Interview: 'We Don’t Treat Class With The Attention It Deserves': Ardent Theatre's Mark Sands and Andrew Muir on Bringing Underrepresented Groups to The London Stage

It’s easy to forget that, while we all know that theatres have four walls, they also have two doors. The one we all know has bright lights, glossy playbills, a welcoming foyer and, sometimes, a queue for a bag search, that mark of 21st century life. But where is the other? Hard to find, hard to get past a code pad for entry / scowling guard and hard to know what to do even if you’ve cleared those hurdles. You guessed it, it’s all a bit on the nose as a metaphor for breaking into theatre as a career.

The Ardent8 Project is seeking to open that hidden, mysterious portal to young people who have talent and determination, but not the code for the stage door keypad. While too much can be made of “nepo babies” - the great Liza Minnelli was one after all - theatre, hell, the world, would be a better place if it drew on society as a whole, rather than primarily on those born with the four digits already loaded on their phone. We might even hear the stage school kids and Eton alumni trying to do Sarf Larnden accents instead of the other way round.

Speaking of which, Ardent addresses a key issue that can be overlooked when diversity is on the agenda. To get to a stage door, certainly in a venue that can give a young actor a real start, you often have to get to London. But, with the possible exception of Fintech, is there any economic sector more focused on the metropolis than the Culture Industries? 

While Peter O’Toole’s account of hitchhiking on a haywagon to RADA for his audition is every bit as funny as you would expect, it’s not really a strategy to travel from Leeds to Malet Street these days, to say nothing of the cost of accommodation and travel once you’re in town. 

An insurmountable problem? Well, Ardent might just have a plan.

Their programme consists of the following:

• 12 practical acting workshops led by industry professionals
• One week professional performance at a London theatre and short tour
• Ongoing advice and mentoring
• All travel, subsistence and accommodation costs paid covered, including the costs of a one year National Rail card
• All performances treated as professional engagements paid at 5% above Equity minimum rates
• Following the project, each participant is paired with a professional mentor to begin at a point in their career that is most useful. There are four mentor meet ups throughout the year to discuss how things are going and to agree practical actions
• We also cover the travel for each participant to attend their first professional audition

It’s almost as if someone sat down and thought through what was required by the aspirant actor and not just what's needed for the funding application form. (It’ll never catch on.) But it’s also what you would expect from this unorthodox company, inspired by the first-hand experiences of its founders, Mark Sands and Andrew Muir, growing up in working-class families in the provinces. Full disclosure - your writer did too.

Here’s some of what they had to say when I talked to them recently. 

"Back in the 80s, the state just paid for everything and that got us our starts. We set up our company ten years ago and we’ve continued our freelance work (acting and writing) and teaching alongside that, just to keep going.

This is the fourth year running the Ardent8 project, recruiting eight graduates, considering applicants from provincial working class backgrounds. We aim to fill gaps in their education to date with industry masterclasses, while also taking the financial anxiety away, up to and including break time coffees. Each year, accommodation alone costs £26,000! We finish with three weeks of rehearsals and a one week run of a play that we produce, all under professional contracts, paying above Equity rates.

We raise money from organisations and foundations, with the support of the likes of Richard O’Brien and Joanna Lumley crucial. We have an on-off relationship with The Arts Council - as people do. It costs a lot to do things properly. With class not a protected characteristic in the legal framework, it can make applications tricky with funders pulled in so many directions.

As a country, we don’t treat class with the attention it probably deserves, so we seek to offer targeted support. We don’t like the assumption that working class theatre is synonymous with community theatre, because it can be much more than that, so we want to go broader. We also want to go beyond Performing Arts students devising work, and get to acting graduates too - the ones who do Shakespeare and Chekhov. It’s surprising how often you still hit the attitude that new graduate actors don’t need to be paid because they can use the work as a showreel - we do not accept that. 

Working class theatre need not be solely concerned with social problems - there’s a lot of joy and humour too on the estates and in the seaside towns. The four plays we’ve commissioned for 2026 try to reflect some of that aspect of life. It’s a big undertaking, but we’re trying to employ as many people as possible.

Confidence is key - many of our actors have never been to London for example. Working class twentysomethings have a deep fear of failure that you just don’t see in teenagers in fee-paying schools - they have so much to fall back on, with their financial and social safety nets. Preparation is the key to building an actor’s positive attitude towards challenging workshops. We get the scripts out early and make sure WhatsApp groups work for communication. 

In terms of success, it’s less outcomes and more processes. We might not see the full benefit of the project’s work for ten or 15 years. 

We pitch at 22 years old and above and everyone we take on is a professional actor and they are treated as such. We’re sensitive to each individual’s needs, but we don’t have the same obligations to safeguarding as an educational institution would have, for instance. We do early one-to-one work to give an opportunity to the actors to explore what they require - it comes from them - and then we provide the support they need. 

In the future, we’d love to extend Ardent8 to more actors and extend it to more regions (all nine in England in ten years time!), but funding is critical. We’d love to go into bigger venues too and we’d like more people involved, especially younger ones with new skills that we don’t have." 

You can read more about Ardent’s ambition in their manifesto.