Central Alumni Feature on 'The Stage 100' List
On Thursday 7 January, The Stage published this year’s edition of ’The Stage 100’. We are delighted to see that a number of our alumni have been recognised and celebrated in this list for their remarkable efforts and achievements over the past year.
Since 1997, ‘The Stage 100’ has chronicled and ranked British theatre’s most influential people. This year’s edition instead seeks to shine a spotlight on those who have gone above and beyond in response to the challenges the theatre industry is currently facing as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Stage’s editor, Alistair Smith, said the list could have been “filled the 100 many times over” and was “representative of the huge numbers of other people doing great work in the face of adversity during 2020”.
The list has been divided into five categories to represent the range of responses to the pandemic: putting on shows, lobbying and campaigning, fundraising, serving the community, and support and development.
Central alumni appeared in the following categories:
Putting on shows
Alumnus Ian Nicholson, with Sam Wilde
Director and designer
Nicholson and Wilde’s cardboard puppet productions of a series of children’s classics have brought online theatre to tens of thousands of children, and their parents. Their version of Jon Klassen’s I Want My Hat Back for the Little Angel Theatre went viral when it was streamed last summer. They went on to complete Klassen’s trilogy, before using similar techniques to create a mini-opera of Chris Haughton’s Shh! We Have a Plan for English Touring Opera, then capped off the year with a version of A Christmas Carol for the Polka Theatre
Alumnus Chris Stafford, with Nikolai Foster
Leicester Curve
Curve put the theatre to great use for its filmed version of Sunset Boulevard. Imaginatively done and fully integrating its theatre setting, this was one of the screen highlights of the year.
Support and Development
Central’s President and alumnus Michael Grandage
Michael Grandage Company
The theatremaker’s commitment to supporting young artists was unwavering this year through MGC Futures, which was supported by the Theatre Community Fund with £300,000 over the next three years. Last year also marked the introduction of a bursary for a female theatreworker backed by Nicole Kidman. Grandage also supported the TuneUp Tuesday arts careers scheme
Fundraising
Alumna Dame Judi Dench, alongside, Kenneth Branagh, Derek Jacobi, Sir Ian McKellen and Maggie Smith
Acting for Others
At the end of November, five members of theatre royalty got together to raise money for Acting for Others. Branagh, Dench, Jacobi, McKellen and Smith took part in an ‘evening of intimate chat’ on Zoom, called For One Knight Only and, extraordinarily, raised more than £300,000 for the charity.