Benjamin Till: Composer & Director

Benjamin Till (Vanburgh,1995) immersed himself in both music and theatre at the University of York. He speaks to Alumni Voices about his varied experiences directing ambitious student productions, forging friendships, and navigating the challenges of being openly gay during a period of social and legal inequality. 

Student Life and Creative Productions at York

“I always knew I wanted to go to York. I think I was about eleven when I first set my heart on it. Someone had told me that the music department was full of oddballs, and I considered myself very much an oddball. 

My dad was a deputy headteacher, and during my fourth year at secondary school, he did a secondment year at an organisation based in Wentworth. He lived there, so we’d go up to visit him. Every visit just deepened my love for York, and I knew I wanted to study there. I also had a history teacher who had studied at York, who was my guru at school – that just cemented it for me. I didn’t even consider applying to Cambridge or anywhere else – I just wanted to go to York.

When I finally got my interview, I was so excited that I completely forgot to bring my music. I had my cello strapped to my back and ran to the York music shop to buy a copy of Summertime – just the piano music- and then said to the interviewer, “Let’s just feel it, we’ll do it as jazz.” It was terrible. But somehow, I got my offer. Then I convinced myself I’d never get the grades – I always looked on the dark side of things – but I did, and getting into York felt like the biggest achievement of my life up to that point.

I lived in Vanbrugh College, in the so-called “Vanbrugh X Block,” which I don’t think exists anymore (they didn’t want a “VD” Block, apparently)! When I went back to York a few years ago, the part of the accommodation where I lived had been knocked down, so my hall of residence no longer exists.

I studied music, but theatre was a huge part of my life. I was vice-chair of what was then called “YUSADS” – York University Society of Drama and Something. Everyone called us, “You sad b*stards,” which was fair enough!

I directed theatre all the time, and I remember there was even a campaign from the Students’ Union saying my work was unnecessarily commercial rather than creative. I’d find graffiti about me on campus, and I was very much a campus personality.  I used to walk around campus in a kaftan and bare feet. That was me. It was an odd time, but it was brilliant!

“The joy about York for me is the sheer number of people who I am still in touch with. I think there’s something about our group at that particular time at the university which believed anything was possible, and that’s very much followed us through our lives.  We’re all go-getters and many of us have successful careers in the arts.”

York was the perfect place to be creative. The students ran their own drama production – I had keys to the Drama Barn. I remember starting a rehearsal at midnight after a university orchestra concert and running through until six in the morning. On the way home, I nicked a pint of milk from a milk float! That was the kind of freedom we had; the kind of environment that nurtured creativity.

York itself was magical. I remember my closest friend at the time, Ellie – who now works as a senior producer at BBC Radio 3 – saying to me, “You know, we’re halfway through our time here,” and we were both horrified at the thought that it would ever end.

The weather was a big part of the atmosphere – the microclimate of York was so distinctive. Cold, harsh winters where the mist and snow would roll in from the Moors. And then those long, endless summers, sitting by the river with a pint of Coke at nine in the evening, the light just lingering.

It was the creativity, though, that made it so special. The music department lived up to my expectation of encouraging oddballs. I did two composition units, we had new music groups that performed our pieces, we could record our compositions – it was this amazing mix of independent creative work and collaboration.

In the Drama Barn, I directed a play each term. Jesus Christ Superstar in Central Hall was a big one with 150 people in the cast. I also did The Crucible, When the Wind Blows, The Black Cat by Edgar Allan Poe, Oh! What A Lovely War –  it was non-stop. My music professor once said to me, “You do realise you’re doing a music degree, not a drama degree?” But I made it work. 

There was a big set of us who did all the drama together who have all gone on to become very successful and some quite well-known actors and writers. I don’t think any of us ever doubted that we wouldn’t be successful. We all pushed each other on. There was a real creativity in that space. I could say I’m going to do The Black Cat by Edgar Allen Poe. We moved all the seats in the drama barn so that there was a tiny, like meter square acting space which Richard Coyle sat in, and then behind the chairs was a bank of cellists who played live, and other people who would walk around the backs of the audience. We led the audience in by candlelight, one by one, and people would just walk along the back of somebody and brush their shoulder while the action was going on. So people were screaming all the time because they didn’t know what was going on. They didn’t even know where they were sitting in the space, because it was a small, restricted space. The fact that you could just do that was remarkable. I think that high level of creativity has stuck with everyone. So now, when we say, “I want to write a book”, or “I’m going to write a novel”, or “I’m going to write a screenplay”, there’s something in that hinterland of being at York, that makes all of our particular group go, “Well, that’s possible.”

If I went to York now, I’d be in the library all the time, and I wouldn’t be staying up until four in the morning, hatching plans to make shows and taking photographs. I’d be knuckling down a bit more, but I think actually,  the joy about York for me is the sheer number of people who I am still in touch with. I think there’s something about our group at that particular time at the university which believed anything was possible, and that’s very much followed us through our lives.  We’re all go-getters and many of us have successful careers in the arts.

Early Career and the Importance of Community 

I’ve always felt incredibly proud to be a gay man. That pride has been a constant in my life, and I’ve been involved in the fight for gay rights at so many different stages. My time at York coincided with a period of significant struggle for LGBTQ+ rights. At that time, the age of consent for gay men was still unequal, and there was a real sense of having to fight for visibility and respect. I remember feeling like simply existing as a gay man required a level of defiance.

My first boyfriend, Stephen Twigg, was the first openly gay man to be elected to Parliament. Stephen was elected in 1997, famously beating Michael Portillo in the general election. Suddenly, I found myself as the partner of a newly elected MP, and we were thrust into this bizarre media storm. There was even a photograph of me and Stephen in the Daily Mail, which meant I had to come out to my dad via the newspaper. What a way to come out. It set off a rush among my family, with relatives trying to shield my grandmother from the news that her grandson was gay. It was a very strange period.

What made it even weirder was that no one really knew how to deal with us as a gay couple, because you couldn’t get married at that time. They gave me a partner’s pass – actually, a spouse pass, which gave me the same rights as the wife of an MP, because there was no other provision for a gay partner. I’d only been with Stephen for about three months when he was elected, and suddenly I had an access-all-areas pass to Parliament. The law didn’t allow them to properly recognise our relationship, so they bent over backwards and gave me this spouse pass. That was the nonsense of those inequality laws. It was a key moment for me, back in 1997. 

Establishing myself in my career took quite a while. I didn’t have that immediate sense of belonging or a clear path, so my journey was always this intricate process of moving at a high level from one art form to another. The fact that I’d reached a certain level in one discipline allowed me to transition into another at a similar standard. I worked my way up, taking on roles like Associate Director for many of the Raymond Gubbay operas at the Albert Hall and other major venues. I remember working on Madama Butterfly in these huge arena productions. Then I became the Resident Director on the West End musical Taboo, which was written by Boy George and explored the 1980s club kids scene – I was Resident Director on that for a year. It’s where I met my husband, Nathan Taylor. He was an actor in the show and we’ve been together for 23 years. He’s presently touring Europe playing Gus The Theatre Cat in CATS! 

Throughout my career, I’ve always believed in saying yes and seeing where that leads. At one point, Philippa Goslett (a fellow University of York alum) – now known for her work on “House of the Dragon” – was working as an assistant to casting director Shaheen Baig. Shaheen specialised in street casting for major British films like “The Others,” “The Hours,” and “Billy Elliot.” She needed a pianist for auditions for a Beatles-inspired music film. I’m not really a pianist, but I said yes anyway, knowing I could bluff my way through pop music. Suddenly, I was playing piano for all these big-name actors. After a week, Shaheen and I got on so well that she asked me to come work for her, which led to a year in feature film casting and then to working as an acting coach on films like “28 Weeks Later.” We cast “Brick Lane” and several Nick Broomfield films.

Around the age of 30, after working with Shaheen, I realized I needed to return to music. Having done so much street casting, I saw that you could take someone off the street and turn them into a film star if they had the right look and presence. I wondered if the same could be done with music.

That thought set me on the path of creating documentary musicals. I pioneered a genre where I’d work with a community, interview people at length, and then turn their verbatim words into lyrics, which I’d set to music and give back for them to sing. The performances were raw and authentic, not polished like professional actors or singers, and that gave them a unique power. My first film, a three-minute musical about Hampstead Heath, won a competition for BBC London and went on to win an RTS award. Suddenly, I was seen as a film and TV director, even though the genre barely existed. The BBC would send me off to communities to make musical films about everyday things, like the tiny Metro in Newcastle or the A1 road – elevating the ordinary into something glamorous.

I love people and communities, and I think that fascination comes from my own experience as a Midlander. In the Midlands, you don’t fit into the North-South divide, and you spend a lot of time searching for a sense of belonging. Midlands accents aren’t easily recognised, and I always felt invisible growing up. There was also the discovery of my Jewish heritage, which was mind-blowing as a young adult. I felt like a wandering Jew from the Midlands, without a community of my own, which drove my fascination with other people’s communities.

That drive to help people feel seen and connected has shaped my work. I’ve always felt a sense of community in the LGBT world, but lately, I worry that sense is slipping away. In the 1980s, as a gay man, I had no voice and lived in fear of being jailed or attacked. We had to turn that fear into love, to win hearts and minds. 

Our Gay Wedding: The Musical – A Cultural Milestone

Throughout my career, I’ve felt compelled to use my creative work to push for LGBTQ+ representation and rights. That really crystallised with Our Gay Wedding: The Musical. In 2014, I married my husband, Nathan, in a television musical. That journey – from those early days of fighting for recognition, to being able to marry the man I love – has shaped so much of who I am and the work I do.

“I remember feeling like simply existing as a gay man required a level of defiance.”

We had seven and a half weeks to plan a wedding and write an entire musical for live television. Channel 4 insisted on celebrity involvement, so we had to secure big names. Stephen Fry agreed to narrate. Hannah Waddingham, eight months pregnant, sang. ‘The Feeling’ performed live.

We wrote original songs, our mothers sang a duet, and our registrar even had a sung line. Everything had to happen in one take – it was live, so there were no retakes. When the registrar finally said, “I now pronounce you husband and husband,” she burst into tears.

The response was overwhelming. People who had been in the closet their whole lives wrote to us. A 16-year-old who had been thrown out of his home said he hoped his mother would see our mothers singing together. Widowers who had lost their partners before they had the chance to marry reached out. It wasn’t just a wedding; it was a cultural moment. And it mattered. It showed people what was possible, what had changed, and what still needed to change.

I’m currently working on a new project with Matt Lucas – a podcast musical. We’re telling the story of the battle in 1993 to lower the age of consent for gay men from 21 to 16. It’s an extraordinary story, and it’s one I remember vividly because I was at the University of York at the time, right in the thick of it. I was 18 and dating a 21-year-old, so I found myself in exactly the same situation as the couple at the heart of the campaign. That absurdity – that a three-year age difference could criminalise love – was something that stuck with me.

We’re telling it as a podcast musical – an audio documentary with interviews from the people who were there, interspersed with original songs about what happened. We’re breaking new ground because there hasn’t been a podcast musical like this before. The plan is to make it as a three-part series, and then see where it goes, maybe it’ll become a theatre musical, or a TV or film musical. But for now, it’s exciting just to be working with Matt, and I’m still trying to convince him to play Edwina Currie!

The Lasting Impact of York and the Power of Creativity

For those at York now, my advice is simple: Be kind. Be loyal. Stay principled.

Don’t let social media consume you – don’t fall into outrage for outrage’s sake. The world isn’t black and white; the truth is always somewhere in the middle. Debate, search for nuance, listen, and understand that people can change but that they’ll only change if you’re kind to them. If you bash them with a stick or try to have them cancelled because they don’t agree with you, they’ll simply dig their heels in. Talk to people in different echo chambers. You never know, you might learn something!

Through my job, I hand out thousands of pounds worth of money to commission emerging filmmakers, but the first thing I do is check their social media profiles to see what sort of people they are by the sorts of things they’re willing to publish. If they’re being cruel to anyone about anything – even if they think they have morality on their side – I will think twice about giving them an opportunity. Let your art do the speaking and don’t assume everyone outside your bubble will agree with your views.

And most importantly, create. Get out there and make art that challenges, that tells your truth, that makes people feel seen. But most important of all – use art to build people up and make them feel proud of who they are. 

I will always be proud of what we did with Our Gay Wedding: The Musical. It was a full stop on one battle, but the fight for equality continues. Whatever your passion – whether it’s music, theatre, activism – use it to make a difference.

That’s what York gave me. The confidence to believe that creativity can change the world.”