Amit Sharma has been Graeae’s associate director since 2011, but he first made contact with the 35 year old theatre company when he was 19 years old and attended its Missing Piece training programme for actors back in 2000.
After an extensive career as an actor, he turned to directing. As well as co-directing the outdoor spectacle Prometheus Awakes – the first large-scale outdoor production to be artistically led by Deaf and disabled people in the UK, he directed Ted Hughes’ The Iron Man which toured both nationally and internationally. He also co-directed Graeae’s Rhinestone Rollers in Sequins and Snowballs with Jenny Sealey at the Southbank Centre.
His directing skills are attracting praise for Jack Thorne’s powerful play The Solid Life of Sugar Water, a co-production with Theatre Royal Plymouth. The production has just been given the Euan’s Guide Award for the most accessible show at the Edinburgh Fringe. Sharma speaks candidly to Joy Francis about the worrying impact the abolition of the Independent Living Fund is having on Deaf and disabled artists, and explains why Graeae is championing new writing regionally with leading theatre companies.
The Solid Life of Sugar Water, which you direct, had a great audience response during the previews in Plymouth, and it is now playing to more acclaim at the Edinburgh Festival. For those who haven’t seen it, what is it about?
It’s about a couple who are trying to have sex for the first time after experiencing a stillbirth. They way they do that is by remembering past events and key moments of why they were together, intermixed with the experience they had that night in the hospital when they lost their baby. It is delivered in monologue form by two wonderful actors. We have produced it with Theatre Royal Plymouth.
What attracted you to the Jack Thorne penned play?
Jack is such an incredible writer and his work speaks for itself. The idiosyncratic nature of how he writes characters is very clear and dynamic. When I first saw the script I thought: When is Graeae putting on this play as it is so exciting? Luckily, we have been able produce it. The characters are well rounded. There is laughter, sadness and a real journey in their development to try and find their love for each other. Jack has captured that incredibly well in a poetic and devastating way.
You’ve been Graeae’s associate director since 2011, but your relationship with the 35 year old company goes back to 2000 when you attended Graeae’s Missing Piece training course for actors. Planned or fortuitous?
I’ve always had an interested eye around the directing form when I was performing. During the course I’d ask the director about the role. Having been an actor and then a director, I’ve pick up a lot of the qualities of the directors I’ve worked with. I really enjoy working with actors and trying to create a piece from nothing. With Sugar Water, there is very little stage direction in the text, yet Jack captures the heart of a particular moment very well. This gave me the freedom to explore options with Jack. As for Graeae, it is home for me. I was on a film, media and video production course at Buckinghamshire University when I saw an advert for actors to train at Graeae. I was 19 and I didn’t fully understand what the word disabled meant, in the social model sense. Graeae has made me grow up and turned me into the man I am now. We create strong, interesting and dynamic work using a fully accessible way of working, not only for our performers, writers or directors, but for our audiences. We use sign langue, creative captioning and audio description to create theatre with a very interesting form. You can attend any of our shows and you will have a fully accessible experience, and we are very proud of that.
You co-directed Prometheus Awakes, the first large-scale outdoor production to be artistically-led by Deaf and disabled people in the UK. As well as being an achievement, it also highlights how few opportunities there are for Deaf and disabled actors, directors and writers.
There has been a slow shift in how Deaf and disabled artists are now seen by theatre companies, who perhaps haven’t worked with disabled artists in the past. Prometheus Awakes was an ambitious project. It was outdoors. We had 90 people working on that show, over half of whom identified as Deaf and disabled, and it was rehearsed in four days with different access requirements. It was a real achievement and it was executed to an incredibly high standard. Sometimes there is a concern that you will need more money to hire a disabled person. Even if that is the case, we don’t ask ‘can we afford the designer?’ or ‘can we afford a movement director?’ If it is intrinsic to the piece, then the budgets can work. Graeae, alongside many Deaf and disabled-led companies, is leading the way to get a lot more artists into the mainstream world. Genevieve Barr, who is in Sugar Water, has been on lTV and she is Bafta nominated. I’m not quite convinced that would have happened 10 to 15 years ago. The New Wolsey Theatre, Birmingham Rep, Nottingham Playhouse and Theatre Royal Plymouth are among the theatres which recognise there is a talent pool out there, but it’s not easy with the ILF (Independent Living Fund) being cut.
Graeae is part of the Act for Change project, and your artistic director Jenny Sealey said that she was “pissed off” at the treatment of disabled actors, directors and playwrights, and the fact that “disabled actors can’t even get through the doors to have a career”. What needs to change?
It’s also about training. There is a lot of uncertainty around the Disabled Students’ Allowance. It may be cut or be reduced. What this says to students is don’t aim too high as there is not enough money to go around. We have a programme called Ensemble for 16-25 year olds, which we are in the process of shortlisting for. Year one is for those based in London. The reason we set up this programme is to show there is an opportunity for a Deaf or disabled person who is at school or college who has the same aspiration as their non-disabled counterpart to be an actor or director. Why can’t the same ambitions be had by disabled young people?
Graeae is also committed to developing new writers through your Write to Play programme. Where are you at currently with it?
Write to Play supports five writers over a year. We partner up with three leading UK theatres. We are now in year three in the North East of England, and we are working with the West Yorkshire Playhouse, Live Theatre Newcastle and Hull Truck Theatre. The participants have a dedicated one to one mentor who is a leading playwright, a week’s development of what is playwriting with two leading playwrights teaching them and masterclasses from practitioners in the industry. They also have the chance to do small scratch performances leading up to writing a full draft of a play. The plays are just fantastic, but we have to decide which one to go with out of the five. It is a difficult conversation to have.
What next for you?
We have a couple of commissions on the go, which haven’t come to production just yet. I lead on the Write to Play programme and we are interviewing to find the final five for the programme. I would love for Sugar Water to have a full tour. It’s just a great piece of work. My directing aside, we have some cracking actors and the writing is just superb. The play touches on a subject not a lot of people talk about, but most people know someone who has been through the experience. Stillbirth isn’t a conversation that is openly discussed.
The Solid Life of Sugar Water is playing at the Pleasance Theatre in Edinburgh until 30 August 2015.