‘In the past, there was lots of swearing and saying you were crap’: my day at the all-new Italia Conti stage school

‘Style. Detail. Dynamics.

Performance. That’s what’ll get you a job’ … a dance class at Italia Conti.

Photograph: Italia ContiView image in fullscreen‘Style. Detail. Dynamics.

Performance. That’s what’ll get you a job’ … a dance class at Italia Conti.

Photograph: Italia Conti‘In the past, there was lots of swearing and saying you were crap’: my day at the all-new Italia Conti stage schoolFrom Noël Coward to Martine McCutcheon, the famed institution has been hothousing talent for more than a century. Our writer finds there’s a softer approach these days – and a food bankWhen I walk into renowned stage school Italia Conti, in the smart building in Woking that has been its home since 2022, the first thing that hits me is the quiet. Where are the students dancing on tables?

Rehearsing scenes in the hallways? Some are offsite, it turns out, rehearsing for a show, but those I see are busy on their phones in the corridors, like any other young adults.Life has changed at Italia Conti since its earliest days.

The school celebrates its 115th anniversary this year. It was founded in London in 1911 by English actor Italia Conti to teach a group of children appearing in the play Where the Rainbow Ends at the Savoy theatre. Noël Coward was among the young performers.

By the 1930s the school was advertising lessons in elocution, acting, singing, fencing and dance (ballroom, “operatic, Greek and stage dancing”).These days, it’s commercial dance, aerial circus skills and getting advice on your social media presence. There have been some big shifts during the last decade.

The financial strain of Covid forced the closure in 2021 of the junior school for ages 11-16, the alma mater of Bonnie Langford, Louise Redknapp and Martine McCutcheon. (They are looking at how they could bring it back, “but it’s a 10-year plan rather than a two-year plan” as CEO Hayley Newton-Jarvis puts it.)Italia Conti’s junior school wasn’t the only closure.

Redroofs theatre school in Maidenhead stopped providing its full-time course, and the Barbara Speake stage school in Acton closed. When classes paused or went online during Covid, enough parents stopped paying fees that the schools couldn’t survive. In the state sector, Liverpool’s Lipa has announced it is closing its primary and secondary schools at the end of this summer term (its sixth form and degree courses, which are run separately, remain open).

View image in fullscreenThe class of 77 … Lena Zavaroni, Rudi Davies and Bonnie Langford. Photograph: ITV/ShutterstockItalia Conti alumna Claire Sweeney, who is currently starring in the musical Annie, tells me she has just signed a petition to save Lipa.

“I love stage schools,” she says, especially for “kids who don’t thrive academically, to find their tribe and get that wonderful coaching”. And especially now there’s less arts provision in schools since the shift in focus to Stem subjects.It’s not that there aren’t other ways into the industry, says Sweeney.

“Now you can stay in your bedroom, do some recordings and get a record deal. There’s Britain’s Got Talent, YouTube.” But to have any sort of sustainable career you have to hone your skills.

“In theatre, if you can’t do it you’ll be found out, you won’t last long.” Sweeney learned her craft singing in social clubs from the age of 14, but a two-year grant to send her to Italia Conti pushed her further. Amid frequent reports that fewer working-class people are entering the arts, Italia Conti is marking its anniversary with the launch of new bursaries for low-income students.

The school now takes students from 16 for dance and musical theatre courses, and 18 for acting. It has consolidated its previous three sites into one state-of-the-art building, with recording studios, a wellness suite and wardrobe department stuffed full of spangly outfits (they get hand-me-downs from Strictly). It’s on the edge of a shopping centre in Woking, with big windows inspired by New York’s Juilliard school, so you can see synchronised legs in ballet tights doing grands battements when you come out of the big Boots.

View image in fullscreenA merry dance … pupils performing at a garden fete in 1920. Photograph: Smith Archive/AlamyDucking into the studios, I watch singers doing tongue-twisting warm-ups (“Thirty, flirty and thriving!”)

, and a dance break from Anything Goes. “I know we’re fighting for dear life but our faces don’t need to show that!” warns the teacher.

I see theatre students being told “Have a little explore and let’s get it wrong” in Macbeth, and getting advice against “middle-distance acting” in Chekhov.The manner of teaching has changed over the years, particularly in acting, says Harriet Whitbread, head of acting at the school. “In the past there was lots of swearing.

Lots of telling you that you were crap. And you’d just have to cope with that. That was the training of old,” she says.

“It used to be that they would deconstruct you, and if they put you back together again, you were lucky. Now we have a re