Ahead of her appearance at the INK Festival, impressionist Jan Ravens talks to Sarah Harris about her career journey so far
Jan Ravens is far from a one-trick pony. Most known for her voice work on television's Spitting Image and BBC Radio 4 show Dead Ringers, Jan is also an accomplished actor, director and producer. She has worked hard to carve a colourful and creative path to stardom and, at the age of 64, shows no signs of slowing down.
This month, Jan is set to take to the stage at the INK Festival in Halesworth, where she will sit down in a Q&A session with poet Luke Wright. “It's such a great event which promotes new writing and local talent," says Jan. "A lot of hard work goes into it behind the scenes.” Jan’s involvement in INK comes as a result of the friends she has made during her career. “Julia Sowerbutts, who I have known for years, is the artistic director and co-founder of the festival. Also, two great friends of mine are very involved, Helen Atkinson Wood and Ann Bryson.
“Ann was starring in a one-woman play at the INK Festival, Invisible Irene by Jackie Carreira, a few years ago, and I went to see her in it. It was so brilliant, and I saw many more great plays and exhibitions over the weekend. I loved it. It was one of those moments where my whole life flashed before my eyes, and I saw many people from my past. They were all in Suffolk for that one weekend and it made me think that it must be a really nice place to live if you’re of an artistic inclination. There are lots of creative, interesting people around.”
For Jan, it was clear where her talents lay from a young age. Growing up in the north west of England, she used to do impressions of the teachers at her school, although she was set on becoming an actress. “I lived in a little village called Hoylake, where the actress Glenda Jackson was from, and I thought if Glenda can do it, so can I.” After school, Jan trained as a drama teacher at a college in Cambridge, where she joined the Footlights Club and got into comedy acting. The first play she was in was directed by Sir Nicholas Hytner, who subsequently became director of the National Theatre and co-founded The Bridge Theatre in London.
Following a stint in London, where she continued to pursue her acting career, Jan was called back to Cambridge to direct the annual Footlights Revue. “That year, Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie and Emma Thompson were in it. It did very well, winning the first-ever Perrier Award at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 1981.” She then spent 18 months working as a producer at BBC Radio, before returning to perform in another Revue with her then-husband, composer and writer Steve Brown. In the audience was Jasper Carrott who, following Jan’s performance, invited her to share her impressions on his television show, Carrott’s Lib. Spitting Image shortly followed, which earned Jan her reputation as an impressionist and led to collaborations with Rory Bremner and Alistair McGowan, as well as the conception of Dead Ringers.
“I use a lot of topical, political material as that's the area I'm most interested in,” she says. “I use my impressionism as a way of saying something and trying to illustrate the absurdity of the figures I'm portraying. I’m naturally someone who pokes fun. For example, Liz Truss giving her speech about ‘pork markets’ struck me as someone whose dad had always told her she was funny as a little girl, looking around for applause the whole time.
“The writers on Dead Ringers are so brilliant and I'm in awe of the way they continue to be so witty and incisive. There are also more women writers now.” Indeed, being a woman in comedy has come with its challenges for Jan, who recalls the ‘60s satire boom as ‘full of white, middle-class men’ and describes topical comedy as ‘the last bastion of male chauvinism’.
“It’s hard to imagine, now, that sexism was so prevalent in the workplace; we just accepted it back then,” she says. “It’s a tough world in which to have the confidence to compete, because if you don’t see anybody of your ilk there, you think you can’t do it. It’s so great to see so many good women doing it now. The playing field is changing but it's a slow process, and it needs to become more diverse in lots of other ways, too.”
Jan’s one-woman show, Difficult Woman, was a poignant moment for her in 2017, both personally and professionally. “It came from the label that Theresa May was given by Kenneth Clarke as a ‘difficult woman’, and it was about that concept - what is a ‘difficult woman’? Is it someone who doesn’t agree with you, someone who’s ambitious or decisive – what's the definition?” And while the play focused on impersonations of powerful women, such as Theresa May, Hilary Clinton, Nicola Sturgeon and Angela Merkel, the personal aspect was also carefully interwoven. “At the same time, I was going through the tragic break-up of my second marriage, I was caring for my mother who had dementia and all while looking after my three children who were still at home.”
Jan has always been open about her personal life and has been known to incorporate her own experiences into her work. She now feels the time is right to focus more outwardly, using her life as inspiration but presenting it in a more fictional way. She's currently in talks with a television production company about a programme that follows a group of women in their sixties who are navigating the world of dating.
Her passion for work remains as strong as ever and she's a long way off retirement, pouring her efforts into projects in new and exciting ways. “It’s such a privilege and brilliant thing to enjoy your work,” she says. “There are elements of it, in any job, that are a slog or not very stimulating, but nonetheless to be able to do a job that you love is such a gift. Here I am at 64 years old still doing it, and I love that.”
For more information about INK Festival, April 13-16, visit inkfestival.org
