Diary of an actor

I put this on FaceBook today. I was looking for something and came across a diary I kept when we lived in Northampton – here it is word for word (more or less) and I remember very little of it. On another page of the diary I met a famous film director and don't actually remember it at all.

Elvis Presley died yesterday. I was listening to John Peel on the radio last night and he said he had heard the news from the news room. Then he carried on with his planned show as he said 'we don't play tributes' - or words to that affect.

I'm starting a new job the week after next. I am playing Richard (the Lion Heart) in The Lion in Winter at Cheltenham. The money isn't brilliant - £58.70 including subsistence – but we should just about manage especially if the repeats from the commercial start coming in.

I thought I might have been going to Northampton to do a play or two. I went to see the artistic director, David Kelsey; he was quite specific about the time, ten-o-clock, as he was due to start rehearsals at 10.30. I arrived at three minutes to and he didn't arrive till twenty past so I wasn't very optimistic.

He entered the office and picked up the newspaper, opened a few pages then put it down; looked at his mail, quickly, and put that down. Then he turned around to look at his bookcase, with his back to me, then called over his shoulder 'do you sing?'

Eventually he sat down and said 'have a look at Arthur Wickstead in this' and he threw a copy of Habeas Corpus to me after he had sent 'upstairs' for it.

He said the part can be played any age and said to come back the following Tuesday.

I looked at the role and it was originally played by Alec Guinness – but the character had a grown up son and was aged around fifty three. I thought it was a bit ridiculous but afterwards I got used to the idea. I went back to the theatre, as arranged – on time – and there he was in his office having a production meeting -'can you wait outside, Chris' he said; so I did.

I went to the empty bar and waited for about ten minutes then I heard footsteps going down the stairs away from me and someone said 'hello.' It sounded like Lionel Hamilton. I was sure that was David Kelsey's voice, answering him back, so I went down the stairs – I could talk to Lionel in any case.

Sure enough, when I got there, it was David Kelsey, wearing his hat, carrying his briefcase and on the way to rehearsals. I said a very quick hello to Lionel and stepped back to wait for them to finish their conversation.

When Lionel went, David Kelsey said 'what do you think of it?' I said I liked it and he beckoned me to follow him in to the foyer of the theatre where he said 'that role has gone to somebody else but would you look at the Vicar; I think you would be very good.'

I said okay and we arranged to meet to following Thursday at 12.30 pm.

Thursday morning a letter arrived from the theatre; the appointment was cancelled and 'could I call the theatre to arrange another appointment for Friday.'

I did and met David Kelsey at one-o-clock at the theatre and as soon as I got in to the office he told me he couldn't use me. The theatre was way over budget and the board had agreed that they couldn't afford me. I took his cigarette and went.

Over the next couple of days, England won The Ashes.

my blog and the theatre.

I looked back at how many words I had written for my novel last week and came to about 5,200; so that, to me, is great; I put the increase of output down to this blog.

When you do things on a regular basis you get better at it; even though I might be writing a load of shit in both places – the blog and the novel – I am getting better at it.

It was the same starting a season in the theatre; the more you worked the easier it became to learn the lines.

As you will probably know when working in the repertory system in the UK you do a new play every two weeks, or every three weeks or however amount of weeks the particular theatre advocates.

One of the theatres I worked at, in rep, was the Royal Theatre in Northampton and that theatre would put a new play on every two weeks.

What would happen is you would start the job on Monday morning and rehearse for the two weeks before putting the first play on; in the evenings we learned our lines and by the end of the second week of rehearsals we would, more or less, know the them and then after a technical rehearsal and a dress rehearsal we would perform the play to the press and public on the Tuesday evening.

Then the next morning we would start the next play.

We would rehearse during the day and do the other play at night; so when did we learn our lines?

The rehearsal day would start at around 10.00 am or at least 12 hours after the previous night's performance closed; so if the play came down at 10:30 the night before we were not allowed to start the following day till 10:30 am.

We would break for lunch at around 1:00, finish rehearsals at around 4:30 – 5:00 then have to be back at the theatre at 6:55 for the 7:30 show – we learned our lines during the tea breaks, lunch time, the time between the end of rehearsals and the evening show and maybe after the evening show and my point is he more we had to learn the easier it became. That job lasted for eleven months – I had a month off to do 5 episodes of the British TV soap 'General Hospital' – and by the end of it you felt you'd been through something.

I did that to a lesser extent at other theatres and, even though we were adequately paid, it was good training; and it's the same with writing: the more you do it the better you become.

With regards to the blog people read it all over the world and I get the benefit and the pleasure of writing it; I don't have many followers and only a few comments but I can see by the stat counter where the readers live. Some of the hits come from posts I have written months ago and many hundreds of people have read the post about Bill Sparkman who killed himself some time ago in Kentucky and a few weeks ago I had many many hits when I wrote about proportional representation and the British General Election.

Someone asked me if I know what I'm going to write about beforehand and the answer is no; I sit down to write and it kind of comes to me once I start.

So thank you everybody out there in the world – people are reading from Russia to the USA – I tried to copy the map of visitors but it won't copy properly so I leave you with a picture up there of John Wooden who was a very famous basketball coach who died over the weekend aged 99; he had a great saying 'if you fail to prepare you are preparing to fail' - or words to that effect.