‘That’s what saved me’: Darren Raymond and Mark Rylance on the prison drama workshop that brought them together

Darren Raymond, artistic director of the London theatre charity Intermission Youth, is directing his friend Mark Rylance in the lead role of his adaptation of Molière's Tartuffe, opening at the Marylebone theatre. The pair first met in 2004 when Raymond, then serving a prison sentence at HMP Brixton, attended a Shakespeare workshop that Rylance, then artistic director of Shakespeare's Globe, was involved in; that encounter shaped Raymond's later decision to found Intermission and sparked a lasting friendship and professional partnership.

Intermission, which Raymond set up 20 years ago, offers free professional-standard drama training to 80 trainees a year aged 11 to 30-plus, but has lacked a permanent home since leaving its base at St Saviour's Church in Knightsbridge in 2019 and is currently working from Omnibus theatre in Clapham. Rylance has supported the charity since its early days, and says he now prefers backing grassroots arts initiatives such as Intermission over larger institutions like his former drama school, the Globe or the RSC, describing it as repaying his debt to the teachers who shaped him.