For 50 years, Sylvia Young’s theatre school has trained the likes of Dua Lipa, Nicholas Hoult and a ‘very naughty’ Amy Winehouse. The 82-year-old tells us how it started – and why she expelled her own daughter
Sylvia Young rescues me from the noise and chaos of what seems like 100 schoolchildren singing and dancing and jumping around the entrance to the Sylvia Young Theatre School, but is probably only around 20 – these are theatre-school pupils, with the noise, confidence and presence of a group several times their size. She takes me through the school to an upper floor and we peek into classrooms where drama lessons take place before eventually finding an empty room. The whole place – it’s a converted church in London – seems to fizz with noise and activity. The children are all a bit overexcited, Young explains – they’re holding a day of fundraising for Ukraine, and it’s the end of term.
Young describes herself as the “caretaker” – she lives in the caretaker’s flat above the school with her husband, Norman – though she’s actually the founder and principal of her school. At 82, small and twinkly, she no longer teaches but she’s always around. When we walk through the school together, pupils smile and say hello to her with an easy confidence I never had as a child (and she’s always Sylvia to them, she says, never Mrs Young – though to be more accurate, she’s Mrs Ruffell because Young is, aptly enough, a bit of a stage name).
