What drives me... (part 2)
When I was at school, Drama was where we threw chairs at the supply teacher. Actually that’s not quite true. I’d brought in my apron in order to play the character of BUTCHER because I loved it. The lessons were chaotic and nightmarish. There was no pattern of discovery or illumination and learning success was measured by how long it took for the teacher to weep. It was pretty grim. But it was the mid-eighties, and school was grim then anyway.
My Dad wouldn’t let me study Theatre at ‘A’ level because it was a useless career path and so I found myself studying English Language and Literature which had the resultant effect of me of waking up under the leafy domes of Bretton Hall College in Yorkshire. The degree was English with Inter Arts. They’d never ratify it now. It was absolutely brilliant. I got to study Hanif Kureshi, Bruce Springsteen, Arthurian Legends, Film Noir, Allan Ginsberg, Dennis Potter, Thomas Hardy, Mike Leigh, Bill Shakespeare, Werner Herzog, Angela Carter, Harold Pinter, Caryl Churchill, ‘Apocalypse Now’ and other really great stuff. It opened my head up to the endless corridors and passageways around the building we call the arts.
Cannily, three-fifths of my degree by the time I graduated, was seated in the study of Drama. I didn’t tell my Dad that until years later.
"The pupils would lap it up. So would I."
Accidentally becoming a teacher was a plague in the mid nineties. You couldn’t move for non-vocational graduates shockingly realising that their degree in Chaucer Studies did not have a lot to offer the world of big business. One of my friends was on the dole for six months until she got a job behind the glass at the job centre. I found myself still at Bretton embarking on a PGCE in secondary English and Drama.
My first post was as a teacher of English and Drama at the school in Wakefield. I enjoyed it and learned loads from my Head of Drama, Liz Gaughan, about process Drama and how rich my lessons could be if I employed these tactics within other teaching areas, particularly English. The pupils would lap it up. So would I.
In 1996 I asked my Head for some additional responsibility. He said there wasn’t any money left in the budget. He hadn’t heard my question properly. I left.