Acting and Writing.

What is the creative difference between acting and writing apart from the obvious mechanics?

Why would I ask this question, first of all? Because I heard someone discussing it on the tube but I won't bore you with what they said because that's not my opinion – I'll bore you with what I think instead.

There is not a lot of difference at all – actors and writers have their own way of creating characters. Some sit in cafés or pubs and study people and some even go to the zoo.

I was playing a psychopathic murderer in a play once – Night Must Fall by Emlyn Williams – and there was a scene where the stage was bare apart from an old woman sitting in her wheel chair. It was dark and quiet and as she sat there the wind howled from outside and it was very scary then suddenly I poked my head through the curtain and the audience gasped and screamed.

The woman looked at me and was relieved as she knew me – Danny! Danny! she cried, then I came in and talked to her for a while.

As I was talking to her the audience could tell that I was going to kill her, chop her head off and put it in a hat box – at least that's what they thought and by the time the scene closed they knew that's what I was going to do.

There was something about the dialogue that the writer had written which needed something from the actor; I was saying one thing but meaning something else; I couldn't just stand there with my hands in my pockets or try to speak evil or look menacing. People don't pull faces and show their inner emotions if they're trying to trick somebody so what should I do – in my case I usually ask what would I do in that situation?

Then someone – not the director – gave me a note. He said I needed to stalk the woman like a lion or a tiger; and he was right. That's what I meant about going to the zoo!

So I paced around the stage as I talked to her and it worked. I was as charming as I had been in the previous scenes with her but there was something about me which gave the message to the audience that I was up to no good.

Some actors would say, never mind the audience - worry about 'the work' – I know what they mean but we are doing it for the audience; who else?

In that case the writer had given me the bare bones and I had to put flesh onto them.

The lines – or the dialogue – should come last in a characterisation even though you learn them first; you learn them first to get them out of the way but these days with film acting you don't learn anything as you don't rehearse much.

Rehearsals are a learning process and this you do as you rehearse. Sometimes on a film I have only just about got the lines into my head before having to say them; so I deliver them as if that's my raison detre then go away; nothing learned.

Later I might think maybe I should have done them this way or that way and the day after that I had forgotten them altogether.

That's what you have to do as an actor but it's a shame as the chances of you seeing that performance many years down the line and cringing is quite a possibility.

Whereas the performance in a theatre, which disappears into oblivion, is rehearsed, practised and has the benefit of being performed many times to near perfection.

Some of the great film directors, such as Sydney Lumet, would have a period of rehearsals which is why their movies have great performances – I mean look at Dog Day Afternoon.

But back to writing and acting – they are the two things that everybody thinks they can do; they think they can do this because they can put words on a page – writing – and they can speak – acting!

But that's not all there is to it.

The best scripts, movies, books, plays or whatever are character driven; the alternative would be plot driven.

There are some great films, I'm sure, which are plot driven; I haven't seen the Star Wars films but I am told they are plot driven with lousy dialogue and poor development of character but I am also told they are great films.

Look at the film Avatar – no nothing to do with an Indian deity - which was a pioneering film which everybody thought was the answer to the future, a new way of making films, with 3D and all that; only the characters were one dimensional and the dialogue was terrible but then again – I didn't see it.

A film I did see was Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy which I loved; I loved it because the acting was good, the characters were well drawn, the plot took a lot to figure out and I like to have to work things out for myself.

Of course a lot of people didn't like it, because they couldn't follow it, but people thought the same when the TV series was popular in 1979 with Alec Guinness playing Smiley; I wonder if they'll make the sequel Smiley's People?

So writing and directing are one and the same apart from the logistics of it – they both create characters and some of them even go to the zoo.

Here I am in Night Must Fall – many years ago:

as Danny in Night Must Fall.

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??