JADAR

The Stage Debut Awards are the only awards dedicated to recognising breakthrough theatre talent. They celebrate emerging actors and creatives, from all backgrounds. Some of the nominees have recently made their professional debut, some are established onstage creatives making their West End or London debuts, some are established in onscreen actors making their stage debuts, and some are established in one area of theatre (e.g. acting) but making their debut in another (e.g. writing). In short, the nominee is new to their category, even if they are not new to acting or even theatre.

I was lucky enough to be invited to attend this year’s awards at the iconic 8 Northumberland Avenue in London. Read ahead for an overview of the event and interviews with the presenters, performers, nominees, and winners.

The Presenter: Divina de Campo

Before the ceremony began, I had the opportunity to talk to Manchester’s own Divina de Campo, a drag superstar best-known for coming second on the inaugural series of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK. I have seen them onstage many times, even before theystarred in RPDRUK, and we have previously spoken on Instagram, but this was our first time meeting in real life.

I told Divina that I saw them in Dancing Bear, way back in the day – before I was even reviewing theatre.

“Oh, my goodness. You saw me full-frontal for 15 minutes, as my testicles descended – what a time that was!”

Since then, Divina has co-judged on All Together Now, appeared on Drag Race, and transitioned to musical theatre. They told me that they never expected this to be their career; they thought that they would be back at pubs and clubs but “Here I am!”

Divina especially loved playing Planktom. They stepped into their “drag king era” for that role; it was their first time playing a masculine character in 20 years! They admit that it was a challenge and they grew into the part.

Divina was super excited about hosting the awards ceremony and admitted that, “The more I talk to you lovely people, the less nervous I am about it!”

Best Performer in a Play: Elan Davies and Isobel Thom

The first category, Best Performer in a Play, was presented by BAFTA Cymru winner and British Academy Television Awards nominee Callum Scott Howells (It’s a Sin, Cabaret). Sadly, I did not chance to interview him – but we did compliment each other’s lewks!

Before the ceremony, I spoke to Rhian Blundell, who is best-known for starring in Vampire Academy. She was nominated for her role in Let the Right One In (another vampire story) at the Royal Exchange Theatre, which I reviewed.

Rhian had so much fun in Let the Right One In but she did get sick of having to shower 2 or 3 times a day because of all the fake blood – that was the only problem!

I asked Rhian if she was drawn to supernatural characters, what with her having played two vampires recently. She admitted that this made her look at herself in the mirror and acknowledge that people see a type that she was not aware of! Whilst she plated two vampires, she enjoyed playing two very different types of vampires: “Eli was definitely a lot more… feral.”

I asked Rhian what’s next. She said, “Maybe not a vampire next time.”

She is grateful that she has gotten to do both film and television, especially because most mediums are so different. She hopes that things get better with the SAG strikes and that creatives are compensated.

I asked Rhian about her dream stage role.

“It’s a long way off – and this is such a stereotype, I’m going to kick myself later – but I’d love to do King Lear. But obviously – hopefully – much further down the line! I would love to just smash something like that, something that noone would expect me to do; that would be cool.”

The award was ultimately won by Elan Davies for Imrie at Sherman Theatre, Cardiff (the first ever Welsh-speaking play to be nominated for The Stage Debut Awards) and Isobel Thom (they/them) for I, Jone at Shakespeare’s Globe, London.

“I apparently did [win a Stage Debut Award]!” Isobel told me. “I’m very excited. I’m feeling very scattered. I think it will hit me probably tomorrow or maybe the day after but I’m having an excellent time right now.”

Best Designer: Andrea Scott

Best Designer was presented by Prema Mehta, a renowned lighting designer of over 200 productions, and won by Andrea Scott, the video designer for My Neighbour Totoro at the Barbican Theatre, London. Scott was sadly not in attendance so the award was collected by a friend.

Best Director: Emily Ling Williams

Best Director was presented by Olivier Awards winner (3 x nominee), Drama Desk Awards winner, WhatsOnStage Awards nominee, and Critics’ Circle Theatre Award nominee Rebecca Frecknalll, who is best-known for directing the acclaimed revival of Cabaret.

The award was won by Emily Ling Williams for A Playlist for the Revolution at Bush Theatre, London.

Best West End Debut Performer: Rose Ayling-Ellis

Best West End Debut Performer was presented by stage and screen star Bertie Carvel, a 2 x Olivier Award winner (3 x nominee), Tony Award winner (2 x nominee), Drama Desk Award winner, 2 x Evening Standard Theatre Award nominee, 2 x Critics Circle Award nominee, and Drama League Award nominee.

Theis category was especially tough: Rose Ayling-Ellis, Emily Fairn, Mike Faist, Kyle Ramar Freeman, Samira Wiley, Paul Mescal, Zachary Quinto, and Gabriel Howell. The award was ultimately won by Rose Ayling-Ellis for As You Like It at @sohoplace, London. A deaf actress, Rose is best-known for starring in EastEnders and winning Strictly Come Dancing in 2021. She is a BAFTA winner, Olivier Award nominee, NTA nominee, and NTA shortlistee.

Rose told me that she began her acting career onstage but this was her West End debut – and the two are very different.

“I [did] theatre and then TV, and the TV part kicked off in a very different way, and then I’ve gone back to theatre. It’s like back to who I was at the beginning – but West End, in London, and a big stage! There’s no favourite; they’re all very different. I feel very lucky that each experience I’ve had, I’ve learned a lot from it.

“It’s so nice to win; it’s just lovely. I genuinely didn’t expect to win because all the other actors in the same category, they’re so cool, they’re good, so my heart went to my chest, and I didn’t prepare any speech at all, so I have no idea what I said; I just waffled and came off!”

Best Performer in a Musical: Jessica Lee

Best Performer in a Musical was presented Faye Tozer from Steps, who is also known for starring in musical theatre. She is currently starring in the UK tour of 42nd Street, which is coming to Manchester in a fortnight.

She made her professional stage debut in a national tour of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Tell Me on a Sunday, sharing the role with Patsy Palmer.

“When they revisited Tell Me on a Sunday, Denise Van Outen did it in town, and I did it as part of the UK tour. So, yeah, that was my first-ever professional musical debut!”

I asked Tozer how she would compare her music career with her musical theatre career.

“It’s like a bit of a double life really. Totally different. Steps is our business; its our baby. We celebrate all our music; we create new music. It’s nothing like doing theatre, really. I really love, and I’m a little bit addicted to, the grind of the 8-show week. I love it; I get a real buzz and adrenaline off it. I love touring, and I love the live applause – they’ll tell you if you’re great or if you’re not… straight away! But I think the buzz that I get from working with other people is just incredible; I just love it. I can’t stop it – every time I finish Steps tours, I’m like, ‘When can I go back into the theatre?!’”

Whilst Tozer lives a “double life”, I noted that Steps are very theatrical. I asked Tozer if she brings her theatre side to the band.

“Well, I guess we really like the heightened sense of the costumes and the drama and the campness, but obviously the music is different and the sound is different and it’s not acting, although we love to put on a show, for sure!”

I told Tozer they should do a Steps jukebox musical.

“Well, hold that thought,” she said,

The award was unsurprisingly won by Jessica Lee, who played the lead role of Kim in the revival (and reimagining and, frankly, reclamation) of Miss Saigon at Crucible, Sheffield, which I reviewed.

“It was a big [collaboration between] the director, the cast, everyone involved; it was a big team effort,” she told me. “It was really important to tell the right story, and we didn’t copy and paste from the original version; it was reimagined. So, that was really fun to create – and reclaim!”

Also nominated was Maisie Smith, best-known for starring in EastEnders and competing on Strictly. She was nominated for the recent UK tour of Strictly Ballroom, directed and choreographed by Strictly judge Craig Revel Horwood, whose theatre work has earned him three Olivier Award nominations.

I asked Maisie if she ever expected her career to take this trajectory.

“One thing I didn’t expect when I did Strictly was Craig Revel Horwood giving me a part in Strictly Ballroom the musical so that’s definitely something you can tick off your bucket list! I never expected it but here I am!” she said.

However, Maisie has always loved musicals. She went to a small musical theatre school but was hardly there because she was busy filming EastEnders!

I then asked Maisie if she prefers the screen or stage – or if she wants to do both.

“I wanna do everything. It’s the kind of thing that in the moment, I think, ‘This is what I wanna do’, but then I do another film or another programe, I’m like, ‘I love this as well’. I just love performing.”

I asked Maisie if she has a dream role.

“There’s roles that I would dream to do but not to say that I could do them,” she laughed. “I love Chicago“. I told her she’d slay as Roxie (pardon the pun).

I next asked Maisie what’s next for her.

“I don’t know if I’m even allowed to but I haven’t been told I can’t so… I’m doing two films in the next few months so at the moment I’m just preparing for those. I don’t think I can say that but, oh well, you heard it here first!”

I asked Maisie if she tell us the genres; she told me she’d said enough already!

Maisie said that she never expected a Stage Debut Award nomination. She went into the show so nervous and grew in confidence so it is amazing to be recognised.

Best Writer: Anoushka Lucas

Best Writer was presented by Morgan Lloyd Malcolm, the playwright and screenwriter behind the triple Olivier Award-winning play Emilia.

The award was won by Anoushka Lucas for Elephant, which will be revived at the Bush Theatre this Autumn. She was previously nominated for an Olivier Award for the recent revival (reimagining) of Oklahoma!

Anoushka described Oklahoma! as “Exhausting, delightful, satisfying, challenging.”

“I learned so much about myself as a person and as an actor. It was one of the most gratifying shows I’ve ever performed to an audience because every night, they would go, ‘What?!’ and you’d be like, ‘Surprise!’ It was wonderful [but] I’m relieved it’s over because doing it for eight months was really emotionally exhausting! I’m so proud of it and I made some of my best friends on that show – but it’s okay that it ended.”

Anoushka said being nominated for an Olivier Award was “wild”, “unexpected” and a “a whirlwind”, which she has still not fully processed. She received the nomination of the day of the West End run’s press night.

“It had been two months leading up to press night, and I was like, ‘Everthing will calm down’, and then on that day, before press night, [I] discovered I was nominated for an Olivier, and that was surprising and joyful and I’m really proud. But it was also odd because it was such an ensemble piece, and I felt like my performance in that show was a cog in a wheel of 12 people making a show together – but maybe that’s always true in good, strong company shows.

“It was really wonderful; it was wild. I had a lot of fun at the after-party,” she laughed. “It was in the Natural History Museum – wild!”

“Literally wild,” I said (there is, quite literally, animal skeletons everywhere).

Speaking of wild, Anoushka won her Stage Debut Award for Elephant.

“After the murder of George Floyd – fun start! – The Bush got in touch with me because I’d done a show there already, and I got on really well with Lynette Daniels. They commissioned myself and 10 other writers to write a really short digital piece – it was peak pandemic. They expected me to write a song, and I expected me to write a song, and then as I was writing the song, I was like, ‘This is too clean and it’s too tidy, and a song is too nice, and my feelings about racism are not clean and tidy or nice’.

“But also, I’ve never really talked about it in public or thought about it because I’m so privileged [so] I never felt like it was my place, and then I was like, ‘Actually, that’s really interesting, to be like, why as a light-skinned, middle-class person do I feel like I shouldn’t talk about racism? And how am I complicit in racism, and also how am I upholding the system that is oppressing me and my family by being like, ‘Well, I’m really posh and everything’s nice so I won’t talk about it’ – and so I wrote a play!”

Anoushka is currently in rehearsals with Elephant, which opens in a few weeks.

“I’m absolutely terrified because last time we did it, nobody really had any expectations, and it’s very funny to bring something back and be like, ‘Gosh, I hope it’s as good as it was last time!’ But I’m really excited about [the] new staging; we’ve extended it a bit.”

Anoushka has also recorded a radio musical which is coming out in December.

“I think I’m a writer now,” she admitted. “I’m writing something new with Lynette that I hope will have life in the future.”

Best Composer, Lyricist or Book Writer: Michael R Jackson

Best Composer, Lyricist or Book Writer was presented by stage and screen star John Partridge, who is best-known for starring in EastEnders. He is currently starring in the second UK tour of Everybody’s Talking About Jamie. Katie Bray interviewed him ahead of the tour’s premiere at The Lowry.

The category was unsurprisingly won by Michael R Jackson for A Strange Loop at The Barbican in London. On Broadway, the musical was nominated for 11 Tonys and won two (Best Musical and Best Book of a Musical). He has won many awards, including two Drama Desk Awards and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Whilst A Strange Loop won every major Best Musical award on Broadway, and Michael was excited to bring it over to the UK, it was nerve-wracking because he had “no way of knowing how an English audience would receive my big, Black and queer American Broadway show. It’s full of lots of very specific references and a [particular] point of view but audiences were very attentive and receptive, even from our early previews. I was very pleased that people brought their open hearts, minds and souls.”

I asked Michael about putting trauma into the musical.

“I don’t personally think about it as me putting any trauma into it as much as being transparent and open about what Usher’s experience is – ’cause Usher’s not me. It’s a tricky little thing of thinking that it’s my story. I mean, it is my story in a sense, but it’s really more about a point of view. You know, Usher’s 25, going on 26; I’m 42. There’s a point of difference between us. But I had to be open about what he had to say which means that I had to listen to an aspect of myself that may be different to where I am today – and be willing to share all the sort of nuances and the specificities that he had to offer and share.

“And that’s exciting; that’s not traumatic. It’s moving rom a place of solitude and loneliness to a place of openness and community and empathy and sharing. An exchange of what it’s like to be human and trying to get somebody else to see what you see. That’s what theatre is all about.”

Best Creative West End Debut: Rob Madge

The final category, Best Creative West End Debut, was presented by Omari Douglas. Like Callum Scott Howells, who presented the first category, he starred in It’s a Sin and Cabaret. He is an Olivier Award, WhatsOnStage Award and British Academy Television Award nominee.

Omari has had amazing success onscreen and onstage; I asked him what it’s like seeing other people come up and have similar success.

“It’s amazing because I feel like, even if you’re not friends with those people or necessarily closely acquainted with them, our community is big but it’s also small so it feels like a really supportive network. It was so amazing being able to present the award to Rob ’cause I saw their show, and it was so beautiful and honest. I think it’s so important that work like that gets to cut into the industry ’cause we’re not getting enough work from people who don’t get to tell their stories often enough. I think nights like tonight are such a god platform for celebrating our community and lifting up the people who are gonna blaze trails, like Anoushka – I did Jesus Christ Superstar with her in 2016, and I saw her show Elephant, and it was just stunning. So, yeah, it just feels like a celebration really.”

I asked Omari if, as a queer actor of colour, he thinks that opportunities are getting better for marginalised peoples. I mentioned It’s a Sin, the similarly themed US-show Pose, and his It’s a Sin co-star Nathaniel Hall, who is doing great things in theatre (his upcoming play, Toxic, is directed by Scott Le Crass, who was nominated for this award).

“I think people are sitting up and just making the work happen for themselves. Very often you have to cater to other people’s perception of queerness, or what the queer experience is for people of colour. I think it’s really inspiring seeing creatives take that reign themselves and make it happen for themselves so I think more of that is what we need.”

‘Sisters are doin’ it for themselves!” I said.

The award was – again, unsurprisingly – won by Rob Madge, the writer and star of My Son’s a Queer (But What Can You Do?) at the Garrick Theatre and the Ambassadors Theatre in London.

I asked Rob if her ever thought that his play would become the success that it has.

“Oh, my God, absolutely not!” he admitted. “I’m sure my 12 year-old self would have been like, ‘Yeah, absolutely, one day you’ll have a show!’ but no, when you get to an anxiety-ridden 27-year-old, you never imagine that it would even be put on, let alone received well, so I’m very chuffed and confused by it all but it’s nice. I’m absolutely elated.”

I similarly asked rob if he thinks that queer stories are being taken more seriously.

“Without a doubt, and I think anybody that doesn’t take them seriously or thinks that they’re unworthy of a platform, because there is such – like you say – such a hunger and an appetite. and for the joy of being queer – to normalise our joy and not make it such an event. We are very happy, thriving people; we’re existing as a fabulous community, as human beings, and that’s the world that we live in.”

Rob’s next project is the iconic annual London Palladium pantomime; he’s playing Tinkerbell in Peter Pan, which is “gonna be very camp!”

He also has “something very cool” happening in 2024 which he can’t wait to talk about: “Watch this space. How annoying, how boring,” he joked.

As aforementioned, also nominated in this category was Scott Le Crass, who directed Rose, which also played at the Ambassadors Theatre. Rose previously played at Hope Mill Theatre in Manchester. I had the chance to chat to Scott before the ceremony began.

“[Rose] stared off in Manchester. We filmed it at the Hope Mill, we streamed it, and then we did it nearly two years later back at Hope Mill, and then we came to Park Theatre – and then we had a transfer to the Ambassadors. That was amazing, surreal, wonderful. [I] feel very lucky. It’s an important story about displacement, about identity, and being able to share it with a bigger and wider audience was amazing. I feel really humbled. It feels like being in it for the long game has started to pay off – just really grafting. I’m a bit overwhelmed and really happy.”

As aforementioned, Scott is directing the new play Toxic.

“Toxic is this incredible piece that is about toxicity within a queer relationship, and it’s about a couple looking back at it and going into that story and examining why it was toxic and what made it so and playing that out. It’s wonderful. It’s made up stylistically of lots of different things so every scene feels differently in terms of style. There’s an intensity to it but there’s also a lot of fun as well, even though it’s called Toxic, there’s some brightness to it. It’s a Britney reference; we go in some of the Britney references as well. Being in the rehearsal room with everyone, it’s a really collaborative space.”

I asked Scott what it is about identity that he is so drawn to.

“Identity is important but also stories that feel really human that I feel connected with. It’s stories that feel visceral, stories that feel human, stories that I think will get people thinking and talking. I like stories that feel authentic and stories that feel like they’re expansive; I like telling [stories] that have a heart.”

Performer: Zizi Strallen

One of the night’s performers was Olivier and WhatsOnStage nominee Zizi Strallen, best-known for starring in the most recent UK tour and West End production of Mary Poppins. She performed a number from the new musical Cake, which just finished a short West End run following a small UK tour earlier this year.

I told Zizi it was weird seeing her in Cake because, all of a sudden, Mary Poppins had become “sexy”.

“And crazy!” Zizi added, before admitting that “Personality-wise, Marie is more me. Mary Poppins was more of a character I was playing because I am very untidy and unorganised and crazy. Going to Marie was easier. It’s funny having old friends come and see me in Cake, and they’re like, ‘Oh, it’s just you!’ I’m just playing me.”

Zizi said taking Cake to the West End was “amazing and I really hope it has another life ’cause I think the show could get bigger and better. It’s always lovely when you get told that your show that you love and that you’ve created on tour is going into town so fingers crossed that it happens again.”

Whilst Zizi has had some real variety, I asked her if there is anything she is dying to do. I told her that Carrie Hope Fletcher recently told me that she’d love to play a villain – especially Mrs Buckett in Sweeney Todd (Zizi said Carrie would be great in that role).

Zizi admitted that she goes with the flow and is open to everything but she’d love to have a “huge breakthrough onstage – a real dramatic role that I can stick my teeth into.”

So, there you have it… Until next year!