Susie Stubbs speaks to actress and HOME patron Suranne Jones about adaptability, blurring boundaries and why the arts are an essential part of education.
What makes for a good actor? One word: adaptability. And if it’s adaptable you’re after, look no further than HOME’s latest patron, Suranne Jones. The Manchester-born actress began her career at the tender age of eight, made her name as Karen McDonald on Coronation Street – and has resolutely refused to be typecast ever since. Jones has played everyone (and everything) from the TARDIS in Doctor Who to the title role in a recent adaptation of Orlando; she’s tried her hand at BBC period drama and developed an original detective drama – Scott & Bailey – that’s now onto its fourth series.
Yet running through a career that’s as varied as an average week’s TV listings is a single, unifying thread: the desire to tell stories. “I was always into story books and storytelling as a kid,” says Jones, recalling a childhood spent performing for her family (to the point of wearing Madonna-style gloves at her Holy Communion). “But it was at Oldham Theatre Workshop that I first got a sense of what it was like to play someone else. I found I was able to communicate better when I was acting.”
By her own admission, Jones wasn’t particularly academic. Schoolwork left her cold; she felt stifled. Telling stories and learning how to act, on the other hand, “just stuck”. “Children have different ways of learning – creatively, visually – yet the education system pushes them all to be academic. Some aren’t, and they miss out,” says Jones. It’s this that lies behind Jones’ decision to become a patron of HOME. “It’s not just the theatre that excites me about it, but all the educational stuff,” she says of an organisation that plans to use the new building to ramp up its filmmaking and contemporary art programmes for young people.
“There are constants within the curriculum, and we need them – those basic skills like English and maths,” continues Jones. “But there are other ways to give children skills. Creativity allows young people to express themselves, to develop confidence and social skills. The arts can bring out so much more.”
Theatre and the performing arts can open doors in other ways. “Take Orlando,” says Jones, referring to the Royal Exchange’s recent version of Virginia Woolf’s novel in which she starred – and received solid reviews (The Guardian’s Matt Trueman described her performance as “superb”). “It’s a difficult book. It has time travel and fantasy. Those things get you reading, but then you get interested in Virginia Woolf. So you start to look into her as this strong female figure in literary and intellectual society – the book sparks off a chain and you make other connections.”
In other words, a child can start with one thing – an artwork or a play or a piece of music – and end up somewhere entirely unexpected.
Which is a little like Jones’ interest in HOME. Although attracted by its work with young people, she also found its attitude to art, film and theatre intriguing – particularly its desire to kick over the old divides between them. “People can be frightened of things they don’t know well. So if you say to someone, ‘let’s go and see an opera,’ they might say, ‘no, that’s not for me.’ If you say ‘let’s go and see an opera by Damon Albarn,’ the answer will be completely different. Crossing things over, mixing them up a bit, gets people trying new things.”
This approach is at the heart of the new HOME, but it’s also one pioneered in the city by Manchester International Festival (whose Monkey: Journey to the West is the aforementioned opera by Damon Albarn; written with the Chinese director Chen Shi-zheng and Gorillaz artist Jamie Hewlett, it premiered here in 2007). It is also an approach that extends to popular culture, as Jones is happy to admit. “Someone like me, who people might know off Corrie or the TV, might get people into the theatre and watching a difficult play like Orlando, and if that gives more people reasons to come, then surely it works for everyone.”
Despite a near constant presence on stage and screen in the past 15 or so years – most recently in BBC First World War drama, The Crimson Field – Suranne Jones has resisted a complete move to London. She continues to split her time between the capital and Manchester, and her affection for her hometown is evident in the way she talks about it. “Manchester is quite daring. It always has been. There’s a bolshy gregariousness about the place; there’s a northern openness reflected in the arts here.” And while she acknowledges the challenges that come with being based up north, she also reckons it brings its own reward. “Maybe sometimes you have to fight harder to be seen and heard when you’re on the outskirts,” she says. “And that’s a good thing.” Well, if it turns out actresses as successful – and adaptable – as Suranne Jones, we’re not about to argue with her.