![]() But I like it! I liked it because I felt alive.” If you see a finished show, it’s very tight – but if you see the ramshackle group that it takes to make that show, it’s all about working together My brain was spinning out! This isn’t what I know theatre to be. It was while studying there that Murray first went to the BAC: “We watched a show that was completely in the pitch dark. He finished his schooling at South Thames College, where he found himself making music alongside the kids he grew up with. ![]() After getting in a fair bit of trouble (“Sometimes it was like I was being profiled”), Murray left the Brit school with no GCSEs. He told a teacher about his desire to fuse drum’n’bass, hip-hop and theatre, but was immediately shot down. Murray worked hard but couldn’t find anything that really spoke to him: “The one thing I did notice is that all the plays and all the shows – none of it was real. Murray (second from right) with cast members in rehearsals for Pied Piper at the Battersea Arts Centre. Fighting to create theatre that’s open to everyone (Murray has fought hard for “accessible” productions, which allow people to keep their phones switched on throughout the show, arrive late and generally act a little more freely). Fighting to tell stories that reflect the people he knows in an tweet in the summer, Murray wrote: “Working-class voices in theatre are so unrepresented … there is no nuance or truth.” Fighting for respect from theatre practitioners who still don’t understand his process (lots of casting directors balk at Murray’s use of workshops rather than more conventional auditions). The show garnered five-star reviews, toured the country and was eventually transformed into a powerful documentary on BBC iPlayer. And perhaps most notably, in 2018, Murray found success with Beatbox Academy’s first professional production, Frankenstein. He’s started composing rap, hip-hop and beatbox-infused scores for a number of increasingly high-profile musicals, including Michael Rosen’s Unexpected Twist. A trilogy of Murray’s plays, all of which merge hip-hop, theatre and working-class stories, was published last year. There have been plenty of high points, both in his individual theatrical pursuits and as artistic director of Battersea Arts Centre’s brilliant Beatbox Academy. Conrad Murray’s life in the arts has been a battle.
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