Paul Harman

I am a very old man – born in 1940!
So my ideas about theatre were formed in the 1950’s, playing Shakespeare roles, like Richard the Third, at a school which organised bus trips to London for students to see the great classical actors of the day.
At University I played Romeo and many other classic and modern roles, including, in French, Orgon in Moliere’s Tartuffe. Many of my fellow students became professionals, like me, and two of them founded a new theatre in Liverpool, the Everyman Theatre, where I spent many happy years as an actor.
Then, in the mid-1960’s, I discovered Theatre in Education and Theatre for Young Audiences and in 1978 created my own company called Merseyside Young People’s Theatre, which I directed for 11 years.
Halina Machulska came to visit us in 1981, with help from the British Council, and she later invited me to direct ‘Widok z Mostu’ by Arthur Miller at Theatr Ochoty in Warsaw.
In 1990 I moved to Darlington in North East England and in 1994 ‘re-purposed’ a company on the edge of closing down to become a successful professional theatre for young people, now known as Theatre Hullabaloo. I also directed England’s annual Festival of TYA, Takeoff, from 1988 to 2008.
Over the years I have watched theatre performances in over 40 different countries and my own shows have been seen in New Orleans, Moscow, Toronto, Seoul and Okinawa, Bucharest, Brussels and Bologna, to name a few!
But this is my first time as a jury member and I am ‘petrified’ of saying the wrong thing, of being too strict or too soft and gentle.
Please remember that every person who enjoys theatre or makes theatre comes from a particular place, at a particular time, and is influenced by the culture around them, in their own country, with their own lifetime’s experience.
I have always enjoyed seeing new kinds of theatre, in places and cultures new to me. I always ask myself, ‘Why did they choose that story and that style of writing and performance to tell that story? Why do they think it is appropriate for this audience?’
My best experience of theatre ever, I think, was to sit behind the screen, actually on the stage with the performers of a beautiful shadow puppet theatre performance in a small village near Khota Bharu in Malaysia. That style of shadow theatre tells stories from the Hindu epic Ramayana. It is accompanied by Gamelan percussion music and is called Wayang Kulit.
Wayang Kulit is hard to find now because some important people think those stories should not be told any more. But I could hear the people in the audience that night enjoying the show under the stars.
So, the theatre we offer to young people says who we are and how we think about our children.
If we are theatre makers, our choices are important for children now, and for the future adults they will become.

Paul Harman (Life President, ASSITEJ UK)