Alumni Spotlight: Jack Firoozan

It’s a privilege to able to share a short chronicle of my progression within the arts, starting at WHS, all the way through to conservatoire training and the start of another ‘New Adventure’ in the acting industry. In keeping the alumni family connected and engaged each year, fond memories of school resurface amid a busy world, and I am reminded of how lucky I was to be able to foster my love for the dramatic arts during my time here. It goes without saying that each journey through education is unique, and WHS, through its endless extracurricular offerings, led me to theatre and music. This wonderful school and its phenomenal teachers are to thank for that, so, thank you. 

Having just completed drama school in London a year ago, I maintained to my peers throughout that my locus of love for theatre belongs to the first play I ever performed in; The Wizard of Oz. It was Year 3, and I can categorically say, I had no clue what I was doing. At seven years old, I was awestruck by the colours of our set in the Hall, the costumes, the face paint and that towering proscenium, under which a very small me felt both lost and enchanted by an imaginary world. I was grateful in my role as The Cowardly Lion to be able to hide behind a tree for the first half of my opening scene. Between an adrenalising stage fright, the blinding heat of stage lights, and the magic of suspended belief, I became hooked on theatre. It contained all life. The cast and crew became family, related by a love for entertainment, and a strong valuation of the maxims, lessons, heartbreak and laughter found in cherished tales, old and new. The fear The Cowardly Lion had to overcome, in order that he might redeem himself, was a fear that I also shared as I stood behind that tree. Looking back 17 years ago, that lesson has been the bedrock of my belief in the value of the theatrical arts; an imagination suspended is an imagination alive.

WHS had an exceptional availability for progression in theatre and music. Starting with The Wizard of Oz, I was able to hop on that track of progression. Speech and Drama, LAMDA examinations, Shakespeare plays, The Poetry Competition, The Year 8 Revue, and countless other opportunities led me to finish WHS with an insatiable appetite to not let this new found love of writing and performing theatre end here. As such, I decided to apply for an acting scholarship to my next school, Harrow. Through innumerable monologue rehearsals in Drayton with my Speech and Drama teacher Mrs Leach, coupled with the ever-sage counsel of Mr Gillam and Mrs Farrow, I was able to obtain an acting scholarship to secondary school. 

Here, I was able to refine my skills as a performer, and continue discovering the truths that dramatic arts can impart. The opportunities and resources available were unlike anything I had witnessed. Once more, I could lose myself in the 300-seat auditorium, a wardrobe department spanning three floors, House plays, School plays, writing competitions, field-leading beaks and masters (teachers), and dramaturgical workshops with alumni in the profession. I was immensely grateful to be afforded the space to engage with new kinds of theatre, and to begin writing some of my own. It also gave me the freedom to fall flat on my face; perhaps the most important part of being a performer in theatrical arts. It’s strange to say, but to learn anything about yourself, or the characters you play, you have to take risks. Engaging, exciting theatre takes risks.

This is because I believe that there’s something inherently brave about performance in theatre. I wrestled with this at Harrow School, Durham University and The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. That’s not to say a play equates to running into a battlefield, but stage fright wouldn’t exist if there wasn’t something dangerous about theatre. There are multiple reasons why, perhaps, but university and drama school showed me that self-consciousness is likely responsible for most of them. At Durham, this manifested in pressuring myself into giving ‘cool’, or ‘good’ performances to my peers, and at drama school I was quickly told that this is ‘the Actor Brain’. I, the actor, had to stop thinking about what I was doing, or even delivering a good performance. It simply caused worry. Instead, you had to be the character you were playing, completely. You have to lose yourself in the role, just how I lost myself in the Assembly Hall at 7 years old.

As my education in drama ends and the frontier to professional work beckons, I hope I can impart a couple of small suggestions and encouragements to pupils at WHS that my adventure has taught me thus far. The first would be to take advantage of what WHS has to offer. You will rarely find opportunity like you do at school to express artistically, and learn about yourself and others. There is nothing I am happier to have done than to have taken that first leap into the unknown 17 years ago. Your wonderful teachers will guide you expertly, and the facilities are there for you to use, so don’t let the chance go to waste. The sky is truly the limit. The second, and last, is to be brave, believe in yourself, and take value in what you have to express. I came across a letter the other day by an American novelist, Kurt Vonnegut, who articulated this in a much more profound way than I ever could, and so I will leave you with it. Writing to a young class of Xavier High School art students in New York, he said the following: “Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money or fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow… Dance home after school, and sing in the shower and on and on. Make a face in your mashed potatoes. Pretend you’re Count Dracula… You have experienced becoming, learned a lot more about what’s inside you, and you have made your soul grow.

Jack