HOW LIVERPOOL INSTITUTION SHAPED A GENERATION OF FAMOUS ACTORS

"If you want to change the world, you can. If you want to change the world together, you will." Those are the words Roger Hill told Everyman Youth Theatre members when he stepped down as their director in 1982. Many of the group of "misfits and renegades" who attended the Youth Theatre from 1979-1982 went on to become some of the most talented actors in the country and include David Morrissey, Ian Hart, Cathy Tyson and brothers, Mark and Steve McGann.

The Everyman Youth Theatre was founded in the late 1970s. Initially a small gathering which met away from the Everyman Theatre on Hope Street, it later moved next door to the venue and became an institution which "turned out a micro-generation of strong, powerful, committed characters in every walk of life", including film and television.

Many of the Youth Theatre's alumni would say they partially owe their success to Roger Hill, a director, performer, arts and education consultant, writer, lecturer and broadcaster who joined the organisation as associate director in 1980, when several future famous faces were just beginning to flourish. Speaking about how he came into the position, he told the ECHO: “I arrived in the autumn of 1978 but I had been running a youth theatre in Newcastle, which is where I came to Liverpool from on the back of a motorbike.

“That autumn I couldn’t find any work. I’d come to join a theatre company which completely collapsed and I found myself on the dole, and it wasn’t a good time to be on the dole in Liverpool. But I looked for work and early on I spotted that the Everyman were offering a job at the Youth Theatre, running it.

“So in that autumn, I applied and didn’t get it. It went to a woman who stayed there for about three months and then she left for the National Theatre. By the spring of 1980, I was on a job creation scheme, which was one way of getting people off the dole. The job came up for a second time and I didn’t get it. Then finally, in the November of 1980, the job came up for a third time, this time for the director. I applied and did an interview but also had to do a demonstration session up in the Youth Theatre space - as did each of the other candidates. We each had half an hour to work with the group and as a result of that, and the interview, I got the job just before Christmas 1980."

Before taking over the Everyman Youth Theatre, Roger went to see the group. He said: “The set of people who were in the Youth Theatre when I arrived were, like myself, very individualistic and quirky. When I went in to see the place just before I began to run it, it was an evening of the usual merry mayhem; people were jumping on chairs, there were others posing and preening. There was lots of laughter and strange energies, all in this rather run down old room which never got warm in the winter.

“I knew two things about the group when I met them. Firstly, there were a lot of strong characters, which didn’t surprise me as youth theatres are there for the renegades and misfits. They will be people who didn’t fit in at school, those who had their own individualities and, at times, their own sexual preferences which were distinctive. Also, people who didn’t necessarily fit in at home. In fact, for me it was a close inspection of what you might call the ‘young Scouse character’.

“Secondly, I knew that they were a clique. They were a self sustaining gathering of crazy friends - it was almost like a party. But I was there to expand the Youth Theatre beyond this set of 20-25 people. I was there to introduce the world to the Youth Theatre and the Youth Theatre to the world. That’s not to say that the members who were already there didn’t get out and about, but they came to the group for respite."

Roger continued: “There were a number of things that had to happen before you walked into the Everyman Youth Theatre. Firstly, you had to know about it, and to know about it you would probably need to talk to people on the streets or at school who knew it existed.

“Once you knew about the Youth Theatre, you then had the serious challenge of finding it. If you came to the Everyman, they probably could direct you but you’d have to go down Hope Street, turn onto Arrad Street and turn round the corner into a very dark back street where there was almost nothing.

"Somewhere along there was a set of steps and a door, and it looked about as dismal and dingy as anything. If you got that far, you probably pushed the door, but the door wouldn’t let you into the Youth Theatre - only to a set of dark stairs. You’d go up four sets of stairs and turn left, where you’d come to another door. At that point, if you had any doubts then you’ve possibly ran away - that’s if you haven’t already. Anyway, behind that last door, there’s probably a lot of noise going on of people doing crazy things - and this was before the session. If you’re on your own but you’re strong of mind, you’ll eventually push that door. If not, you may well have someone burst out, see you and you’d be swept in."

Once he took over, Roger spent the next few years increasing the size of the Youth Theatre. He continued: "We went from a Youth Theatre with about 35 people in it across two groups, to about 200 plus members. That meant more evenings, more groups, more meetings and more productions. It didn’t do the original group any harm because they became the inspirers and mentors of others. They were also allowed to take on more challenging and realistic roles."

According to Roger, there were two reasons why the Everyman Youth Theatre produced several stars of the screen during the time he was there. He said: “A lot of people wanted to be actors but not many made it. Most people in the Youth Theatre weren’t thinking about joining the profession. But if you were, you had two advantages. One of them was that you had a terrific amount of experience of being on a stage in front of audiences; it wasn’t one production a year - one year we did seven productions at Easter.

“And the other thing was that you had a certain determination and a commitment to the underdog. I know that the members who’ve gone into television and theatre don’t do things the proper way. They aren’t afraid to break the rules and are a bit renegade or misfit. They are probably never going to be Tom Hanks but they’re probably going to be Johnny Depp. There was a sense that they were going to be big in a crazy way."

He added: “If you ask me what I did, I think I spotted that and encouraged it. I ran a youth theatre where individualism was the thing. And that goes for the non-actors too, many of whom were also individualistic and also went on to find success. What we effectively turned out was a micro-generation of strong, powerful, committed characters in every walk of life."

One Everyman Youth Theatre member who became a successful actor was Ian Hart. He played the villainous Professor Quirrell in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Father Beocca in The Last Kingdom and drug dealer Carl Sweeney in Liverpool-based crime drama, The Responder.

Ian didn't want to be an actor, but one day stumbled upon the Youth Theatre "by accident". He told the ECHO: "I was outside of Probe Records one early evening. We didn’t have any money so we’d go in to look at the records and get asked to leave. Anyway, on that evening I bumped into this lad called Lawrence and I asked him where he was going. He said he was going up to the Youth Theatre and I asked him what that was. He said it was easier to just show me than explain.

“I was reluctant but I got there and thankfully Roger’s methodology was not to force people into a situation they didn’t feel comfortable in. The first week I went, I just sat on a bench at the back and watched. There were two lads from my school there, who had never mentioned being involved in acting.

"Another lad who was there was David Morrissey, who I’d gone to junior school with and lived near to me. He asked me if I was going to the next session and I told him it wasn’t for me. He asked if I would go if he got the bus with me. I went back and became more comfortable with it. It was a really mixed bag of people, about as big of a mix as you’d get anywhere in the city."

He added: “I never really wanted to be an actor - like everyone, I wanted to be in a band. It was either that or football. I was far more interested in music and that was were my focus and attention was - not that I really had any musical gift, I didn’t play anything and I didn’t have a plan of how I’d get into a band. But I just liked that kind of environment and felt more comfortable in it than I did at home."

The actor, originally from Knotty Ash, describes the Youth Theatre as an escape. He continued: “I couldn’t wait to leave the house. Any opportunity I had to go somewhere other than my own house, I took it. The Youth Theatre was a safe space and was full of broken toys. You could shout ‘I hate my mum’, but pretending to be someone else who hated their mum - not that I hated my mum, I love my mum. But it provided a place where people were not judged, were not coerced or advised to go in a certain direction or behave in a certain way.

“For me it was an escape. It was a place to be for two nights a week where I could just say whatever was on my mind - you can’t do that at school without getting detention. It allowed you a sense of personal identity which was validated. Everyone was equal and everyone was welcome."

Ian left the Everyman Youth Theatre eventually and went to college, where he joined a band. He said: "I forgot about anything else. That was it, I was going to be in a band now. I didn’t really go to lessons anymore, I went to the pub and practised with the band. That was what I’d always wanted.

“Then in about 1981, after I’d left the Youth Theatre, I bumped into Roger again. He said: ‘Have you seen that advert in the Echo?’ I said I hadn’t. He told me it was for an open audition at the Adelphi for a new TV show that Channel 4 was making called One Summer.

“So we all went up to the Adelphi, auditioned and were asked to come back in two weeks time. I went back for a second audition and a third audition. Me and Dave Morrissey got down to the last few actors and we went to Yorkshire Television who were making the show - it was the first time I’d been out of Liverpool.

"Anyway, I got a call the next Monday saying I hadn’t got the role and someone else had got it. But then the director rang me and told me I was welcome to any other parts because he thought I was good. It was a smaller part but I did that, and as a result of doing that I tried to get into drama school, but I didn’t get in.

“Then I auditioned for a play by Jim Morris called The Holiday at the Playhouse Theatre. I stayed at the theatre for 12 months and got an agent who sent me to London."

Since then, Ian has starred in many hit films and TV series. However, he says it was Roger Hill who gave him "a foot in the door". He added: "Roger gave me an opportunity to see that it wasn’t bad to have an imagination, that it wasn’t negative to have loads of ideas. All I’d had in school was conflict. The couple of years in the Youth Theatre gave me more self confidence than anything else I’ve ever been through.

"I didn’t have any money and I couldn’t have auditioned. I’d seen maybe one play ever and that was on the TV. The fact that auditioning wasn’t a bar to getting into the Youth Theatre, and that it only cost pennies to get in, was hugely important. It was perfect for young people who couldn’t access other things."

Gerry Potter is an author, poet, playwright, actor and director. He is also the creator and destroyer of Chloe Poems.

Gerry trained at Liverpool’s Everyman Youth Theatre and National Museums Liverpool lists him among the city’s leading LGBTQIA+ icons. His autobiographical poetry-theatre show, My Scouse Voice, was performed by Fenella Fielding at Liverpool’s Unity Theatre, and a portrait documentary film, My Name is Gerry Potter, premiered at Homotopia.

The poet calls the Everyman Youth Theatre "the fifth Beatle" and says that he mightn't be alive if it wasn't for his time there, which he claims pulled him out of the "depths of despair". Talking to the ECHO, he said: “Before I joined the Everyman, I was a broken human being. I was a camp kid in the middle of Scotland Road - and Scotland Road was doing me no favours at all. I was just too broken to do anything or look forward to life in any way - I was possibly suicidal actually. It was a place where, if you were camp, you were just battered to the ground, literally, and your voice would be mocked all the time.

“I’d left school at 15 and had nothing in my view at all - I had a kind of inkling that I wanted to be an actor on some level but I had no idea how to do it. That was until one day in 1979, when I was 16 and I finally found the Youth Theatre." He continued: “A couple of my cousins went to its junior group, which I wasn't really aware of, and their parent said: ‘Gerry, will you take them to the Everyman?’ I said: ‘The Everyman? What for?’ They told me there’s ‘this youth theatre thing’. So I went and it was absolutely mind-blowing; somehow I joined in and I thought ‘what the flying f**k is this? What does this mean? What’s this place where people come and run around like kids?’

“I was asked to come to the next session which was on the Tuesday. I thought it was all going to be adults and full of far-off actors and things, but it was exactly the same! It was just 16-21 year olds acting exactly like the junior group, running around camp, wild, outrageous, punky, races mixed. I’d just come from a nightmare scenario and I'd come through these double doors and arrived in this sort of Alice in Wonderland-like place. I shrank to about an inch and thought: ‘What’s this? Does this exist in Liverpool?’ I joined in but I can’t remember it because I was genuinely in too much shock."

After his first session, Gerry was given a script to take home but says he "didn’t quite know what had happened". He said: "I didn’t realise that people who were 16-21 could not only get on so well together, but just be so liberated and so colourful. No one gave a flying f**k about anything except having a good time."

He added: "It was completely new to me so if they hadn’t given me the script I wouldn’t have gone the next Thursday, been pulled into it and cast into a street-theatre production. That was the day my life changed forever, on a scale that I can’t even begin to explain.

“I was a beaten-down outsider and suddenly I'd arrived at a place where not only was my camp voice listened to, but it was brought into the conversation - I’d never, ever experienced that before. My voice was listened to, my jokes were funny and I was able to speak freely, which was just an absolute revelation to me. I thought I was ugly, and all of a sudden I was attractive - that had never happened before either."

Gerry said that during the first production he appeared in at the Everyman Youth Theatre was the first time he realised he was "any good at anything." He said: "We did this Victorian melodrama street theatre and I was the narrator, dressed in a Sherlock Holmes cape and blue tights; I was playing a character that wasn’t like me - who was posh - and I was able to do it! I never, ever knew that was part of who I was.

“I found a confidence that I never knew I had. I found a best friend called Brian King - who was even camper than I was - and suddenly we became this double act within all this madness, which everyone really enjoyed. The world that I thought was tiny, horrific, beating and violent was actually enormous, kaleidoscopic and wondrous, and I could be part of that world - and indeed was.

"And I’m not blowing my own trumpet but I was even a figurehead in that place - I was in the top tier of it. I never thought that someone like me could actually be good at theatre, drama and funny voices; I never realised that I could be good at anything - and that meant everything to me. Not only that, I was surrounded by people who were also good at the same thing."

Gerry says that the Youth Theatre taught him, in the space of a few weeks, more than he'd ever learned in school and that he still uses the skills he picked up there - such as improvisation - in everything he does today. He said: “I spent three years at the Youth Theatre and I was attached to the Everyman for about 10 years, becoming the director eventually. But in my first six weeks at the Youth Theatre, I learned far more than I’d ever learned at school.

“I don’t know where I’d be without the Youth Theatre because, before I found it, I was so shy and so unable to do the world - every time I went for a job I’d be laughed at for my voice - so without it, I have no idea what I’d be - I might not be alive. And that sounds crazy but it’s true because the effect it has had on me is profound. I’ve never let go of what it taught me. For example, whatever I do now, including my poetry, isn’t based on some dusty library somewhere where I’ve read about the greats. It’s based on those three years where improvisation was everything."

He added: “Whatever I do always goes back to what the Youth Theatre taught me. We were given the best of the best teachers in people like Roger Hill - although they’d hate it if you use the word ‘teacher’. I’ve never been to university or that sort of thing, but I’ve had great moments in life and performed in front of 80,000 people at festivals and stuff like that, but none of that comes near to what the Youth Theatre did for me and my head, or how it helped me find value in the world and in people."

Many of the Everyman Youth Theatre's "class of '79" went on to enjoy success in the acting world, among them Steve McGann and Ian Hart. Gerry says that they were the last to be taught what he calls "anarcho-theatre", the style of theatre practiced by the the class teachers Ken Campbell and Roger Hill. He describes this as "theatre based on the evolving anarchies of the times: hippy, punk, political anarchy. Ripping up the rule books and starting again. Looking at new oddball, different ways of doing things and doing them."

Gerry continued: "There were a lot of people in our particular group who went on to do ‘big things’ - whatever that means. I do think we were given possibly the best people to work with. For example, Roger Hill who I mentioned before, and Ken Campbell. We were just surrounded by these vibrant personalities. I mean, a lot of people just went to be teenagers and cop off, but there were those of us who saw the energy of it and just got it. I think we got the last of what anarcho-theatre looked like and we loved it!"

2024-09-15T16:08:08Z dg43tfdfdgfd