Page 241 - Guildhall Coverage Book 2020-21

schools as being isolationist – bubble cultures that were quite concerned with
themselves rather than the world, the wider industry, critical context and society.

“My practice and interest as a theatre director is in new work. It is tied up with
activism, politics, asking questions about who we are and where we are going, so
that is bound up in conversations about representation, inclusion and equality. That
was my offer.”

O’Loughlin says the dominant classical training, “which has a particular focus on
craft as applied to voice, body, text, is very much predicated on a western European
male tradition, both in terms of practice and repertoire”. She insists she understands
the value in practice and craft and the application of technique, but says: “It is best
applied for me as much in contemporary and experimental work as it is through the
classical canon. So, for me, it is not about throwing everything out, but finding a way
to integrate where the gold is, and that might be in very different places from where
we found it in the past.”

But of course, one person’s much-needed cultural change is another person’s
cultural vandalism. At LAMDA, Frankcom’s questioning of the centrality of
Stanislavski and Chekhov, combined with the move towards more self-created work
by students and a substantial loss of faculty jobs in areas such as voice training and
movement, has led to online petitions and accusations that she is destroying the
school.