Hackney People
Jo Carter
Trudi Styler was one of her parents' lodgers, and she counts actresses Alex Kingston and Gina McKee among her friends from student days.
But Jo Carter, founder and artistic director of Immediate Theatre, in Hoxton, is better known in Hackney's schools and housing estates.
One of Immediate Theatre's projects recently featured on Radio 4's PM programme as a good example of how to engage young people. 'Meet The Parents' is a peer-led drama workshop with teenagers, part of Hackney's highly-praised teenage pregnancy partnership. It is also part of Jo's firm belief in the power of drama to bring about change in peoples' lives.
She was born and brought up in a large, rambling house in a socially-mixed and multi-ethnic part of Bristol, one of two daughters of a careers officer and drama teacher who took in lodgers. Alan Rickman was another young resident who later hit the big time.
By the age of 14, Jo was helping backstage at the Little Theatre, Bristol - an independent venue led by Peter Postlethwaite - which helped launch
the careers of many actors and directors.
"Acting was what I'd always done," she says, adding: "At school and at my local youth theatre I got to play some great parts. But I knew I wanted to be a director."
At 16, she came to London to join the National Youth Theatre, winning critical plaudits for her role as Falstaff's landlady, Mistress Quickly, in Shakespeare's Henry IV. Two years later, she moved to London to study English and Drama, and from then on, worked as a director.
She says:"I lived in Richmond, but it was not the right place for me; not culturally mixed enough.
"I was touring the UK, and working in schools with writers and running workshops. But I didn't like the 'hit and run' approach where a company arrived and showed people what to do. I wanted to establish a strong relationship with an area."
Two turning points brought her to Hackney and the setting up, with actress Clara Onyemere, of Immediate Theatre in 1996.
She recalls: "One evening in 1989, I drove round the North Circular and moved into my sister Vicki's flat in Murray Grove. Apart from a brief hop into Tower Hamlets at Victoria Park, I've lived here ever since.
"One of my final jobs in mainstream theatre was as the assistant director on David Mamet's 'The Cryptogram', at the Ambassadors. One night, looking at the audience, I thought, 'what am I doing? I don't care enough about this audience'.
"At the same time I was directing 75 young people in 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' at a disused church in Silvertown. I realised that the West End was not my dream. Immediate Theatre (meaning 'right here, right now'), takes as its starting point the idea that, to change, people need to imagine how different things can be."
The company now has nine full-time and nine part-time staff and a large number of freelancers, including many young peer educators, with a base in Hoxton Street next door to Hoxton Hall. Their latest innovation, '2moro?', is a Team Hackney-funded project that employs four former young offenders to use drama to engage their peers in identifying ways of defying youth crime and gang violence.
"I think we've established a model of good practice, putting community voices at the heart of our work, which is embedded in Hackney and is extending out to other boroughs," says Jo.
"Hackney is one of the richest places in the world to live: in its food, its creativity and its people. We've got to keep that creativity going. Information and knowledge are not enough," she adds.
Curriculum vitae
- 1965 Born in Bristol
- 1981 Joins National Youth Theatre
- 1983 Studies English and Drama at London University
- 1989 Moves to Hackney
- 1996 Founds Immediate Theatre
- 1999 Immediate Theatre receives annual funding from Hackney Council
- 2002 Immediate Theatre wins award for work around mental health and drug use
- 2004 Immediate Theatre starts 'Meet The Parents' workshops in schools and youth centres
- 2010 Immediate Theatre named community organisation of the year by The Learning Trust
More information
Call: 020 7012 1677; email: info@immediate-theatre.com; or visit: www.immediate-theatre.com/
Page updated: 2 Nov 2010
.