CAREERS
THEATRE DIRECTOR Ola Ince ON HER CAREER JOURNEY
After graduating from Rose Bruford College with a BA in theatre directing, Olga Ince cut her teeth at London’s Young Vic before becoming a freelance director for theatres including the Royal Opera House, the Donmar Warehouse and the National Theatre. Her latest production, Othello, opens on 19th January at Shakespeare’s Globe in London.
It was while rehearsing a play at school, aged 14, that I realised I wanted to be a director. What excited me wasn’t being in the show, it was making it. At the time, I couldn’t see a way other than studying to be an actor first. My thought was, ‘If I can do it, I can show someone else how to do it.’
At 16, I turned up at The BRIT School. I’d been at an all-girls school in south London, and it was a culture shock, like suddenly being in Fame. There were people running around in leotards and standing on tables at lunchtime, singing. But there was also an event called ‘Strawberry Picking’, when you could write your own play.
Mine was about gun crime, and the teachers encouraged me to take it on a mini tour around London afterwards.
It probably took me another three to five years to realise why I wanted to make theatre. After my degree, I got a placement at the Young those themes – domestic abuse, racism, the unfair treatment of kids – are really juicy to me. There have been SEVERAL pivotal projects in my career. There’s The Convert, Danai Gurira’s story about colonialism, and the grime musical Poet In Da Corner. But the most talked-about play I’ve made is Romeo And Juliet at Shakespeare’s Globe. My premise was that suicide isn’t romantic, and some, such as The New York Times, thought that was a brilliant reframing, whereas others still wanted to see it as a love story. It was made and performed during the pandemic, when the actors weren’t allowed to touch or kiss, so it was a real creative challenge. The nature of directing is that you’re always juggling. I can be in rehearsals from 10am to 6pm and then straight to another theatre to make notes on an evening performance of another production I’ve directed. Rehearsals for my latest project, Othello, started the day after I opened Cinderella at Brixton House, so there was hardly any separation. The hope is that Othello, which is centred around corruption within the Met Police, doesn’t look too much like Cinderella, and vice versa.
I see myself as a very visua
