Drama School.

I mentioned in my last post that I was at drama school for three years which prompted a couple of e-mails asking me what we did there; well we had the time of our lives.

It wasn't the most wonderful three years in my life, as it was to some, but it came close; it meant a great deal to one or two people there who went into a depression upon leaving and I think one girl even tried to commit suicide; fortunately she was unsuccessful.

I had been working on the motor bikes at the post office and that was a great part of my life too; we did over a hundred miles a day on those bikes, delivering telegrams, and in the evenings we went out on other motor bikes – what a life!

So when I went to drama school, I had spent nearly nine years working, so I stepped into another world. I had a kind of introduction to what it might have been like by taking evening classes at another drama school but it was still a shock to be going to school every day instead of punching a clock; not that I ever punched a clock at the post office.

First of all, I needed a grant to pay the fees and to keep me, and I was fortunate that my education authority didn't needed academic qualifications – just an audition.

As I had spent the year doing the part time drama course I had become familiar with the process of auditioning; the audition for drama school usually meant performing a piece of Shakespeare, a modern piece and a piece of poetry.

After my audition the Principal said I had passed and then grilled me as to what I was letting myself in for; I actually knew what I was letting myself in for and really looked forward to the 'resting' periods of an actor – in other words being out of work. A thing I have never let worry me; even now.

Next I had to audition for the Education Authority which was more difficult; I had to do the same three pieces but when it came to the modern piece I did a fifteen minute speech by Harold Pinter. The drama man from the education authority wasn't expecting something so long so when I had finished he asked me a lot of questions about it: how I had managed to retain the lines and concentration; then we went into free improvisation and then some improvisation which he had set – and I got the grant; Yippee!!

At drama school we studied speech, which included diction and voice projection; we learned all about our intercostal muscles, our diaphragms and we were taught how to breath. A few wags, of course, would question that last one as we were all alive.

We learned how to sing, sword fight, dance – ballet and tap – we studied theatre history, historical movement, the history of costume, microphone technique, improvisation and a whole load of other things I can't bring to mind; in other words I've forgotten more than I know.

After seven years in the work force, standing in a class taking ballet lessons with people all shapes and sizes seemed unreal; especially when the windows were being cleaned by a mesmerised window cleaner who spent more time than needed on a single pane.

The dancing teacher would tell us all to get on the balls of our feet and everybody had to hold their laughs when she said one day “Come on boys; up on you balls!”

Apart from lessons in the above we performed plays for the public and many more plays for the rest of the college.

It gave us the opportunity to fail and we did many times but we had a lot of fun doing it.

Of course being twenty three I was a lot older than the other new students who were straight from school. They had just finished their A-levels and I'd just finished work, as far as I was concerned.

Being older than the others I was cast in the older roles; it was fun getting made up to play somebody eighty three and getting to know how to use make-up but it wasn't any use to me for a career in the theatre where you very rarely get to use the colour carmine from your make up box to put veins onto your cheeks; they cast people who already have them. The only time I was cast in something near my age was when someone dropped out.

I remember doing a production of Juno and the Paycock – a play I was brought up on – and it was double cast; which meant that two casts alternated performances and I was cast as Captain Boyle. Then they changed the director and he said it would be interesting if I played four different characters; so they left the part of Captain Boyle to be played by one actor and I played the four characters; if you know the play I played the sewing machine man, a coal block vendor, an IRA man and a tailor called Needle Nugent.

The trouble was the audience recognised me and laughed each time I came on – especially at the college performance.

We had a good Joxer Daley and a terrible Joxer Daley – but the whole thing was good.

Drama School is not the only way to go into the theatre; the other way is to get a job at a repertory theatre as an Assistant Stage Manager playing small parts; you have to do loads of work backstage on props etc and play a small part, if there is a small part, and then the next year graduate to bigger roles – if you are lucky.

Some people would have to do ASM and small parts even after leaving drama school and some people at drama school only ever wanted to do that and went on to be company managers.

The other things at drama school to study were teaching and speech therapy and the majority of the students who studied that went on to successful careers in those fields.

I didn't have to do any of the ASM jobs; I did the same as everybody else when I left drama school by writing to every repertory company in the book plus the Television companies and casting directors.

I got more interest from the TV companies so before I even went into the theatre – apart from doing Toad of Toad Hall at Birmingham Rep when I was still at drama school – I did maybe fifty or sixty television episodes, half a dozen commercials and a film.

One of the roles that most of the men wanted to play at drama school was Danny in Emlyn Williams play Night Must Fall and one of the first roles I played in the theatre was that particular role; instead of playing someone older than me I was playing younger for a change.

After I finished that season someone wanted me to play Danny again at their theatre in East Grinstead – no I didn't know where it was either!

I met the director, who was a well known television actor, in a London cafe and we had an hour of chat, coffee and fresh cream cakes, where he told me about his theatre and how great the production would be and how he had enjoyed my performance in the same role.

We shook hands and said we would see each other soon; not long after I found he had given the role to Hywel Bennett; welcome to the theatre??

Fame

Fame? Now what is it? Can you lead a normal life whilst being famous? I think you can; when I read about the royal family and the normality of their lives I ask myself how can they do such things without people staring at them?

But they do; they wander around Windsor or Balmoral in their Land Rovers and they see the people they see all the time and the people know who they are and wave.

Just like me and you wandering around our neighbourhoods and saying hello to the people we know. But when they step outside the familiar places they are noticed there too, whereas we are not. Unless we dress up in a bowler hat, pins stripes and carry an umbrella into a Country and Western Texas Bar.

Many years ago I had a dose of mini fame; I was doing a soap opera on TV in Birmingham and at the time I lived in Oakengates, Shropshire which is around 35 miles or so from Birmingham.

I used to go to a place to drink at the weekends with my pals and I told them when I got the job in the soap and we carried on drinking and playing the card game NAP. People in the bar knew me and people in the neighbourhood knew me too.

When I went into the soap I travelled in to Birmingham six days a week – four days to rehearse in a rehearsal room then two days in the TV studio where we would tape two episodes a day. Then back in the car to Shropshire and on Sundays it would be a day off.

On Sunday lunchtimes I would go to the same place to drink and play NAP then back home for lunch in time to watch the football match on TV and maybe sleep in front of The Golden Shot – fans of The Golden Shot will know how long ago this is.

The episodes of the soap started to go out on the air a few weeks after I started and when they did, people in the place I used to drink would say they saw me on Television and so did the friends and neighbours; my mother would tell all her friends to watch and she got a great kick out of it.

Then one day as I was travelling in to a Saturday rehearsal my car broke down; there was no chance of getting it going straight away so I left it where it was at the side of the road; I knew there was a railway station nearby so headed towards it by foot. When I got to the station I waited for a train but all seemed hopeless as the next train wasn't due for another hour; so I sat on a bench and waited.

Presently a train came into the station but going in the opposite direction from where I wanted to go; I glanced up at it and it was full of teenage school girls; one of them looked at me and said “It's Jim!” I didn't really hear those words but worked it out later; then another girl came and shouted 'Jim” - that I heard clearly and soon quite a few of them opened their windows and started calling. That's when the penny dropped – they had recognised me! I had stepped outside of my comfort zone. I waved to them and as the train disappeared into the distance they were all waving to me and calling.

I never did catch that train and missed the only day's rehearsal I have ever missed; a pal came and gave me a lift back home to my comfort zone.

There have been many such incidents over the years whenever I have had something current on TV; when I was in General Hospital people would stop me in the street saying “please have that operation; it'll save your life.”

So I think movie stars, Royalty and the like have their comfort zones too but Royalty have been trained for a public life and people who seek fame have not.

If someone becomes famous early they don't always know how to handle it; we see the problems with drugs young movie stars and rock singers have – some of them not surviving.

People seek fame seek as if they are taking drugs; they want only so much fame and they want it on their terms but fame increases exponentially till it's out of control and sometimes it's very difficult to reverse.

Once in a very great while I get a fan letter – or more like an e-mail these days – and once in a very great while someone will recognise me in the street; that's usually in the UK; now if people remember me, no matter how seldom, what would it be like for someone like Brad Pitt or Jack Nicholson to start a new life?

I could quite easily change my life – take a job doing something else and get away with it.

I sell antiques/collectibles at Fairfax Flea Market once a month and when I am doing that I'm in another life away from the theatre - but that doesn't really count as most of the other sellers are actors and musicians and the like; in fact I think very few actors take jobs in bars these days or as waiters so casting directors could easily take a trip to any flea market to do their casting.

But I enjoy my monthly sale; I meet hundreds of people and I have loads and loads of conversations with people from all over the world – and many other places.

There I am above – someone snapped a shot and sent it to me.

There is a ninety second clip of me from The Stanley Dyrector talk show on You Tube - take a look; he asked me how and why I started and I said I saw a guy in the street going to a ball with a blond on his arm; he was famous as he was in a soap opera on TV – the same one I did as it happens - and it was one of those shows that went out in the evening that was always number one in the ratings.

I saw him on the way to the ball and I thought “Wow! I wouldn't mind a bit of that” and so I became an actor. Well it wasn't as simple as that; I had to go to drama school to learn the craft side of the job – you can't teach the artistic side; you either have it or you don't – and that took me about four years; one year of night school and three years full time college and by the time I finished thoughts of fame and fortune had gone. I just wanted to be a good actor – I still do!

The Audition Process.

I'm just going to ramble on here about auditions; it's the process that every actor knows and a lot of us hate.

Let's face it there can't be many other jobs on earth where you have to audition all the way through your career; there's only one other job where it can be worse and that's a comedian playing to nobody at all just a producer sitting there demanding that you make him laugh.

I saw something similar once when I went to my very first audition – well it wasn't my very first as I had to audition for drama school: one piece of Shakespeare, one modern piece and a poem.

Every actor will recognize those three requirements and I think I explain quite well how I started as an actor in this 90 second clip from a talk show - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrGBnPB8IN0 - have a look and I'll wait for you.

Getting back to my first audition; I had been at drama school for three months and I saw in The Stage newspaper an advertisement for a pantomime at the De Montfort Hall in Leicester and I decided to give it a go; why not?

By the way I know people on the American continent will hardly know what a pantomime is and will confuse it with 'mime' so have a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantomime which should fill you in.

I was living in Shropshire at the time so Leicester wasn't that many hours travel away and when you are at that stage of your career you will try anything; so off to Leicester I went and I can't tell you how I got there but it took a long time on many trains.

The De Montfort Hall has a capacity of two thousand and is a venue for the Leicester Philharmonic Choir and the Leicester Symphony Orchestra; acts like the Beatles played there and Buddy Holly when he came to the UK played there too and walking in that day I noticed how big the place was; an indoor stadium no less.

Most of the others there for the auditions were variety acts; I came as an actor even though I was only a drama student; trying to run before I could walk.

There was a really good double act auditioning made up of two brothers in suits who did a song and dance and many young girls with beautiful singing voices; one fella came on stage with a newspaper and started to sing 'Old Man River' then he said to the producers out front 'I also do lines.'

'Do you?' they said 'well let's hear some.'

That was where the newspaper came in; he unfolded it and started to read it out loud in a mock Shakespearian voice – 'The Prime Minister today met the cabinet at number 10 . . '

There was no hook to drag him off stage or loud 'thank you' - they just let him finish and thanked him.

Then came the comedian I mentioned earlier; he was obviously a bit like me – no experience.

He came on the stage and started telling a few jokes and of course because there was no audience – only us waiting to audition – there was nobody laughing and this threw him totally.

The more jokes he told and the more silent responses he heard the more confidence he lost till he was a quivering wreck.

I remember the last thing he did was to take a chair from the back of the stage and say 'For my next trick I am going to do a back flip from this chair and land on my head on the floor' and he stood on the chair; then he looked out front, got down off the chair and said 'no I'm not' and walked off.

It was very embarrassing and I was next; 'tell us your name' somebody said and I told them.

'What do you do?'

'I'm an actor.'

“What do you do – lines?'

'Yes I'm going to do a piece from Present Laughter by Noel Coward.'

So I did my piece, speaking to the chair, and when I walked off everybody gave me a round of applause; I suppose I was different from everybody else there but I didn't hear another word from them.

Now that has always made me laugh when an actor talks to a chair during an audition but maybe that's just my sense of humour.

Most of the other auditions I've been to over the years have been with just actors and there is a difference between auditions in London and those in Los Angeles.

In Los Angeles you really do audition no matter who you are – I don't mean people like Brad Pitt or Jack Nicholson but you would be surprised at the well known faces that audition.

In London actors don't admit they have to audition at all even if they're a nobody – like me; they call them meetings and a lot of the time that's all they are.

You chat with the director for twenty minutes and they assess who you are and base their decision on that.

Lots of times you have to read the lines from one of the scenes; one actor I followed in London had writing next to his name which read 'will not read under any circumstances.' Big headed bastard!!

When you arrive at an audition – on both sides of the Atlantic - you are welcomed with the sight of nervous looking actors who look exactly the same as you; so you can see what type you are as soon as you arrive.

In Los Angeles the actors go dressed for the role; especially for commercials.

I went for the role of Santa Claus once and there in the waiting room when I arrived were three fully dressed Santas and they knew each other.

A bit like the singing Hitlers and the dancing Hitlers from 'The Producers.'

Actors in Los Angeles have their 'sides' with them which are the scenes the casting director wants you to read from the script.

Most actors learn those lines and have worked on it for maybe the last 24 hours.

Actors here are entitled to see the sides 24 hours before any audition – union (SAG) rules.

In London, when I was there, you don't get the sides till you arrive and one time, when I went to meet Ned Sherrin for a play he was directing, they didn't let me see the script till I met Ned Sherrin himself – this kind of process gives you the best sight readers and not necessarily the best actors.

It's a pity about that particular play as Ian Dury was in it and I would have loved to have worked with him.

In Los Angeles they want the best actor for each role and go out of their way to help you which is why you get the sides.

The draw back here is you very rarely meet the director on the first audition and sometimes you don't meet him at all.

The casting director 'reads' you and you will get a call back to meet the director at the second meeting.

If you go for a big movie they just put you on tape so you are at the mercy of the casting director who usually don't know how to direct you properly.

I've been to quite a few seminars, organised by SAG, where there have been agents (they get 10% and no more here unlike in London), managers (15%) and casting directors and you do pick up a lot of hints and tips.

Number one: at an audition when you are reading don't fix your eyes on the other person you are reading with; people don't normally look each other in the eye all the time when they speak to each other. Have a look around, if you don't believe me; so there is no need to do it with the casting director.

Also look at the American TV and movie productions and you will see the actors looking around being natural.

That doesn't mean to say you never look people in the eyes but it's unnerving if you do it all the time.

I also know actors who are quite well known and they don't see why they should go in and meet the director as they have worked with them before or they are friends.

Some directors here still want actors they know to come in for casting as they might want them to do something different from what they normally do; maybe you're well known as playing a killer or a heavy and the director wants to see if you could play something light or comedic.

Or the other way around – you do a lot of comedy and they want to see if you could play that nasty streak or even a bit of violence.

Directors have said, at these seminars, that the actors who don't or won't come in sometimes miss out.

What has been fairly consistent over the years at auditions is the seriousness of the Americans, who mean business, and the nonchalance of some of the English; sometimes the English arrive with the attitude that they have something else more important to do; now what could be more important than your next job?

Of course I haven't been to any auditions in London for over fifteen years as I've been here so things might have changed.

At the last couple of auditions I went to there were some young girls waiting, and I couldn't believe that they spent their whole waiting time sending texts on their smart phones – I refuse to use the word texting – but maybe that's natural too.