CHOICES - Nataliya Kharina

This blog is part of our ‘Passing On’ series, where we’re shouting about those who are doing bits in the community and engagement side of the theatre world. Read more about where this series comes from here.

Nataliya Kharina is the Artistic Director and creator of Brent Youth Theatre and an all round legend.

There’s a short delay to the interview, we’d planned to do it I.R.L but instead we chose to meet in the Zoom world. Nataliya joins the meeting with a sunny café in the backdrop and I immediately wish I could be there too, for the sun yes, but also Nataliya has the calming yet impressive presence of someone you know is on big things. I first experienced this presence in 2019 when I emailed looking to get some work experience facilitating for a local youth theatre, Brent Youth Theatre. I ended up volunteering there for months before beginning to facilitate more and more regularly. It’s no overstatement to say these experiences were formative for me as a person and facilitator and eventually for the company I would begin 3 years later, CHILD Creatives.

It's 10.30am and just before we start Nataliya is finishing her emails and it later becomes apparent that she has been up since 7.00am writing and re-writing budgets, among other things.

N: “I’ve realised one of my things is I’m really efficient but that means when I’m working I need to be working.”

I nod along, recognising that as my experience of her.

E: “On or off there is no in between”

N: “Exactly”

We jokingly sing “Let’s start at the very beginning” and then that’s exactly what we do.

N: “I am an asylum seeker from Russia, we arrived here when I was 5 years old initially. We were here for 2 years, we went back to Russia again for a year and then came back here and kind of settled. We were officially asylum seekers, we were political asylum seekers, so we ran away from Russia from a very dangerous situation. […] I think a lot of what I do is very much down to my childhood.”

Then we talk about school, something Nataliya talks about eloquently and with masses of self-awareness.

N: “Basically, I was very shy and quiet in school, primary school was all right, but high school was confusing and I didn’t get it. I wasn’t smart enough to be amazing but not under-achieving enough to be noticed in that area, so I was very, very in the middle”

“By secondary school I could speak English properly […] but I still always felt very dual heritage. I would watch Eastenders as homework, because everyone would talk about it and I was like ‘I have no idea what these people are talking about!’[…] I’ve met people that I went to school with and they were like ‘you were fine’ but inside me I was like ‘I don’t get it’. A lot of readjusting to fit into gaps.”

N: “We had my grandma at home so we always spoke Russian completely at home. […] it was very this world and that world, completely living two worlds the whole time.”

It strikes me as a tiring world for a young person to live in, constantly being told who to be in these seemingly very separate worlds.

 “I took Drama at GCSE. […] Everyone else took drama cause it was a dud lesson basically. […] in year 11 when we were preparing for our final exam one of the other kids was like ‘listen Nataliya, I don’t know what I’m doing here, how do I get an A?’ and I used to prep them. A drama teacher who wasn’t my drama teacher, she came past my classroom, and this is how much teachers matter, She didn’t even know me and she came up to me and was like ‘you should do that’ and she walked out.”

I chuckle at the hit and run quality of this teachers inspiration. But it seems this is the crystallising moment for Nataliya. It makes me think of my own and maybe this is where you can think of yours, the moment where in amongst a challenging messy existence you can see a path that aligns something you love with something you are good at and where there is the possibility of a career.

N: “I remember being like ‘well I’m going to be a director then’”.

N: “We had a really tough home life during [school] years 12 &13. I still got an A in art”

I remark on the power of a subject like art for young people in these situations. I don’t usually make blanket statements, but here I will. I think all young people need a creative, expressive outlet where they make the choices. For Nataliya in this tough and challenging time, that came in the form of A-level Art.

N: “School was all right, it wasn’t good, but it wasn’t bad. I’m glad I never have to do it again. I thought no one will ever let me in [to drama school], it just won’t happen”

N: “Every time I’ve had particularly difficult situations at home, it’s pushed me to do more challenging things for myself. Those 2 years were the worst two years at home, we had a really awful situation. So when I was sitting with those brochures, I was like ‘screw it’ I’m just gonna do it because this (home life) is awful. There’s some sort of power it gives me where I’m like, either way I need to get out of this. Because here [in creative spaces] I have choices, there I have no choices. So where I have choices I going to make complete use of them”

We talk about her choice to apply to Central simply because it was on the UCAS system and how she was accepted to Goldsmiths without an audition. She believes this is because she “made use of her dual-nationality” and how she “could understand two completely different different perspectives on living”.

I note that this open-minded ability to see other perspectives is something she really has continued to make use of. A few weeks ago in early 2022, Nataliya was diagnosed with ADHD and for her so much about her experience at school and early life started to make sense. I bring up at this juncture that she can confidently understand the perspectives of people with Neuro-divergent brains as well as those from different nationalities and backgrounds, something that means she’s perfectly placed to begin a venture like a youth theatre in one of London’s most multicultural boroughs, Brent.

After studying Drama and Applied Theatre at Central SSD Nataliya spent time honing her craft, cramming days full of work in Hong Kong, learning the meticulous attention to detail and energetic facilitation style that I and others now recognise as distinctly hers. Nataliya is a go-getter if ever there was one, she tells me “My mum was talking about mine and my older brother’s life cause we both went through the really tough times of our early childhood. [Through those experiences] I’ve been raised into this idea that life could be taken away like that (she clicks her fingers). So I’ve completely moulded my career around myself. It means I wake up at 7am and cry over budgets but that’s the price I pay for being able to be creatively, completely free. […] I can trust my creativity entirely.”

N: “I remember reading the poetry anthologies and there was always that one or two poems about belonging and I remember thinking ‘man, just assimilate’ only because the way I’d come into this country was like, assimilate quickly so that you’re allowed to stay.” 

At this point I want to shout as loud as I can about Nataliya’s Mum, called Natalia. Some years ago she set up her own charity and began helping Russian-speaking people from across eastern Europe with adjusting to life in the UK. She is such a supportive presence and is thought of as a mother by most people who work for Brent Youth Theatre and ‘Unique Community’ - her charity and the umbrella that Brent Youth Theatre and many other people are under.

N: “Right now I don’t even know how to talk about my identity. We can stamp out bullying, but society for those young people (of Russian heritage) right now is just ‘Russia is bad Russia is bad Russia is bad’, Or even Ukrainians who have that connection between the two countries.”

E: “Let’s get into Brent Youth Theatre, was that something you’d always wanted to do, or was it just the right time?”

N: “The idea was that Mum had always said that she would hand this charity over to me. I tried to start a youth theatre when I came back home, [from Hong Kong] but I failed, loads of times. I didn’t have the skills.

“For three years I was a freelancer and I worked everywhere, Ed everywhere. It was really good learning how organisations run […] then I was like ‘people are hiring me, ok I can do this’. I sat down with Mum one day and asked what’s going on with the charity, and the charity had been dwindling and she was almost thinking about closing it. I said well, why don’t we just do this.

E: “So what currently is the aim of Brent Youth Theatre and the charity as a whole? Give me your funding application spiel about what it is you do because I know you’ve got it reeled up…”

N: “The dream vision in the sky is to live in a world that’s so inclusive that the word itself becomes redundant. Right now the big push in youth services in general is that we need to give them careers, clear toolkits for careers, which I think is great and I agree and we’re doing all of that on the side. But my personal aim for the work that I do is that kids are kinder, they’re resilient, they’re empathetic, they’re conscientious.”

E: “How are you doing that? What measures are you putting in place?”

N: “Having a therapist in every single room we run - we’re hiring a second one now. Having a well-staffed room full of not just volunteers but paid staff, that’s why we have 4 or 5 people in every room. Minimal hierarchy so people can talk to me, they can call me whenever. But again I’m learning, every day.”

This is where I see the beauty of what has been built here. Someone who as a young person, cherished the opportunity to get into a creative room and make her own choices is now giving that to the next generation. At Brent Youth Theatre they have 3 different weekly sessions focussing on acting, design and music/songwriting. So it’s a place where the young people have choices of what they want to create, how they want to create it, and with a team of staff in every room, they even have choices of who they can seek support from if they need it. I note here that often young people learn from their experience of a space as much as, if not more than the actual content of what we’re trying to teach them.

E: “What are the big challenges at the moment?”

N: “Not to grow too quickly. To make sure we have the right staff in the room – we’re always trying to hire staff that reflect our community in different ways. Funding is always a challenge, but that’s ongoing forever I think. But managing the growth […] being realistic about my physical and mental capacity.”

Using the Hats:

As a Facilitator you have to put on many different hats. I will ask each of our interviewees which of these roles they use most often and why. (And yes, it is a Sondheim reference).

N: “Clown, Liberator and Mentor”

E: “Which of these roles do you enjoy playing the most?”

N: (immediately) “Liberator. […] liberation from like, you don’t have to be this thing that you’re presenting, you can actually be whatever you want. In our space we’re giving everyone the option of playing and then within that play you find yourself better.”

There’s so much in theatre and engagement work that Nataliya and I could muse on for hours, and on occasion we have. I finish by telling her how much I enjoyed it, how much I’ve learned and how I wouldn’t usually get the chance to ask these questions, thus underlining the original point of this series of interviews.

Please consider this a whole-hearted endorsement of Brent Youth Theatre, if you’re a facilitator of any level get in touch with them as they are doing an amazing job of aiding the development of the young people they work with as well as the people who work there.

And I will leave the final words of this blog to Nataliya:

“Life will throw enough challenges at us where we have no choice, so why don’t we live life day to day with all the choices in front of us. We’re trying to break the box and the younger we do this, the funner life is. Life should be fun.”

Written by Ed, CHILD Founder

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