Episode 5 - An Actor's Life for Me

I meet someone important.

Photo by Europeana on Unsplash

Previously on This Writer’s Journey

Bruised from a devastating encounter with a BBC script editor, I’ve stopped writing.  After a surreal spell with a fading ballet company, I now have an Equity card and am setting out to find acting work.

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A while ago, a friend I’ve made quite recently - a former consultant psychiatrist and a massive Archers fan - asked me how I’d come to spend my working life writing for theatre, TV and radio. I gave her an edited version of the story you’re now reading. She looked at me with gentle concern. That sounds rather chaotic, she murmured.

It didn’t feel chaotic at the time, I told her.

Actually, I think my doctor friend had a point. Until now, my life had been punctuated by making up stories, dreaming them, writing them, shoving them somewhere secret. I didn’t always understand why I was doing what I was doing. It was just something I did. Something I needed to do. If I didn’t do it, I’d start to feel twitchy. But I wasn’t doing it any more. Without that ballast, maybe I was drifting.

But here’s a thought. We know there are an infinite number of stories in the world, and that the act of writing a story involves making choices, focussing down, editing, creating order from the chaos.

If you don’t live some chaos, how can you have anything to write about?

All the same, if I were sitting opposite that younger self right now, the one who’s never going to write another word, because she knows she’s rubbish, I would look her sternly in the eye, tell her that the BBC script man’s opinion was just his opinion - or prejudice - and advise her to buy a copy of Dorothea Brande, and get going on her morning pages.

Back to the story.

It’s the winter of 1978. I’m living in my council flat on a tough estate in Brixton. I’m setting out to find work as an actor.

What am I thinking of?  No training, no professional experience, no agent.  All I have to offer are a few raggedy student productions, a passion for the theatre and a lot of front. And the shiny new Equity card, that I hope will give me access to auditions I’d never otherwise have been seen for. 

In dirty rehearsal rooms on the edges of London, I try out for various small roles in various small productions.  I’m competing with people who also have Equity cards, but who have two or three years of acting training on top, and perhaps a couple of spear-carrying jobs as well.

I don’t get the parts. 

Around this time, late one night in an Italian restaurant in Soho, I have a showdown with the two-timing boyfriend. Upset and furious, I make a melodramatic exit and storm off, heading for my night bus back to Brixton.  It is around midnight. It is many years before Soho will be cleaned up. My blood is thick with wine and fury. As I stride down dimly lit streets, through the murky neighbourhood of seedy bars, strip joints, and scantily clad prostitutes, my mind is churning with the many things I wish I’d said. 

As I march past a dim doorway, a bloke steps out.  He holds his raincoat wide open.  I curl my lip.  I’m embarrassed to repeat what I said to him - so I won’t. Suffice it to say that he quickly buttons up his raincoat and shrinks back into his doorway. I stomp on down the street to catch my bus.

Next morning, adrenalin still swirling around my system, I head to another audition. This one’s in Rotherhithe. In the Crunchy Frog Warehouse.

Photo by David Clode on Unsplash

The Crunchy Frog Warehouse is draughty and dusty and none too clean. I’m being seen by an anarchic travelling company called Incubus. 

I don’t get the job.

But the administrator, David, sends me a rejection letter of such warmth and compassion, that I write back to thank him, and he becomes a friend. 

Reader, I married him.

Don’t hold your breath. It’s another five years before anything saucy will happen.

And even then we take things slowly. 

But in time we will come to share dogs, cats, children, wedding rings, hamsters and a goldfish - and, more recently, two beautiful grandchildren. 

source

As I travel back to Brixton I know none of this. All I can think of is my pounding hangover. When I get home I put myself to bed.

A few days later, the phone rings: a call from Cardiff, inviting me to audition for the Mid Glamorgan Theatre in Education (TIE) project, a brand new company that is due, in the new year, to tour the valleys of South Wales. 

At the tail end of 1978, the UK cultural landscape was very different from today. The government of the time believed that the arts should be adequately funded, without need for sponsorship.  Small companies as well as large ones were seen to enrich the national offering, and were included in the state’s largesse.  Community theatre companies, political theatre companies, women’s theatre companies, street theatre companies - all were encouraged by the national and regional Arts Councils to apply for funding.

The theatre in education movement pitched its tent in a niche corner of this artistic terrain.  When the invitation to audition in Cardiff arrives, I don’t know much about TIE, so I start to do some research. 

No internet back then.

The local library is no good. The National Theatre bookshop helps a bit. More helpful still are my old friends, the ticket-tearers. They tell me what they know.

It seems that the TIE companies see themselves as doing more than the simple performing of plays to captive audiences in school halls.  They are built on the belief in the powers of education and theatre to empower young audiences and effect social change. Up and down the UK, the TIE companies share a seriousness of vision and purpose. They hold national conferences. They publish a regular journal.  They call their performers actor-teachers.

A marriage of education and theatre, with a peppering of social idealism. Sounds right up my street. I want that job in Wales.

I catch the train to Cardiff. I stare out at the winter landscape and tell myself to keep my expectations low. I almost certainly won’t get the job. And if I don’t, what’s the problem? There will be other jobs.

Who am I trying to kid?

I really want that job in Wales.