SPOTLIGHT By Nicky Sweetland
Terence Wilton has been teaching drama at the school for the last 10 years along with both his wife and daughter. The esteemed thespian - who’s performed with the likes of Derek Jacobi and Felicity Kendall– has recently joined the cast of the West End thriller, The Woman in Black and I popped backstage to find out a bit more about his work and career. Originally from Brighton, Terence Wilton has lived in South East London for over 15 years. He trained at Manchester University and became well known in the theatrical committee during the 1960s for some notable performances at the Royal Exchange under the guidance of director, mentor and pioneer of theatre in the round, Stephen Joseph. He became a household name in 1969 after appearing in an epic film with an all-star cast, “I did a film called Ann of the Thousand Days with Richard Burton.” Terence explained, “He was wonderful. There were a lot of old actors who used to applaud him on the set and he really was like Henry VIII.” Terence has enjoyed an esteemed and varied career, which has also comprised of hundreds of television appearances, including a cameo role in Doctor Who alongside Jon Pertwee in 1974. But it’s for his Shakespearean accomplishments that he is perhaps most celebrated “I performed with Sir Ian McKellen and we went around the world doing Richard II and Edward II, which were very famous productions and made his name. I had very good parts in those and I used to do his matinees on Edward II and that started a whole classical career.” And it’s a career that has spanned almost 50 years and enabled Terence to bring the Bard’s work to all the corners of the globe, “I’ve done loads of Shakespeare; I’ve performed in front of the Sphinx, I played the Great Hall of the People in Beijing recently; Fort Canning Park in Singapore and about 22 different states of the US.” But it’s in South East London where Terence finds solace – often while working on his well-stocked allotment - and he is passionate about bringing theatre to the young people in the area. With his daughter Kate and his wife – who is the actress Lucy Tregear – Terence teaches drama at Blackheath High School for
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Girls, in what is “A bit of a family business”. The theatrical troika offers LAMDA courses and students can gain bronze, silver and gold medals for their achievements, “It’s time honoured and you get UCAS points” Terence tells me. And the Wilton family is a huge supporter of the theatrical establishments in Greenwich too, “My daughter has danced on the stage at the Bob Hope Theatre in Eltham and she does lots of things in Blackheath at the Conservatory, where there’s a terrific local policy of putting on Benjamin Britten operas and lovely adventures, which use the whole community as well as professional players.” Terence has recently been stretching his own acting chops once again however in the classic stage horror The Woman in Black at the Fortune Theatre. The play - based on the gothic novel by Susan Hill - has been terrifying audiences in the West End for over 28 years and has been seen by over 7 million people. “It’s an extraordinary story” Terence enthuses and then drops his voice to deliver a spooky preface of the infamous two hander, “I play this traumatized geezer, who comes in with this terrible secret and I use a young actor to help me to tell the story. We start on this adventure of trying to tell the secret and as we get closer and closer to the heart of this, we drag the audience across the terrible marshes into the ghost story.” The spooky memory play relies on the psychology of the audience and is still just as fearprovoking today as it was when it was first staged in the bar at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough back in 1987. “The audience does most of the work, that and the soundtrack. You can hear a pin drop and then slowly gasps and shrieks. It’s glorious to do.” “It’s terribly simple really; there’s nothing on the stage.” Terence impassions “It works by old Victorian tricks, real old bits of theatre that just absolutely work and the audience terrify themselves as much as anything else.” You can see Terence Wilton in The Woman in Black at the Fortune Theatre www.thewomaninblack.com
Back to Black Terence Wilton as Arthur Kipps in "The woman in black".
Photos by Mark Douet
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spiring performers at Blackheath High School for Girls are learning theatrical craft from one of Britain’s most highly acclaimed actors.
Terence Wilton as Ar thu in "The woman in bla r Kipps and James Byng as The Ac tor ck"
Kipps as Arthur n o ilt W e Terenc lack". oman in b in "The w
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