Let’s do the show right here

‘When we approach them, we always get the same reaction’, says Nick Allott, Managing Director of Cameron Mackintosh Ltd. ‘First of all, they are enormously flattered. But there’s also some trepidation at the amount of academic input and output that might be required. And all these people are busy and think they won’t be able to commit the time.’ Oxford has reassured them that they are being invited to share their practical wisdom, not their intellectual credentials, and has also been very flexible about the time commitment. Each professor has responded differently to the challenge of interacting with students.

‘Phyllida Lloyd brought other interesting people’, says Professor Roger Ainsworth, Master of St Catherine’s College, which is the Oxford home of the Cameron Mackintosh professors. ‘For example, she deconstructed in front of an audience how she would direct Harriet Walter in Shakespeare at a micro level. We had a glimpse of how a great director might go about her work – it’s inspirational for the students. Richard Attenborough took a group out to Italy to watch the filming of In Love and War. Many of them have run sessions for small groups – Stephen Daldry for instance, and Patrick Marber who held writers’ workshops.’ Patrick Stewart is engaged in a particularly demanding year, starring in back-to-back productions of Antony and Cleopatra, The Tempest and Macbeth, but has invited students to watch him rehearse.

Apart from remaining emeritus fellows of St Catherine’s, what do the professors themselves get out of the experience? Most articulate on this point is producer Thelma Holt, who held the chair in 1998 and never quite managed to leave. In the first months of her professorship she gave a workshop on The Cherry Orchard, during which one of the students began to ask questions about the play that she could not answer. So she asked him to do some research – ‘he had the time and the patience’ – and he ended up briefing the actors in her production. She has since become a one-woman theatrical agency for Oxford actors, directors and designers, finding them placements with her unrivalled network of contacts around the world and organising a yearly London showcase for the best. ‘I have a very good time’, she says.

‘Oxford students are very demanding, and have a lot of misconceptions, but you just don’t get this quality on a drama course.’ Both Roger Ainsworth and the Mackintosh Foundation have come to rely on Holt as the link between Oxford and the individual professors. ‘Most of them know her and get on with her’, says Ainsworth ‘She’s able to interpret for them the nuances and quirkiness of Oxford, and give them an idea what’s required.’ The result is unique access for ambitious Oxford students to some of the most creative talents in theatre today.