what job you get, where you work, when you work – is out of your hands, knowing yourself will serve you well. That and how to do your accounts.

Q Who from the history of stage or screen do you wish you had worked with or could work with, and why? Lately I’ve been really sad never to have worked with Helen McCrory. There are so many amazing artists through history, but we really could have crossed paths, and the more I revisit her Medea at the National, or her Aunt Polly in Peaky Blinders, the more I realise I could have learned from her. Thankfully she leaves those wonderful performances behind for us to treasure.

John Haidar (2009)

Q Describe your path since leaving Trinity. After graduating with a BA in English from Trinity, then an MA in Theatre Directing from RADA, I worked as an assistant and associate director at Shakespeare’s Globe, the Royal Court, the National Theatre and in the West End with directors including Howard Davies, Michael Grandage and James Macdonald. I also trained on the National Theatre Directors’ Course. I then started to direct my own productions in theatres including Bristol Old Vic, Cambridge Arts Theatre, Theatre Royal Stratford East, Trafalgar Studios and the Irish Repertory Theatre in New York. Since the onset of the pandemic, I’ve been writing too, developing projects for theatre and television. This year, I’ve been reading for the MSt in English (1900–Present) at Merton College, Oxford, but will return to directing in September with a new production of Hamlet.

Q Did anyone in particular inspire you? How did you get started? I had a brilliant English teacher at school who took us on a trip to the RSC – the first time I’d been there – which was especially influential, I think. It was to see a production of Henry V, which formed part of the Histories Cycle directed by Michael Boyd. Having initially found Shakespeare a bit difficult to engage with, it completely drew me in. That was a lightbulb moment, for sure.

Richard III – dir. John Haidar – Bristol Old Vic (2019).

© MARC BRENNER Q What current and forthcoming projects are you excited about? Rehearsals for Hamlet begin in September and the production will be at Bristol Old Vic in October and November. I love working there – it’s the oldest continually-operating theatre in the English-speaking world and it truly is a beautiful space, replete with its own theatrical ghosts. To know that generations of iconic performers since David Garrick have played on that stage – including one of my favourite actors, Peter O’Toole, with his first Hamlet – is really special.

Q What’s the piece of work you’re most proud of? One of the pieces I’m still most proud of is the first I directed – The Alchemist by Ben Jonson – which was produced by the Marlowe Society at the ADC Theatre when I was an undergraduate. I was meant to act in it, but the production had to be cancelled due to cast illness. Since many of the cast and crew then graduated, I, along with the producer, fundraised to cover our losses and restaged it the following year, but with me directing rather than acting. It was great to be able to welcome some of Cambridge’s illustrious performing arts alumni to see it. Almost a decade later, I was invited back to Cambridge to direct Othello, again for the Marlowe Society, which has an annual tradition of performing at the Arts Theatre stretching back to 1938. In terms of shows performed elsewhere, to see our production of Disco Pigs by Enda Walsh transfer from London to New York was, of course, another highlight.

Q As we move closer to a post-pandemic world, what does this mean for performance, productions, and artists? What does the future look like? I think, as an industry, we’re still not out of the woods, to be honest. So many colleagues are struggling to keep their shows going due to illness, isolation and the consequent unpredictability of scheduling, which has meant audience confidence has taken a hit. While theatre continues to recover from the greatest challenge to our cultural life in recent memory, it is in need of a commitment to emerging artists to ensure its future. As part of this process, the direction that new writing takes – incorporating previously underrepresented voices – is essential to its ecology, especially in the current climate, as we seek to understand the series of international crises we’re living through.

Q What advice would you give to aspiring writers, actors, and directors? I suppose I can only speak about my own experience and say that, for me, it was (and is) helpful to see as much theatre as possible. It is one of the reasons why this pandemic has been so destructive for the performing arts – because of the necessary distance it puts between us and the in-person experience. I didn’t live in London until I moved there to go to drama school, though. So, on an even more fundamental level, it’s about identifying creative outlets wherever you can, especially if theatre isn’t easily accessible to you, as it hadn’t been for me. That meant immersing myself in storytelling in different forms, whether art, books, film or TV, which I know have been the foundations for other theatremakers too.

Q Who from the history of stage or screen do you wish you had worked with or could work with, and why? Someone I’ve revisited recently, because of the Masters I’m working on, is Samuel Beckett – in my opinion, one of the most significant practitioners in post-war theatre. While I’m inspired every day by different figures from history, I’m also excited to continue discovering meaningful collaborations in the here and now, whether that’s with those I’ve never worked with before or by developing existing creative partnerships further.

bristololdvic.org.uk/whats-on/hamlet michaelgrandagecompany.com/ biographies/creative-agency/ john-haidar @JohnHaidar @john.haidar

© MARC BRENNER