Pandemic Burnout

(Wednesday) Oh  no! Yet another press conference about the pandemic, shown on BBC1 tonight with Boris Johnson leading. I get the impression, right or wrong, that all the questions asked by the journalists are censored and some questions are evaded. You're not allowed to undermine the scientists or go again government guidelines regarding the pandemic. Oh dear! I just think Boris should be a good deal bolder and not listen that idiot Witty who keeps on saying that there'll be x thousands of infections and x thousands of deaths as a result of the covid pandemic when his predictions are inaccurate and produced from computer projections which have been out my umpteen thousands. He should listen also to other scientists who have produced far lower infections. Why on earth can't these press conferences go on the BBC news channel? When they're on BBC1 it means the early evening programmes are scrapped, at least one or two on BBC2. Pointless gets moved to BBC2. If people want to watch them, then go to the BBC news channel. I'm not sure it's not on there as well. Why does it have to be on two channels at the same time?

I listen to Julia Hartley-Brewer on Talk Radio. She's a good journalist and doesn't suffer fools. She's like me in that she doesn't believe the data that the mad scientists feed the government. I'm no sheep and have to do my own research as regards the pandemic. She was grilling some N.H.S. bureaucrat on the fact that hospitals are probably not as busy as they would be in a 'normal' winter. The testing system is flawed in that it gives false negatives, picking up 'dead' coronavirus. I could go on ad infinitum on this issue. As I've already said in the above paragraph, the government should be listening to a wider range of evidence from a wider cross section of research from more scientists before making lockdown decisions.

I had a weird dream last night. Well, nothing usual in that because most dreams, or at least those we remember, are odd. I was in a theatre. Took me back to when I worked in stage management. It was in Leicester. As I was an A.S.M. briefly at the Phoenix Theatre in Leicester in the early 1970s, perhaps not a surprise, but it wasn't clearly like the Phoenix. A theatre where some of the auditorium seats had been removed. I sat at a table with other people and one was an academic of some sort. I'm not sure what I was doing there. Was i part of the stage management team? Or about to be acting in a play? It seemed that it might have been a rehearsal. Some of the seats in the auditorium had been removed and some were facing the wrong way round to the stage. That's about it, but I've had several similar dreams, one where I had gone to Northampton (I think. But it seemed like Northampton.) and had been brought in at the last moment to be an A.S.M. or at least a member of the stage management team. I had no idea what the play was that we were involved in but I have had dreams where I am expected to take over a part, without knowing any lines and standing on stage and trying ro recall my lines. I think this is a typical dream that actors are supposed to have, having to take over a role at short notice and be an understudy for an actor who is ill or otherwise incapacitated. I think it is understandable when actors have worries about forgetting their lines.

I have divested the Christmas tree of it's decorations. I am so pleased with that little tree which I got from Waitrose. Absolutely perfectly for the flat. It hasn't dropped a single needle. My experience of 'real' Christmas trees is that, when you come to deal with them at the end of the festive period, you find the floor covered in needles. I have kept it watered during the Christmas period which might be the reason it has kept it's needles. After all, a real Christmas tree is like a house plant which needs care, particularly watering. 

The little Christmas tree is now outside in the community garden. I have given it another water, I hope it doesn't get lonely. It's going to be another frosty night and it won't like getting cold.

I got a text message from Nationwide to tell me that there wasn't sufficient cash in my account to cover a couple of Direct Debits which go out today. My only option was to go into the city centre and take out money from my second account, the NatWest and transfer it into the Nationwide. This had to be done by 2.30. I had around an hour and a half to accomplish this mission. I drove in and parked near the Point and rushed into the shopping centre. The carpark was virtually empty and when I reached the Nationwide I had to wait to enter as they're not letting too many people in and they have a one-way system due to the pandemic. I managed to take out enough to cover the Nationwide payment, from my NatWest account and I then had to wrestle with the cash machine. You can only pay in cash one note at a time and the thing was being difficult. Several of the notes I managed to insert in the slot were disgorged, but eventually I managed to get them all into the machine, but it was a tortuously slow procendure. It was as I walked back towards the car that I realised that I hadn't paid my parking ticket. I was in such a hurry that I clean forgot.

Very few of the shops were open. I think W.H.Smith and Boots were open, along with banks. Probably they are what they call 'essential.' 

I got back to the car to find a host of crows either sitting on the cars or all over the ground, like a swarm of flies. Very reminiscent to the Alfred Hitchcock film 'The Birds.' A couple were sitting on my car. Not the sort of bird you'd want to have an argument with, considering the look they give you with their beady eyes and their sharp and pointed beaks!

(Later) Boris is given ANOTHER press conference! How much more of this can a person endure? It's getting so tiresome. I know we have to be told, but endless ramblings and those miserable faced scientists and their graphs. Just turn off the television or watch another channel, which is exactly what I did. I put 'Pointless' on, which was on BBC2.

Propping For Plays

Continuing my blog posts on my time working in stage management. One of the jobs we were often assigned to would be propping (or, in other words, responsible for props, any item used within a play  by the actors, from a pair of glasses, a tea set or an umbrella.) If you were assigned to this particular job you would be first and foremost sitting in all the early stages of rehearsals, from the initial read -through and then the blocking, that is, when the director is giving the actors their moves in the rehearsal room, on a chalked out or duct taped floor, an actual scaled version of the set. You would have to take notes of any props that come up during the course of the rehearsal, although you would have a fairly good idea of what props would be required as you would have had a copy of the script before rehearsals started and you would make a list of props mentioned in the script as they appear as you read. But directors and sometimes actors can come up with a additional props as rehearsals progress, or at least have their own unique idea what sort of item them want as a prop. For example, if they have to have a wallet, the sort of wallet they would want, it's colour, whether it had a zip in it, the sort of material it was made of, cloth instead of leather and so on. You would need to make a note of exactly where the props were to be set, either on stage or off. An absolutely vital part of the job, knowing where the props are set, as this will be how you set them during the eventual performance of the play. As the rehearsals continue, you have to keep a list of all the positions of these props and amend this list as things develop, as they always have a habit of doing.

During rehearsals the actors would expect to have props to use. But we sometimes had to provide them with stand-ins before we could find the actual props. We would then go out and look for appropriate items, sometimes begging and borrowing from local shops and other businesses. Most shows were produced on extremely limited budgets, so this was probably the only way we could possibly provide appropriate items for props. If the play was set in a particular period, it would be necessary to find items which were from that period, so antique shops would be asked if they would mind lending items, usually furniture and in most cases we were pleased that they did. For more expensive items we would have to go to specialist prop hire companies. Usually things like firearms, swords and other military items would come from these prop hire companies.

Some shows required food which could present us with one or two problems, particularly if a meal was required to be eaten by the actors involved. Most theatres I worked in had not particularly good facilities off-stage for the provision of cooking, as you would imagine. We had to improvise in order to make a meal look convincing, without using 'real' food. For example, there is no way you could provide a complete roast dinner. We'd have to find a way to make a synthetic and thoroughly convincing roast beef joint, complete with gravy, roast potatoes and vegetables, but without in any way making it look fake. Because in most cases the audience wasn't close enough to the stage to get a good enough view you could get away with using artificial meat joints we constructed out of paper mâché or other material.

For a production of 'The Three Sisters' I once was involved in we had to mock up caviar, as we obviously couldn't use real caviar. We used blackcurrant jam, and then the actors had French toast to eat it off. Fortunately the meal this was part of was far enough up-stage on the set so that the audience couldn't see closely enough to see the caviar wasn't real. Well, to be honest, they should really be concentrating on the acting and not on the props!

On a production of Alan Ayckbourn's 'How The Other Half Loves' at Century Theatre in Keswick, we had to provide avocados for the central meal. We bought real avocados and then moulded them in paper mâché , or at least, pasted newspaper and brown paper. When dried, the outside was painted the colour to represent avocado and then lined with foil, and then filled with mashed banana to represent the edible part of the fruit. Certainly cheaper than using real avocado, which our budget would never run to, particularly if you consider you'd need several fruit for each performance of the play.

Drinks on stage were a similar problem. Mixing water and food colouring, usually gravy browning and water to represent whiskey or in some cases, apple juice. I don't envy the actors having to drink some of these concoctions as it must have tasted really horrible. Attempting to carry on a conversation and drinking these mocked-up drinks must have been quite difficult. If a play required bottles of a particular brand of drink, such as Martini, we'd have to find empty bottle and then make up water with food colourings to match the real drink. Sometimes, if we did a period play, it could be difficult to find bottles of a particular brand to fit that period. All this meant we would have to go round bars and pubs and ask the barmen or landlords to keep empty bottles if they had them in stock for our use. Usually people could be helpful in this regard. But American brands, not available in the United Kingdom could sometimes cause problems, but then we could source them via American airbases or other places.

Cars I've Owned- Part 1

Over the years I've owned many cars. Some I've loved, but many I have hated. You have a definite love/hate relationship with the car you own, basically because when they run smoothly, get you from point 'A' to point 'B' without any problems, when they decide not to behave, for example, refusing to start, or breaking down unexpectedly, they are more hated than loved. Most, if not all, the cars I've had have been second hand. I never seem to be in a position financially to afford a completely new vehicle, so the old cars I've had were prone to the usual faults such as refusing to start in cold or damp weather and one-hundred-and-one other problems. I suppose an older car is going to cause more problems than a brand new one because the bits and pieces, such as brakes, tyres, water pump, starter motor and so on are the bits that wear out fastest and so cause you the most problems.

Having been brought up on a farm does have it's advantages, particularly when you're starting to learn to drive. There is always space, or at least there was at Malting Farm in Cardington, I don't know whether all other farms are the same, allowing you to be able to drive a vehicle along farm tracks or across meadows and fields without encountering other vehicles. I was able to drive tractors which aren't exactly like driving a car as they have so many gears and sub-gears and far more levers to shift into these sub-gears. But at least I was able to drive such vehicles as Land Rovers which gave me a chance to do some driving, although off-road, before I was able to start driving lessons. 

The first car I owned was a Ford Anglia, the classic car from the 1950's- 1960's. I was working at the Everyman Theatre in Cheltenham in 1969 (see earlier post on here which gives a full  description.) Before I'd gone there I had been doing driving lessons and hadn't yet done my driving test. I don't know how many lessons I'd had, quite a few I seem to recall. My test was set to be during the summer break in the theatre's season so I went home to Bedfordshire. I probably took a few more lessons and then did the test. Unfortunately I failed miserably, on something quite trivial, like not turning right or left when told by the examiner, or keeping up with the traffic. I went back to Cheltenham and did a few more lessons there and did my test and this time I passed! As a result my parents bought me the Ford Anglia, which cost all of £75! I know, looking back, it doesn't seem possible that you could buy a car for so little! It was two-tone green, light on the top half and dark on the bottom half. It had quite a few quirks. One being the windscreen wipers. When you put them on, and you drove slowly, say, up a hill, in a rainstorm, they moved fast, but if you drove faster, for some strange reason they moved slowly. Why? Seems odd thinking about it now. On those old cars you had the headlight 'dip' control on the floor near the clutch pedal, unlike in a modern car where you control the 'dip' with a lever on the steering wheel column. I think it might even have had indicators which actually stuck out from the side of the car when you were going to turn either left or right and not just a flashing bulb on the four corners of the car. It's a wonder they never got knocked off when a bicycle or someone went past. Goodness, how cars have changed, but this is a good 45- or more years ago.

Of course, having a car was made use of as part of my stage management job. Moving on to work at Greenwich Theatre a few years after working at the Everyman Theatre in Cheltenham, as part of my work I had to return a lot of items which were used as props in a show we'd done. I had to load up the little Ford Anglia with no end of items and then drive into the centre of London and return the things to some of the prop hire companies around Covent Garden in particular. I had not been driving for very long and it was quite nerve wracking driving through Marble Arch, not knowing exactly where I was supposed to go and no sure which lane I was supposed to get into as well and looking at an A to Z Atlas of London which was open on the passenger seat beside me. It was quite hair-raising, to say the least. The best way to learn to do something that might be difficult is to just get on and do it, a good motto for life I always think. Spending to much time mulling it over is a good way of talking yourself out of it, so that incident driving through Central London certainly taught me a thing or two and came in handy a good deal later when I used to go in to London in my car when I used to do TV walk-on work and had to get to, say BBC Television Centre or any of the major television or film studios such as Pinewood or Shepperton.

On another occasion I had to drive a large van with a load of furniture into central London and was going to return it all to the various hire firms around the city and beyond. It was a rainy day, which didn't exactly help matters. I don't think I had ever driven such a large vehicle before and I think it must have been the largest vehicle you could drive on an ordinary driving licence. I soon found out that stopping the engine was no easy matter. You couldn't just use the key to turn it off when you wanted to park the vehicle. The only way to stop it was to stall it by shifting the gear stick and the clutch at the same time or something weird which made the lorry shudder horribly. I went with another stage management member to help me unload the furniture, which included a piano. Somewhere in Covent Garden (at a time when the fruit and vegetable market was still there.) it was a real knot of small alleyways and roads and I accidentally got into a one-way street- the wrong way, so I had to reverse the lorry quite a distance so as to get out and so get back into the correct flow of traffic. Not an easy manoeuvre at he best of times, but not helped by the fact that it was raining. My vehicle-driving experience was increased several times over that particular day.

I was always very keen to keep on the right side of the law. For some reason or other, one always gets somewhat edgy, almost guilty, for whatever reason, when you are out driving somewhere and you see a police car, when you're absolutely sure you've done nothing wrong. On one occasion, when I was working at Greenwich, when I'd gone home for the weekend and was driving back to work fairly early one Monday morning. The route required me to go through the Blackwall Tunnel. I never like driving through tunnels at the best of times, but I had to go and ignore an instruction on a reading or one of those overhead gantry things, which told me to move over into a different lane. I just drove on and didn't move over to a different lane and I got stopped by a Police car, pulled over to the side of the road. I didn't have my driving licence with me and was told I'd have to go into a Police station and show my licence. I was numb with fear. I don't know why. I don't think, up until then,  had ever set foot in a police station. So, I did as I was told and a few days later I did just that, produced my licence at the police station somewhere in or around the Greenwich area, was told to not do 'it' again, and went away, fully warned off. I don't think, after that, I ever ignored an instrucion as regards driving in the right lane ever again.

As for hating any cars I've owned one was a bright red Ford Escort estate. Bought from a neighbour. It was a real pain to get started, particularly when the weather was damp or cold. I tried to remedy it with such things as new spark plugs, battery leads and other bits and pieces that I replaced, but all to no avail. It was worse when it was damp, even when there was no rain. Those cold, misty mornings, a slight drizzle, you name it, the confounded thing refused to start. Even having a tow from someone else's vehicle and jump starting, it would not start. So much so I just lost my temper and gave the confounded thing a good kick. A bit like that famous scene in "Fawlty Towers" when Basil Fawlty can't get his car to start and hits it with a branch of a tree. It's almost always when you need to get somewhere in a hurry, early morning, have to get to work. The thing had an almighty dent in it's side for ever after. I'm not surprised I lost patience with it. Stupid thing.

Working In Theatre- Part 11

In the Spring of 1973 I answered an advertisement for a stage management job in  "The Stage" newspaper, the entertainment industry journal  where most acting, stage management  and other theatre-related jobs were advertised. It was to work at Century Theatre in Keswick, Cumbria. It now seems quite incredible, in hindsight, from the distance in time of some 40 years, that I was not asked to go for an interview. Today you have to give all sorts of forms of identity before you can apply for even the most menial of jobs, such as several utility bills, bank statements, C.R.B. checks and so on.  I couldn't believe that a few weeks after I applied that I got a letter back in response to mine, informing me that I had got the job of D.S.M. with the company and that I would start that Easter.  It does seem incredible that I could have been any one on earth when I eventually turned up for work, what with so many stories now  coming to light such as child abuse  etc etc (just think of the Jimmy Saville Scandal).  I imagine they must have followed up with references for other places I'd worked, or at least I would hoped they did. So I packed up some of my things and put it into my little Triumph car and drove off up the M1 and M6 towards the Lake District. I recall that the driver's side door of the car caused a big problem as it wouldn't close properly so I had to tie a bit of string to the inside door handle and then the other to the steering wheel column. Before I had tied it up in this fashion, the door had swung open when I'd gone round a roundabout. Thinking about it, it seems really quite precarious and dangerous, but there seemed absolutely no other way of dealing with the problem. I could have easily fallen out of the car, but it actually didn't seem to bother me. It did cause problems when I came to stop at a service area on the M6 as I had to undo the bit of string to get out of the car and then re-tie it back on when I got back in to resume the journey! On the way I spent a night with friends in Liverpool and then continued on towards Keswick.

I had a vague idea what to expect with Century. It had a reputation for being quite innovative, in that it was a mobile theatre and had been set up after the Second World War with the intention of taking professional theatre to towns and cities across the North of England which at the time didn't have their own, permanent theatres. It was quite an amazing construction, being made up of a series of large pantechnicons or I suppose H.G.Vs or in modern terms container trucks, which could be transported in convoy and then assembled to form the theatre with the stage being formed out of one such trailer and the auditorium from another, which had all the seats in it and another which housed the front-of-house with a bar and box-office as well as the lighting control box. There were a couple of other trailers which served as dressing rooms and another for wardrobe as well as a furniture van which contained all the scenery, props and other equipment. When it had originally been set up in the late 1940's all the actors, stage management  and auxiliary staff had toured and lived in caravans, and everyone mucked in and helped construct the theatre as well as set up and strike the theatre whenever it moved around from town to town and everyone lived in these caravans. During the summer of 1973 several of the actors in the company did live in caravans on the Keswick site, which was a car park, but also several company members, including myself,  lived in flats and houses around Keswick. I do not have very good experiences of caravans, mostly due to the fact that I'm over 6 foot tall and having to  live in accommodation which is cramped and usually has headroom of less than six feet high doesn't suit me, so I found a room nearby in  a house in the centre of the town.

The season consisted of four plays, which were "The Patrick Pearce Motel" by Hugh Leonard, "How The Other Half Loves" by Alan Ayckbourn, "The Man With A Load of Mischief" by Ashley Dukes  and "Romeo and Jeannette" by Jean Anouilh. Each play ran in repertoire for the season, from April to October and each would run for two days at a time and  then we would change over to another play in the repertoire, the idea being that most people who visited the area came for a week so in any week they would be able to see at least two plays in the season. The first play to be rehearsed was the Hugh Leonard and once that was running, the next was rehearsed during the day whilst the evening show was running, then that was opened and then the next was rehearsed and then brought into the repertoire until all the plays were running and then cycled round every two days. Extremely hard works as you can imagine. We had to set up and strike after each play's two-day run which meant working late into the night and as the show would finish at gone 10 p.m. we might not complete the strike and then set-up for the next show until well into the early hours of the following day. We had to re-light the new play once the set was in as well as put in all the necessary props and furniture.

As I've already mentioned, there was a furniture van on the site which was parked near the get-in doors of the theatre where all the scenery was stored. Bear in mind that this was chocker-block full of flats for up to four shows, although at any one time there would be three stored in this van. It was no easy task to drag out each flat and lift it into the theatre through the doors, and then, once the sets had been dismantled, to then lift them into the furniture van. It was quite a task to stack the flats carefully so as to not damage them but to make sure they were stacked in such a way as to take up as little space as possible. Also, after several months of this, setting and striking, the scenery began to show signs of real wear and tear.

If you know the Lake District well you will be aware of the weather in that part of England. It can change very rapidly. In one day you can have fog and mist and the next minute the fog will clear and it will be bright and sunny and the next minute it will be pouring with rain. I mention this because the theatre was, as I've said already, constructed of several large container or H.G.V. lorries and they were made of metal. When it was sunny it could get quite hot inside the theatre, as the metal of their construction retained heat. When it rained when a show was on the sound could be quite loud and the actors had to raise their voices to be heard. Another problem was that where two of the lorries met, just over the centre of the stage (I think, looking back, the roof of the stage was made of a side section of a lorry which was hinged up and it joined another similar section from the other up-stage section to make the rest of the roof.) Where they met it used to be not particularly water-proof and as a result there could be drips falling on the stage whenever it rained (which was quite frequently.)  The actors learnt quite early on in the season where any drips would fall and managed to find ways of avoiding these drips, which was quite amusing, watching them from the wings, trying to judge where the next drip was going to fall, and stepping carefully out of the way! As a way of solving this dripping it was decided to fix a sort of gutter along the  ceiling. But, unfortunately, it meant that as a result, the sets were some four or five inches too high. I must tell you that the entire height of the ceiling from the stage floor can have been no more than about nine or ten feet, in fact the height of a standard Leyland lorry (which was what the whole theatre was constructed from.) As a result of having this gutter fitted all the flats for all four plays had to be cut down so that they would fit under the gutter! So you can imagine the amount of work and effort this caused!

I seem to remember that there was a complaint from somebody who lived near the theatre. It seemed that we made far too much noise during the get-in/get-out nights. I think it may have had something to do with the floor of the stage. As with most stages, or at least those I had worked on, the floor was covered by what is called a stage cloth. It is in simple terms a large piece of canvas that fits the floor of the stage exactly and is stretched and held taut with staples tacks or nails. It can then be painted to suit the set design obviously depending on what play is being staged. After time this cloth becomes very wrinkled due to the number of feet walking on it and scenery being moved around over it. So, in order to remove any wrinkles and irregularities it had to be re-tacked. We used to 'tread' it so as to get rid of these wrinkles. This was always done as soon as the stage was completely empty. As a result of this 'treading' with everyone involved, it produced quite a lot of noise. I think it was this that caused the complaints from the neighbouring houses. As a result we had to keep any noise to an absolute minimum and we had to finish any work in the theatre at midnight or even earlier.

This stage cloth comes into the next bit I'm about to relate. During the scene changes for one of the plays, "The Patrick Pearce Motel" stage management would stand in the wings ready to go on stage immediately this particular scene ended and did the scene change, which if I recall was quite complicated. There was quite a draught which blew across the stage under  the afore-mentioned get-in doors. This caused the stage cloth to ride up somewhat. One of the stage crew had to remove stage weights off a lighting stand ready to move it away for whatever reason, perhaps to allow flats to be moved on or off. As a result the stage cloth under the lighting stand on this particular day was toppled over and the light and stand fell on my head. I was not seriously injured but I could have been. This was long before the claims culture of today when everyone and anyone seems to demand compensation for work-related injuries, but I just carried on as if nothing had happened. But, thinking about it now it was just another accident and one of the things you come to take in your stride in that particular sort of working environment.
Something else which is worth mentioning is connected to another of the plays in the repetoire, "Romeo and Jeannette" by Jean Anouilh. This is set in France and the director, John Ridley, came up with an idea for it that took stage management by surprise, not to say, shock. During the action of the play a chicken is killed and appears carried by one of the characters, having been killed off-stage, head chopped off complete with the rest of it's feathers, tail and so on. Easy enough to make a stuffed prop, which is what we did, but he wanted a real chicken to be on stage when the curtain went up, but not only on stage but sitting on the table in the middle of the stage. We all thought he was having a joke, no way on earth was a real, live cockerel going to stay sitting or at least, perching, on the table and remain there when the curtain went up as the play opened.  There was a real danger that the stupid bird would take fright and either fly into the audience or at least fly into the wings and perch on a lighting bar or something. But he was proved completely right. The real chicken we managed to acquire from goodness knows where, behaved perfectly during every single performance of the play and sat still on the table as the curtain went up on each  and every performance.  Remarkable. He lived in a cage somewhere on the theatre site, and was named Leon (I'm not sure whether it was the name in the play's script.) We had to make the 'dead' prop version of Leon and managed to retrieve some of his spare feathers (no doubt plucked from his wings and tail!) and we made the body rather in the manner of a stuffed toy, complete with wings, but minus a head, and used the feathers to complete the prop! It did look very convincing, but I'm not entirely sure what the real Leon thought of it! I don't know what happened to him once the season finished and all the company dispersed to various parts of the country. No doubt someone gave him a good home. He should have joined Equity and made appearances in things like 'Emmerdale' and make commercials for eggs or something. I never did know.

Working In Theatre-Part 8

From working at Greenwich Theatre I next went to work at Liverpool Playhouse. Something of a culture-shock, I suppose because it was a greater  distance from home and Greenwich was within the London area. Looking back from the vantage point of some 40 years I think I should have stayed in Greenwich, but when you are offered a job elsewhere it seemed a good move, but to be honest the move to Liverpool wasn't the best decision I've made.

I arrived in Liverpool at the weekend preceeding the opening of a production of 'Hamlet.' I have to admit to be something of a 'Hamlet' obsessive, built up over the years, but in 1971 at the age of a mere 20 years, it was something of an enigma (as I expect it would be to most people.) The previous show's set  was being 'struck' or dismantled and the new show (Hamlet) was being bought in and there would be a technical rehearsal over the following week and then several dress rehearsals and then the play would have opened on the Tuesday. 

The set was fairly straightforward, with most of it being a large coffin-shaped raked floor which came out over the orchestra pit and with most of the scenes created with 'flying' pieces, I seem to remember them being something like flags or curtains. The fly system at the time at Liverpool Playhouse was a counterweight system, as opposed to any flying being done manually, sheer brute force being involved with stage-hands pulling on ropes or 'hemps' suspended over the stage through a grid and then cleated-off on the fly floor, which is usually above the wing space in most theatres. It was one of my jobs on this production to operate the counterweight-flying for these curtain pieces during some of the scene changes, but nobody had thought to train me on the best way to operate this. During the technical rehearsal it is the stage management crew who has to be able to learn to do any scene changes that are required, along with the lighting cues, sound effects  setting of props and to make sure the actors enter on time and get used to working on the set, which up until that point they would not have seen. 

The scene changes were done in pitch black, for example, the lighting would fade on one scene and the scene change would be done in the dark and then the lights would come up on the next scene, the actors would either walk on as the lights faded up or would be discovered on stage. I was supposed to bring in one of these pieces of curtain and it was supposed to be set exactly in place, without it moving or hitting the floor and not curled up. But, unfortunately, I pulled the rope the wrong way and when the lights came up the confounded thing was there, on the stage, for all to see, in a crumpled mess on the floor. You can imagine the embarrassment for me, I just wanted the floor to open up and swallow me.
This production had John Castle playing Hamlet and Joanna David playing the part of Ophelia. She is currently to be seen on I.T.V. playing the part of the Duchess of Yeovil in the series 'Downton Abbey.'

One of the problems with the counterweight system was that the ropes that operated it had to go down into the theatre basement which often got flooded and as a result of being in water these 'hemps' or ropes tended to shrink slightly, so when you came to pull on them, because they had shrunk slightly, it was very difficult to get a purchase on them, making the operation of them  very difficult and therefore smooth flying up, or down, quite difficult. 

Another job was to go up into the grid to put weights into the cradles which made the system function, the actual 'counter-weights.' This was one of my least-favourite jobs (I doubt, with modern-day health and safety regulations it would be allowed) as I suffer from vertigo and having to climb up some 50-60 feet to the grid and looking down onto the stage was not my favourite job, as well as it being very dusty up there and very hot and very unpleasant. Also, having to handle the weights and putting them in the cradles so that the scenery was balanced correctly was not very pleasant. I think at that age I was not particularly used to saying 'please don't send me up there!' but I just got on with it. I think today if I was asked to do something similar I would refuse and not feel in the least embarrassed to tell the ther person why.