“Theatre” a place where fantasy becomes reality…

21 April 2015

Last week I was in Cardiff at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama – nothing strange in that as many of our Stage Management staff over the years were trained there, before coming to us as work experience placements. About four times every year I go and meet potential placement students.

What was strange was I had been invited there by the University of South Wales to be on the Validation Panel for new Stage Management and
Technical Theatre BA Hons. degree. As we all sat there discussing the finer points of the degree, a small part of me thought, “what is someone, whose highest award is a cycling proficiency badge, doing here?”

The reason – because I work at The Watermill Theatre, one of the top producing theatres in the country, with a proven record of, not only
production excellence, but also leading the way on issues like student training and employment, and is also far in advance of most theatres when it comes to standards of sustainability.

As you may have guessed, I left school early and have spent my whole life in theatre, initially as an apprentice, and from then on learning all my skills on the job, being taught by my mentors as my career developed. This learning still hasn’t stopped. Only this morning I was being shown our new sound program Qlab3.

Recently the world seems obsessed with qualifications – but honestly, there are many positions in life where being practical is of far more use than being academic.

Just imagine if you were at school, loved all sorts of technical stuff, breaking things and putting them back together, doing art and drawing, or maybe mixing tracks or making video clips. But hey, your future was going to be dissertations and lectures.

How amazing if there was a place you could learn more about all that useful stuff you love, and some amazing benefactor that would pay you to
learn it, so you could start on a career path that had a practical skills base.

You would need some kind of place where that fantasy happens every day, and a powerful Lord to fund it. Well, The Watermill Theatre is that
place and Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber that amazing Lord.

The Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation has awarded The Watermill with a Stage Management/ Technical scholarship for an apprentice, which will last a year and is aimed at a local student who will join us in September rather than go to university.

Over the course of the year, they will work across all the technical departments, learning all the skills involved in producing a stage show. By the end of the year, they may choose to specialise in one field. Their final project will be working on the summer musical of 2016.

We will be contacting local schools with all the information this week and we are looking at holding interviews in May. So for the next few weeks, pay attention at school for the information – making a puppet sheep can wait!  I know this scholarship could change your life.

As for the new BA hons. at RWCMD I can think of no better way of starting a career in theatre – other than a converted Mill I’ve heard tell of in Berkshire …….

Lawrence T Doyle
Production Manager