Ned Glasier is pretty flustered when I meet him at Islington Community Theatre’s office at the Central Library. He’s not late, but he’s been cycling – and the theatre company that he set up three years ago is keeping him busier than ever.
What started out as a charity to run Islington Youth Theatre has now expanded into a parent organisation of several youth theatre groups. Islington Community Theatre (ICT) started with 25 young people but now works with 150-160 people every week.
Artistic director Glasier, who used to direct at the Almeida theatre, said: “We’ve grown very quickly in a short space of time. I think we’ve grown quickly because people believe in what we do.”
ICT recruits children and teenagers from schools across Islington. In the borough with the second highest child poverty rate in London, ICT brings together young people who might not otherwise mix.
And while some may associate Islington with the yummy mummy shops and posh restaurants of Upper Street, Glasier has a story that will bring you down to earth: “We took a load of girls and boys down Upper Street, leafleting about what we do and wanting to raise some money, and one of the girls said: ‘I didn’t even know Islington was like this.’”
The 31-year-old from Wandsworth wants to overcome what he calls the “massive divide”. But isn’t teen drama all about divorce, eating disorders and drugs? Would this really lighten up the lives of a borough in which 43% of households are on out-of-work benefits?
Yes, Glasier claims: ICT stands out from other youth theatres because it moves away from the sensationalist topics often showcased in school productions.
He says, “Kids come in from school and go: ‘Oh my God, another theatre company doing a play about shanking and stabbing.’ We don’t make issue-led work, we make theatre. Our aim is to make good work, good art.”
“We’re not a ghetto youth theatre – we don’t make hip hop knife crime plays. We make plays.”
ICT’s latest offering is anything but your typical teenage melodrama. All the Minutes Ever, showing next week at Platform arts venue, is what Glasier describes as a “rich and exciting” production exploring the concept of time.
A cast of 12-16 year olds who wrote the play together: “We encourage them to engage in every single aspect of theatre making”. The play led Islington’s budding dramatists to consider ideas as alienated from their daily lives as philosophy, string theory and the psychology of memory.
Glasier, who attended a youth theatre when he was a teenager says, “My interest is in young people who aren’t trained as actors, and people who would never normally go near theatre – not for any other reason than I think they’re really interesting onstage and are quite inspiring.”
He adds, “I think you can make very different work with people who don’t have a set idea of what theatre might be.”
The same idea comes into play in another new project. Speakeasy, which is funded by local charity Islington Giving, is a playwriting workshop for 14-19 year olds who don’t need any prior writing experience.
Glasier says: “I think there are loads of stories in Islington and I don’t think that we hear them all. I think that some will come out in the kind of work we make generally, but there are others that will only come out in a more personal and private way through writing.
“People say we’re a bit like a family and I think we are.
“We have three rules when we work, and the rules are be brave, be nice, be yourself, and I think that all of those rules are very much key to what we do.”
“It sounds like Glee”, I say. Glasier looks offended for a moment. “It’s nothing like Glee!” he snaps, before pausing and smiling. “Yeah… it’s a better version of Glee.”
