A decade of drama on show: Meet Leslie Williams who brought drama to lives of Bournemouth youngsters

English teacher Leslie Williams was appointed to head the Bournemouth Drama Centre, based in a Victorian school building in a backstreet of Boscombe.

During his 10 years there, hundreds of young people were involved in productions which attracted international attention and even earned the endorsement of theatrical royalty in the shape of Dame Sybil Thorndike.

An exhibition, A Decade of Drama, opened at Bournemouth Library this week and tells the story of the project.

The drama company built on the work Mr Williams had been doing at Boscombe Secondary Bilateral School.

Mr Williams, now 88, had seen the power of drama to move students during his previous job in a school in Herefordshire.

He remembers astonishing his first class of 14-year-olds at Boscombe by telling them to clear away the chairs in the hall and take off their shoes. “I was sitting cross-legged below the stage.

“I said ‘Don’t stand there, sit down, come and join me’. I began to encourage them to respond.

“My second class was a class of 12-year-olds and they included several who later became my stars of the drama centre,” he said.

Students were involved in improvising all kinds of scenes.

A moving depiction of a mining tragedy remains in the memory of those who were there.

The lessons, encouraged by head teacher Lance Kaisley, became so popular that pupils asked for more drama after school, with 70 children queuing to get in.

Before long, the students asked to be allowed to put on a play.

That production was Lady Precious Stream and it was soon followed by George Bernard Shaw’s Androcles and the Lion.

Leslie Williams, right, and his drama group with Dame Sybil Thorndike, centre

At the time, Dame Sybil Thorndike – for whom Shaw had written his play Saint Joan – was appearing at Bournemouth’s Palace Court Theatre in Westover Road, with her husband Sir Lewis Casson.

Mr Williams took a group of pupils along and persuaded Dame Sybil to visit the school.

He remembers collecting the glamorously attired star in his Mini and taking her to Boscombe to watch his students’ Androcles.

“They performed beautifully. At the end of it she said ‘Come along’ and they gathered around and she congratulated them.

“She really was quite surprised and delighted by the quality of the work.

“She said ‘You know, I worked with George Bernard Shaw’ and they were fascinated by that.”

On the way back in the Mini, a tragedy almost befell the theatre.

Mr Williams said: “As I turned left into Ashley Road, the passenger door opened.

“She leaned forward, I grabbed her and pulled her back in and leaned across and banged the door shut.

“I said ‘Oh dear, we nearly lost the first lady of the British stage’.

“She said ‘I must remember to tell Edith’ – meaning Dame Edith Evans.”

In 1962, Bournemouth council announced it was closing Boscombe Secondary School.

A production of Schiller's 'Mary Stuart'

Mr Williams remembers the borough’s director of education, Walter Smedley, calling him in to say: “I’ve been empowered by the education committee to offer you an empty Victorian school building which we think might suit you.

“We wish to extend your drama centre to all the schools in Bournemouth.”

Mr Williams said: “There were members of the education committee who were very sceptical about it.

“What I was doing was unusual but it was producing the most remarkable results, so that’s really where it started.”

The school building was in Haviland Road, where the new Bournemouth Drama Centre mounted a succession of ambitious productions.

The performances involved thousands of people, thanks to Mr Williams’ idea of the “theatre of participation”.

In The King and the Castle, the audience entered the set and attempted to pull the sword from the stone.

For C Day Lewis’s The Otterbury Incident, 100 pupils, representing all Bournemouth’s schools, performed at the Palace Court and Pavilion theatres.

The centre’s youth theatre produced Christopher Columbus and The Caucasian Chalk Circle, while six leading members became professional when formed into the centre’s Company of Players.

Dame Sybil was patron and the work of the company attracted the interest of educationalists nationwide and from abroad.

A production of Schiller's 'Mary Stuart'

Actor-director Bernard Miles invited Mr Williams to lunch and courted him to join his Mermaid Theatre. Although tempted, he refused.

In 1974, local government was reorganised, and Mr Williams took a new job with Dorset County Council’s education authority. The drama centre later became part of Bournemouth Centre for the Community Arts.

Those who took part in the productions remember the astonishing change the productions represented in their lives.

Carolyn Farrow, one of the company’s stars, was there from the beginnings at Boscombe Secondary.

“I remember we were told we were going to have a new English teacher and then he was going to teach us something called drama, which we had never heard of. Nowadays it’s in most schools but in the early 1960s, it was pretty revolutionary,” she said.

“It did have an incredible impact on the students.

“He was so clever at seeing people’s potential, whatever they were like academically. He always said ‘In drama, everybody can succeed’ and he was right.

“He could get amazing performances out of the most unlikely people.”

Carolyn later became Carolyn Wishart after marrying another of the company’s key players, the late Colin Wishart.

“I was lucky to be part of it and Colin and I often used to talk about it. Having done it, it remains with you all the years of your life. Although we didn’t work in the theatre, having a good experience at school influences you,” she said.

She was pleased at the tribute to Mr Williams. “It’s a bit overdue and I think he deserves it,” she said.

A Decade of Drama runs until May 15 at Bournemouth Library.