One o'clock In The Morning . . . and all is well . . . almost...

 Thursday 13th August. 1.20 a.m. Not being able to sleep is no problem. Well, it shouldn't be. I have plays I'm working on, so I write a bit one, and then a bit more on the other. 

1.15 p.m. Because it's August, there's no Thursday Lifegroup. We may have some sort of get together next week. I do hope so, because my routine is thrown out because of this holiday break.

I have a couple of plays in development. One I have mentioned in an earlier post, based loosley on the Rude Mechanicals 'Piramus and Thisbe' play-within-A-Play from A Midsummer Night's Dream,' and the other is going to become the first play in a proposed trilogy of plays, beginning in 1906, moving on to 1919, after the armistice, and the third and final play will be set in 1936, just after the Nazi's come to power in Germany. These plays revolve around one family, who live in a grand house, on the shores of Buttermere in the Lake District. I won't reveal any more, but I have more or  less got each play sketched out and I know more or less how the third one ends. All set in one place, a limited number of actors in the cast, deliberately to help them be produced. I have a good idea what sort of thing a producer would be looking for in a new play, and one set, limited cast, simplicity of staging, would be in their list. 

I have discovered a relatively new theatre which has opened in Cirencester in Gloucestershire, called the Barn Theatre. It opened in 2018, a conversion of former buildings and has an auditorium for around 300 people. They have a policy of staging new work, supporting new playwrights and do a lot of work in the community with schools and those who might otherwise be isolated. It sounds like a lovely place, not vast, not over-commercial and they have done plays that have moved to London, not necessarily the West End, but give new work a chance of being seen. So, this sounds the sort of theatre that my work could begin life, have a sort of nurturing, supportive home. I'm now hoping to get my first play edited and printed. My friend Mike and his wife Margaret, from Shenley Christian Fellowship, will read the play and make any positive comments so that I can edit any glaring problems from the script, before I have it printed and bound professionally. I think the term I am looking for is proof reading.

At rhis stage, I have not been in contact with the Barn Theatre, but once I have the script proof-read and printed, I can write to their Artistic Director, outlining my writing and hope at least get an interview.

Kenilworth Castle Outing

On Wednesday, as it was such a fine and sunny day, we decided to go to Kenilworth Castle. It has been somewhat undecided as regards the weather over the past couple of days and it has been quite over-cast and threatened rain. We wanted to get the most out of our membership of English Heritage. We've been once before, around six years ago. That time I seem to remember it was quite cold and we had soup in the restaurant. They had begun work on building the Elizabethan Garden, so it would be great to visit again and see it completed. Or that was the hope this time. The first time we joined was when we came back from a few days away we had for our first wedding anniversary in 2008 when we'd been to Chesil Beach and on he way back we went to Stonehenge. I find that a really intriguing place and would like to visit again since they've made some major changes there as well as opening a new visitor centre. We passed the site when we went down to Devon last August for Chloe and Steve's wedding.

The Elizabethan Garden at Kenilworth Castle

We drove out of Milton Keynes and went up the A5 and crossed over to Leamington Spa and got to Kenilworth that way. They have made quite a number of changes at the castle since we last visited, notably the Elizabethan garden, which, as I mentioned earlier, was being constructed the last time we visited. Having an interest in history (we  English Heritage joined this time with a discount from BBC History Magazine which I have a subscription to.) and it's amazing to see the place which is quite central to quite a few 'bits' of English history, notably Elizabeth I and her relationship with Robert Dudley. Also, as I'm something of a William Shakespeare fan and the fact that Stratford-Upon-Avon is so near. I did a course earlier this year on Shakespeare's World and part of it mentioned the fact that possibly Shakespeare visited Kenilworth when Elizabeth was there (although there is no definite documentary evidence for this.) as he mentions something in A Midsummer Night's Dream which could possibly allude to the masque that was performed there. The 'play within a play', the 'Pyramus and Thysbe' story is almost a parody of such a masque.

We wandered about the castle and took plenty of photographs, as we almost always do when we visit such places. They have now put walk-ways up along some of the ruined sections of the castle and you can see how the castle was built.

We wanted something to eat and went into the restaurant which is built inside the stable block. It was very busy as there were children's activities going on within the castle so a great many families with children, one in particular was very noisy and screaming. Carol had to queue up and I went outside to find a vacant table to sit. It became quite over-cast and there were a few drops of rain unfortunately, so after around 3 hours we decided to return home, but this time we went home via the Motorway, getting on the M6 near Birmingham which joins the M1 further south and gradually home to Milton Keynes.

Oxford Outing- Part 1

On Saturday we decided to have a day out and went to Oxford.  The last time we went  was almost exactly one year ago to the day, and as I have a free bus pass (one has now got to the age where one gets such things.) it seemed a good idea to leave the car behind, oblivating the necessity to not  only j driving there but also find parking space, even though there is a 'park-and-ride' scheme in operation in Oxford (we have used this on several occasions.) We got the bus from just outside the Academy in Saxon Street and arrived at Milton Keynes railway station and then had to wait before the Oxford bus came in. It arrived within about ten minutes and then we were off, going through Buckingham on the way, which we drive through on our way to Stowe Landscape Garden, one of our favourite National Trust properties. One advantage of being in a bus is that you sit up a good deal higher than you would if you were in a car, so you can see a good deal more of the countryside and in particular you see over hedges that grow alongside the roads you drive along. We went through Bicester (I went there to do induction for one of the care agencies I used to work for. A bit of a waste of time and effort if you ask me because I didn't get much work out of them as it turned out, but that's another story which I may or may not discuss in a future post.) We went past Bicester Village, the outlet shopping centre as well as Bicester Avenue, which we visited earlier in the year, which is fairly new.
We arrived in Oxford at around 10.00 and had need for the use of the toilets. Sorry to bring this up, but it seems to be a necessity of both of us. We knew that there were toilets in the bus station (where the bus came in at Oxford) but we soon discovered that there was some building work going on there and the toilets were out of operation. They had managed to put notices up telling you where the alternative toilets were and when we got there was a queue of people. On our way home on the bus we realised that there were toilets on the bus itself so that was one problem solved on the way home.
We have visited Oxford on several earlier occasions, a few times to Oxford Playhouse to see productions of Shakespeare plays produced by the all-male company, Propellor, in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and "Twelfth Night." We saw their version of "The Taming of The Shrew" a couple of years ago when Carol was teaching at Stantonbury Campus and we managed to get tickets through the school and went on a coach trip to see that show at the famous Old Vic theatre in London, which was a real treat. The last show of theirs we saw was "Henry V" a couple of years ago when they came to the Milton Keynes Theatre. So we know Oxford fairly well. This time we wanted to visit the Oxford Natural History Museum but weren't sure exactly where it was, so we spent quite some time wandering somewhat aimlessly around the streets in an attempt to locate it. We eventually managed to find it on a map but it was quite a walk out from the city centre and then discovered that it was CLOSED due to the roof being repaired which was something of a disappointment but there was an event going on outside the museum, I believe something to do with the friends of the museum or something, where there were stalls selling food and exhibits and managed to get pizza and something to drink because by now we were hungry and thirsty and it was quite a warm day and all that walking had taken it's toll.

Working In Theatre- Part 4

It makes me laugh, looking back, but at the time I was offered my first job, back in 1968, when I was at Mander College in Bedford (now plain old Bedford College. Don't ask me why they changed the name.) and I was failing my A Levels miserably, there was a story going  around the place, when I said I was  going to work in 'rep', that I'd actually got a job AS A REP!  I can't think why I would go off and be a 'rep' supposedly going from door-to-door selling something such as brushes, insurance or encyclopedias, or from company to company selling something else. Why would I do that? I have no selling skill and I can't imagine myself doing such a thing. But, thinking about it, if you didn't realise that 'rep' was short for 'repertory' I suppose you could confuse it for the selling-type of rep. It just goes to show, looking back all those years, the sort of way people can have an ignorance about something, how you are more or less expected to follow a certain path in your life, and that, if you veer from that path, you are, in some way, thought of being a bit odd. I really do hope things are different now, where children at school who want a career that is slightly different from 'The Norm'  can do so without being made to feel they're odd in some way. Perhaps that was what it was like in the late '60's. I wasn't exactly given much help with my career-path with teachers at school. I think anything to do with 'The Arts' and 'Theatre' was thought of as 'not being a career', that it was 'insecure' and that it would be better if you found something else to do with your life. Perhaps it wasn't actually verbalized, but, looking back, it seems as if that was what was going through people's minds when I had said that I wanted to do something 'artistic' as a profession.

I recall several of the plays that were produced during my time at Colchester. One being "Loot" a somewhat controversial play by Joe Orton. This is an extremely black comedy, to say the least. It may not be considered to be so controversial by today's standards, but when it was first staged, I imagine in the mid-1960's, one has to bear in mind that in Britain there was still censorship in theatre, so a great deal of what was portrayed would have had to be vetted before it could be staged. I think Orton's intention was to shock, and this play could definitely be said to shock. I'm not sure what sort of reaction it had on the Colchester audience in the early 1970's, but I would imagine that they would be fairly conservative in their tastes. The post of Lord Chamberlain had been abolished under the 1968 Theatres Act, the government official who had power to censor plays and licenced theatre premises.   So one can imagine that theatre managers at the time would  have been keen to put on plays that formerly would have come under the jurisdiction of the Lord Chamberlain's Office. The play is about a couple of  young men who are planning a bank robbery. What was so controversial was the fact that they used their  deceased mother's coffin to hide the money that they had stolen. Stage management had to create all the bank notes, coffins and even a corpse, which is within a shroud. Also, we had to find a glass eye, which was supposed to roll across the floor at one point in the play, but this was actually artistic licence, as an actual glass eye isn't like a glass marble and won't roll at all.
We had to have two coffins as well as two 'mini-coffins' or caskets. One of each had to be so constructed that the side could fall out on a hinge and had to be made to look as if it had been in a fire, with  the effects of scalding and fire on it.  Off stage, before it went on stage, we used a smoke gun to add smoke, which added to the whole effect. This smoke came out of the coffin when it appeared on stage. The hinged section had to fall open on cue to reveal the hidden cash inside and that also had to look as if it was burned. We had to create bundles of £5 notes, which had been created by myself and then Roneoed (this was before the more modern photo-copying we have today, which would have made the whole process so much easier.) and then we cut up bundles of newspaper the size of the £5 notes and glued together with the tops and bottoms glued on and then painted as near as possible the colour blue of genuine £5 notes. In all there were supposed to be a few thousand pounds-worth of notes, so you can imagine how much work went into producing all these mock Fivers!  These bundles of notes did look quite convincing from the audience, but not so real on closer inspection. No, certainly not forgeries of real fivers! Also, they weighed a good deal more than real fivers. The story in the play is that the two men go off to their mother's funeral having removed the corpse from the coffin, which has been on stage from the beginning of the play, then they conceal the money inside the coffin and then there is a traffic accident on the way to the funeral which is why the coffin is burnt and they bring the second coffin back with the burnt-out effects and the hinged side which, as I say, has to be revealed on cue to show the audience and not a police inspector who comes in at the vital moment.
The corpse was actually a mannequin with hinged joints, very realistic with movements when moved about, but then is concealed inside a shroud, so when it is picked up it moves in a very realistic fashion. Quite eerie if you didn't realise it wasn't real!
During the  final week of rehearsals the actors got to use the 'prop' coffins and other items which had been constructed in the theatre workshops, which were elsewhere in Colchester and one Sunday we had to bring them over to the theatre and carried them through the town streets. It must have looked very odd to members of the public who saw all this! I don't suppose they would have realised that the coffin was not real! All these items were later hired out to other theatres for their own productions of "Loot", but I think our work and efforts producing these props were extremely good. It was one area of my stage management duties which I  really enjoyed.

Yet another production staged at Colchester Rep when I was there was “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” I had been involved in several other Shakespeares over the years, beginning with “A Winter’s Tale” and “Romeo and Juliet” at Cheltenham, “King Lear” at Ipswich Theatre and “Hamlet”, which was the first production I was involved in at Liverpool Playhouse.

The production  of “Dream” was something of a cut-price affair, as regards the casting. As with most Shakespeare productions, most of the parts are ‘doubled up, ’ one actor playing one or more parts. This means, for example, that the actor who plays Hamlet’s Ghost in “Hamlet” will probably also play Claudius, and in “Dream” it is  traditional for the actor playing  Theseus to also play Oberon, King of the Fairies.

At Colchester, the fairies were done in a different way from the usual. I don’t know whether it worked, but I was involved. A couple of us stage management had to operate torches with coloured gels in them, standing on ladders ‘off stage’ and shining these lights over the top of the set, and unseen by the audience. Actors spoke the lines through microphones and we had to move the ‘spots’ of light produced by the torches in synchronisation with the lines spoken by the actors. I’m not sure it worked, but at least it was different. I don't know, actually, now I come to think of it, whether the lines hadn't been pre-recorded, and we worked the lights to the recorded voices, but I'm not sure on reflection.

 We also had to be ‘walk-ons’ during the ‘Play-Within-A-Play’ scene, handing out sweets to the on-stage audience. I remember having to appear in the production of “Winter’s Tale” at Cheltenham, as well as “Romeo and Juliet.” I think it was all part of being a member of stage management in those days. I do recall, though, that one of my cousins saw me in “Dream” as she had come to see the production when she was at school, and, not knowing I was working at the theatre, was somewhat surprised to see me on stage! Also, I had these two school girls who saw me when I was having a meal in a café near the theatre, and recognised me from my ‘walk-on’ scene in the production and thought I was a proper actor and kept following me and I suppose it was quite nice while it lasted, but I wasn’t going to go on to become an actor so I didn’t think any more of it. I did say that they should be looking at the central characters and not minor ‘walk-ons’!