OK, I know that I can be very anal when it comes to those hidden qualities of a performing arts practitioner; commitment, dedication, good communication and time-keeping, stamina and continuity, and above all, humility.
Such things were driven into my psyche during the initial twenty years of my apprenticeship in the British professional theatre. The very idea that my own personal desires had priority over the needs of the production was not one that ever occurred to me.
That I only worked on the understanding that my personal needs were factored into a training, rehearsal, or production schedule was an alien concept and totally unheard of… and by ‘personal needs’ here I am specifically talking about time-outs for going shopping, for watching a favourite TV programme, for visiting family, dinner with a friend, taking the car in for a service, etc., etc., and so forth the list is endless.
Was I being exploited?
By the ubiquitous PC standards of today, then yes, I probably was occasionally exploited by an unscrupulous director or producer; but then, the very idea of anything being PC was not a part of the public consciousness during those times, and we never even considered the act of willingly working our nuts off and doing whatever had to be done in the pursuit of excellence in our chosen art and craft, to be adverse behaviour. The important words are ‘Willingly’, ‘Pursuit of Excellence’, and ‘Chosen’.
We all had one common objective, from Producer/Director right down to the ASM’s and Stage Crew, which was to produce the best possible production out of whatever resources we could make available.
I’ll never forget the words of my first Stage Director, when, as a newly arrived assistant stage manager at a repertory theatre, I was handed a list of period props a mile long which were needed for the show… “You must provide all these props for rehearsals as quickly as possible; tomorrow morning would be good. You can beg them, borrow them, steal them, or as a last resort, you can buy them.… but if you buy them, you’re fired.” I was terrified!
I worked non-stop with my two co-ASM’s to accumulate everything, which included a old brass double-bed, a suit of medieval armor, a bottle of champagne that had to be opened and drunk each performance, along with two hot cooked-meals that came out of a cast-iron cooking range, and a one-hundred year old newspaper, amongst a myriad other more mundane items.
What we couldn’t immediately find, beg borrow or steal, we found substitute props which the acting company (I was also playing a walk-on role) could use during their daily rehearsals. In one day we managed to get all these ‘working’ props together in the rehearsal room. By the end of the week we had discovered the whereabouts of every ‘Actual’ prop that would be used for the performance. By the end of the second week, (we opened on Monday night) we had every ‘Actual’ prop either in rehearsal or in the store ready for the Get-In overnight on Saturday after the previous show finished its final performance.
The meals, in the form of tinned stew, potatoes and vegetables, were donated by Smedley’s Food Co. in return for a advert in the programme, and were delivered to us by them in a very large lorry. The butler arrived from a nearby stately home with a horse-box full of period furniture AND a suit of armor which the friendly ‘Lord of the Manor’ had been persuaded to lend us (once we offered to muck-out his stables one morning a week). The champagne was actually ginger beer that I made myself in the props-room and put in old Moet bottles (thanks Mum for the recipe). The local newspaper office printed us a replica of one of their old newspapers their archives, for two free tickets. AND we found an old brass bed on a dump-site and wheeled it through the town back to the theatre on it’s wheels; eventually being escorted by a policeman on a bicycle. (‘cos we didn’t have a license to drive a bed on the public road.)
We spent maybe one pound on bus fares, postage stamps, and a few pennies on a bit of ginger-root and some yeast, during the whole process. The show opened and was a hit. We all felt as though WE were personally responsible for it’s success and felt great pride in the production.
The next morning, Tuesday, we were presented with ANOTHER PROPS list, just as long, with just as many weird things to find. We were NOT terrified! We were excited at the prospect of DOING the work! Of finding a way of producing the very
best possible production AGAIN! and AGAIN! and AGAIN!
What became vitally important to us was the desire and the need to create something new, something wonderful; the bar needed to be continuously lifted, new things had to be continuously learned, new ideas had to be continuously explored; there was no room for self-absorption, our own success became utterly reliant on the success of the
production, and we learned to believe in, and to trust each other implicitly.
I still have that desire and that need as strongly as ever, but am finding fewer and fewer opportunities to nourish them. My desires and needs are starving! I am starving, starving for the communion of the equally hungry.
Fewer in the business of creating theatre are truly hungry anymore, and appetites are changing, with the quick-fix rapidly becoming the fast-food of actor-training, and the insidious coupling of the prevailing Celebrity Culture and Political Correctness is producing a generation devoid of all those attributes first mentioned above, being content to wallow in the morass of mediocrity that is the inevitable result of self-
absorption, self-indulgence, arrogance, and the pursuit of cash and kudos.
What is equally alarming is the growing trend within this generation, when formulating a biography or curriculum vitae, to elevate items to perceived levels of importance far beyond their innocuous reality, often by the abundant use of adjectives such as ‘renowned’, ‘award-winning’, ‘nominated’ and ‘highly established’… self-aggrandizement seemingly the order of the day. Of course, any experienced, self-respecting director or producer worthy of his/her salt will see through such nonsense immediately, and react to such blatant subterfuge accordingly.
I have often come across items in an actors CV which state that they had received specific training from me worded thus… “Completed an intensive course in Theatrical Biomechanics training conducted by the internationally renowned director, acting teacher and coach ……………… ………….”… when in actual fact all they did was
participate in a couple of physical warm-ups and a few exercises before a rehearsal, and the fact that am an ex-patriot and not a native of the country hardly qualifies me
as anything ‘international’, much less ‘renowned’.
It would all be very amusing, were it not for the universal decline in standards of performance and production values which is palpably evident throughout the performing arts of today.
Heigh ho!
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