I was reading Josie Long’s article in The Guardian today where she argued that University education should be made free in this country. She raised some interesting points and made a great case for how her own University days have helped her in more ways than one.
It got me thinking about the worth of my own education. It’s important for me to point out at this stage that my degree has had inconsistent (and occasionally negative) effects on my employment prospects, so I’m really evaluating my education based on how it has helped me as a person. Josie points out that education at its best is exploring your own humanity. Certainly my time at University taught me so much about the world, and encouraged me to travel and think more broadly about my plans for the future. It has also made me engage with human rights in a more active way than I did before. In terms of my Theatre making, I was shown new ways of working and I am now able to approach performance with an open mind and a wealth of contextual knowledge. I passionately believe in the power of education. I don’t think University is for everybody but I do think viewing higher education as a means to a job is at best naïve and at worst personally damaging. I’m often asked by younger relatives or acquaintances about my opinions on whether University is worth it, when so many graduates are either unemployed or earning less than their non-University educated counterparts. At the end of the day, if your goal in life is monetary then University is certainly not the easy route and I’m unsure whether or not free education would change that; but whatever your goals and opinions, devoting three to six years of your life to the in-depth study of a subject you are interested in, is never a waste of time. I my never earn enough to pay off my own student debt, so it doesn’t affect my day to day life, but I certainly would have been glad of a free degree; and getting rid of tuition fees may at least break the misguided link between University and money.
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I first worked with Jules Tipton during the final year of my degree at East 15 Acting School. Jules was directing and I was performing and assistant directing for the devised show, ‘The Last Resort,’ which aimed to lift the veil on the Asian tourist industry and expose the hidden sexual slavery going on in East Asia’s most luxurious hotels. Jules’ attention to detail where research and discovering truth both in character and in politics are concerned is second to none. It is that and her many witticisms, that have endured throughout our subsequent friendship. I spoke to Jules in the ambient setting of London’s Barbican Centre where Jules had just finished a day’s teaching with her students at The Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Though now working predominantly as a Director and Teacher, Jules’ career began in Acting. From the outset her work always had a community focus and she gained several roles in Community Theatre productions and Theatre in Education alongside some Television. This led to working in workshop facilitation and by virtue a level of direction. Though the repertory system had all but disappeared, there were companies and theatres still producing work in that way and Jules first taste with more traditional Theatre came when she joined The Everyman in Cheltenham, performing in ‘Lark Rise.’ This was an adaptation of Flora Thompson’s literary work, which many will know via its later Television treatment as ‘Lark Rise to Candleford.’ As well as furthering Jules’ acting career it gave her the chance to collaborate with The Albion Band who provided the folk soundtrack to the show. ‘I can get a tune out of almost anything,’ Jules asserted when I asked her what instruments she plays. The Guitar, keyboards, concertina, harmonica, Mandolin, and of course her very own voice. After around 8 years of acting, Jules began to tire of the craft and the creative restraint being put on her as an Actor. ‘I don’t know if I gave up acting or it gave me up… I was trying to fit into a box that someone else wanted to put me in. [I didn’t want] to compromise my politics for the sake of a performance. That was one of the reasons why I went back to music.’ Jules left the acting world to pursue a career as a singer songwriter, creating and performing acoustic songs that had, ‘a close connection with the audience [and were] centred on the text.’ As with her theatre work now, Jules wanted to write songs that, ‘meant something and had a connection with the audience.’ Though still performing, Jules had left acting for music as a way of retaining artistic and political control, but it has also had a longstanding effect on her work. ‘It’s very scary when all you’ve got between you and an audience is a Guitar and a microphone, but it’s made me braver.’ I wondered what Jules’ inspirations were. She told me about an early champion of her work, the actor David Suchet who supported her in the early stages of her work: ‘When I auditioned at Cheltenham he took me through a piece of Shakespeare, which I had never done before.’ It was watching Suchet in an RSC production of The Tempest and seeing how, ‘the world could be created and someone sitting in a plush seat could be transported,’ that gave Jules a real sense of the power and scope that theatre had. ‘The most recent practitioner that has made the biggest impression on me is Mike Alfreds… I learned the different positions of a narrator and the way movement and fabric can be used in performance.’ After finding her own acoustic style and becoming a well-received singer/ songwriter Jules began to re-join the world of Theatre, but this time as a Director: ‘When I was performing I used to like seeing the big picture, and as an actor you don’t always have the chance to have an input on that.’ But it is important to point out that Jules is most interested in collaboration: ‘I’m not one of those Directors that sits behind a table. That creates a barrier. Even when I’m working with text I like to be on the floor with [the actors]. That way I’m on the journey with them, I’m not just giving them the map and telling them where to go.’ Many Directors follow specific methodologies and styles in their work, I wondered what had influenced Jules. In truth, Jules plays by her own rules, though she points out some early inspirations as coming from the political Theatre Companies of the 70s and 80s such as Monstrous Regiment and Gay Sweatshop which carried a more Brechtian style of presentation. However, Jules points out: ‘one of the things I enjoy is working with actors to find characters that have a truth and an honesty, which is more like Stanislavski.’ Much like myself, Jules has also been subtly influenced by the work of Joan Littlewood whose centenary is being celebrated this year (2014). Littlewood’s use of real people's stories and the way she used improvisation to explore characters has hugely influenced Jules’ work. Certainly, Jules has specialist skills as a Director, and there are, as she puts it, ‘common threads,’ in her work, but I wanted to know whether Jules considered herself a specialist. ‘No. What I find quite frustrating sometimes is people who say, ‘oh you do devising,’ and I say, ‘yes but I also do bloody good text work. It’s a resistance to being pigeon holed.’ Jules is currently working back at East 15 Acting School with the graduate year of the World Performance course, directing their Applied and Political Theatres show. This was the project where I first met Jules so naturally I was keen to find out more. Jules explained that her students are looking into Homelessness both as a global issue, and local to Southend-On-Sea where the school is based. ‘I am encouraging them to find stories from real people.’ I wondered too, with all the many global political issues currently taking precedent in the media, what led her students to settle on homelessness as a topic of exploration? ‘The students saw the local presence of homelessness and were motivated by how often we walk past homeless people and don’t see them. They wanted to make the inviable visible. They want to create a piece of theatre that is going to make the audience sit up and take notice; that will make them challenge their preconceptions.’ I asked Jules which of her projects she was most proud of. ‘Sailing to Britain,’ was her immediate answer. This was a large scale heritage project which Jules directed and co-ordinated with Tara Arts alongside Artistic Director Jatinter Verma and playwright Nicholas McInerny. ‘[The project] explored the untold stories of Lascars who were Sailors that worked on the East India Trading Company ships. Mainly they hailed from South East Asia and China [and we showed] how they became part of the communities in the east end of London and the way in which the East India Company abandoned these workers once they got to Britain. ‘The project encouraged young people to engage with their own migratory history.’ Jules has worked prolifically both on new writing and devising as well as classic drama, so I wanted to know which English language play Jules most wanted to direct that she hadn’t had the chance to yet. Though Jules gave mention to Middleton and Dekker’s ‘The Roaring Girl,’ and Arthur Miller’s, ‘The Death of a Salesman,’ she did have to admit: ‘What play would I like to work on? I don’t know that it’s been created yet. I enjoy making my own work and collaborating with a writer.’ So what advice would Jules give to someone just starting out? ‘The advice that was given to me by a school drama teacher: ‘be aware of your own limitations and act on them. Don’t ever stop learning, keep the hunger, strive for the best you can. If I ever feel like I’ve stopped learning or that I know everything then I would stop and do something else.’ And what about the future? ‘If I can tell accessible stories that mean something to somebody then that’s all I can hope for. I want to get people to think that Theatre doesn’t just happen in a box.’ |
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