Ibraheem Toure, Emma Tracey and Sophia Papadopoulos are starting their stage careers.
Ibraheem Toure, Emma Tracey and Sophia Papadopoulos are starting their stage careers.
Three of nine recent graduates appearing in the RSC's new take on Henry VI on their difficulties at drama school and their big ambitions.
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Few people in theatre were as badly affected by the Covid-19 pandemic as drama school students. Thousands of aspiring actors at training institutions across the country were abruptly robbed of the traditional experience. Their productions were pulled, their classes cancelled, their showcases moved online – and they graduated into an industry on its knees.
In response to this, the Royal Shakespeare Company ringfenced nine roles in its current production of Henry VI: Rebellion – a reworked version of Henry VI Part II, directed by Owen Horsley – for recent drama school graduates. Over 100 were invited to take part in RSC workshops, before an audition process whittled that number down to nine. Here, The Crush Bar meets three of them.
At 22, Ibraheem Toure is the youngest member of the Henry VI: Rebellion cast.
He grew up in North London, and first learned to love performing through music – “Mainly calypso, reggae and samba, which is still a massive part of my life,” he explains – before discovering theatre at school. He auditioned for drama school at 18, received a deferred offer from East 15 Acting School, and decided to do American Studies at the University of East Anglia instead, rather than wait a year.
“I wanted to live on my own and experience independence,” Toure says. “I got to the second term, was doing fine and getting all the marks I needed, but I just didn’t enjoy it. I wasn’t passionate about it like I was passionate about drama. I finished that year, went back to East 15, and asked if my place was still there. They said it was, and that was that.”
Covid-19 struck mid-way through Toure’s second year of training. “It was devastating,” he says. “We were rehearsing for a production of Chekhov’s The Seagull and I was playing Trigorin, which is an awesome part, but we never got to do it. Then, I got the lead in our third-year show. I was so excited, but because of the restrictions there were only four people in the audience.”
“I think anyone that graduated over the last two years has been conditioned to expect things not to happen,” he continues. “So much of acting is sitting around waiting to hear back from auditions, waiting for the phone to ring, and the pandemic has trained us for that. We are more resilient and stronger, too, though, and it has definitely made us hungrier.”
“Anyone that graduated over the last two years has been conditioned to expect things not to happen…”
Toure graduated last summer. Appearing in Henry VI: Rebellion at the RSC will be his first professional stage appearance, but he has already been busy making work through Piece Of Cake, a theatre company he runs with fellow East 15 graduate Shakira Newton. In March, they co-created The Route, a Bush Theatre community production celebrating the Notting Hill Carnival, and later this month Newton will make her debut with solo show Things I Can Laugh About Now at Brixton House.
“Piece Of Cake stands for POC, which stands for People Of Colour,” Toure explains. “We are trying to hold up those voices that are not usually heard within our industry. We did an online monologue slam showcase during lockdown. We’ve devised, facilitated and directed with the Bush Theatre, which was brilliant and so humbling. Shakira has her show soon. I’m at the RSC. We have some other projects coming up, too. It’s exciting.”
What do you want to do and what help do you need to get there?
“I want to do new writing. I want to be in a play that is published, and for my name to be there in the cast list at the front of the book. I want to play a part that no-one has played before, and make brand new choices.
I’d also love to do more Shakespeare, though. I’d love to play Cassius or Brutus in Julius Caesar. I love opinionated, argumentative parts like that. It’s very important to me that I get to express my opinions.”
This is actually Emma Tracey’s second time performing with the RSC.
In 2016, Erica Whyman’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream toured the UK, with amateur companies joining the cast to play the Mechanicals at each stop. Tracey took over the role of Starveling when the show reached Glasgow.
“It was the most insane adventure, and it is actually the reason I applied to drama schools in England,” says Tracey. “I had applied to the one drama school we have in Scotland, but they kept rejecting me. I did a diploma at Glasgow Clyde College instead. Then, after A Midsummer Night’s Dream, I decided to apply to drama schools in England, and ended up getting into two.”
Born and raised in Paisley, outside of Glasgow, Tracey’s first love was writing – “I wrote a full novel when I was eleven, which will never see the light of day because it was terrible,” she remembers – before her ambitions turned to journalism, then drama. “I realised I just liked telling stories, and that I get the most out of telling them on stage,” she says.
“I would love to work in Scotland. That is my dream. That is the theatre I grew up with…”
After A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Tracey spent three years on The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama’s collaborative and devised theatre course, which is run in partnership with Complicite, and which furnished her with “the skills to go and make my own stuff, rather than waiting for my agent to call.” The pandemic struck in Tracey’s third year, just before she graduated in 2020.
“It was terrifying, because the pathways for where you go after graduation just disappeared,” she says. “I count myself one of the lucky ones in hindsight, though, as I’d finished all my training, and only missed out on doing an in-person showcase. I was lucky, too, because I had an agent interested in me from quite early on, and she’s been amazing.”
After graduating, Tracey endured “seven months of nannying” before the work started to come in – an audiobook job, a role in Eliza Gearty’s About Money at Theatre503, a part in upcoming HBO series The Nevers, and now her second appearance with the RSC in Henry VI: Rebellion.
“It’s been a bit incredible,” she says. “This is such a lovely, supportive, caring company, and Owen has been an absolute joy. He cultivates such a joyous room where you can have a laugh while you do the work. The plays have very serious themes and violent bits in them, but you always wake up in the morning feeling really happy that you get to work on them.”
What do you want to do and what help do you need to get there?
“I would love to work in Scotland. That is my dream. I’d love to work with the National Theatre of Scotland and the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow. I’d love to work with writers and directors like Zinnie Harris and David Greig.
That is the theatre I grew up with, and I’d love to be part of it, so if anyone working the Scottish theatre industry is reading this, then get in touch.”
It took five years of auditions for Sophia Papadopoulos to earn a place at drama school.
Born and raised in Kent, she never seriously considered a career in theatre until her third year at the University of Leeds, where she studied English and drama. “The course itself was quite theoretical, but I got involved in student drama,” she remembers. “I realised that acting was what I really liked doing. I was quite an anxious kid, and acting was a way of getting out of my own head.”
Papadopoulos auditioned for drama school straight after graduating, but didn’t get in. She took a corporate marketing job, and tried again the following year, and the year after that, and the year after that. “After a couple of tries, you do start to think that you just aren’t good enough,” she says. “But something just changed in me in the fifth year.”
“I just thought, ‘You know what? I’m going to go into this audition and have a good time,’” she continues. “I walked in feeling happy, and not apologising for being there. I think that made a big difference. I think they could feel that energy in me. I think that is why I got in, to be honest.”
“I’ve learned that it is okay to play around with stuff, and try things out, and get things wrong…”
Papadopoulos spent two years at LAMDA, training on the school’s MFA in professional acting. Only the first half of her first year was unimpacted by the pandemic. From March 2020 onwards, it was “very on and off”, a mixture of Zoom classes, socially-distanced in-person sessions, curtailed rehearsal periods and online showcases.
“It was a bit like, ‘Oh, this wasn’t what I’d been hoping for all this time,’” Papadopoulos says. “And, yeah, maybe I didn’t grow as much as I wanted to in some respects, but I think I also learned a lot of skills that I wouldn’t have learned without the pandemic – self-creating stuff, working with cameras and screens, and self-discipline. If it’s just you at home, you have to make yourself to a warm-up in the morning.”
Performing in Henry VI: Rebellion with the RSC is Papadopoulos’ first professional credit since graduating in 2021. It has, she says, been an “amazing experience” and a big learning curve, thanks to the rest of the cast and crew being “really generous with their time.”
“In the past, I have been very guilty of getting in my own head and getting in my own way,” she says. “This rehearsal room has given me the confidence not to worry about that. From watching and listening to the other actors, I’ve learned that it is okay to play around with stuff, and try things out, and get things wrong. It’s been really good for me.”
What do you want to do and what help do you need to get there?
Is it too bold to say all of it? There are so many things you can do as an actor, from stage to screen, from classics to new writing to creating your own work. I want to do all of it. I want to be around for a while.
At the moment, the most helpful thing would be getting an agent. I would love representation. Don’t get me wrong, I know it isn’t essential and that not having representation can allow you to write and create your own work, but it does open doors faster. I definitely wouldn’t say no.
Henry VI: Rebellion runs at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon until May 28. For more details, click here.
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Fergus Morgan