Josh Roche (right) at the JMK announcement1. How does it feel to be directing a production at the Young Vic?
It’s extraordinary, a strange blend of lots of different things. Firstly you’re aware that you’re sharing the building with people like Joe Wright, Carrie Cracknell, Natalie Abrahami and Peter Brook. With that comes an awareness of a higher standard, so you push yourself and your creative team very hard to try and meet that. As for David Lan, Ben Cooper and the team that support you, they go out of their way to make you feel like any other show. They never patronise you as the young director, nor do they give you any leniency in terms of what they expect. It’s an incredibly productive, driven creative environment. Adrenalin-fuelled but worth it.
2. Who was the first person you told when you found out you had won the 2017 JMK Award?
The producer of the project, Paul Casey, and then shortly afterward our designer Sophie Thomas. By the time you reach shortlist it really feels like such a group effort, and they had put so much time into the project. It felt strange knowing, and not having told them, even for that 10 second gap while I dialled numbers.
3. How do you think this show will make audiences feel?
Hopefully it will make people think about political action, and their part within it. At the moment you can sometimes feel that you’re not entitled to speak, or act on any political belief until you’ve read every possible angle on it. There’s obviously a difference between being informed and being ignorant, but it’s also ok to act on what you think while still saying I’m not an expert, I’m a citizen, and this is what I think the world should look like. Rachel was one of those people, and it’s a message that’s getting drowned out.
4. What is it like working with actress Erin Doherty?
It’s a predictable answer but a true one - it’s been a real joy. Erin’s a workaholic, we both get invigorated by rehearsals and charged up by it. Especially when it’s a project like this. The privilege of being paid to create a play for such a theatre was evident in her face every day of rehearsal. As for her performance, she has a unique warmth and ability to welcome an audience into a private contract with just a look. It’s really something to behold and has made the production what it is.
Erin Doherty in My Name is Rachel Corrie. Photo by Ellie Kurttz5. What are you usually doing 10 minutes before the show begins?
Depends which show. For previews and press I’m usually walking around like a lost person, fidgeting and peeing a lot.
6. What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given?
The aim of working in theatre isn’t to be the hot ticket or create a ground breaking show or get written about by university students in the future. The aim is to get to the age of 80 and not be bruised by the experience.
7. Who is your ultimate hero and what would you say to them if you ever met them?
Not a hero as such but the person I am most intrigued by is Victor Serge, a french communist who was involved in the Russian Revolution. I’m no communist myself, but Serge grew up in the early 1900s on the streets in paris and lost over half of the people he knew to TB. He decided to change the world, and never gave up attempting it, even when he was exiled from Russia and fled to Mexico. He was deeply flawed, and violent, and a fanatic. But I think his fanaticism came from humanism, so he’s the one I’d like to meet. I guess I’d ask him how he retained his optimism.
8. What is your favourite play you’ve ever seen, read or worked on?
My top three are The Tempest by Cheek by Jowl, with a group of Russian actors that I saw while at University. Angels in America, which stuns me on the page and off. And the production that made me want to work in theatre, which as Hymns by Frantic Assembly.
Erin Doherty in My Name is Rachel Corrie. Photo by Ellie Kurttz9. What is the last thing that made you laugh out loud?
Dickie Beau’s production ‘Remember Me’
10. If you could have been born in any era, which would you chose and why?
I’d have been born in 1935 in California, and I’d have been friends with Greg Noll and the big wave surfers of the 1950s, who went out to the North Shore of Hawaii before any of those breaks had been discovered by the surfing tourists. They lived on the beach, ate off the fat of the land and surfed 30 foot waves all day.
11. If this was the end of Desert Island Discs and you had to pick one record to see you through, what would it be?
This is utterly impossible to answer. But the thing I can’t stop listening to at the moment is Five Variants on ‘Dives and Lazarus’, by Vaughan Williams.
Find out more about My Name is Rachel Corrie and the JMK Award here.
