Alan Durband
Encyclopedia
Liverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...
. He was head of English at the Liverpool Institute High School for Boys and was co-founder of the Liverpool
Liverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...
Everyman Theatre
Everyman Theatre
The Everyman Theatre stands at the north end of Hope Street, Liverpool, Merseyside, England. Established in 1964 in a former cinema, it encouraged local talent and played a part in the development of new artistes and writers. The theatre was rebuilt between 1975 and 1977, and was closed again for...
.
Early years and education
Alan Durband was born and raised in the poor inner city districts of the Dingle, LiverpoolDingle, Liverpool
Dingle is an inner-city area of Liverpool, Merseyside, England. It is located to the south of the city, bordered by the adjoining districts of Toxteth and Aigburth...
, (Drysdale Street) and Kensington (Esher Road), as the only child of a ship's carpenter, Joseph William Durband, who spent many months at sea on the 'banana boats' during the 1930s, leaving Alan in the care of his mother and aunts. His mother, Edith Durband (née
NEE
NEE is a political protest group whose goal was to provide an alternative for voters who are unhappy with all political parties at hand in Belgium, where voting is compulsory.The NEE party was founded in 2005 in Antwerp...
Ashcroft), had come from a background ruined by the failure of the family horse-and-cart business in the late 1920s. She was particularly ambitious for her son, and even before he was born began making sacrifices and saving money from their modest income for the time when she might have to pay for a grammar school education. However, this was not needed, as Alan won a City scholarship from Matthew Arnold Junior School in the Dingle in 1938 and gained entrance to the prestigious Liverpool Institute High School for Boys, where he proved an excellent scholar, eventually being appointed to replace the Head Boy (accidentally killed in a school cricket match) in mid-year.
In 1946 he won a scholarship to Downing College, Cambridge, but this was delayed by 18 months of compulsory National Service
National service
National service is a common name for mandatory government service programmes . The term became common British usage during and for some years following the Second World War. Many young people spent one or more years in such programmes...
. Because of his pacifist beliefs, he refused to enter the armed forces, and as a conscientious objector
Conscientious objector
A conscientious objector is an "individual who has claimed the right to refuse to perform military service" on the grounds of freedom of thought, conscience, and/or religion....
he was instead assigned work in a coal mine. "He used to drive his car to work, passing the foreman on his bike" (Personal Communication, J. Eedle). This experience later gave him his schoolteacher nickname "Dusty", aggravated his lifelong asthma, and strongly influenced his political views.
He began undergraduate life at Cambridge in September 1948; his tutor was the noted literary critic Frank Raymond Leavis "At Cambridge he tried one afternoon of tennis
Tennis
Tennis is a sport usually played between two players or between two teams of two players each . Each player uses a racket that is strung to strike a hollow rubber ball covered with felt over a net into the opponent's court. Tennis is an Olympic sport and is played at all levels of society at all...
and cricket on the paddock before deciding that sport was not for him, retiring to his diet of doughnuts and milk" (Personal Communication, J. Eedle). He was much influenced by F R Leavis and his views on literary criticism. He graduated in 1951, did a year's post-graduate certificate of education, married (Audrey Atherton) in 1952 and began his career, briefly in Bolton, then in September 1953 returned to The Liverpool Institute as an English teacher, later (1956) becoming Head of the English Department.
Teaching at the Liverpool Institute
His teaching work was generally with the higher streamed, academically-inclined boys and the Sixth form, in preparation for Advanced (A) level English or for scholarship exams to Oxbridge and he achieved very high pass levels and results. "Dusty" Durband later came to considerable public fame as the highly regarded Sixth Form teacher of A level English to Paul McCartneyPaul McCartney
Sir James Paul McCartney, MBE, Hon RAM, FRCM is an English musician, singer-songwriter and composer. Formerly of The Beatles and Wings , McCartney is listed in Guinness World Records as the "most successful musician and composer in popular music history", with 60 gold discs and sales of 100...
(1958 - 60) who achieved his pass in that subject.
Durband's teaching style was imaginative and engaging, displaying his enthusiasm for the subject and praising individual achievements. His discipline was strict but humane and he never resorted to the physical punishments so common in the school. All the plays were read aloud by pupils in class with dramatic flair encouraged. McCartney himself commented that he loved the way that Durband cut down the stories to expose their most basic themes, therefore simplifying them so as to be easily understood.
He played a central role in directing school plays and staged them with imagination and 'modern' interpretations: ' The Rivals' in 1958 (with incidental music composed by John McCabe
John McCabe (composer)
John McCabe CBE is an English composer and pianist.- Biography :John McCabe was born in Huyton, Liverpool, Merseyside. A prolific composer from an early age, he had written thirteen symphonies by the time he was eleven...
); 'St. Joan' in 1960, 'Servant of Two Masters' in 1962.
Expansion of post secondary education and the uncertainties of the future of Grammar schools led several experienced teachers to leave the Liverpool Institute School after the departure of the Headmaster John Robert Edwards in 1961. Durband was appointed to the C.F.Mott Teachers' Training College, Huyton, Merseyside in 1962, eventually becoming Head of English.
Texts, plays and theatre
Durband's experience in the classroom led him to write a series of textbooks entitled 'English Workshop' which had commenced at his desk in Room 32, (published in 1959) and proved popular in classrooms throughout the country. He also wrote a series of student guides, 'Shakespeare Made Easy' - each volume a complete play, the original on one side and the same verse in modern English on the other. These were published from 1986 on. Judi DenchJudi Dench
Dame Judith Olivia "Judi" Dench, CH, DBE, FRSA is an English film, stage and television actress.Dench made her professional debut in 1957 with the Old Vic Company. Over the following few years she played in several of William Shakespeare's plays in such roles as Ophelia in Hamlet, Juliet in Romeo...
as a young drama student was a keen reader of these texts and Durband was particularly delighted that the headmistress of the school at which his daughter was teaching later banned his Shakespeare Made Easy version of Romeo and Juliet because the girls could understand the text of the play. (Personal Communication, J. Eedle).
Alongside his career and his writing, he was an avid promoter of the development and production of new drama & plays in collections entitled: 'New Directions in English', 1961; 'Contemporary English', 1962; 'Playbill', 1969 on; 'Prompt', 1973 on; and 'Wordplays' containing writers such as Alan Ayckbourn
Alan Ayckbourn
Sir Alan Ayckbourn CBE is a prolific English playwright. He has written and produced seventy-three full-length plays in Scarborough and London and was, between 1972 and 2009, the artistic director of the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough, where all but four of his plays have received their...
, Tom Stoppard
Tom Stoppard
Sir Tom Stoppard OM, CBE, FRSL is a British playwright, knighted in 1997. He has written prolifically for TV, radio, film and stage, finding prominence with plays such as Arcadia, The Coast of Utopia, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, Professional Foul, The Real Thing, and Rosencrantz and...
, Willy Russell, Brian Jacques
Brian Jacques
James Brian Jacques was an English author best known for his Redwall series of novels and Castaways of the Flying Dutchman series. He also completed two collections of short stories entitled The Ribbajack & Other Curious Yarns and Seven Strange and Ghostly Tales.-Biography:Brian Jacques was born...
, Alan Bleasdale
Alan Bleasdale
Alan Bleasdale is an English television dramatist, best known for writing several social realist drama serials based on the lives of ordinary people.The Bleasdales live in prescot,liverpool,wales and london.-Early life:Bleasdale is an only child; his father worked in a food factory and his mother...
, George Friel & John Mortimer
John Mortimer
Sir John Clifford Mortimer, CBE, QC was a British barrister, dramatist, screenwriter and author.-Early life:...
, etc.
Durband was also a motivating force behind the creation and renovation of The Everyman Theatre
Everyman Theatre
The Everyman Theatre stands at the north end of Hope Street, Liverpool, Merseyside, England. Established in 1964 in a former cinema, it encouraged local talent and played a part in the development of new artistes and writers. The theatre was rebuilt between 1975 and 1977, and was closed again for...
on Hope Street, Liverpool which opened in 1964 and earlier he had attempted with Sam Wannamaker *< ref>http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/jan/26/sam-wanamaker-uk-security-forces to revive 'The New Shakespeare' as a supper club until its mysterious destructive fire in 1959.
He served for nearly 30 years as vice-chair, chair and vice-president of the Theatre Board raising thousands of pounds by means of innovative seven year tax-free covenants for the conversion of the building. It was a popular theatre specialising in local Liverpool settings & political subjects which gave opportunities to new playwrights - most famous of whom is probably Willy Russell (to whom Durband lent his Welsh cottage to write 'Educating Rita') and to actors such as: Bill Nighy
Bill Nighy
William Francis "Bill" Nighy is an English actor and comedian. He worked in theatre and television before his first cinema role in 1981, and made his name in television with The Men's Room in 1991, in which he played the womanizer Prof...
, Pete Postlethwaite
Pete Postlethwaite
Peter William "Pete" Postlethwaite, OBE, was an English stage, film and television actor.After minor television appearances including in The Professionals, Postlethwaite's first success came with the film Distant Voices, Still Lives in 1988. He played a mysterious lawyer, Mr...
, Jonathan Pryce
Jonathan Pryce
Jonathan Pryce, CBE is a Welsh stage and film actor and singer. After studying at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and meeting his longtime partner English actress Kate Fahy in 1974, he began his career as a stage actor in the 1970s...
& Julie Walters
Julie Walters
Julie Walters, CBE is an English actress and novelist. She came to international prominence in 1983 for Educating Rita, performing in the title role opposite Michael Caine. It was a role she had created on the West End stage and it won her BAFTA and Golden Globe awards for Best Actress...
who joined the Theatre company around 1975.
To mark this era, Willy Russell unveiled a plaque in memory of Alan Durband at the theatre in 1998 in the company of actor Pete Postlethwaite who acknowledged a great personal debt to his time spent on the stage at The Everyman.
Views and styles
Durband was an atheist, and like his mother, a committed socialist and a supporter of Left wing, 'progressive' causes. He was the Communist PartyCommunist Party of Great Britain
The Communist Party of Great Britain was the largest communist party in Great Britain, although it never became a mass party like those in France and Italy. It existed from 1920 to 1991.-Formation:...
candidate for school elections in 1946 and he withdrew (at the Head's suggestion) in favour of the Labour
Labour Party (UK)
The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...
candidate "to prove the value of the united left". [Source: School Mag. Feb. 1946]. At the same time he was creating imaginative money-making ideas such as an insurance scheme against physical punishment in which boys "paid him sixpence a week premium with pay-outs if we were punished"! (Personal Communication, J. Eedle).
His ideas were to evolve into an unusual combination of beliefs and experiences. His acute social conscience seemed to lie easily alongside a love of life with all its joys: of good food, wine and clothes, comfortable houses and luxury cars, made possible only by his entrepreneurial bent and an extremely strong work ethic which produced a steady flow of royalty payments from several decades of sales of his study guides in Britain and the United States. As an entry in the School Magazine (July 1962) announcing his departure, put it: "nestling in his briefcase alongside L5A's exercises were the latest brochures on refrigerators, washing machines, caravanserai, nuclear disarmament, brilliant new textbooks, and resurrections of long defunct amphitheatres". An obituary in the Liverpool Daily Post
Liverpool Daily Post & Echo
The Liverpool Echo and Liverpool Daily Post are two newspapers published by Trinity Mirror in Liverpool, Merseyside, England. They are published Monday to Saturday, the Echo being Liverpool's evening newspaper while the Daily Post, published in Merseyside, Cheshire, and North Wales editions, is the...
on 13 March 1993 said "His influence lives on in the minds of the boys he taught and the strength of popular theatrical productions in Liverpool".
He became a Justice of the Peace
Justice of the Peace
A justice of the peace is a puisne judicial officer elected or appointed by means of a commission to keep the peace. Depending on the jurisdiction, they might dispense summary justice or merely deal with local administrative applications in common law jurisdictions...
, (J.P.) in Liverpool in 1974 and is survived by his wife, Audrey, and his son, Mark, and daughter, Amanda.
Afterword
With the financial support of former pupil Paul McCartney, the old Liverpool Institute school building on Mount St. was saved and its interior transformed into LIPA, The Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts in 1996. It is particularly apt that his old English teacher's Classroom 32 was designated & plaqued as 'The Alan Durband Room'. Overlooking the school at the top of Mount Street at Hope StreetHope Street
Hope Street is the name of several streets:* Hope Street, Liverpool* Hope Street, Glasgow* Hope Street, Dunedin* Hope Street, Weymouth, Dorset* Hope Street, Providence, Rhode Island* Hope Street Hope Street may also refer to:...
is a sculpture (“A Case History” by John King, 1998) which depicts Durband's old briefcase cast in concrete.
Sources
- Dave Lang," Scrutiny to Subcultures: notes on literary criticism and popular music", Popular Music, Vol. 13, No. 2, Mellers at 80 (May, 1994), pp. 179-190. http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0261-1430(199405)13%3A2%3C179%3ASTSNOL%3E2.0.CO%3B2-3
- Merkin, Ros (Compiled by), Liverpool's Third Cathedral: The Liverpool Everyman Theatre, 2004