Few amateur drama groups have so prolific and versatile a member as Ian Gledhill. He has been active in Sheffield University Drama Society for some forty years and during that time has acted in many shows, while also devising and staging adaptations such as ‘Rise and Fall of the House of York’ from Shakespeare, and Pat Barker’s ‘Regeneration’ trilogy of novels. Ian has taken SUDS productions to Bolsover Castle, the Shepherd’s Wheel, the Winter Garden, and to Buxton Festival.
He has produced rehearsed readings of his adaptation from a novel by Julian Barnes, and also his own play ‘Trio’, based on the relations between Virginia Woolf, Vita Sackville-West and the composer Ethel Smyth. It’s also worth noting that Ian once directed an Opera in Sheffield’s own Crucible Theatre!
While currently serving his second term as Chair of the Society, he is directing his nineteenth SUDS production, ‘The Crucible’ by Arthur Miller. This show offers scope for Ian to pursue some of his favourite aspects of work in the theatre. The play demands a large cast (though at 22 it’s not quite so big as his record 35 for a Shakespeare production).
“Perhaps I was born to be an air traffic controller,” he says as he describes the pleasure he derives from ‘painting stage pictures’ by shaping groups of characters on the stage and mapping their movements while taking care to give life to each individual – “there are no small parts,” he remarks. He enjoys too, creating a contrast between the big ensembles and the intense scenes involving only two or three characters – of which The Crucible provides moving examples between John Proctor and his wife Elizabeth.
Is there a link between Arthur Miller’s play about the supposed witches in Salem, and the fact that Ian has twice staged Shakespeare’s ‘Macbeth’? Most recently, in his sell-out production of 2024, Ian increased the number of witches to nine… and devised special music and visual spectacles to enhance the spooky atmosphere! But providing opportunities for the women in the troupe to assert themselves is a particular preoccupation, he argues. He can see that The Crucible offers plenty such possibilities, and as rehearsals get under way he is already exploring novel ways for his actresses to give rein to their passionate and unsettling characters.
‘The Crucible’ runs from 12th – 15th November in the University Drama Studio, Shearwood Road. Get your ticket below.
Catch the article also in The Sheffield Star.
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