The Anna Scher theatre in Islington, north London, was responsible for producing some of the cream of modern British talent, including Daniel Kaluuya, Kathy Burke and Phil Daniels. But Anna Scher, who has died aged 78, had little patience with talk of fame. “We do not tolerate hubristic behaviour here,” she told her class in 1997. “Being an actor is just a job. Compared to being a midwife, it is really nothing and you should all remember that.”
Her students were asked to keep in mind five P words: punctuality, preparation, presentation, practice and positive. Scher, who described herself as “an Irish-Jewish-Lithuanian integrationist” and was usually seen in beads, bracelets and alice band, launched the endeavour in 1968 as a lunchtime drama club at Ecclesbourne junior school, where she was a teacher. Drama, she found, was the most effective way to communicate with pupils who were non-readers.
Two years later, the club moved to a nearby community hall. “None of us really wanted to be actors,” said Linda Robson, who was later the star, alongside her fellow Scher student Pauline Quirke, of the sitcom Birds of a Feather (1988-99 and 2014-17). “It was like a youth club. The pensioners used to play bingo after the drama class, so when we were doing our class all the old girls used to be chatting all the way through it.”
In 1975, Scher moved premises again, establishing the Anna Scher theatre. There were no auditions to get in, only a waiting list, which reached as many as 5,000 names. Once admitted, each member of her class could expect Scher to impress upon them a cherished saying from one of her heroes, Archbishop Desmond Tutu: “Everyone’s a VSP – Very Special Person.”
Improvisation was at the heart of her methods. Knowing that anger and tension could sometimes be near to the surface, she kept an olive branch close at hand as a way for pupils to “make up” when the improvisation exercises were over. This came in handy, too, when she was brought in to lead “peace workshops” in Northern Ireland and Rwanda. Whoever she taught, she would draw on the words of Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Anne Frank.
The theatre quickly became renowned as a hotbed of raw talent. The director Alan Parker stopped by when he was casting his all-child gangster musical Bugsy Malone (1975), as did Alan Clarke when he was looking for actors for his borstal drama Scum, which was made for the Play for Today strand in 1977, then banned and remade for cinema in 1979.
Producing stars may not have been Scher’s goal but it happened nonetheless. Kaluuya thanked her in his 2018 acceptance speech when he was named Bafta’s Rising Star; he later won an Oscar for Judas and the Black Messiah (2021). Adam Deacon, writer-director-star of the recent comedy Sumotherhood (2023), was also a Scher student.
One of her greatest success stories was Burke, who put her name on the theatre waiting list at the age of 13, got in shortly before her 16th birthday, was cast a year later in the female borstal drama Scrubbers (1982) and went on to be a successful writer, director and actor. She won the best actress prize at the Cannes film festival in 1997 for her performance as an abused woman in Gary Oldman’s hard-hitting Nil By Mouth.
The first visit Burke made after returning from Cannes was to see Scher. Asked how she felt when one of her students enjoyed such acclaim, Scher said: “Like a proud mum.”
Other alumni included Herbert Norville, star of Horace Ové’s Pressure (1975), and Dexter Fletcher, who went on to direct the Elton John biopic Rocketman (2018). Numerous EastEnders cast members passed through Scher’s hands, such as Gary Beadle, Patsy Palmer, Gillian Taylforth, Susan Tully and Martin Kemp. When Kemp and his brother Gary were cast in the title roles of The Krays (1990), after many years away from acting, they sought out Scher for a refresher course.
Another EastEnders star, Jake Wood, described Scher as “this whirlwind of energy … I’d never met anybody with that drive. I was a bit intimidated, to be honest.”
“No matter how tough the kid was, no matter who they were, she didn’t put up with any shit from anybody,” said Robson. “She demanded respect and got it.”
Scher was born in Cork, Ireland, the eldest of four daughters of Eric, a dentist, and Claire (nee Hurwitz). She was educated at St Angela’s convent, where she was the sole Jewish pupil. She showed an interest in tap-dancing and being on stage. “Life was bliss there,” she said.
When she was 14, her father moved the family to Hove, in East Sussex, reasoning that there would be greater opportunities there. Her education continued at Hove grammar school and Brighton School of Music and Art but her father objected to Anna’s acting ambitions, steering her instead toward teaching. “There were terrible arguments about it,” she said.
Against a backdrop of tension at home, her mother walked out; it was Anna who found her goodbye note. She later insisted that she did not blame her mother for leaving, saying her father was “difficult to live with”. It would be another six years before she saw her again, by which time her mother had given birth to a son. Once the Anna Scher theatre was a success, Scher established an agency for some of the youngsters who were going on to get work. It was run by her husband, Charles Verrall, whom she married in 1976.
After plunging into severe depression in 2000, she stepped back from the theatre. When she recovered and tried to return two years later, she was blocked by the board of trustees, who had replaced her with a new principal. A long-running campaign to see her reinstated was ultimately unsuccessful, so she taught a handful of weekly drama classes in a church hall instead.
Scher was appointed MBE in 2013. Two years earlier, she had been a guest on Desert Island Discs, where she said: “Teaching is the love of my life. Teaching is everything for me. It’s my raison d’être.”
She is survived by a son, John, from her marriage to Charles, who died last month.
Kathy Burke writes: You’re nearly 16 and finally there. You’ve been on the waiting list for three years.
Walking into the large black room, knees wobbling, you feel a tangible vibrancy of hundreds of kids that came before you and hundreds more still to come. It’s charged.
Old battered chairs line the walls. You sit in one closest to the door. Nobody notice me, please. Nobody does. The 50 or so other kids are too busy with their chat, their excitement, their … what’s that thing I don’t recognise from normal school? Oh yes, their happiness.
The clatter of a football rattle cuts through the babble. She’s here.
You recognise her from a documentary on the telly and articles in the Islington Gazette. Long, thick hair. Knee-high boots and the most amazing teeth you’ve ever seen.
It’s so quiet! Her voice has a sweet Irish lilt. “Hello everybody and welcome. Our inspiration for this term is Dr Martin Luther King and our word of the week is strength.” You notice “strength” on a card on a wall. “We can show strength in many different ways, but is it always a positive thing? I look forward to your interpretations and improvisations. Now, is anyone new this evening?”
Your bum squeaks. Six or so other kids put up their hands so you put up yours.
“Welcome all of you. We start each lesson with a warm-up. Feel free to join in or sit and watch.”
What’s a warm-up? Soul Limbo by Booker T & The MG’s blasts out from the speakers. Anna at the front, the kids lined in rows copying her every move. This way, that way, clap, smile, stomp. That way, this way, stomp, smile, clap. Then it stops and everyone sits.
For the next two hours you learn about “being a good audience” and how “listening is the key to good improvisation”. You watch the others work their way through situations set by Anna. Kids from different backgrounds pretending to be their parents, teachers, friends or foes. Putting themselves in other people’s shoes. Understanding life from another’s point of view.
And when someone is brilliant or hilarious or both, the exuberant roar of appreciation and manic stomping of feet from us, the good audience, is fucking exhilarating. You’re exhausted. You’ve never felt like this before. You’ve never respected and loved a teacher like this before.
In the shortest amount of time, this magnificent woman has become your everything.
• Anna Valerie Scher, teacher, born 26 December 1944; died 12 November 2023
