Addressing a student audience at Corpus Christi College, Paul Roseby is daring enough to admit that he is unconvinced as to the benefits of a university education. Yet, during his talk and our subsequent interview, his passion for the talent and importance of young people is evident. He describes the performers he works with as ‘fearless’ compared with more seasoned actors, which complements his ‘pacey, theatrical, surprising and inventive’ directorial style, and so he seems ideally suited to his position as Artistic Director of the National Youth Theatre, returning to the organisation which kick-started his career in the theatre, on TV and on radio.
The NYT, for Roseby, deserves recognition not only for being the first youth organisation of its kind but also for its consistently groundbreaking approach, staging entire programmes of ‘challenging productions’ and bringing together talents from across the UK. His time there as a teenager ‘opened my mind to other worlds, other people’. While praising its nationwide view, however, he is aware that ‘the word “national” can be a handicap.’ His argument that ‘you can’t be national without being local’, although a glib sound-bite, may leave those who prefer to support their local youth theatres unconvinced, and he himself recognises the power of geographically and culturally specific projects: ‘some of the best plays I’ve ever seen have been community plays, in a community environment, part of a community that have never seen theatre at all.’
Roseby is keen to assure me that NYT is not a static institution: ‘an institution is something that stands still, or slowly evolves, or gets put upon by time trawl.’ At NYT there is a fresh intake of young people every year and, much as he loves it, Roseby will not be staying there forever: ‘I don’t know where I’ll be when I leave the National Youth Theatre in a couple of years, I don’t know what I want to do, but I always want to start and finish it where theatre is, because theatre is the last brave bastion of truth and the platform to make a difference.’
Telling the truth and making a difference seems to be Roseby’s directorial mantra – that’s why so many of his plays have a topical message, although he admits this helps marketing as well (and ‘sometimes, you have to market the hell out of it’). Some devised pieces he has worked on he wouldn’t repeat, such as a drama satirising the internet, while others like Faliraki – The Greek Tragedy, which dealt with binge drinking, he would: ‘we could be doing it this Christmas and it would still be very fresh and relevant.’ When I question whether concentrating on the topical obscures longer-lasting themes, he responds immediately: ‘your way in is something immediate and topical but underneath it, a good play has more than one layer.’ This is why he enjoys working with older texts. When he talks about the NYT’s upcoming production of Orpheus, at the Old Vic Tunnels, he mentions the anniversary of 9/11 and the presence of fear in our own society: ‘there could be a good time to do Orpheus and a bad; I think next year’s a good time.’
The continuing relevance of great drama recently brought him back to the BBC, where he worked at the start of his career, to film When Romeo Met Juliet. The programme brought together two groups of teenagers from disparate backgrounds to perform Romeo and Juliet under Roseby’s direction. His disappointment in the BBC’s treatment of the project still seems a little raw: ‘I think I would have liked a bit more honesty about the drama off the stage. I injected time and energy into it and would have liked a little more returned.’ For him, the project wasn’t about teaching people Shakespeare, but about the potential problems of mixing young people from different racial and cultural backgrounds, problems the BBC producers seemed too scared to tackle. The students, he tells me, did get on ‘but we weren’t allowed to talk about the fact that they might not.’
When Romeo Met Juliet is indicative of Roseby’s perception of theatre as having a purpose, of plays as being useful tools for change, not untouchable historical texts. His impatience with ‘puritans’ who objected to the breaking of the ‘very academic rule’ of sticking to iambic pentameter in his Shakespearean productions, for instance, is obvious. This desire for flexibility is also evident in his interest in performance spaces: ‘I’d like the Royal Opera House to be slightly more inventive in its space. Why can’t you do a promenade through the back corridors, be surprising about your venues and break the rules within your traditional seating?’ He does however recognise the practical difficulties of alternative venues: ‘you’re not in your comfort zone at all so, in a theatre, it’s technically easier to produce a play.’
That’s what is most interesting about listening to Roseby talk: he veers from almost revolutionary idealism to being eminently practical in a matter of seconds. When I ask how he himself proposes to ‘break the rules’ (as he urged the audience in the earlier lecture) he mentions directing a drama satirising September 11th. He sums up his childhood desire to act as ‘I just wanted to make people laugh, I just wanted to communicate with people, I just wanted to entertain people.’ He certainly managed all three in the course of his evening visit to Oxford, but how much was ‘true’ is anyone’s guess.
