Throughout my meeting with Michael Lesslie, I’m struck by his animated personality. At 28 years old, Lesslie’s writing has already been nominated for a range of awards, including a BAFTA, and he is now developing two new plays, two TV series and three feature film scripts. He’s not up to much at the moment, then. It’s a little ironic that someone so young has been intrinsic in giving a company of young actors, only a few years his juniors, the chance to perform at the National Theatre in his play Prince of Denmark, a prequel to Shakespeare’s Hamlet. But this is a reflection of his obviously generous character; very quickly I feel like we’re on the same page, and most definitely learnt more in an hour with him than in a year at university.

At university, Lesslie was taken under the wing of Patrick Marber, all because he simply took the initiative to make himself known to the playwright when he visited; Lesslie is adamant that “he really did give me a career, I owe him so much”. Marber’s advice to him was to “direct great plays, because it really teaches you to get inside them”. Lesslie is keen, but is yet to add a directing credit to his already impressive CV; instead he likens this to his acting experiences (apparently he was a terrible actor, but I get the impression his personality would definitely hold its own). “One of the things which helped Prince of Denmark was that I did play Hamlet at school. I tore the ligaments in my ankle the week before, I was a lame Hamlet. But my headmaster wrote a note to me saying ‘long after your ankle’s healed, the memory of the lines will live on’. Once you’ve learnt Shakespeare it’s in your head, it’s amazing how the rhythms stay with you.”

It seems Lesslie was blessed with teachers passionate about drama, as well as full of absolutely golden quotes for a writer’s essential arsenal of anecdotes. He remembers the influence that reading Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf had on him, and his first taste of Shakespeare. But then at university, he studied all of Pinter’s plays to death until “I just hit a wall. I could say the pauses and silences do this. Great. But the magic was in seeing it and how they work.” He knocks such dry approaches, especially to Shakespeare. “I’m not an authority on this, but in terms of my gut reaction, I think there is an unfair stigma against it as being hard and boring, and actually it’s the most exciting drama ever if you stage it right… People going out and saying kids have to read Shakespeare is as damaging as saying Shakespeare’s really difficult. It’s good for you, not the people telling you to read it.” He recommends students would find it more engaging to “read it out loud as the character”.

Prince of Denmark is a stepping stone for young people into Shakespeare, which steers clear of ‘fake-speare’ expression or an unjustified update. “I know how Laertes speaks, it’s in Hamlet. I couldn’t make him say ‘Wassup!’, it’d be ridiculous.” Lesslie initially questioned whether a prequel “was possible without being terrible,” until re-reading Hamlet and remembering there are ideas with which everyone still identifies and which make it so popular today. “Everyone sees themselves like Hamlet, like the protagonists of their own life. Aware that we know what’s going to happen to these characters, by calling attention to the fact in the very act of writing a prequel, the main point is, I feel like someone in control of my life. But am I in control? Or am I an actor in someone else’s tragedy? In the way the play is set up, there’s a sense that they could act in such a way that I was toying with the idea, what if Hamlet dies at the end of this?”

What’s refreshing about Lesslie is that he thinks “there is no difference between writing for adults and young people. I loathe things that patronise.” Reading Prince of Denmark, I’m struck by how it’s just as challenging as any other play, in no way patronising. Despite his rapid success, Lesslie evidently has both feet firmly on the ground and significantly echoes Marber’s kindness in the wealth of counsel he shares with me. “I’m not the best writer in the world by a million leagues, but just the fact that it’s actually what I do day in day out means I’ll have some advice. But I guarantee you will get contradictory advice too. It’s about finding the way that works best for you: what you want to say and how you want to do it. Writing is an incredibly selfish thing, what people want is you as a writer on the page.”

And the advice Lesslie gives rings true for me, and I’m sure for most young writers: “Write as much as possible and don’t worry about it. Don’t get precious and feel a need to perfect it, just get it out there or else you’ll cripple yourself because you never start. There’s nothing like writing an imperfect play to teach you how to write a perfect one.” Lesslie seems to churn out scripts at lightning speed; his ability to look forwards  is an example to young people wanting to get ahead in an increasingly competitive industry. “There’s nothing like biting the bullet. You’re never going to get perfection in a moment; a line only works in a scene once the scene’s finished, playwriting is as much about context as articulation.”

Considering everything he’s working on at the moment, Lesslie also feels “collaboration is the most incredible thing in the world”. As both a successful playwright and screenwriter, he compares his experiences working with directors in these mediums, and the idea of directing himself. “With a film, you see it in a certain way; you’ve only got one shot. With theatre, you’ve got hopefully endless reiterations of your play for years to come. Inevitably that means you collaborate with directors and make it something that wasn’t just the idea in your head. Sharing it with someone else will just make it richer.”

Prince of Denmark shares Hamlet’s world with young people by making the characters teenagers who have as much at stake in the decisions they make as teenagers today. “There is something in the characters with which everyone can identify: if someone’s in love, if someone wants something. But I think there’s a common approach to Shakespeare like it’s something unreachable. When we did Prince of Denmark at the National the first time [as part of the Discover season in March 2011, performed by members of the National Youth Theatre], we got really young audiences, and they loved it – there was silence, and people were really attentive. We’d been concerned that the language was going to be too challenging or too difficult but it wasn’t at all.” Lesslie’s play not only captures the essence of Hamlet, but of the Connections Festival itself: the breaking of boundaries and breaching of stigmas.

Michael Lesslie’s play Prince of Denmark will be performed at the Cottesloe Theatre, National Theatre, on Monday 25 June at 7.00pm by Calderdale Theatre School, West Yorkshire. For tickets and more information, click here.

Image credit: Prince of Denmark, March 2011 by Simon Annand

Veronica Aloess

Veronica Aloess is an aspiring arts journalist and playwright, who trained at Arts Educational School London and is currently studying towards a BA in English with Creative Writing at Brunel University. She is co-founder of Don't Make Me Angry Productions which is dedicated to original writing and innovative performance.

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Have you ever dreamed of performing on one of the three stages at the National Theatre? Did you think that you would have to train at drama school and buy into the ‘it’s not what you know, it’s who you know’ conspiracy? Did you just not think about it because you thought it would never be possible? Well all that can change because Rob Watt, Youth Programme Manger at the National Theatre, is on a mission to get as many young people as possible through the doors of the National and onto its stages, in order to change people’s expectation of youth theatre and pave the way for the theatregoers of tomorrow.

The National Theatre’s Connections programme started 17 years ago and is now one of the largest, and most diverse and exciting, youth theatre schemes in the country. “We’ve created a back catalogue of 130 plays… we’ve had them on main stages here, they go on and be professional shows. For me, there is something about a quality back catalogue of brilliant plays that people can go and access. DNA, which was written by Dennis Kelly who wrote Matilda [the musical], is now on the GCSE syllabus, which started its life as a Connections show, so there is something about that resonating with young people and there is something historical there as well.”

Each year 5,000 young people take part and put on, with the help of their teachers and/or youth theatre leaders, brand new plays written specifically for young people. This year the writers include Meera Syal, Craig Higginson, Hilary Bell and Rory Mallarky, and have an international flavour as a nod to the Cultural Olympiad. Watt describes questioning, “how is it that plays and stories from the world have resonance with the young people across the British Isles? And actually they inevitably do because the themes will still be the same and teenage angst is still the same whatever country you’re in, and that political and sociological angst that people have will still resonate, and it’s done that.” It is very important to Watt that the writing is in the right language and set in the right world; it needs to click with young people in order that they may do the writing justice and vice versa, that the writers will do justice to the young people of today and give them a great story to perform. The writers are told “write your next play but write it for young people”. Some writers have perfectly clear ideas about what they want to write about, and then have a first draft reading with a group of young people so that the writer can get a sense of what does and does not work, other writers have no idea what they want to write about and so visit a group of young people to find out what matters to them and work out their story that way. What is most important is that the writing has to be tested by young people, so that they feel it is within their world, and secondly that it does not become censored by the teachers or youth theatre leaders. If the kids say it’s alright, then it’s alright by the National Theatre.

Each year ten new plays are written and published, and in the spring of that year are performed across the country in Northern Ireland, Scotland, England and Wales. Out of the 200 groups that take part, ten are chosen to bring their production to London and perform at the National Theatre. The show is treated like any other show at the National; the set is moved in, fitted and touched up, the actors have their dressing rooms and they play to a paying audience. Having so many young people around doing something they have enjoyed for years or are experiencing for the first time gives the National an atmosphere that does not always happen with their regular audiences. Because there are always other shows going on at the same time some audience members might not be expecting the youthful buzz that hums throughout the building for the five days that the productions are being showcased – but that is part of the excitement and a way of bringing new audience members to the Connections shows: through curiosity.

However, Connections is not a competition and getting to take your production to London is not a prize to be won. Watt has spent much of his time “working with young people who are either on the fringes of society or don’t get on with education very well, don’t get on with the world very well, and how theatre might have a role within their lives to explore other people’s stories and to explore their stories. I think Connections can do that really well. We’ve had quite a lot of success stories… the Lyric Hammersmith worked with a pupil referral unit, Bridge Academy, this year and did The Grandfathers, which is one of this year’s portfolio and did it absolutely amazingly… just watching it on stage it was just like any other show in terms of its professionalism and its impact, but what I also knew was that the journey these young people had made was one which was quite exceptional for them.”

There is a journey for everyone involved, though. This year, Artistic Director of the National Nicholas Hytner returned to his own school, which is now taking part in the festival for the first time. A sign of the new directions the National is taking with its youth participation work, and a statement, too, that theatre by and for young people is more than worthy to be judged alongside any other production in the country. For Watt, ”it’s not necessarily just about the National Youth Theatre doing amazing pieces of theatre, which is great and wonderful, and I respect and love that. But where my passion lies is working with young people who don’t even understand or know that they are theatre makers and accessing them with these great pieces of writing and then giving them the chance to perform in a theatre that’s probably 20 miles away from them, that they don’t realise, and get that experience and get that buzz. You know as much as I do, I assume, that theatre, good theatre, has a hugely profound and positive effect on young people and I get that from every young person I’ve met throughout the Connections festival this year, as I did last. You can see that there is some change that has happened within them. So I think telling these Connections stories, it just gives them something really plausible to talk about… something to focus on, something to really get their teeth into, something different to their school musical, something different to their devising that they’ve done before. It challenges.” Given the range and extent of young companies taking part in the festival this year, we are clearly ready to take on the challenge. If you’re not involved yourself, visit the National this week to watch our generation rise to the occasion.

The festival runs at the National Theatre from 20 to 25 June and includes performances of all ten Connections 2012 plays. For more information and to book tickets, visit the Connections website.

Applications for Connections 2013 are also currently open, so if you and your youth group would like to be involved, visit the Take Part section of the website. Plays for 2013 include pieces from Lenny Henry, Anya Reiss, Lucinda Cox, Howard Brenton and Stacey Gregg. Applications close 1 July so get in while you still can!

Image credit: National Theatre Connections

Nadia Newstead

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I was delighted when I was offered the chance to attended The National Theatre’s storytelling workshop on behalf of A Younger Theatre. It’s a three-part course inspired by Inua Ellams’s stunning new production, Black T-Shirt collection. Based at the theatre’s John Lyon Education Studio, the sessions occurred over three evenings. Being familiar with Ellams’ work, I expected the workshops to have an emphasis on beautiful and poetic words, and a strong concentration on the craft of writing. I expected to meet new and experienced writers who wanted to take their story writing to new levels.

From the first evening, I quickly realised that this would be a much richer and more dynamic experience than I had first expected. The roughly 30 people in the class were a mixed bag of males and females ranging from mid teens to those in their late 20s. I discovered that many of the younger people were taking part in work schemes with aim of equipping them with more confidence and social skills to help them find employment, and navigate the world of work. There were also those wanting to try new things, or who were already interested in arts and theatre wanting to learn more about the art of storytelling.

We started each evening by participating in really engrossing and energising warm-up exercises. As well as complicated memory games we also did trust exercises where we paired up with partners and took it in turns to be led blindly around the room with our eyes shut. One exercise was to pair up and stare into a partner’s eyes for one whole minute without saying anything. As an ice breaker, this exercise tops the lists, as afterwards the whole class shared that when we did this over and over again with different partners, it became less incredibly uncomfortable, and more pleasant and enjoyable to hold eye contact for an extended period. We also did a bit of improvisation to get our creative juices flowing.

The workshop leaders Al and Joy were immediately engaging. The ease with which they shared interesting and inspiring stories from their personal lives definitely allowed the class to be more forthcoming in telling their own stories. The first storytelling exercise was to communicate a section of any fairy tale story from our childhoods that we were familiar with. We had two minutes to prepare this in our heads, after which we would be taking turns to perform the story to the entire class. When my turn came, I told the story of one of my childhood favourites Timon and Pumbaa, who were characters from the legendary Lion King and had an offshoot mini-series made about them.

We came to realise that telling an entertaining story was innate in everyone of us. It’s about owning the story, knowing what you want to say and the point you wish to communicate. Joy summarised it by saying when you are forced to tell your story in a really short time, you tend find a way to say what needs to be said. When you are forced to tell the essence or the most important bit of a story, it comes out more formed than you would have imagined. At the end of the first day, we were taken to see Inua Ellam’s play, so we could be inspired by witnessing storytelling from a master of the art. We all left feeling impressed and with an intensified appreciation for stories.

The second evening of exercises forced us even further out of our shells. We were to draw life size outlines of ourselves and decorate it with little symbols of our loves, losses, passions and experiences from the past. We laid each drawing on the floor and then talked about each of them as a group, directing questions at the owner of each drawing. Through this exercise we learned a lot about each other. We shared funny, quirky, beautiful and sad moments of each life, from moments of falling in love to moments of family grievances.

We realised that our lives were bursting with stories, so it was easy when we were instructed to pick one of these moments and construct a story out of it. This story would become our final performance piece on the last night of the course. This time though, we would have the chance to practice it in front of multiple partners and to receive constructive criticism before the final performance. We were finding that storytelling was about finding the confidence to speak and open up, and also about “giving yourself permission to exist”, one of the many beautifully uplifting pieces of advice offered to us by Joy.

On the third and last evening of the course we were treated to a Q+A with Ellams himself, and we eagerly showered him with questions. He talked about several things, from his cultural background (Nigerian of Hausa, Edo, Isoko heritage), to his decision to stop taking part in poetry slams and focus more on his writing. We heard about how he gets started with the process of writing: “I’m struck by an image first. If it stays with me then I run with it”. However, he made it clear that it is not all about resting on your laurels, waiting for inspiration to strike. On the subject of weather you should intentionally write to suit a specific form, or just write whatever whacky thoughts may come to you, he chose form. In order to make things for so many different productions and projects, Ellams rationalised, “you need to sacrifice the way you work”.

He also had plenty of advice for aspiring writers: “read until your eyes bleed”. He listed some of his biggest inspirations as Keats, Seamus Heaney, Frank O’Hara, Jacob Sam La Rose and Saul Williams. His explanation of the finite structure of stories had many of us listening very keenly. He described how all stories are made of exactly the same building blocks, but are rearranged and presented in different ways. He mentioned some of these building blocks as being: the status quo, the inciting incident, the response, the climax and the resolution.

We asked him how he could write so personally, drawing things from his own life to put into his stories. Ellams explained that you need a certain distance of space and time before you can write about certain things. “You need to be able to close the book on it… I couldn’t have written Black T-shirt if all my immigration issues hadn’t been sorted out.” He was referring to problems he had previously with his immigration status in the UK, which had prevented him from travelling outside the country for a very long time. Finally, he told us about the next piece he is working on, set in a fictional south London, about gang culture and global warming. This 10-15mins piece set to music will be doing an outdoor tour this summer at several locations including Camden and the Southbank.

After Ellams left to get back to the National Theatre in time for another of his performances, we got back to preparing for the final performance of our stories. We did this by retelling sections of our pieces to several partners until we were sure of exactly what we wanted to say. Performance time came, and the class that I had seen growing so much in confidence over the previous two days became suddenly hesitant and nervous again. This final performance felt awkwardly high-pressure and everyone had begun to question the story-worthiness of their tales. No-one wanted to go first.

After much deliberation, I decided to bite the bullet and be the opening act, telling a story of my guitar obsession and zero musical talent. Then one by one, my course-mates stood up to tell their stories which ranged from the hilarious to the serious and solemn. I heard stories of people getting out of tricky, ridiculous situations, and stories of rekindling estranged relationships. At some points I had a hard time holding back the tears. It really surprised me how willing people were to open up and share stories that were so tied up in their emotions.

By the last story I felt like I had been on an epic journey, or for want of a better phrase, an emotional rollercoaster. As we swapped emails, phone numbers and hugged each other good bye, it was clear that this was a reluctant end. It was a brilliant course, and one I hope the National Theatre will run for a long time to come.

Many thanks to the National Theatre for inviting A Younger Theatre along to join the course and report back on the art of storytelling.

Image credit: Inua Ellams

Lara Akinnawo

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National Theatre: A middle-class nightmare?

There is something deliciously quaint about Terrence Rattigan’s ‘After the Dance’ at the National Theatre. It captures the dying days of an all-drinking, all-smoking generation, longing for their lost youth and stumbling tipsily toward the horrors of war. The London flat is spacious, the dresses are glamorous and the accents are perfectly clipped and proper. In short, it’s a period piece.

Or is it?

For when the curtains close and the house lights come up, that world of privilege, or at least very refined accents, is all around you.

I am sure that the National Theatre is aware that its audience remains overwhelmingly middle-aged and middle class, and yet I would hope that it is not complacent about it. I recognise the important contribution made by people who are able to and enjoy spending their wealth on supporting theatre and the arts; however, in the long term the affluent returning audience may not be enough to defend the National Theatre in particular, and theatre in general, against charges of obsoletism.

To be fair, the National Theatre is trying to attract a more diverse audience through schemes such as the Travelex £10 tickets; Entry Pass, which gives free and heavily discounted tickets to under 25-year-olds (and which is now vulnerable to being axed after A Night Less Ordinary was culled by the recent funding cuts); the Discover programme that invites people to learn more about the workings of the theatre; and the Connections scheme, where youth groups from around the country stage specially commissioned plays by leading writers. Its upcoming programme also demonstrates an interesting mix of shows, with the unique and dynamic ‘Earthquakes in London’ and ‘FELA!’ standing out. The Square² also shows cutting-edge outdoor theatre from international companies and is cheap enough to take the risk thanks to Priceless Previews, where you pay what you choose at the end of the show.

However, despite these initiatives, I rarely see any evidence of real progress being made in getting younger people, or people from different socio-economic backgrounds, through the door and into the stalls. Other theatres, located not that far away from the middle class haven of Southbank, seem to be doing a better job of engaging different audiences through access schemes and the type of works staged. Through its Two Boroughs project the Young Vic provides free tickets to residents of Lambeth and Southwark, which goes some way to engaging a diverse, local audience. Likewise the Theatre Royal Stratford East stages plays targeted at the local community and bills its Youth Arts Studio Season alongside the rest of its productions.

You could argue that it doesn’t matter if National Theatre audiences are a sea of the same faces month after month. If other theatres are better at engaging and catering for different audiences then leave them to it, and allow the National to remain a comfortable haven of chinos and twin-sets. However, it is precisely because the National Theatre is so important and good at what it does, thanks to its tremendous space, resources and reputation, that it is necessary that it does everything it can to shield itself from the criticism that it is irrelevant to society as a whole. If recent funding cuts are just the tip of the iceberg, then the case must be made for why institutions such as the National Theatre have to be protected from more savage attacks to their finances. That argument will be a lot easier to make and win if theatres are seen to be less elitist, and start to actively serve local communities and a wider audience.

Either way you look at it, attracting a more diverse audience is a necessity. If you don’t see any problem in leaving the National Theatre to be run as a purely corporate institution, funded by ticket sales to people who can afford whatever it charges, then kindly compare it to all other private businesses. If any company turned around and said ‘No, we’re fine with the customer base we’ve got thank you, we don’t need to appeal to anyone else’ it would be corporate suicide. Conversely, if you feel that theatres should be supported by the state in order to pursue innovative and interesting new works, then what publically funded institution in its right mind says ‘We’ll take the public’s money thanks, but we’ll only serve a small, wealthy proportion of them’? Theatres provide a public space and service and so should be supported out of the public purse; however, in order to justify this they have to try and serve that public as well as they can, which with a little imagination and investment is perfectly possible to do, without hurting existing audiences or artistic standards.

I appreciate that the National Theatre is taking measures to diversify its audience base, but I long for the day that noticeable improvements start to be made. All theatres have a responsibility and reason to attract a more diverse audience, but perhaps none more so than the National, which must serve society as a whole and not just a privileged few. The clue is in the name!

Lois Jeary

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