![]() She was also the inspiration for Tracie Tremarco, the alter ego of Sean Bean’s character in Shaun Duggan’s Bafta-nominated episode of The Accused in 2013. Mandy Romero first became famous in north-west clubs and is now an international avant-garde performance artist. After years of helping others transform, Roger removed the mohican and emerged, in secret at first, in a tight dress, blonde wig and high heels. Perhaps this is why that extrovert alter ego didn’t materialise until the mid-90s. Photograph: Rachel Joseph/BBC/RSJ FilmsĬonsidering his background as a punk peacock, Hill is surprisingly serious and intellectually introspective. ![]() Sean Bean as Tracie Tremarco, a character based on Roger Hill’s alter ego Mandy Romero. “There was no one who could help me live my dream.” He and Hart got their first break after Hill encouraged them to audition for the Willy Russell drama One Summer. “It was a profession that no one I knew did,” says Morrissey. Many of the teenagers were working class: Hill’s workshops expanded their horizons. “To make everybody work in the same direction is quite clever.” “All those loud, irritating rampant egos,” he recalls. “Working with young people is not necessarily the easiest thing,” says Stephen McGann, currently appearing in Call the Midwife. But it was his colourful spiked, jaw-droppingly high hairstyle that attracted the most attention. Long after punk, he still wore bondage trousers and ripped T-shirts. Hill’s unconventional appearance was part of the appeal. For Gerry Potter it was performance poetry and directing. In some cases, as for Liverpool Confidential editor Angie Sammons, it was journalism. Twice a week, in a small rehearsal room at the top of several flights of stairs, he unleashed the creativity of 50-60 teenagers. Hill, originally from Leicester, had arrived in Liverpool with a Cambridge University degree in English and Drama, and experience as a teacher and director. He created a safe space and that’s a really big gift to someone.”Ĭolourful character … Roger Hill and David Morrissey Ian Hart is equally emphatic: “I’d never have become an actor without Roger. It was Hill who “harnessed those energies and gave us this creative freedom to explore ourselves”. ![]() David Morrissey remembers himself as “a young person full of energy, but not particularly getting on in school academically and in a very turbulent world”. Many of them first encountered Hill as a director at Liverpool’s Everyman Youth Theatre in the late 70s and early 80s, when the city was undergoing high unemployment and civic unrest. An unlikely combination of John Peel, Ken Campbell and Grayson Perry, he has inspired playwrights, musicians and some of Britain’s most talented actors. There are many “characters” in the arts but there is only one Roger Hill. In the following decade, he swapped the mohican for a blonde wig and took to the stage in high heels as his extrovert alter ego Mandy Romero. I n Liverpool in the 80s he was known as “the man with the mohican” who helped local teens to act, write and direct. ![]()
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