Humans of NYT REP - Dan's Story
Daniel Regan plays Sebastian in the NYT REP Company’s Twelfth Night running from 19 Nov - 18 Dec at our new award-winning Workshop Theatre on Holloway Road. This isn’t your typical Twelfth Night: it's reimagined and recharged by an explosive cast of young NYT talent who bring fresh energy to every line. With alumni including Helen Mirren, Paapa Essiedu and Zawe Ashton, who knows which future star of the stage could be hiding in this show!
Here's Daniel on the most pivotal moments in his career so far:
I’ve never been ashamed of having Tourette’s but there have definitely been times in my life where I have felt the need to try and hide it. For me having Tourette’s always came with a fear of being perceived; not wanting to take up too much space or be overly noticed due to the fear of being labelled as different. I always felt that I had very little control over how I was perceived and what people thought of me. I guess it’s kind of strange then that I’ve found myself becoming an actor, where the whole point of the job is being perceived by a large group of strangers who come and sit in a theatre and stare at you for several hours. One response to that is with the fact that I don’t tic when I’m acting. I don’t think that is either a good thing or a bad thing, but it is nice to become so fully engrossed and immersed in something that my tics become secondary in my brain to whatever I am doing in that moment when the camera starts rolling or I step onto the stage
I think the more truthful answer is that, when I was 18, a theatre company called Frantic Assembly gave me the opportunity to go onstage, in front of an audience, and talk about my experience of living with Tourette’s. For numerous reasons this performance was the moment I realised that I wanted to be an actor. However, it felt especially significant as it was the first time that I was actively given the permission and encouraged to be authentically myself on a stage and in front of people. I spoke about how I felt the weight of the label of Tourette’s; how I feared people’s preconceptions of what Tourette’s was, and who they automatically assumed that made me. I spoke about how I began to feel a pressure to define myself with this label in order to justify my tics and stop the staring, the questions, the confusion, the aggression – all these uncomfortabilities that came with being perceived. I spent a lot of my early life feeling confined to a single NHS definition and a million and one pre-conceived stereotypes of what Tourette’s was, and what it meant to everybody else but myself. Having the chance to give my own interpretation felt therapeutic.
Since then, I have begun a career as an actor and played numerous roles where I haven’t spoken about my Tourette’s at all. Currently this is as Sebastian in Twelfth Night with the National Youth Theatre’s REP Company. In general, I don’t feel the need to bring it up in conversation so much anymore. I’ve gained confidence in the fact that people don’t need to know anything about me unless I want them to, and so if I choose to tell someone that I have Tourette’s it’s often as a celebration of that fact in some way rather than as some kind of admission. I think there’s power in being able to step on to a stage and not tell that story if I don’t want to. There’s also power in having the opportunity to do so. I’m very grateful to Frantic Assembly for giving me the opportunity to act and the opportunity to talk about having Tourette’s on stage. I’m very grateful to the National Youth Theatre Theatre for giving me the opportunity to act and the opportunity to not talk about having Tourette’s on stage.