Phill Jupitus is best known as a stand-up, improv comedian, actor and performer. He was a team captain on BBC2’s long-running pop quiz Never Mind the Buzzcocks and a regular guest on TV and radio shows like QI and I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue. In 2013, he played old-style variety entertainer George Lightfeather in Red Ladder’s Big Society! In 2019 he stepped away from performing to study fine art at the Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design at Dundee University.

How did you come to work with Red Ladder? Rod Dixon got in touch with me via my agent. I had recently done Spamalot and Hairspray, so I’d done a couple of musicals, and the City Varieties angle really appealed to me. I liked the idea of having a production which is set in a theatre itself so this was too good to resist.

What was the appeal of performing at City Varieties? It is one of my favourite rooms in the world in terms of performance spaces. There’s nowhere quite like it with those dimensions and of that size, that has the same feeling. It’s not like any other major city venue I’ve ever played in. There’s something very homespun and cosy about it. The staff all know each other and that notion that they used to give Ken Dodd the key when he was playing so he could lock the place up, there’s just something irresistible about that. I often talked to other performers about other favourite venues to play and myself and Jack Dee were having a chat once and we came to the conclusion that the best sized venue with the best layout in the country is City Varieties.

L-R Kyla Goodey, Lisa Howard, Phil Moody, Phill Jupitus & Boff Whalley in Big Society! credit Tim Smith

Had you heard of Red Ladder before you worked with them? Yes. When you’re in theatre and fringe cabaret you get to know about the people who are doing stuff. Fringe theatre was what I grew up with as a kid in London, so the fact other places were doing it around the country never came as a surprise to me. So I’d heard of Red Ladder but not seen any productions.

What are your memories of working with Red Ladder? What I liked about working with Rod and Chris Lloyd [executive producer] was their approach to the work. At the time, the possibility of losing their funding was something they were cogent of, but it was always a case of ‘how do we do it without the money? because we’re going to do it anyway.’ And I love that. They’re real artists. They cut their cloth according to what they had available. Rod would say things like ‘if we can’t get an actual theatre space, we’ll go round all the pubs in Yorkshire and ask who’s got a back room and we’ll do it there.’ And that’s what I love about Red Ladder – they walk it as they talk it. It isn’t an exercise in virtue signalling, it’s a hardworking and realistically focused theatre group.

What makes Red Ladder and its work important? It’s quite punk rock. It’s like that field of dreams thing – if you build it, they will come. You make the work because you believe in it and you’re passionate about it. They focus on doing the work and let it grow organically and that’s the beauty of Red Ladder and other similar organisations. Punk rock was never about ‘how we can play here?’ or ‘how can we play there?’ It was ‘how can we play anywhere?’ That’s what I love about them. There’s a genuine and sincere accessibility to their working model.

What impact do organisations like Red Ladder have on regional theatre? We’ve seen what’s been happening to the arts across the UK and what Red Ladder does is establish a way that you can carry on. Red Ladder not only brings up new writers, new actors and new performers, but everyone I worked with on Big Society! was involved with theatre groups, whether it was in the West Country, London, or Scotland, and they came from similar organisations to work on this production. When you get a large group of people and they all have a similar mindset then you have that ‘can do’ attitude.

Phill Jupitus in Big Society! credit Tim Smith

How crucial are local theatre companies in developing young talent? The kids that get to work with Red Ladder have a much broader toolkit when they come away. They’re not just going to be actors, or lighting technicians. When you sit kids down and tell them it’s about doing the work they look at you slightly askance. Through no fault of their own they see a world where people seem to slot into things and do well. But what they don’t see is the work that took them to get there. I will be forever grateful to Grayson Perry who, when I was an art student a couple of years ago, did an online lecture. He talked about all the projects he was doing, he was talking about tapestries, ceramics and his drawing work, and at the time he had a couple of TV shows on. He was massively prolific and he said, ‘What you’ve not seen is the 20 years of nothing happening that it took me to get there.’ You can’t teach that, but somewhere like Red Ladder I think makes you more predisposed to realising that this is the way real art, in the real world, works. It’s the field of dreams paradigm. Just do it. Make it happen.

What did you most enjoy about working with Red Ladder? The autonomy and passion of an organisation like Red Ladder is something you don’t really see in mainstream theatre and that’s what’s so appealing. It’s a purer form of the work. There’s a lot of joy in working with Red Ladder. For someone like me, who had been working in mainstream television for 20 years, coming to work with Chris and Rod I got to see a wider world.

How would you describe Red Ladder to a friend? The Clash doing Shakespeare. They have the ethos of a punk rock group but they still do the quality work, and there’s something very enticing about this. This is a theatre that deserves all the support it gets, and I love the fact the Yorkshire media get behind Red Ladder. They have an incredibly good reputation in Yorkshire and deservedly so. They’re a theatre company that delivers amazing work.

Main Image: Harry Hamer and Phill Jupitus in Big Society! credit Tim Smith