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What's happened since our first post, PLUS: messages from NNT alums and what's happening next...
Since we published our first post almost two weeks ago, the response has been incredible. We now have over 600 subscribers to our mailing list, and we’ve received a large number of messages and offers of support. If you sent us an email, thank you for your patience while we figure out what support we need.
Many of you also shared your personal thoughts and reflections on the theatre's closure, and explained what NNT means to you. We’ve gathered just a few of those below, and it makes for powerful reading.
But before we continue, a reminder that we need your help to keep spreading the word: please get in touch with as many other NNT alums as you know, send them to savennt.com, and ask them to subscribe.
What did NNT mean to you?
We asked around, and many alums shared their personal reflections on what NNT meant to them and why its closure matters.
Here’s what Emma Barnett, BBC Radio 4 Presenter on the Today show, had to say:
Quite simply changed my life.
I learned to direct, produce and work as a team. Oh, and have a blast. It defined my time at uni and to have been elected its President? Magical.
It must be a part of Nottingham Uni students’ experience moving forward. We thrived because of it and conversations were had that wouldn’t have been. I am devastated that the building has been left to ruin. A theatre is a magical place - especially a student one. Anything can and does happen.
I really hope we can save this dedicated building where dreams are realised and firm friendships formed.
We also heard from renowned theatre and film director Carrie Cracknell:
The year that I spent running the Nottingham New Theatre as President was completely formative for me in terms of my work as a director and a producer moving forwards. The opportunity to lead a team of people, to programme our own plays via pitches from the student body, to fundraise, look after the building, and take on that level of responsibility was a completely unique opportunity. I met future collaborators such as producer James Erskine, actor Ruth Wilson, and Jenny Worton who I have now worked with on over ten professional productions and in her role as the Artistic Director of the Roald Dahl story company.
Alumni from the NNT are disproportionately represented in the performing arts and I believe that much of this is due to the freedom and artistic responsibility that comes at a formative age with the opportunity to work in and run a student theatre. By the time I graduated I had set up my own company with fellow students and in our graduating year we toured our show to Edinburgh, London and New York. This led me to be confident enough to apply to run the Gate Theatre in London at the age of 26 which I went on to run for five years. Applying so much of what I had already learnt at NNT.
My career has spanned from Broadway, The National Theatre, via film and opera. I am always so grateful that I had such incredibly creative and empowering formative years at Nottingham and the role that played in my life as a director cannot be overstated. I graduated with a degree in history but also having directed 6 original productions and produced countless more.
I regularly recommend Nottingham to young actors and creatives as a place to go and develop themselves, whilst also obtaining an excellent academic degree. It seems such a waste that the building has now been left to degrade. It seems to me that if the university were to commit to keeping it open there would be a strong swell of support from alumni to work alongside them.
Deputy Political Editor at The Guardian, Jessica Elgot, had this to say:
The current state of the New Theatre is devastating to see - not only to its precious stage but also to the backstage areas where so many new skills were learnt, friendships forged and memories made. It’s a shame to see this happen to a place with such a vibrant artistic scene, including many famous creative alumni and the litany of awards won by student actors, playwrights and directors while at Nottingham.
New Theatre was formative for me at Nottingham, a place for experimentation, to debate and engage with texts, to undertake serious journalistic research as we did with our play Talking to Terrorists, to self-organise as we did on the committee, but also where I met my husband!
Student theatre was such an enriching part of my time at Nottingham, and the self-run aspect of the theatre was a unique point of pride. And it is this, specifically, that needs to be preserved: the making of theatre alongside the experience of managing and running our own building that cannot be replicated in borrowed spaces and is a vital skill for life which the next generation should also get to have.
Douggie McMeekin, actor (Chernobyl, The Decameron, Harlots, The Crown) said:
Very sad to hear about the closure. I am often asked to speak to teenagers who want to pursue acting as a career, and my advice is ‘go to a university like Nottingham, Edinburgh, Leeds, places with brilliant student theatres, be in as many plays as you can, play brilliant parts alongside your friends, it’s the most incredible training.’
For me personally, NNT remains front and centre of my life in Nottingham. I played sport, did a physics degree, was the Activities Officer of the SU, but NNT was where I take my fondest memories, of friendship, of pride. And it was because we had the keys to the place, we were given the responsibility and freedom to create work, and we took it, week in week out. A student-led group in a student-maintained space, it was perfect.
As an actor, the skills I learnt at NNT of collaboration, resilience, artistic integrity, and the broad range of plays, old and new, I was exposed to set me up brilliantly for a life in theatre. Let alone the relationships and encouragement from the experience with the National Student Drama Festival which gave me the confidence and knowledge to pursue acting as a profession. I wouldn’t be an actor if it wasn’t for NNT.
NNT was not just an addition to life on campus, it was an ecosystem of exceptional people and profound joy, its alumni are scattered all over the industry, working at the highest level, and it’s a great shame to think that the future versions of those theatre makers may not come to be.
Want to add your own reactions and memories? Email us: savennt@gmail.com
Watch this space…
Our meeting with UoN VC Professor Jane Norman takes place tomorrow, Friday, March 20th. We’ll be back in touch soon with a further update.