Theatre audiences are becoming more diverse, said the actor and singer Beverley Knight, who credited the Olivier award-winning musical Sylvia for attracting “people of all kinds of everywhere”.
Knight picked up the prize for best supporting actress in a musical at the Olivier awards ceremony on Sunday night for her performance as Emmeline Pankhurst in Sylvia, which is running at the Old Vic in London. “A show like Sylvia makes theatre accessible,” she said. “We are diverse on stage and I love that I look out and see diversity in age, in race and most likely in [theatregoers’] financial situations, too. I give absolute respect to the Old Vic for that.”
Theatre, she said, has often been seen as the preserve “of the middle classes and upwards, dominated by people who are mainly white – and who are older because they’re the ones who can afford it”. Hamilton, whose groundbreaking blending of musical genres and colour-conscious casting is mirrored by Sylvia, has helped to change that she said.
Knight applauded the previous work of Sylvia’s director-choreographer, Kate Prince, who also wrote the book and lyrics. Prince’s company ZooNation “has been making this kind of theatre for two decades – it’s the culmination of a lot of her hard work”. Knight said that shows such as the Bob Marley musical Get Up, Stand Up! had also diversified audiences and that Six, the musical about Henry VIII’s wives, was “absolutely crushing it” and bringing in younger audiences. “You cannot stop the march of where theatre is going and I’m telling you I am so here for it,” she said.
Knight performed twice at the ceremony at the Royal Albert Hall in London and used her acceptance speech to pay tribute to Emmeline Pankhurst who had spoken from the same building more than 100 years ago – and then been banned from returning.
Like several other winners, including Arthur Darvill (Oklahoma!) and Paul Mescal (A Streetcar Named Desire), Knight acknowledged those who had nurtured her career. “I got this award because of good, diligent people who gave up their time, and their money, to get 11-year-old Beverley on a stage at Wolverhampton Grand theatre to live out her absolute dream … If it wasn’t for Wolverhampton Youth Theatre I wouldn’t be stood here. They gave me the tools.”
Whether participants in youth theatre pursue an arts career or not, the experience shapes “powerful and confident minds for the next generation”, said Knight. The government must not think of theatre as “something frivolous”, she added: “You don’t know what the arts does for kids.”
