Theatre Archive Project
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THEATRE ARCHIVE PROJECT http://sounds.bl.uk Julia Imogen Magnus Interviewed by Tara Bennett Tuesday 19 November 2013 Julia Magnus Arcola Theatre; Almeida Theatre; BBC; budget and cuts to theatre; Channel 4; Sean Connery; design; Dublin Gate Theatre; English National Opera; experimental theatre; Folkestone Theatre; fringe theatre; Front Row – radio; future of theatre; Christopher Hampton; Sheila Hancock; historical research; Italian prisoners of war; Kaleidoscope – radio; Margaret Lockwood; Keith Michell; opera; Elaine Paige; Peter Pan; Jim Parker; Plenty - Meryl Streep; Tony Robinson; Sadler’s Wells Theatre; Scott of the Antarctic; sexism and racism in the theatre; Martin Shaw; David Suchet; Wendy Toye; weekly rep; White City; Wimbledon Art and Design College; Unicorn Theatre TB: How would you say your upbringing affected your desire to enter the theatre? JM: Living in London with theatre going on all around me and being aware of my older brothers and sisters going, and me wanting to do what they were doing, and also to do it professionally eventually, in some form. TB: Were you surrounded by people that were in the same professions growing up and would you say that that influenced you greatly or do you think that that would have been inevitable anyway? JM: Not by actors or directors, I don’t think, but yes, by art and design, and because I loved the theatre so much that was the combination of the two, was to train to be a theatre designer. TB: Can you remember a key moment in your, when you were growing up that made you want to - an actual moment where you thought ‘this is for me’, or any particular plays that you saw that made you inspired? [1.03] JM: When I was at primary school I was really taken by a play that was set up, with the lighting, I just thought it transformed everything into another world. So that would’ve been up until, that would’ve been about when I was aged, aged ten, nine, ten. But going to the theatre I went to the young people’s http://sounds.bl.uk Page 1 of 16 Theatre Archive Project theatre, the Unicorn Theatre, that’s right, in Newport Street, and it was an alternative pantomime which I thought was wonderful, but my godmother who took me thought it was awful and took me out in the interval. I was absolutely furious, but I couldn’t say anything. And then I think I mentioned that I saw Julia Lockwood in Peter Pan, she played Peter Pan, and her mother, Margaret Lockwood, the famous film star, played her mother, and that, I can still to this day remember the design, the lighting, the whole atmosphere once the curtains had opened. Oh, I remember when Oliver! opened in the West End, the very, very first production, and my sister, who was four years older than me was taken and I wasn’t and I, to this day still, felt completely left out. So those are the very early memories, going to the theatre as much, and cinema as well, and watching black and white films on the television at home and being transfixed by all the glamour of that. TB: Were you ever tempted to go into acting rather than design? [2.40] JM: Well, I used to put on plays with my friends which I directed and inevitably had the star role, but I don’t recall that they were particularly successful, but we would rope everybody in the neighbourhood to come and watch and charge them money. But no, acting wasn’t my thing and when I went to art school to do theatre design we had to do quite a lot of acting because roles had to be filled and I really didn’t like it at all I was very unhappy. But there was one thing at college that I did act which I enjoyed, it was when I finally graduated, the graduating year, the third year had to do a show, a comic show, for the rest of the college and we did a skit on the royal family and I played Princess Margaret. TB: Can you tell me any more about your time at theatre college? JM: Okay, I did a two year foundation course in art, which was where you tried your hand at any type of art, whether it be printmaking, sculpture, pottery, fashion, whatever, but even at the beginning I knew I wanted to be a theatre designer and so I was sort of thrown between different departments. And then I got a place at Wimbledon College of Art, which at that point was the two, was one of two places in London that did a degree in theatre design… What was your question? Oh, at college yes. And it was a three year course. There were some amazing projects. I remember once we all had to design - there were 19 of us in a year - and we all had to design a play by Christopher Hampton which had just happened at the Royal Court, and when it came to our final crits the, the professor, the head of department arranged for Christopher Hampton and the two leading actors to come and do the crit for us. None of us knew this was going happen and there we were with the playwright, which was pretty http://sounds.bl.uk Page 2 of 16 Theatre Archive Project amazing, I’ll never forget that, that was great. What other plays? What other parts? Well, it was one project after another. I don’t think I was in the top lot of the designers, but it was very instructive. I didn’t get much of a grant, so during the holidays, and in the evenings after college I used to work in the theatre, and the evening work was as a dresser at English National Opera. So I got a real education in opera every night. And then in the longer holidays I would go and work in the production offices of English National Opera and I went down to Chichester Theatre and I was an assistant designer to the designer there, before I left college, working on particular productions. And one of those productions starred the man who plays Baldrick – a lovely actor, not particularly well known - Tony Robinson and Elaine Paige was in that production, various people who’ve come to the fore. I learnt lots of things prior to leaving college which was real theatre. So that actually not having much of a grant had its benefits because I started to make a lot of contacts, which other students weren’t making in quite the same way because I had to work. And one of my first jobs when I left college after I’d done weekly rep, a season in weekly rep, was to actually co-design a show at Chichester Theatre. TB: What was the show? JM: Ah, what was it called? Oh gosh. I can’t remember the name of it, I’m sorry. I’ll have to look in up on my CV, it was sort of part two of the one I’d already done, which was an alternative Christmas show. I can’t remember really any of the names of people who were in it, but I can remember faces. But before that I’d done a whole season of weekly rep at Folkestone Theatre and I got that job because the man who ran it with his father had been stage manager at Chichester, so it was all through contacts, nothing formal like an interview or a CV or anything. And we had to design one show a week, I had to design one show a week. The actors had to learn a new show and then perform in the previous show every night. We had a changeover night on Wednesdays when the scenery from the old show came down. Is that what you’re interested in? TB: Yeah. JM: And then we put up the new scenery and then I would be left alone in the theatre to paint anything that needed painting at the last minute, rearrange anything, and I would usually spend the night in the theatre on my own every week. When I think about it now it’s really scary, being in this enormous place, on my own for a whole night. But that happened lots of times in the theatre, I remember being in Sadler’s Wells Theatre overnight many times. And sometimes I would want to have a kip and I used to have to hide from the security man. I’d hide in a cupboard when he came round. Then when he’d gone http://sounds.bl.uk Page 3 of 16 Theatre Archive Project I’d come out, carry on working, then I’d go and sleep in one of the dressing rooms, just to get the work done. It was too late to go home. Anyway, so back to weekly rep, we did a new show every week and they were quite safe shows because, it wasn’t expec… anything unusual in Folkestone. We’d never do anything like Beckett or even John Osborne or… it was safe things like Noel Coward and Agatha Christie. Various plays that were doing rep theatre at that time, nothing scandalous, and we would have a core group of actors: the male lead, female lead, juvenile male lead, juvenile female lead and then character actors and a director, a stage, stage managers who would do walk-on parts, and occasionally people would come in to do special parts.