It was called the “heartbeat” of the National Theatre. Located in a brutalist building on London’s South Bank, the Studio was founded in 1984 as a five-year experiment, with the aim of developing new work away from the public glare. “Until we started the Studio,” said Peter Gill, its founding director, “there was a sense that the National was not for the likes of the new writer.”
Forty years later, the Studio – which now houses the New Works section – was behind many of the National’s hits. It is here in this building that the team managed to give three of the four shows for best play at this year’s Olivier awards: Till the Stars Come Down by Beth Steel, The Motive and the Cue by Jack Thorne, and Deara, who won the James Graham award. England. At the entrance, a chalkboard grid informs about writers and artists in workshops. It is a laboratory, a sanctuary, a place where one can ask questions and expand ambitions, with the time and space they need.
Two men were running around with a ladder over their heads, and Tom Morris was going: ‘It’s going to be great!’
So what happens inside? My visit begins in the shelf-lined script room of Rufus Norris, the National’s artistic director, nearing the end of his 10-year tenure. “I am the first director of the National Theater who does not have a literary background,” he says. “I didn’t go to university. As a result, this has always been much more of a home for me than perhaps my predecessors.”
Norris uses the building to dress scripts and explore staging, most recently for Nye, the play about the birth of the NHS. “I went through 41 drafts with Tim Price,” he says, referring to writer Nye. Their sessions also explored the show’s hospital setting – placing “a lot of scruffy beds” around to save time during rehearsals.
The theatre’s greatest hits were stress tested here, from The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time to One Man, Two Guvnors. “I came to the first workshop for War Horse here,” says Norris. “Two guys running around with a ladder over their heads and co-director Tom Morris saying, ‘It’s going to be great!'”
As in any laboratory, some experiments fizzle rather than blaze, even some of Norris’s own ideas. “This is also a place for projects to die,” he says, disarmingly, going on to describe “some of the best shows we didn’t do”. This was a work based on songs by “a great rock musician, now deceased. It was great – but it wasn’t in the opinion of one of the two rights holders.”
Nina Steiger, head of play development, takes me over the archive, saying: “It’s completely open to the public, free of charge – years of theater history beautifully captured.” When Anupama Chandrasekhar was alive, Norris says, she took on stage movies written for the Olivier stage. “You can see [echoes of] Amadeus and other works in his play The Father and the Assassin.”
A writer’s first contact with the building is often a six-week attachment. “Paid, of course!” Steiger said. “They get a room and a computer, and the community of other artists – at a crucial time in their career.” The current top pop out for a chat on the landing: collegiality is a big part of what’s up at the Studio. “There’s a perception that writers are individuals,” says playwright Tamsin Oglesby. “But I don’t think we are.”
Each writer takes something different from their time here. For Sam Grabiner, finding peace is a big help. “Until about three weeks ago,” he says, “I was writing in my bedroom, about half a meter from my bed. I live with eight people and six of them are very loud.” Currently the National’s writer-in-residence, Grabiner is finding his room attractive and productive: he has two desks for specific projects, and he’s brought along an old Charlie Chaplin statue of his grandfather. “If you could dream about how a writer’s life could be structured and supported,” he says, “it was like this.”
During the pandemic – which Studio head Rachel Twigg calls “the most difficult time in the history of theatre” – the team devised the Generate programme, offering a third of their workshop resources to outside artists and makers of London. As Norris says: “This is an important research and development center for the talent pipeline. We are blessed to have this and it is our duty to share it.”
Twigg introduces me to the Generate workshop, where Peter O’Rourke is developing a show for his Cubic Feet puppet theater company. The puppets are already very lively, all blue hair and mesmerizing eyes. “It’s been a great few days trying out ideas,” says O’Rourke. “My work is not scripted, so having the puppeteers in the room is a huge resource.”
Want to know the right time for a Studio development slot? “The sweet spot,” says Twigg, “is not so close to practice that your discoveries can’t be implemented, but also not too early: during the Post-it notes period, you don’t need people in the room .” Just beyond the Post-its are Bert and Nasi, British/French physical theater makers. The pair are delighted with their high-ceilinged space. “We usually start in a fairly small room,” explains Nasi. “Suddenly, we can see things a little bit more.”
Related: ‘You don’t need to be invited – you do’: Beth Steel on her working-class family’s epic
I have a quick lunch with Beth Steel, flashing parakeet colors. Like many writers, her first encounter with the New Work section was to submit a hopeful script. “You don’t need to add your CV,” she says. “You just write your play and send it out. I still remember getting that paragraph back as a reply. Did I burst into tears? Yes of course. It was very encouraging. You are not writing into a vacuum.”
Gradually, her work reached Steiger’s radar. “You don’t get anywhere as a writer without someone being your name. I found that in Nina.” Steel’s tenure as writer-in-residence led to this year’s sensational Till the Stars Come Down, which follows a packed family wedding. “We had the confidence to do the play in the final because we did a workshop before the full rehearsal. Bijan Sheibani, the director, started walking around the room and said, ‘We can put it on rotation.’ That contributed greatly – the wedding ring, the cosmos, is made of the rotation.
Being a resident also gave Steel a salary (“Money is one of the big unspoken things in theatre”) and access to the wider world of the National. “Drama opened up different sides of my brain by attending association meetings and hearing great theater minds like Lyndsey Turner or Dominic Cooke and analyzing a play. It was the best university experience I’ve ever had.”
Related: ‘We messed with some heads’: Roy Williams on tackling a nation torn apart in the Death of England
The development of ideas can expand even as they are distilled to reflect. Clint Dyer, the National’s deputy artistic director, explains that the initial draft of the monologue play Death of England included many characters. It was only after auditioning a full cast that he and co-writer Roy Williams refined it down to just one voice. “Because we were able to workshop it,” says Dyer, “the essence of the piece is deep.”
I sit with Steiger and Twigg in their shared office at the building’s entrance. Most nights, they are out with their team, visiting small and large venues across the country. “I see ridiculous things,” says Steiger. “That’s where you find talent. We are all scouting for different things. For me, it’s often about tracking a writer’s development. We are looking for artists who, three to five years from now, will be filling the National’s Dorfman stage.” For Twigg, the rhythm of the building feels like the steady beat of the tide. Each week brings a new set of workshops, leading to “some” Fridays. She remembers sharing Alexander Zeldin’s heartfelt play Love. “Alex said, ‘I have three different endings to show you.’ It was terrifying to see the actors come up with the idea of Anna Calder-Marshall’s character, as Alex said, ‘walking through the forest where she will die’. Beautiful.”
I’m about to go out the door. So also, next year, Norris, who will succeed Indhu Rubasingham. “She’s using the Studio a lot,” says Dyer. “She’s a veteran.” Steel remembers bumping into her here. “It was fun meeting Indhu,” she says, “and she went, ‘What do you want to write? Let us do it.’ That’s never happened to me before!”