It is an interesting coincidence that as Back Stage decided to reflect on British drama schools, and in particular what they could offer in terms of different training for stage and screen, a report about that very subject should be published.
The document derives from the National Council for Drama Training (NCDT), the U.K. body that seeks "to promote, enhance, and maintain the highest possible standards of vocational training and education" in the industry, and in part hopes to do so by accrediting courses felt to meet certain criteria.
What is fascinating in relation to film, television, and radio, as the NCDT itself has acknowledged, is that the parameters of what students need to be taught are always changing. As Back Stage discovered when interviewing the performers below about their drama school experiences, training in these genres was pretty nonexistent at one stage. Indeed, it is really only in recent times, perhaps in the last decade with the explosion of satellite television in the U.K., that there appears to have been more of a demand to feature screen acting in course criteria.
In contrast to America—where the theatre world has its home on the East Coast, while the TV and movie industries dominate the West—not all, but much of U.K. recorded media is based in London. NCDT Executive Secretary Adele Bailey is therefore hopeful that the capital's schools will take on board the report's recommendations during the next year—to ensure that students are as "employment ready" as they can be for TV and movie work. Bailey explains: "Students learn how to develop a character during a theatre rehearsal period of three to four weeks, but there is often hardly any rehearsal in a TV studio. They need to understand what these pressures are, what all the people standing around do, and to maintain concentration amidst all of that."
The performers interviewed here range from the experienced actor with years of credits to the young, aspiring hopeful only just out of drama school. All of them are or have been doing high profile work in the West End and beyond. Their views on training, and consequently making a break into TV and film, are just as revealing as any textbook can be, on whatever side of the Atlantic you decide to train.
Lisa Martland
Sasha Oakley—Learning the Process to Act
If Sasha Oakley had known what was due to happen in her first week of drama school, she might never have been brave enough to go. But ignorance was bliss on this occasion, for the year that followed changed her life.
In fact, as far as Oakley is concerned, she did not leave the Actors' Institute in London 10 years ago with only practical training. She took with her a philosophy that has never ceased to influence her both personally and professionally. Out of all the performers Back Stage spoke to about their experiences at drama school and the techniques learned for working in different genres, Oakley certainly turned out to be one of the most passionate.
Currently donning a uniform as Lieutenant Genevieve Marshall in the National Theatre's delightful production of Rodgers and Hammerstein's "South Pacific," Oakley is one actress who cannot wait to enthuse about her drama school experience. As she says, the Actors' Institute actually started in New York and, just as in London, the college mainly acted as a summer school, a place to do short courses. There was also a weekend course called The Mastery that was not just aimed at actors: "It was a personal development-type thing," Oakley explains. "There was a group of people, and a panel of leaders would help them to put their behavioral patterns under the spotlight. It was about getting to know yourself and your demons."
Having already done a degree course, Oakley was accepted into the first full-time one-year postgraduate course in acting. However, what she did not know was that her studies would be based around the philosophy of The Mastery, and the year would begin with a weeklong version of the course.
"It was big, scary stuff," she comments. "The idea is that if you don't know yourself and your inner demons, you can't take on another character. You want to do so without it being on top of your own personal baggage. There wasn't a day without tears, and some of the students had had extreme life experiences, all kinds of personal issues, which they were forced to confront. I discovered that that is what all acting is about, accessing human emotions, and sometimes emotions you haven't yourself encountered before."
All this may sound a little pretentious to some, but Oakley's enthusiasm is hard to argue with. She is obviously grateful that voice work, improvisation, singing, devising, and acting were also taught like at most other schools, but the underlying philosophy of the Actors' Institute was, for her, even more significant.
She continues: "It did not feel like the tutors were saying here is your training for TV, film, stage; more like here is your process to act."
It was more difficult to get casting directors and agents to come along to the Actors' Institute, compared to some of the bigger, more commercial schools, but Oakley still feels she left very equipped to face the audition process, particularly if it was workshop-style. "Some performers have a massive fear of anything that isn't scripted, or isn't a straightforward song or piece to recite. The course was about taking risks, being able to cope with being vulnerable, to have no fear of going into a room and seeing what happens."
A little fear did come into the equation, though, when Oakley got her first TV job—she has appeared in the cop show "The Bill" (a favorite place for drama students to get their first taste of camera work), as well as the comedy program "Reeves and Mortimer." "I was paranoid about being too big for the camera. I learned it was all about scale, but you suddenly discover that you use your hands a lot and your facial muscles go crazy! I had to hope that the director would be honest and patient with me."
Oakley's early movie credits include working on student films, one of the main routes by which young British actors seek the experience of working on camera. Very early on in one project, she had to start crying with no emotional build-up at all—technique-wise this meant learning a great deal. She had been used to developing a character in theatre via weeks of rehearsal—film turned out to be a whole different ball game. It is also interesting to hear her say, "I had not thought of getting into the film industry as a realistic thing to consider—the U.K. has such a small industry, really, compared to America."
Which is not to say that this is an actress afraid of a challenge; she longs to be cast against her "attractive middle-class lady" type, to do real work on developing great characterizations. It is for this reason that she is so proud of her recent lead role in the play "The Far Side" at the London Fringe theatre the Tricycle. Cast as a white, racist, alcoholic mum, Oakley had people coming up to her afterwards congratulating her on how real she made the character she played.
"I'm not sure if my school exists anymore, but everything has boiled down to what it was getting at—not about copying and pretending, but about creating on stage and doing things with integrity."
L. M.
Dominic Cooper—Right Out of the Box
It would seem like a dream to most aspiring British actors, working at both the National Theatre and Royal Shakespeare Company straight out of drama school, and Dominic Cooper has achieved this since leaving the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA) in 2000.
Cooper is about to appear as Puck in a new production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream," opening on Feb. 20 at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon before going on a major U.K. tour. Credits already under his belt include a prominent role in the National's production of "Mother Clap's Molly House," the most recent play penned by controversial writer Mark Ravenhill (also responsible for "Shopping and Fucking"), together with small parts in the award-winning miniseries "Band of Brothers" and the Johnny Depp movie "From Hell," released in the U.K. this month.
While admitting that he has never really had a driving "must act or die" attitude to his craft, behind Cooper's modesty and refreshingly honest approach is an obvious passion for performing. He feels grateful that his schooldays were so encouraging in this respect: "There's that awkward period of time when you don't know what the hell to do with your life, but the school I went to had a wonderful theatre department combined with a lovely little theatre inside. It was there that my interest in theatre was nurtured."
Having heard horror stories about how hard it was to get into drama school, he was hesitant about applying, but the whole process of auditioning and being accepted at LAMDA happened relatively quickly. Cooper laughs now about the "ridiculous things" he chose as his audition pieces: "I was 18, straight from school, didn't know much, so I didn't think twice about attempting the 'Once more unto the breach' speech from Shakespeare's 'Henry V.' I didn't even realize that I was being disgustingly ambitious."
While the budding actor worked hard during these years, he slightly envied the social freedom of those friends of his at university. However, since 2000, when he entered the professional world of acting, Cooper has discovered what a good decision he made. As each job has come along—whether in TV, film, or on stage—he has constantly reflected on his previous studies. "I really didn't know what was going on sometimes at drama school," he comments, "but it suddenly makes a huge amount of sense when you're in the rehearsal room or on set. You learn all this stuff and you're never really sure what it's for and how it's preparing you, but it's stored and there ready to help."
Cooper was relatively satisfied with how the differing genres of film, TV, and radio were each tackled at LAMDA, but wonders whether the difficulties involved in transferring from one to the other are underestimated.
He adds: "The attitude was, if you can do a huge play or if you're prepared to work on the stage, it is a lot less work to then go and try film. But I found film extremely difficult; there is a lot to learn. It would have been beneficial to have done more work than we did.
"It sometimes seems easy to criticize TV actors, but just see how difficult it is to come in on a shoot in a day, pick up a script, and do the work straight away. You've got to be able to direct yourself; you won't always have a huge amount of help."
Cooper is also aware that some of the skills required can only be learned "on the job" by finding yourself on a shoot and watching other actors. In addition to taking on the role of runner on the sets of commercials, the performer has also paid close attention to the work of his peers. While on the set of "The Final Curtain"—the latest movie penned by John Hodge, writer of "Trainspotting" and "Shallow Grave," and due to be released this year—he naturally took time out to observe Peter O'Toole at work.
For the moment, though, the stage is where Cooper has been allowed more freedom to create a role, particularly while preparing for the Mark Ravenhill piece (a play originally given its first airing at LAMDA). "The part got bigger because it was written during the rehearsal process," Cooper explains. "After previewing, I was given a huge new speech an hour before I had to go on. It was a bit nerve-wracking, but things like that are good. Working with and developing the character was so interesting. I had such great fun getting up on stage, I suddenly realized why I was doing it."
But whatever happens, Cooper does not want to take the life of an actor too seriously. "People have said to me you can't be half-hearted about being an actor, which is quite right, but you also don't want to put too much on the line. It's such a scary business; you've got to be ready not to work for months after a job finishes." Wise words, but as Cooper heads for his first professional Shakespeare production, unemployment must be the last thing on his mind.
L. M.
Elizabeth Berrington—You Must Be Confident
For Elizabeth Berrington, currently part of a brilliant ensemble animating a revival of Caryl Churchill's polemical "Top Girls" (recently at the West End's Aldwych Theatre, but now back out on tour), there were lots of knocks before she found the confidence to start making a lasting impression in this fickle business. "I had quite a tough time after leaving drama school," she now recalls. "It was a year before I worked, and then it was an unpaid profit-share job. And then I waited another year before I got yet another profit-share job. And then six more months before I actually got a job I was paid for." But it toughened her up. "What I personally learned during that quiet time, and in subsequent quiet times I've had, is that you may have the best talent or ability in the world, but if you are not personally confident, then you can run into all sorts of problems. For a young actor, that's a lesson you need to learn very quickly. When you go for meetings or auditions, people need you to convince them that you're good enough for the job. In the early days, I assumed they would just know. But you need a more confident approach. So that was quite character building."
She graduated from Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art in 1989. Drama school training is, she says, "the accepted entry into the business," and remarks, "The top five schools in this country are RADA, LAMDA, the Bristol Old Vic, Central, and Webber Douglas, so that's what I went for." Accepted for Webber Douglas, she did the three-year full-time drama-training diploma there: "Unlike a university or college training, it is very specifically geared to the business, so that you're ready to enter it when you leave." Only, as she's already pointed out, it wasn't as simple as that.
Nor, with hindsight, was the training itself without complications: "It focuses on a very middle-class view of the theatre. If you had any regional accent, for example, you were expected to drop that and learn 'standard' English. So many of the things about the training I now think are quite phony; but having said that, on many occasions I now employ those skills I learnt as a result. If you're like me and quite versatile and lucky and can dip between the two—of being a working-class and a middle-class actor—you're okay. But it's only a few years after leaving drama school that myself and other contemporaries of mine started to realize that your strengths are your original strengths; and if you're lucky, you can get those back."
One of her first professional jobs, when her luck finally broke through, was to work on "Naked," a film with Mike Leigh, the innovative, improvisatory British film director whom she calls "a real hero of mine." Again, she speaks of having to unlearn some of her training: "The extraordinary thing about working with him was that it was about forgetting everything I'd learned at drama school. Instead, another strength of mine came into play, which was that as a kid, I'd always been involved in improvisation, and that's what he needs from actors. Your instinctive skills in getting involved in a character and following direction and translating what the director says to you have to come to the fore. That's very specific to working with him, and was almost like an education in itself. Once I'd worked with him once and I understood the process, that gave me a preparation for many, many other things." Not least, to work with Leigh again, which she did in "Secrets and Lies."
She also applied those skills to her approach to her award-winning stage work in a play called "Rupert Street Lonely Hearts Club" that (like "Top Girls") began as a tour and ended up in the West End in 1996. "It took me back to the improvisation I discovered with Mike Leigh. I'd actually seen a documentary about a young woman quite like the character in the play, and so I got the video from the BBC and spent time studying aspects of her to develop the character."
She is obviously an inquisitive actress, and speaks with admiration of American counterparts, who, she feels, "have clinched it with nailing emotional truth" in their performances. It's a quest she, too, constantly strives for.
Mark Shenton
Neil McCaul—You Mustn't Lose the Joy
Take a look at Neil McCaul's resume and you will find an impressive array of theatre and TV credits—evidence of a thriving 30-year career as a busy and versatile performer, one who happens to be currently appearing as Billy Flynn in the West End production of "Chicago." But show his picture to anyone who watches U.K. daytime television and the response is likely to be: "Oh yes, he's the one in 'Crossroads.' "
For life is probably never the same after an actor has appeared in soap opera—to believe some press releases it is as if McCaul left the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art in the late '60s and has not been working since. Those of us who have followed his career with interest know different, a delightful performance in the National Theatre's excellent production of "Guys and Dolls" in the early '80s being a particularly fond early memory.
That is not to say, of course, that many actors would knock a nice stint in a relatively high-profile soap. In fact, "Crossroads" in particular has an interesting history, for the original version of the show was a huge hit back in the '70s, and though notoriously mocked for flimsy sets and dodgy acting, it reigned supreme for many years. McCaul found himself part of the program's much-hyped resurrection, portraying hotel manager Patrick Russell, leaving only recently when his character rather dramatically died of a fatal attack.
It is interesting to hear the actor's reaction to watching his own funeral: "I had never died on TV before. When I watched the funeral back, it was the most chilling experience. It sounds silly, but I had to wipe the tape instantly."
On a more serious note, McCaul explains how working on the same soap for just under a year can in some respects take over your life: "You become so involved. I spent so much time at the Midlands studios, often learning scripts overnight. It doesn't leave you much of a real life—that gets shoved into the corner. For a while, pretend life becomes more important."
When McCaul went to drama school from 1965-68, it is perhaps not surprising that TV and film training were not high on the agenda. But that has not stopped him from learning the ropes, resulting in up to 30 appearances on a whole variety of comedies, dramas, sitcoms, and soaps.
"I believe there is much more of a cross-fertilization between stage and screen than people think," he adds. "In both instances, there always needs to be less acting and more action. TV is very good for teaching you that; a lot of people say it's the other way 'round, but I'm not convinced that is true.
"Theatre's very good in giving you a sense of how a scene can work—its pace, and where the information has to be placed. A different kind of concentration is required for TV; you've got to trust the camera, focus your performance down. But the intentions are the same: not to demonstrate too much."
McCaul's time at drama school was nowhere near as successful as the career that followed. For him, it was a huge mistake to make such a big decision when only 18 years of age. Having done well in drama at school and at a local amateur dramatic society, he was encouraged by teachers to take the obvious next step. "I wasn't to know it at the time, but I was far too young. I ended up wishing I had gone to university and considered doing drama afterwards. Back then there was not the kind of pastoral support you often have at university, or the kind of social structure.
"I'm sure it's changed. Any criticisms I have are tempered by the fact that I shouldn't have been there. I wouldn't say it was anyone's fault, but there were things about it that were so utterly joyless—it felt like anything you did joyfully, with confidence, high spirits, flair, was frowned upon. I would have thought that would have been encouraged. If you lose the enjoyment, then what's the point?"
He can actually date the time that he regained his confidence. It took the already mentioned production of "Guys and Dolls" three and a half years later to come back full circle, to hit something with as much natural ability, and to trust that. In fact, David Toguri, the Japanese-Canadian choreographer and director of the show, turned out to be a huge influence and inspiration.
Straight after drama school, McCaul headed off to learn his craft in repertory theatre in the regions, a theatrical training invaluable to any actor at the time, but one that has rather disappeared since. Before and since "Guys and Dolls," he has transferred his talents from musicals to straight theatre, from "Sweeney Todd" to "The Merchant of Venice."
He is therefore enjoying the current production of "Chicago" and the way its Broadway creators have treated the piece as a play with music. He is one of several artists to take on the West End role, so how does it feel? "It's a bit like being part of a Lego set and you just drop in and find the bit you fit onto, but there is still scope for change because no one performer is the same as another, and each will approach the role differently."
As for the future, McCaul may have plans to try his hand behind the camera with a possible directing stint on "Crossroads," while he is hoping to add a few more film credits to his resume alongside his roles in "Billy the Kid and the Green Baize Vampire" and "The Pirates of Penzance." Whatever turns up, he should be razzle-dazzling for a good while yet.
L. M.
Denise Silvey—Her Own Hyphenate
It would never be fair to say that Denise Silvey has a one-dimensional view of the performing arts, for in addition to being an actress herself, there is a production company to keep in check and an occasional day job as an agent. In addition, every evening she is involved in a very special part of theatre history, stepping onto the stage of the West End's St. Martin's Theatre and into Agatha Christie's "The Mousetrap."
Silvey had her first taste of this record-breaking show—the longest-running of any kind in the world—seven years ago, but it was particularly enjoyable to be asked back for the play's 50th anniversary year (the actual performance taking place on Nov. 25, 2001). Celebrations included a party at London's Savoy Hotel, and all those surviving actors who had appeared in the show were invited. She even met the lady who originally played her part of Miss Casewell, described in one recent review as the strange character who dresses like a man and answers every question with another question.
But this graduate of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama has far more to her than wearing flat shoes and looking good in tweed (as she does on the St. Martin's stage). She has a whole variety of credits to her name, ranging from musicals and straight plays both in the regions and West End to television, film, and radio—plus the producing, of course.
Just like Neil McCaul, Silvey found working in repertory theatres was a huge help after leaving drama school, but confesses she was even more inexperienced when it came to her first TV job, a BBC comedy-drama. "I felt like I was playing to the Royal Albert Hall," she says. "It was so important to be able to think on my feet and learn from the director, it was really frightening. I was running a bar in the show, and at one point I automatically picked up a load of glasses from a table. All the props guys nearly went out on strike and said that was their job. It never crossed my mind for a minute; it was the kind of thing we would do in rep!"
Silvey is hopeful that drama schools offer more substantial training in TV and film nowadays, although she still meets actors desperate for camera experience. In contrast, she already felt quite confident with her stage acting well before the Guildhall course came along. This self-assurance was due to the years she spent, from the age of 14, with a thriving amateur dramatic group called the Renegade Theatre Company.
"We did 12 plays a year, it was like a proper rep company, and I have to say aspects of it were better training than drama school. It taught me an amazing amount about the practicalities of the business, how to learn scripts instantly, be a quick study, and a lot about playwrights, too, from Shakespeare through to terrible old stuff. Most of the members turned out to be professional actors."
With this in mind, though Silvey already felt pretty qualified before she reached Guildhall in the late '70s/early '80s, she believed that a period at drama school would have a big influence on her future employment prospects. She also wanted to learn to sing and, as a result, took a part-time opera course. This was obviously a clever move because Silvey has appeared in several musicals and operas. While touring in such a production with the D'Oyly Carte Opera, she and another cast member even managed to form Cahoots Theatre Company, adding the role of producer to her credits.
Sondheim's "Marry Me a Little" was one of Cahoots' first projects, and several other musicals and plays have followed. These have included a production of "Starting Here, Starting Now," which Silvey herself performed in, leading to the recording of a CD titled "The Songs of Maltby and Shire Live at Jermyn Street." This autumn the company is planning a large production of the Kander and Ebb show, "And the World Goes 'Round."
So there is no doubting Silvey's resourcefulness; just add the odd movie, session singing, public relations, and journalism to the list and you'll get the picture.
Yet one of the most interesting roles must be when Silvey dons her other hat as an agent. When she suggests that it can be difficult getting well-paid TV acting roles when you are a "woman of a certain age," the attractive actress-singer is not fishing for compliments—she regularly talks to casting directors and knows the score.
"The whole experience of working on the other side has given me a lot more confidence. It is an experience that drama students could learn a lot from, but perhaps it is better that they don't know what goes on. Because the terrible thing about it is that there are so many actors out there [that] casting directors have so many faces to choose from. That is why I went into production! One creates one's destiny, so I started creating work myself and I love it."
L. M.
Linda Marlowe—Learning on the Job
If Linda Marlowe hadn't become an actress, she would love to have become a dancer: "That was my biggest love, and what I wanted to do from when I was five or six. I trained in ballet up to the age of 16. At one time, I was in the same class as Anthony Dowell [later to become a leading dancer with the Royal Ballet and eventually its director]," she says. "But I was never good enough, nor the right shape or build to be a ballet dancer. So I decided to become an actress instead."
It was in her blood. " I was born in Sydney, Australia. My parents were both English, but had been taken out there when they were children, and when I was 10, my father—who was an actor—wanted to come back to England to try the bigger pond, so we all followed. He worked a lot—he was a good character actor in TV, films, and theatre. My parents wanted me to go to university, but I auditioned for LAMDA and Central instead, and I got into both of them. I chose Central because it was a three-year course, whereas LAMDA was a two-year one, and because I was only 17 at the time I chose the longer course."
She was, she reflects now, too young for it: "I would always advise people to go a bit later. I was very insecure, and they strip you down in drama school, and I was not quite old enough to cope with all of that." Her real training, however, followed when she left drama school and started working. "A big agent had seen me at drama school and tried to get me into films straight away. They tried to put me onto a circuit of playing common blondes. But I was so avid to learn to be an actress, I didn't want to wait around for a film to turn up, so I decided to go with a smaller agent instead. I was so determined to do theatre. My feeling was that I wanted to be a proper actress and to do that I thought I had to do theatre and learn my craft."
She quickly achieved that ambition. "As soon as I left drama school, I got a leading role in weekly rep at the Connaught Theatre in Worthing," she says, referring to a now sadly redundant British phenomenon in which theatres would rotate a huge repertory of productions on slender resources. "It was the ingenue lead in a play called 'The Pleasure of His Company,' and we had a rehearsal week and then played a week. They then asked me back for another one shortly afterwards. I did a lot of rep, including a season at the Birmingham Rep, and then I got a big leading role in a play at the Gate Theatre in Dublin."
Film and live television drama also followed. "I did two film tests for 'A Kind of Loving' with Alan Bates, but in the end I was not taken because June Ritchie, who got the part, was a real Northerner and I wasn't. But who has heard of June Ritchie now? At the end of a long career, it doesn't make a lot of difference." Instead, her film debut happened elsewhere: "One of my first film parts was a small role in 'Becket' with Richard Burton and Peter O'Toole, which was a glamorous thing to do." Live television drama, on the other hand, was a frightening thing to do: "It was the most scary thing in the world. We did it as if we were going on stage in front of a live audience. Even after that, when we started to record the productions, we were terrified to go wrong because it was so expensive to cut the tape, so we did it as if it were live."
But it was back in the theatre that she actually made her mark, specifically with the work of Steven Berkoff, for whom she became a muse. "We did some exciting plays together, including 'Decadence,' which we did six times all over the world and three times in the West End. It's such a stretch to bring his characters to life on stage because of the density and poetry of his language. He's a perfectionist and a strong character, but also an immensely loyal man. Once we got a rapport going, he wanted to work with me. I was also strong enough to stand up to him. Knowing who you are yourself as you work with him is important, because he's very easy to imitate, but if you do that, you are only producing a copy of what he does. He did a bravura performance, but I did a different kind of bravura performance, so I was a good foil to him but strong in my own right. That's what kept us working together for so long. I enjoyed the danger of it—it was like going into a boxing ring with a sparring partner. He always kept me on my toes, and that's why the work was so stimulating for so many years. That sense of danger continues now with 'Berkoff's Women'—even though I've done it so many times, it still frightens me every time I go on stage."
She is referring to the one-woman show she has built around his female characters, and explains how she came to develop it: "It came about out of the doldrums I was in about being an older woman and not getting the kind of parts I wanted to play. Steven had always said to me, being a friend and ally, that I needed to do a one-woman show—that way you take the power over your career into your own hands, you are in control, and you can take it anywhere in the world. Then he suggested that I build it around his work. That was sensible, since I'd done so many of his plays. The hard bit, though, was to then go away and devise it as a show. With a lot of help from an actor called Tim Walker, we started compiling it, and making it into a collage of different types of women. As I worked on it, one of the most important things was to work on each character as if I was doing the whole play, and from that to let the audience see the metamorphosis from one character to another, and totally change the mood. That's what makes it interesting for them to watch, and me to play."
Seeing the show, it is indeed a distillation of that part of her distinctive and distinguished career. But there's more to Marlowe than merely Berkoff, as her next one-woman show will prove—it will be about herself. Looking back on her drama school training, she reflects, "The most important part of training is actually doing it afterwards. Drama school can give you skills like voice production and movement, but I really think that you learn to become good on the job. Some people at drama school win all the awards, but you never hear of them again. It's all about the stamina of being in the profession and working, being able to take the knocks, and building on your work and creating your own things. That's what keeps you out there."
M. S.
Helen Lederer—Writing and Performing on TV and Radio
Film, television, radio, theatre, books, not forgetting stand-up—Helen Lederer has done it all, and yet she still counts her post-graduate year at the Central School of Speech and Drama as "probably the best year of my life."
The actress and comedienne continues: "I had come to drama school late; I'd already been a student once, and it was great being in such a creative environment. Obviously, we got a qualification at the end, but for me that wasn't what it was about—it was all about having a year where you could explore anything from writing to the actual technical side of lighting. It was giving us permission to be creative in a reasonably formal way."
Lederer has just completed a run at the Arts Theatre in Eve Ensler's "The Vagina Monologues"—now an international hit and still playing at the Westside Theatre in New York—but she is probably best known to U.K. audiences for writing and TV/radio work. Watching her recent performance as the dizzy journalist Katriona in the ever-popular TV series "Absolutely Fabulous," it is hard to imagine how difficult it was for Lederer to make the decision to go to Central.
"My fantasy had been that I would go to drama school," she comments, "but I never had the confidence when I was young. I don't think I would have got in. I knew it was what I wanted to do, but I didn't know how to do it. The atmosphere has changed now; TV and media are perceived so differently, wanting to be on television is much more of a normal dream. When I was young, it was seen as something odd. Unless you had come from a theatrical background or been in a drama club, nobody quite knew how to progress in that direction."
But to write and perform were still very much part of Lederer's childhood, and though it may have taken her a while to build up the confidence, she certainly found her dream in the end. Looking back to her early 20s, she believes a special turning point was answering an advertisement for community theatre in the back of Time Out magazine. "Everyone was welcome," she recalls. "You just had to really want to do it and be willing to take it seriously. I discovered that you had to be really dedicated if you wanted to do something."
Not surprising, then, that her job as a social worker fell by the wayside and Lederer eventually started doing stand-up comedy—then there was no going back. She used to give herself a six-month deadline, saying that if things had not changed in that period she would give up. She adds: "That made me feel safer. Then I'd get something concrete, and I would choose to continue for another six months. I was quite reckless, really; looking back, things kept coming in the nick of time."
Now Lederer is not quite so reckless—there is a family to think of—but she does not reject a challenge. Though she freely admits to preferring TV and writing to the "absolute slog" of theatre, that does not stop her from taking on jobs like "The Vagina Monologues" when they come along. She even found similarities with the skills used in stand-up while performing Ensler's words: "Even if it is somebody else's piece, one has to communicate in a similar way. You learn loads every time you do a job. I was very pleased to be able to do the piece, and especially interested in the way that it offers three women an opportunity to work with people they would normally never collaborate with."
What also comes across about Lederer is that she is terribly grounded—even a recent visit to Los Angeles for a screen test did not rock her personal and professional commitment. She describes what was an extraordinary experience: "The job was to be another Anne Robinson on a surrogate version of 'The Weakest Link' on a different channel; they went with an American guy in the end. But I thought if it isn't going to be the right job, if I am going to be miserable and have to uproot my family for something that isn't right, then what is the point of having money? I do try and have fun and be happy in what I do."
In the meantime, Lederer is working on a TV script and would love to do more film, but she learned long ago that trying to second-guess what the head of any broadcasting department thinks is a real waste of time. It is a philosophy that would help many performers hold onto their sanity when their ideas are not commissioned. These are sensible words: "I remember I am not really in control. I try to be mentally prepared to work and write, but you just can't be in those rooms where people make the decisions. And you can't expect your agent to know everyone and everything. You have to surrender a lot of your own power."
But when British television is now so dominated by what has been labeled "reality TV," our obsession with televised human behavior, let us hope that Lederer's plan to keep writing and performing "good old-fashioned funny sitcom and film" is currently being considered in one of those rooms where she has no control. It would make a welcome change.
L. M.
Hattie Ladbury—Getting a Grounding
Hattie Ladbury was thrilled with her training at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, where she graduated from in 1996 after spending three years doing the acting training it offers. "It's such a brilliant theatre training," she comments, "the way it is structured, the way it concentrates on voice and movement." She also adds, "We had a lot of outside directors coming in every year, so in a way we were being trained in lots of different approaches." The training didn't insist on one right way to do things: "As long as you did your homework and were committed to what you were doing in your training and gave it your best shot, you could take away what worked for you and discard the rest. That makes a lot of sense. You didn't feel threatened if you were not a good enough actor by the end of the first term. It was a very supportive environment."
Perhaps it is the instilling of that sense of confidence that explains why, after she left Guildhall, "I got a job pretty much immediately." (It was a theatre job in Salisbury in a musical called "Maddie"; it subsequently came to the West End briefly, but without her, as she was then doing another job elsewhere.) The last couple of years, too, "have been non-stop for me and a lot of fun. But it's so random, and such a scary thing we do, but you just keep plugging away."
But she credits the training she got at Guildhall with providing the secure footing for an insecure business: "It provides such a good grounding, and so many tools to work with afterwards." One of those is to face the challenges, as now, of touring: "You're probably always learning new stuff until the day you die, but particularly with this work, being in different spaces every week complements the training I had very well. You have to learn to get the feel of different-sized auditoria every week, with different rakes and so on, and eventually you can cope with any stage or size of auditorium."
She is also learning new skills in television and film by actually doing it. "I had a small role in 'Mrs. Brown'—that was very exciting, it was about six weeks after leaving college and it was so thrilling to see Judi Dench at work. I was bowled over. It was so exciting to be with these extraordinarily talented people that I'd idolized from afar. What a treat for a young actress to come out and be exposed to that!" She'd now like to do more "to see how it all works." When she does, it may well be us who will be bowled over.
—M. S.
Pascale Burgess—Time to Develop Your Craft
Pascale Burgess also trained at Guildhall, graduating in 1999, but first went to Bristol University where she studied English and Drama. "I thought in my head that that would be the equivalent of drama training, but it wasn't, and although I did a lot of student productions at Bristol, I realized I needed a practical training to follow it up. I didn't feel as if I had really done enough in terms of movement and voice, and once I got to the second round of auditions at Guildhall, I realized how little I actually knew and how long it would take. That was what the training was all about: taking the time to develop my craft."
The philosophy at Guildhall, she says, is "to train you primarily for classical theatre, and if you can do that, you can adapt yourself to anything. You are taught the stagecraft to do that and fill a big space, so that you can also bring things down if you need to for a smaller one. If you're just trained for a smaller space, it's difficult to adapt to a larger one."
Her first theatre roles were indeed in smaller spaces, including the London fringe theatre the King's Head and an earlier staging of "Top Girls" (by the same director of the tour she is currently in) at Battersea Arts Centre. But one of her first jobs was on the little box: "I got a job in the television series 'The Bill' about a month after I left; it was a small part, but it was great."
—M. S.
Helen Anderson—Maintaining a Second String
Helen Anderson also went to university first, before going on to drama school. She read English at Oxford, and says, "I got most of my drama training there," but then she did a post-graduate course at the Drama Studio in London. "I can't say I had a great time there, but I didn't know how else to declare myself as an actress."
So drama training was a formal way of stating what she'd already decided for herself informally, and she credits her university days at Oxford with being a great preparation for the process of making your own way in the business. "I spent all of my time there doing plays, and it prepares you well for coming down to London and putting your own work on in the fringe. You have to find your funding, find a venue, do your publicity, and deal with the whole mechanism of putting on a show in Oxford; so when I came to London, and formed my own company, Loose Exchange, I was ready to do it on a shoestring. It was a new writing company, based in my flat, and I spent about four years with it producing new plays back-to-back."
From that process, she started to be seen by casting directors: "They would see you there, and recognize your potential for television acting, so I started to do small television parts. In terms of theatre, I became known, too, as a new writing actress, known as someone who was good at working on brand-new scripts." That took her to the Royal Court and Bush, amongst other places.
But, she says, she has long maintained what she calls a "second string." "The way I've survived is to develop a second string, which is to work with kids in schools on art history projects. That way, I've avoided doing waitressing! I work with primary school kids, and it's completely flexible, which is great. I also find it very fulfilling, and it's quite close to performance."
She's also had a regular stint on a long-running television series, 'London's Burning.' "That helped massively financially," she comments. As for acting on television versus the stage, she finds them very different processes. "My own preference, though, is for the stage. I love the rehearsal process, and the way you complete a journey with a character on stage every night. On television, you're lucky to get any rehearsal time—you just turn up and do it, and the only rehearsal often is the camera rehearsal. And you often shoot out of sequence, too."
—M. S.
Joanna Scanlan—Working Both Sides of the Fence
Joanna Scanlan is another university-educated actress, in her case studying law and history at Cambridge, from where she graduated in 1983. But while she never went onto formal drama training elsewhere, she intriguingly ended up actually teaching drama before returning to the business as an actress.
"I worked a bit in community theatre," she says of her time after Cambridge, "but I had a crisis of confidence, and couldn't work out how to get into the profession at all. Some of my friends seemed to be doing well, but I was a bit lost. Then someone offered me a job assisting teaching an acting course at a college in Leicester, and I did it by making it up! But I ended up as a senior lecturer in theatre; and in terms of training, that was it. I was having to learn a lot as I went along. In the act of teaching, I was taught myself."
It stood her in good stead when she chose to return to the business. "When I got to 30, I realized I was not happy not being a professional actress, because that's what I'd always wanted to do. So I needed to take a step towards it, and moved back to London, taking a job at the Arts Council as a Live Art Officer, working to bridge the gap between visual art and performance, and then at 35, got my first job as a professional actress again. By the time I did that, I was ready for the world. I'd been in a position where I'd employed people myself, and so I knew how it worked on both sides of the fence."
Most of her early professional work was on television, however, and it's only recently that she's returned to the stage: "It's taken me a long time to feel relaxed on stage. Now I'm beginning to."
—M. S.
Sophie Shaw—Don't Panic
Sophie Shaw also saw life "on the outside" first before training to become an actress, but in her case, it was born of financial necessity. "I took two years out after leaving school to work so I could actually save up money to go to drama school," she explains. The school she finally went to was LAMDA, from where she graduated in 1997, but the effort she put into getting there paid off. "It was an excellent training in terms of vocal technique, text study, movement, and physical flexibility and strength. It also teaches you how to approach a role, and how to work with directors and other actors."
Not that she got her first acting job quickly—that wasn't until five months after she left—so she worked again in a pub. "I didn't panic too much," she says, "because both my brothers are actors and so is my father, so that's what I knew to expect. An unfortunate part of this business is that you can't always predict when you're going to be in work and when you're not, so you have to make your money stretch. I knew it wasn't a nine-to-five job where you could guarantee work all the time, and I knew that I wouldn't walk into a West End show and stay there for the rest of my life." But since that early fallow period, her luck has improved: "I'm lucky that after that, I had acting work almost continuously for the last two or three years. I've been lucky, but it's not always like that," she says, as realistic as she is obviously practical.
—M. S.