Clint Dyer is an actor, director and playwright who credits the film maker Mike Leigh with launching his acting career when he was a teenager attending youth workshops at Theatre Royal Stratford East. Acting roles include Mr Loverman on TV and Sus on film, and he made his directorial debut with The Big Life in 2004, becoming the first Black British director of a West End musical. As a playwright he co-wrote (with Roy Williams) the Death of England trilogy for the National Theatre, where he was deputy artistic director from 2021 to 2025. Other credits include Get Up, Stand Up! The Bob Marley Musical at the Lyric theatre, and most recently Tracey Scott Wilson’s newsroom thriller The Story, starring Bafta winner Letitia Wright, which is now running at the National Theatre, London SE1, until 24 October.

It was astonishing to listen to an album that seemed to speak about my childhood from someone who’s at least 20 years younger than me. Bashy’s experience of London as a young Black man is scattered throughout the album, and he references my culture, in terms of older music – reggae and lovers’ tracks – in a way I would never have expected in such a modern framework. It’s smart and delicate and nuanced, and his lyricism, which earned him an Ivor Novello nomination, is up there with the greatest. My favourite track on the album is Earthstrong: I really relate to it, in certain moods, as a man who’s still struggling with PTSD from some of the things I’ve seen, because it speaks so deeply about the Black experience. It really touched me.

I used to live in Soho, and my group of friends and I would always walk over Waterloo Bridge and sit on the South Bank for hours, nattering about where we wanted our careers to go, waiting to hear back about acting jobs. When I used to go in my 20s, I would feel I was entering somebody else’s space: I’d be outside the National Theatre and not necessarily think it was my theatre. But what has been incredible for me is how many young kids of colour use the National as a place to sit down and study these days. There’s free wifi, there’s loads of space; they don’t even need to be invited. The fact it has such a diverse community is thrilling for me.

(14 November 2026)

Me and Goldie did a film with David Bowie called Everyone Loves Sunshine back in the 90s, and since then I’ve not only been a fan, I’ve been a friend, and it’s meant that I’ve been able to watch his journey as an artist. When you’ve been listening to somebody for that long, it’s amazing when they still feel forward-thinking. Hearing drum’n’bass live, there is nothing like it. He has two drummers, and it’s literally unbelievable. I’ve seen him perform with an orchestra before, and within about 30 seconds of the first song, everybody is up on their feet. It starts in this very safe and adult environment, but within moments everyone can’t listen to those beats and sit. It’s quite a thing – I can’t wait to see it again.

(dir. Akinola Davies Jr, 2025)

This is about a young boy experiencing or remembering his father’s love for his son. Akinola Davies Jr is a first-time director, and I admired his ability to be poetic while not being indulgent. It’s heartening to see a diverse film-maker being able to make an art film, as opposed to being forced down the road of social realism, which is usually the terrain we’re asked to do. You lose a sense of metaphor, of artistry, but he was skilled and nuanced and elegant in the delivery. The lead performance by Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù was so mature. I’ve seen Ṣọpẹ́ in films and on TV, but this was an absolute movie-star performance. It’s great to see a young Black Brit holding the screen in such a sure-footed way.

(Noel Coward theatre, London; Bush theatre, London)

I recently saw two equally brilliant plays with very different budgets. You’ve got a big West End show with a big West End star – Adrian Lester at the Noël Coward theatre – and a low-budget two-hander at the Bush, yet both packed a beautiful theatrical punch. The Cyrano production was filled with years of technique and skill and ability – Adrian gave a performance no young actor could deliver. It was the sort of experience that could only happen in the theatre. And Tender was absolutely gorgeous work. It’s about two young women who meet and fall in love, and to see that kind of relationship being so boldly articulated by such a young, burgeoning director, Emily Aboud, was just so exciting.

Interview by Kathryn Bromwich