WILL STEELE, PUPPETEER – A GLIMPSE INTO THE LIFE OF A PROFESSIONAL ARTIST.

As part of our almost regular series of ‘Alumni and Friends’ profiles, we were fortunate enough to spend some time with Will Steele recently. Will was a student at Richmond school from 1998 – 2005 and has had a fascinating journey from then to where he is now – a professional puppeteer. 

At the start of his visit we toured the school site. Will’s memory of the exact orientation of the old buildings, even down to remembering precisely where an old doorway had been situated, was uncannily photographic. It was a genuine privilege to hear Will’s candid reminiscences – he clearly wasn’t an easy student to teach!

Will is an intense, eloquent individual whose mind seems capable of holding on to many trains of thought at once. On more than one occasion during our wide ranging conversation, I was reminded of the traditional tortured artist, at conflict with their inner selves! It made for a fascinating afternoon.

Below are some of the highlights from our conversation, broadly following Will’s journey through school, up to the present day.

Tell us about school – what are your abiding memories?

W: I didn’t enjoy school until I was about 14 – into my GCSEs. I remember trying to find out who my group of friends was, who I could function with. Once I’d worked that out I started to enjoy things a bit more.

Some of my teachers stand out. An English teacher in Year 7, for example – he had wild hair. I always loved English because I loved reading. In fact I used to skive lessons, not to go and swim in the river, but to read books!

I started to enjoy the social aspect of school from my GCSEs into my A levels and had more brilliant teachers – Mr. Hesleton. Strange, funny and very honest. You always knew he thought hard about any questions you asked. He never tried to hide behind the ‘teacher persona’. That was really important to me. 

Classics was great too – Mr. Brettell, Mrs. Byrom, but one of the big standout things for me was that we used to do our A-level drama lessons in the Georgian Theatre. Being outside the sometimes strangely sterile environment of school and to be steeped in the history of that place was liberating. The workshops and spaces I’ve worked in since have always been covered from floor to ceiling in stuff – like living in your own mind. Working in the Georgian, leaning against 400 year old beams, feeling the history of the place, just made it so much easier to feel and be creative.

And you also studied politics? During our tour you mentioned that you maybe weren’t the easiest student in that context. In fact you mentioned the term ‘firebrand’! You were outspoken and sparky and challenging – was that something you kept through your A Levels?

W: Ha. I certainly made my views heard during those politics lessons! 

I think when I’d been in the Sixth Form for a bit I knew who I was and so did the teaching staff. They knew that I might be loud and speak my mind and be a bit bizarre, but they knew I wouldn’t cause major problems. They also knew that I was the person to choose if they wanted something read out loud dramatically. For example, in Classics we took it in turns reading sections of the Odyssey out loud as a class. People hated doing it. At some points the teacher just asked everyone whether they minded if I read the whole chapter. Nobody did and I loved it!

Another standout during Sixth Form was a play that we put on. Marat / Sade by Peter Weiss. It was incredibly weird and ambitious, but our drama teacher was determined to make it work – she even took us to Preston to see it. We performed it at the Georgian Theatre. Miss Demkiw was great. She thought the final A-level piece that I wrote and we performed was good enough to be seen more widely – she booked us in at the Harrogate Youth Theatre Awards – nothing to do with the A-level, she just decided to do it!

So, after A levels – what happened next? You got good results – UCAS, university?

W: I applied to do English Language at Newcastle, but didn’t get in. I went up to Newcastle anyway and got a job working full time in a bar. I looked at renting, but it was just impossible. I was earning £280 per week, rent for a room in a flat was going to be £600 per month. After travel, I was going to be working full time for £100 a month. Totally unsustainable.

I came back to Richmond at Christmas and got chatting to one of the technicians at the Georgian Theatre – Adrian. He was great – I basically asked if I could work for him and he just said yes. I ended up being his second for the rest of that year, until I saw that Northumbria had just started running a course called Drama and Scriptwriting. English Language was the smart move, but my original idea was to be a writer and write films – this course was perfect. I applied and got onto the course – it was run by a scriptwriter who’d written for Eastenders and done some big West End plays – he was good!

Sounds ideal. How was it, how did it go?

W: Unfortunately for my lecturers I was as difficult there as I was here! As opinionated and challenging. One memory is at the end of the course discussing one of my written assessments. I was told I shouldn’t keep using my opinions, but base my work on evidence and academic reading. I told them I was going to keep doing it my way, as this was a creative media course. They told me that I’d therefore continue to get poor marks. Fair enough! My practical work was always good, so it balanced out at a 2:1. I’d do better if I did the course now!

It was quite a mad time, in retrospect. We were young and making art. We were lunatics! Just a short time ago I was asked to visit Newcastle College by a lecturer to see some student work and it was crazy! Totally over the top, but that’s the emotional reality for people of that age – emotional, angry, depressed. I was like that then. I actually wrote a piece around then that nearly got out on Radio 4. They liked the way it was written, but said it was just too sad. Looking back at the post-apocalyptic nightmare of the piece, I can’t really blame them!

So, an eventful, formative time at university, ending up with a 2:1 in Drama and Scriptwriting. What happened next?

W: Ok. To talk about what happened next, I have to mention one of the most important experiences of my life. During my first year one of my lecturers mentioned he was reading a book – Improvisation and the Theatre by Keith Johnstone. He said he thought we should read it. I remember buying it at Waterstones in Newcastle and starting to read it on the train home. As soon as I got home I went out into the garden and kept reading. I only stopped when I’d finished the book. It was an absolute revelation – for the first time in my life I was able to say: “I’m not a crazy person.” The book deals with the human condition, but not in grand terms. In the context of learning how to improvise, the author explains how genuine divergent, child-like thinking disappears in adulthood as people try to fit into society. It was like therapy to me, but fun. 

So, straight after university I got a job as a security guard. I’d worked as a doorman before – kicking people out of clubs and breaking up fights. Then I got a job with the Newcastle Metro – driving around at night locking up the stations after the last trains. During my last year at uni, Cormac Power, one of my lecturers, had emailed me telling me about a workshop in London on trance mask improvisation – one of the techniques in Keith Johnstone’s book. I had to go. I did the course and had what I can only describe as a strange and mystical experience, but it informed my final year project – we made masks and taught this technique. This led to what happened next – I went to train at the Danish Institute of Improvisation.

It was incredibly intense and rewarding, but didn’t lead to anything career-wise. At this time I started to realise what it takes to make a living from the arts. You need to be useful. You need a huge range of skills. As an actor, for example, you need to be able to improvise, you need clowning skills, you need to be able to play more than one instrument. You need to be easy to work with. If you’re not, there are other people who are. And that’s just if you want to perform. If you want to create something, you need to be able to produce – you need to be able to organise people and budgets, timelines and resources. You need to know how and where to apply for funding. If not, it’s not going to happen. The problem is that most art isn’t commercially successful. 

What about puppetry – no mention of that so far, even though that’s what you’re doing now!

W: Puppetry came from the masked improvisation that we were doing. It was related to mime and clowning – full body work – how you move. I always really enjoyed this aspect of the work and I found that I was able to do it subconsciously – I could find the right frame of mind and it would happen. Anyway, still in Denmark. We were watching this show on BBC 3 – Mongrels – very rude, very funny, done beautifully with big muppet style puppets. I absolutely loved it. It turns out that one of the puppeteers on the show – Iestyn Evans – was attending a mask course in London. I ended up going and hassling him for a job – I said I’d work for free for a month. He said two weeks. I tried to be useful, but probably wasn’t. They gave me things to do to keep me occupied and I ended up making things – including puppets.

Around this time I went on a puppetry course run by Rene Baker. This was totally different from the puppetry I’d seen before – it was more like dance. I started becoming aware of different types of puppetry and the fact that the demand for puppetry was increasing, especially for working with young people. Young people relate to puppets better than they do to adults. They’re much more prepared to open up to an inanimate object than they are to an adult human! Things started to coalesce. My puppetry, improvisation, practical making skills – the work I’d been doing on mental health and psychology. I started to know the answers to questions people asked me. Can you build a workshop? Yes. Can you run a course? Yes. Can you put on a large scale theatre show that sells out and needs more dates? Yes!

At this point I’d never thought about applying for funding from the Arts Council, but an amazing person, Natalie Querol, an Arts Council Relationship Manager, persuaded me to. I managed to get £5000 which paid for me to go to the Curious School of Puppetry for three months. After that I started teaching at Newcastle college and found I had a real gift for teaching puppetry. I could just do it and make it work for others, really quickly and efficiently.

As well as the teaching and many other ongoing projects, workshops, work with schools and young people, productions and performances, I was involved in setting up an open space project called Space Six. This was an affordable rehearsal space designed to support performing artists in the North East. There was just nothing like it in the area – we ran it for eight years.

I’m sure you could talk in depth and with great passion about the projects that you’ve been involved with over the years, but let’s bring things up to date – what are you doing now, and plans for the future?

W: Currently I’m the artistic director of Life and Limb puppets. We have a well regarded piece of puppetry and visual theatre that’s just finished touring – Dragon. We describe it as ‘An epic tale of a child coming to grips with authority, responsibility and the nature of their world.’ The full show is over an hour long and it was seen by over 1000 people during the tour. We have plans to take Dragon out on tour again – we’ve invested a great deal of time and effort in the production and would love to see it on the road again.

Our ongoing schools projects continue. I’ve applied for a residency in Sweden for three months which might or might not happen. We want to make some big walkabout puppets and get a bit more commercially viable. The Dragon show made a big impact with people who play computer games. They ‘got it’ much more than people without that experience. I’m exploring opportunities to expand the Dragon concept into a computer game – in fact I’ve already had some discussions with the company that made the Tails of Iron game, which shares quite a bit of the style of Dragon. I’m also looking at getting back into writing – I’m 37 and the live art game is hard work. It would be great to have some revenue from sales rather than chasing a show around the country!

I’m also thinking about buying a house. I don’t quite know how I’ve managed to achieve this, actually. As a self employed independent performance artist I’ve somehow managed to save enough money for a deposit. This is a rare thing in my line of work!

Ok, thank you – some big plans there and so many possibilities! Finally, what about advice – what advice would you have to the sixth form version of yourself and the young people at Richmond School at the moment?

W: 

• Have Instagram, but never look at it. Apart from on Sundays, and only for inspiration.
• Read Improvisation and the Theatre by Keith Johnstone. 
• Read Brené Brown’s work – psychology / social science.
• Read Ken Robinson’s work – an innovator in arts education.
• Read the Classics – the Stoics, Horace. So much to learn from these texts.
• Watch TED talks – get into things. If you don’t agree or don’t understand, then find out more.
• Learn how to make. Craft. You can’t have art without craft.
• Don’t try to be perfect. Perfect is the enemy of good. Move forward always – failure is learning.
• Don’t compare yourself to others. The only person you should compare yourself to is you, yesterday.
• If you want to create, your work will only be as interesting as you are. So go out there and experience interesting things. Become interesting.

Thank you so much for your fascinating answers, Will. It’s been an education, genuinely. Your journey has been intricate and involved and torturous at times, but you’ve managed to give us a real glimpse into the mind and life of an artist. I’m sure that many of our students will be fascinated and inspired by what you’ve said and the advice you have for them.

Below are some interesting and relevant links to some of Will’s work, both past and present.

Space Six (no longer trading): www.space-six.org 

Moving Parts Arts: https://www.movingpartsarts.com/

Life and Limb Puppets: www.Lifeandlimbpuppets.co.uk

Dragon trailer: http://tinyurl.com/DragonTrailer23

Dragon full show: http://tinyurl.com/DragonFullShow