Page 152 - Guildhall School Media Highlights Coverage Book - 2019-2020

says. “This is an actor’s play and they’ll have to create their own journeys. My plan is to
treat them as if they were professionals – I want them to have that experience.”

So what’s different? Casting, for a start. Roles are allotted by staff, not visiting directors,
and most of these actors are yet to know the midlife frets of Nine Night, let alone Oscar
Wilde’s Lady Bracknell. Where a professional show is “ultimately about the finished
product”, O’Loughlin explains, with “seats to fill, tickets to sell”, here the process is as
crucial as the product. “We must be ambitious for students,” she says, “but not expect them
to know what they don’t know yet.”

Reimagining Antigone … playwright Stef Smith. Photograph: Handout

“I’m not here to represent the profession, but I am here to work as a professional,”
proposes Neil Bartlett, directing The Importance of Being Earnest at the Royal Academy of
Dramatic Art (Rada). “These are brilliant young people full of inquiry and courage, and I
use the same rehearsal techniques I’d use with anyone.” Grace Venning’s design rejects
walls and doors so Bartlett taught the cast “how to make an entrance when there isn’t a
door. These guys didn’t know how to do that trick until half past 10 this morning. That’s
why I’m here.”

Might awed students be too intimidated to question established directors? “I obsess about
commas, I wear pearls in rehearsals, I am embarrassingly passionate about my work,”
Bartlett states, that rope of pearls peeking beneath his red plaid shirt. “Of course they find
me enormously intimidating. That’s why it’s important for me to talk about what I don’t
know.” A playful costume session melted their reserve. “It was like being in the parrot
house in the zoo,” Bartlett reports. “They just erupted into the primal joy and silliness of
dressing up.”

These shows are student exercises, but also directorial passion projects. When O’Loughlin
invited Smith to reimagine Antigone, “it was for me as well as for the students, if I’m
honest”. Drama schools enable pieces that are too tricky – massive, costly, weird – for
professional contexts. For emerging directors, it’s a godsend. Oscar Toeman could tackle a
gleefully messy all-female Richard III in Cumbria (“We were throwing a pig’s heart
around”) or the Weimar epic Mephisto at East 15. The scale is exciting (and as Toeman