AT THE Arcola Theatre, a converted garment factory in Hackney, Intermission Youth’s artistic director, Darren Raymond, is recalling the first time that he met the Rt Revd Rob Gillion, in 2004. They — along with Jeanine Gillion — would go on to found the theatre organisation in 2008, at St Saviour’s, Walton Street, near Knightsbridge, where Bishop Gillion (as he is now) was the Vicar.
Intermission Youth provides training in Shakespearian drama to young people at risk of offending or exclusion, and has become well respected in the theatre world. Prominent supporters include the actress Naomie Harris and Sir Mark Rylance. In June, Mr Raymond received the Sam Wanamaker Prize, awarded for pioneering Shakespearian theatre.
When Mr Raymond and Bishop Gillion first met, at a poetry convention in Borough, Mr Raymond was nearing the end of a prison sentence, attending the convention on a ROTL (Released On Temporary Licence). “The work was around rehabilitation and transformation for us, the people that were performing,” he recalls.
“He was really interested in having a conversation with me as a person. At that time in my life, I hadn’t really experienced any genuine care, or people just interested in a conversation without any agenda. He showed a genuine interest, and that stayed with me. . . We didn’t exchange numbers. It was just a fleeting conversation.”
Months later, Mr Raymond was cast — “to my great surprise” — as the lead in the London Shakespeare Workout’s touring production of Othello. At the first rehearsal, he found a familiar face. “Before we set off on tour, we were to rehearse at a London base. I saw on my call sheet ‘St Saviour’s Church, Knightsbridge’. I hadn’t been out of Hackney much, and I didn’t know London that well, particularly an affluent area like Knightsbridge.
“I arrived at the church behind Harrods, rang the bell, and this lady came to the door. She was full of beans, the most excitable person you have ever seen — I was a little bit stand-offish, I didn’t have much trust in human beings — and that turned out to be Rob’s wife, Jeanine Gillion.
“The embrace and welcome was just so lovely. Then Rob came out, and I didn’t recognise him instantly . . . and he said ‘Wow!’ and opened his arms and gave me a big hug. It felt like the return of the prodigal son.”
THE contrast between the circumstances of their first and second meeting heartened Bishop Gillion. “They were so excited I was part of this company and going on tour. When Rob first met me, I was struggling for a lot of things: identity, belonging, understanding my purpose, my calling, they were just not there for me. Seeing me turn up for rehearsals, and being part of something productive, Rob was inspired by that.”
But Mr Raymond’s fresh liberty was a “pillar-to-post, or pillow-to-pillow”, existence. “I was struggling to come to rehearsals. I had nowhere to live, because I was not allowed to come into the borough of Hackney, and that’s where my residence was, and the council refused to rehouse me. You look back and think what a bizarre set of circumstances.”
Noticing his practical challenges, the Gillions initiated a conversation. “They didn’t pry, but they lured me into a conversation to open myself up. I was a very private person, but I opened myself up to them.” They offered him a home during the rehearsal period. Mr Raymond recalls his reaction was: “I’m being set up here: where’s the cameras?” and says, “I turned them down. I didn’t know them well enough, and I could not believe there was somebody who was going to allow me — a vicar as well! — to stay in their house.”
In 2005, in the months after the end of the Othello tour, something told Mr Raymond to return the church in Knightsbridge. “Now I know it was the Holy Spirit guiding me.” Arriving unannounced one Sunday at St Saviour’s, there was a warm welcome. “Rob and Jeanine were ecstatic to see me. I felt a sense of peace listening to the scripture and listening to Rob. It was a very informal service.”
Now in his early twenties, returning to church for the first time since childhood, Mr Raymond describes an overriding sense of peace. Bishop Gillion, he says, “was really good at being an example of Christ. He wasn’t pushy, he wasn’t preaching, he wasn’t trying to convert, he was more listening — I found myself talking a lot.”
At one service, he found himself “in floods of tears, crying uncontrollably. And I knew it was because I had rekindled the relationship with God. I knew who he was. I wanted to be close to him. At that moment, I knew there and then my life had to change; and, for me to change my life, it had to be in relationship with God. That was the beginning of my faith journey. It felt like a cleansing, a new beginning for me. And from that moment I developed my relationship with God.”
Having experienced the transformative effect of the arts, especially Shakespeare, on his own life, Mr Raymond wanted to give back the arts to young people. In 2006, supported by the Gillions, St Saviour’s ran drama workshops, initially attended by four young people.
When the four participants became eight, and then 12, Mr Raymond realised that he would have to broaden the offer from just drama games. He says that he chose Shakespeare “because it was all I knew” after the Othello tour. Much later, he also connected Shakespeare’s language with the language of the King James Bible, which he remembered from childhood.
Under “divine inspiration”, the artistic director blended the young people’s writing with Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, “the ultimate knife-crime play”. In 2008, this combination of disadvantaged young people and Shakespeare made headline news, and Intermission Youth was born.
Now, Intermission provides 45 places for training in Shakespearian theatre skills — 40 specialising in performance, and five for technical jobs. Its ten-month course “for young people lacking opportunities, where change needs to happen” attracts 200 applicants from all over London. Course graduates go on to deliver Intermission’s work in classrooms, pupil referral units, and prisons. For Mr Raymond, the power of “peer to peer exchange and hearing testimony of how they have turned their life around” is paramount.
INTERMISSION’s emphasis on community and fellowship echoes Mr Raymond’s childhood experience of attending Holy Trinity, Hoxton, with his mother. “It was a community space, with fellowship through food and outings to the seaside. It was about living in this world as Christians.” He continues: “It was very High Church, verging on Catholicism with the smells and bells. Probably where I got my love of theatre from — it was quite theatrical.”
In common with many young people, Mr Raymond parted company with the Church in adolescence. “I didn’t feel I belonged; so I rebelled, and I left the Church — and did everything scripture tells us not to.”
He is confident that his life’s work speaks louder to his mother of his return to faith than any dramatic gesture. “I wasn’t a great speaker then, but she witnessed my transformation. I’m her son, I’m her child: she brought me into this world. She saw how I was as a child, then that period of late teens into early twenties, she saw me derail. . . I like to believe I’ve done so much in my life now, and she’s witnessed it. I feel she’s very happy seeing me come back to myself.”
Opposite the artistic director’s desk, a noticeboard with headshots and selfies, taken during the current cohort’s interviews, is like a pulsating wall of energy. Mr Raymond says that the professional headshots provided at the end of the course chart how much the trainees have developed and changed. Intermission graduates have gone on to perform in the Royal Shakespeare Company, and TV hits such as Top Boy, EastEnders, and Casualty, while others hold down jobs as Uber and Deliveroo drivers.
At interview, young people are told that every training session ends with prayer, and are asked if they are OK with this. Nobody has ever refused a place because of praying. One memorable trainee started off not believing in God, then blamed God for everything, and finally became the one to lead the prayers. “Faith plays a part in everything I do, in all different parts of my life. In my creativity, in my social circles, in my family, I’m governed by my faith,” Mr Raymond says.
The period after Bishop Gillion left St Saviour’s, in 2014, to be Bishop of Riverina, in Australia, and the new incumbent had different ideas over church use, was a testing time. “The new incumbent had different ideas, and didn’t support the work in the way his predecessor did. And that was his prerogative: it was his parish.
“But how we exited the building tested my faith. We put our trust in the hierarchy, and it left a sour taste in my mouth, questioning how the Church could operate in that way. When there was nothing about the work that suggested it wasn’t God’s work, it was tough for me to understand that.”
Now with a family of four children, Mr Raymond is not currently part of a faith community, and describes himself as spiritually homeless, but surfing churches in London to find a fit. “With children aged 16, 14, 12, and four, it’s very important for us to find a church community where’s there’s something for all of them, and it’s tough. Churches need to do better to engage people in their buildings.”
“The Church is a crucial point where the world is transitioning, and how the younger generations are coming to faith or seeing faith or seeing the Church, it just needs to be mindful of being current. Jesus was very good at moving with the times, and meeting people where they were, and the Church needs to take a leaf out of Jesus’s book. We could be more creative in bringing people to Christ.”
