Picture the scene: you've just moved away from home for the first time and you are in a queue to enter the main university drama studio alongside a group of fellow year-one students that you've only just met. The door opens and you are instructed to enter by a person who then seems to disappear. The room is darkened and some stage lights illuminate a circle of chairs in the centre of the studio which surround a square of carpet. You and your fellow students nervously take a seat and wait for your lecturer to show up and you notice that a salvaged painted kitchen cupboard unit replaces some of the chairs in the circle. The hum of chatting gradually fades as you realise that people are beginning to stare at the cupboard and you see that there are now fingers sticking out around a door which is gradually opening.
There follows twenty silent minutes where the woman who has slowly emerged brings seemingly random objects with her from the cupboard and gradually places them on the carpet. A walking stick. Some plant pots. In a trance-like state the woman then passes objects to the bewildered students who wordlessly begin to improvise by interacting with each other and the items. Some people are now sitting on the floor playing with a scarf, most are hyper aware of their surroundings and searching for clues that what they are doing is appropriate to some unwritten code that seems to exist, but has not been shared. Is this OK? Is this OK? Suddenly the silence is broken. 'Well...! Hello, I'm Helen Iball, I'm one of your Theatre Studies lecturers here at Scarborough, welcome to the course. So as an introduction to your first unit I'd like to ask 'what is theatre?' Is what we have just done theatre? If not, what was it? What do you think?'
For me, that first session was like the first brutal blow of a wrecking ball to my understanding of live performance, which up until that point very much involved posters, a box office, fixed rows of seating, a script involving a plot and usually an interval. That sunny afternoon, Course Leader Andy Head demolished another sizable chunk by way of a brief sojourn into linguistics, 'When I say the word fish, I'm not giving you an actual fish. I'm connoting a 'fishness' if you like, or offering the sign of a fish.' By the time we touched on semiotics and endured a seminar discussing our rabbit-in-the-headlights reactions to Peter Brook's The Empty Space, I couldn't really be certain of my own name anymore.
I wanted to share my thoughts about studying at University College Scarborough because of the hidden extraordinary nature of the education that I was lucky enough to experience tucked away in that little corner of North Yorkshire. As a new graduate in 1998 I took a reworked version of my devised multimedia student show to Edinburgh's Festival Fringe, and in their review of the show, Scotsgay Magazine wrote, 'When I think of Scarborough I think of a resort that for years was boycotted by trade unions and other bodies because of its attitude towards gays. More recently it has got a reputation as a place where the council is more interested in looking at toilets than looking at theatre. In short, it is the last place from where one would expect good theatre to emerge, but it has.'
Such views were not unique. When I tell people that I studied in Scarborough I can see the confusion in their eyes. Most people don't know there was even a university campus at Scarborough and I certainly don't get that nod of recognition that I would if I'd attended Central School of Speech and Drama, Goldsmiths or Rose Bruford. Surely Scarborough means fish and chips, joke shops, sandcastles in the rain, hotels that have collapsed into the sea and shellfish stalls?
It is with a modicum of tongue-in-cheek indignation that I'd like to point out that my degree is accredited by a Russell Group university (York), but more importantly I would argue that the performing arts department at Scarborough (latterly taken over by the University of Hull and sadly now no more following Hull's withdrawal from the site) was at that time one of the most vibrant, empowering and forward-thinking arts departments in the UK. If the careers of its alumni are a measure of success then our course had it in spades. The above photograph of my year-group contains several people who went on to act and direct professionally, at least two set up their own stage schools, several forged a path in teaching at secondary and FE level, some of us created our own theatre companies and worked as arts officers in local authorities. There are arts marketers, a costumier, a technical production manager and a high profile producer, both of whom are based in London and tour internationally, and one entrepreneur who set up a London-based education company that specialises in West End workshops and masterclasses. The people in that photograph continue to make a significant economic, educational and cultural contribution to the country and I wonder how many other lives have been improved from the ripples started in that pond? I must mention that one of those young faces was a brilliant, funny and kind force of nature who, if cancer hadn't arbitrarily decided to strike, I'm sure would have continued to dazzle and surprise us all with his music and who knows what else? His beautiful memory will always be tied to that magical time.
The title of the film Everything Everywhere All at Once pretty much describes my immersive Scarborough education which also includes the minor part of my degree in Contemporary Dance. Year One was set across a weekly grounding in major arts movements spanning realism, naturalism, modernism, surrealism, Dadaism and postmodernism which formed an orientating framework of understanding. We were also lucky enough to be visited by bearded and white-haired theatre sage, Prof John Allen OBE - or 'God' as we called him - who, without the need for such fripperies as 'notes', bestowed his encyclopaedic knowledge of the history of theatre upon us by simply starting at the beginning and working up to the then-present time.
In the dance studio we were encouraged and pummelled in equal measure. Dismissed as sub-par by one lecturer and brought to the front of the class by another, there was nowhere to hide, so improvement was inevitable and I can't deny the good-cop-bad-cop approach wasn't character building. Graham technique. Cunningham technique. Alexander, Feldenkrais, risk and challenge, phenomenology, kinaesthetic memory, we covered much ground both literally and metaphorically. I remember sitting in the bar at the end of the day staring at the table feeling mentally and physically broken by one performance skills session delivered as part of a module by guest lecturer Charlotte Vincent of Vincent Dance Theatre. However learning to strip away my affectations born of insecurity and be more authentic in my performance that day was a lesson that has helped me throughout my career.
We had a strong visiting theatre programme which included companies such as Third Angel, Motionhouse Dance, Fecund Theatre, Forced Entertainment, A Quiet Word, Sakoba, Compass Theatre, Frantic Assembly and Kathakali Dance. Each company delivered student workshops and we managed front of house and box office bookings in addition to providing some technical work which developed our practical understanding of many of the main skills required for touring and running a venue.
We got to participate in a week-long residency with Opera North culminating in a performance at the Steven Joseph Theatre and another by Total Theatre Award-winning Fecund Theatre, which combined a presentation of performed poetry with Britpop and rock gig aesthetics, and changed the lives of all its cast members within its six days of enlightening self-discovery.
The theatre department had an ongoing relationship with the Steven Joseph Theatre so we were invited to sit in on Sir Alan Ayckbourn's rehearsals. We received expert tuition from the venue's technical crews whilst experiencing their brand new state of the art 'trampoline' lighting grid, gained industry insight from sessions with members of staff across key departments and were able to gain additional production experience by assisting the professionals costume-making for an Ayckbourn premiere.
For many years Scarborough was also the host town for the annual National Student Drama Festival where the University College Scarborough students got to manage front of house at a host of venues across the town. For our troubles we were able to gain access to talks and workshops, and since the event was sponsored by the Sunday Times and run by a team of well connected individuals, we were able to attract some of the top names in the industry. As a result I enjoyed an improvisation masterclass with Sandi Toksvig and a talk by Les Misérables and Miss Saigon creators Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg, sampled workshops such as stage pyrotechnics and how to set up a theatre company and saw some of the most interesting and experimental shows by students from across the UK.
Coach trips to York, Leeds, Sheffield and Stratford allowed us to see work by companies of international repute functioning on a larger scale such as La La La Human Steps, Lindsey Kemp, Ultima Vez/Vim Vanderkeybus and the RSC. Oh, and I almost forgot - one day John Godber popped up from Hull for a chat as part of our writing module. If I seem like I am name-dropping then I am, and make no apology for doing so. Don't forget, this was little old Scarborough and few would guess that our tiny former teaching college accommodated such a powerhouse.
Perhaps the most empowering element of our course was having constant access to rehearsal and performance facilities and being strongly encouraged to get involved in as many shows as we could. Younger students became performers for elders who were cutting their teeth in devising and directing. We always had technical support at our disposal so were free to experiment in a safe environment, presenting to a supportive audience of our contemporaries. Student shows varied from realisations of Irvine Welsh books, a show that used the James'/Brian Eno experimental album Wah-Wah as a jumping off point; a show where multicoloured paint was poured on performers and deflected using an umbrella; a one-woman carnival down Scarborough high street and a live art piece in Tesco's underground car park that involved scattered tin foil sculptures of dismembered humans, a live string quartet, me running screaming into a wall whilst blindfolded, and drenching my friend in tomato soup, wrapping him in cling-film and driving off at speed having bundled him in the boot of the car. Anything went - if you had an idea you just got on with it. This was a long way from the familiar but untouchable red velvet curtains and orchestra pit. You want to choreograph a piece for the end of year dance show and mix your own soundtrack? There's the sound desk and the dance space, the selection session's in a fortnight, we look forward to seeing what you've got - crack on!
For me, culture became an opiate I craved to the extent that I ran myself into the ground on two occasions having taken on too much, but the temptation to get involved was too extreme to bear. Memories include working through the night to make costumes for a show written by the Principal before sneaking past security and hanging lights by Tallescope at 4am for a tech that was taking place the next day and then getting up for dance warmups at 8.30am. Too much coffee and Pro Plus and too little sleep caused me to hallucinate during that heady time, but it was primarily the joy of learning and making that was intoxicating and fostered within me a strong taste for the experimental and the avant-garde.
It therefore saddens me when I hear of lukewarm or dysfunctional undergraduate courses because I got to experience such intensity and know the exhilaration of pushing boundaries alongside people who wholeheartedly share that passion. For our class, navigating this extraordinary terrain was a profound bonding experience and there are unbreakable groups of forever-friends in that photograph. Everyone should get to enjoy a similarly vibrant experience from their education as it serves as a rich resource from which to draw throughout your days. It is mind-bending to consider that this creative smorgasbord pre-dated course fees, and was therefore free to attend with the occasional small supplement for heavily discounted show tickets. Now that I am considerably older and more experienced I realise what a credit the programme was to the visionary staff team and how hard they must have worked to deliver it. I am grateful for their hunger in consistently devouring the voluminous stream of work that we generated and their stamina in making themselves available for feedback and advice.
The original group-devised graduate show that I eventually took to Edinburgh, entitled Icon, received a four star review in The Scotsman, was filmed in a nightclub for Scottish Television and was a reflection of how much my skills and tastes had developed in that concentrated three year period. Scotsgay Magazine summed up the show as 'theatre to blow the mind.' I'd say that was also a fair assessment of the Scarborough performing arts undergraduate experience from which I continue to derive much inspiration.
Much love to those of you reading this who shared the UCS ride, I know this doesn't even scratch the surface! x