John Bond

Of shoes, ships and sealing wax, cabbages and kings.

It was only when I retired from my life-long career as a schoolmaster that I had time to reflect upon how privileged I had been to share the school amateur dramatic experiences of so many talented people.  In a career extending for almost forty years I had been a member of so many dedicated and enthusiastic teams.

That group of boarders who, perhaps to escape the tedium of the boarding house, undertook the even greater tedium of polishing and burnishing an old domestic hot water cylinder.  They were abetted by the class of engineering students who, manufactured replica manual pumping handles, and then mounted both handles and the cylinder on a fruiterers hand cart to produce a stately home fire engine of the Napoleonic war period.  The local fire service who lent fire hoses to add authentication to the structure typify the team work.

I have vivid memories of the group of mothers who spent two months, on their knees in the gymnasium, manufacturing a large back drop curtain and then decorating it with tree trunks and leaves individually cut out and sewn carefully into place.   By such efforts the woodland scene curtain was produced.   Then, to complete the scene, began another production of a replica curtain in a gauze-like fabric that was to fall in front of their original curtain, and so produce the illusion of depth and mystery.   All their efforts made to enable a four night school production of “Wind in the Willows”.  But the ladies had a greater reward.  Such was the impact of the curtain that two professional theatre companies in the West of England hired the curtain for their own productions.

Then there were the two school rugby teams employed to heave a laundry basket, complete with actor, up off the stage into the flies in a simulation of a hot air balloon.  They were tasked to maintain the balloon out of sight, and five minutes later, lower both the balloon and the unfortunate actor safely and gently back to stage.

There are some people who have the happy gift of being able to encourage and inspire others to become involved.  None more so than the Head of Drama, who produced play after play, year after year.  Every year the number of volunteer helpers increased, every year the range of their involvements diversified.   There were the parent hairdressers who would give their evenings to attend productions and dress wigs and hairstyles.  The  trainee professional make up artist extending his skill making prostheses and then the make up to transmogrify male students into badgers and toads for “Wind in the Willows” She involved teams of musicians gathered from friends , acquaintances, parents and pupils, persuading one to compose incidental music for a play, another to write lyrics, yet another to rehearse and conduct the orchestra.   Her enthusiasm extended to casting each play with a double cast of principals, each team of lead players taking the lead on alternate nights and playing lesser roles in crowd scenes on the other evenings.   Naturally this device involved double the number of rehearsals, but guaranteed extended audiences, and ensured that students gained additional experience for future years.

The ingenuity of set design is another striking memory.   The play about a Cornish fishing village, with a set designed so that the audience see the village from the sea across the harbour wall in one scene; and the sea across the harbour wall from the village in the next.   Design was one thing, the ability to produce and operate such scenery another.  But what are schools unless they encourage and realise ingenuity, invention and innovation?  In a similar vein there was the realistic train on set for “The Railway Children”, and folding sets that transformed a public house bar room into a rural landscape within seconds for the Victorian melodrama “The drunkard”.

Throughout my experience there was no aspect of school theatre that did not reflect the thought and energy of dedicated teams and benefit teaching and learning.  Silk screen printing, photographic silk screen printing and every modern computer technique were used by pupils to produce exciting publicity materials.  Photography played a major part.   A pupil submerged himself in a local lake, whilst brandishing a sword above water, to help produce publicity and logo materials for a production of “King Arthur”.  Pupils using, what is now, old fashioned darkroom photographic techniques to produce gold coloured swords in photographs for “King Arthur”, blue faced, gold toothed witches for Roald Dahl’s “The Witches”, and sepia photographs for “The Drunkard”.  Certainly the most amusing publicity was gained during a production of “H.M.S. Pinafore” when the then Chairman of Governors happened to be a Commander at a local naval base.  He arranged for the Captain and Admiral in the play to attend the local naval base in their stage costume and inspect the guard.  Needless to say, the latter were somewhat comically turned out.  That one event alone guaranteed sell out audiences for the entire production run.

So memories abound.  I could regale the reader with so many anecdotes but I will content myself with a final reflection.  Although the high ideals of extending education and experience for pupils always endured, I am sure that the overall experience was one of fun and enjoyment; except, perhaps for one young student who successfully transformed himself into an old man, only after placing marbles in his Wellington boots.   I am certain that he will remember that stage experience for the rest of his life.

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Chrissy Moore-Haines

 I suppose my thoughts on the theatre are best summed up by a cartoon I once saw, which showed the famous illustration of the assassination  of Lincoln with a wee journalist type character inserted complete with note pad and pen and with the caption:- “But apart from that Mrs Lincoln, what did you think of the play?”

  For me, it has always been about the play. Even on the endless trips to Stratford when I was a schoolgirl, whilst others chattered about the actors and others drooled over the fit boys in the row in front (we were a girls boarding school and much deprived) I dissected the plot, tried to work out exactly what the playwright meant and whether I could have said it better. As we were usually packed off to see a Shakespeare play the second part was generally redundant.

  My very first experience of ‘live professional theatre’ was dire. My father had taken my sister and me to a pantomime. The only way I could be persuaded to go was by being told it was my favourite fairy story, Cinderella.

  Somewhere, I have a picture of a very small me in a sea of bigger children and big people in uniform, looking like something from a home for the bewildered, and probably wondering where all the beautiful words had gone.

  Words - they’re the stuff that dreams are made on.

  Of course I’m not averse to the odd comedic cock up. I still laugh when I remember a production of ‘the Scottish Play’ at my, then, local theatre in Leicester. Everything went exactly as it should until the very end when Macduff enters with the Scottish king’s head firmly grasped by its wild and bloody locks. Unfortunately grasped a little too firmly. The wild and bloody locks pealed themselves from the extremely well made rubber head, which then did a couple of remarkable dead cat bounces to finish its short,  ignominious life in the orchestra pit.

  Not even the Bard himself could have written that little comedy triumph!

  The first play I ever had performed by ‘pros’ was a disaster which should have put me off writing for theatre for life. I spent the entire production loitering in the foyer trying to convince myself that the grim faces of the audiences were because of the content, and not because they  really hated it.

  But it didn’t put me off. Nothing can beat the adrenaline rush that comes when seeing something you’ve written for (in most cases) living breathing people, being performed by living, breathing people. It’s the best feeling there is in the world and after a forty year addiction, not a habit I would ever want to kick.

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Ben Ridler

Taken literally, the title of this article (and series) evokes memories of the first school plays I took part in, especially summer Shakespeare productions.  The weather was mostly fine and so we were made up outside; the hall with its stage was adjacent to playing-fields and I associate the whole experience  -  being made up, taking part in the plays  -  with the pleasures of summer, the ‘buzz’ of a large group activity, and a certain easing off at the end of the school year.

   Taking part like this was something I had long dreamed of.  The school I attended aged 8 to 13 (The Dragon School, Oxford), though strict academically, had a very good tradition of leisure activities (I also loved playing cricket there and played the violin in the orchestra and a quartet), and plays were the highlight  -  G & S in December, Shakespeare in June.  The first Shakespeare's I saw aged 8 and 9, ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ and ‘Julius Caesar’, made a deep impression.  (I still remember the late broadcaster Humphrey Carpenter appearing in the latter as an innkeeper, popping in and out crying “Anon, anon, sir”.)  Yet for a long while I felt junior, an outsider, watching something ‘others’ did.  It was a real breakthrough for me when aged 12 I landed the minor role of ‘Singer’ in ‘The Merchant of Venice’, whose song ‘Tell me where is fancy bred, Or in the heart or in the head’ accompanies the casket scene; I mimed playing the lute while a teacher strummed guitar chords in the wings.  The one photo I have shows me in a rather fetching period wig, but with very rumpled tights!

   Following this school debut  I gained a place in the chorus of aristocrats (‘’Bow, bow, ye lower middle classes!’’) for ‘Iolanthe’, but for some reason gained promotion (musically if not socially) to the role of Private Willis.  This I enjoyed tremendously, especially the sentry’s opening number. I can still recall the butterflies as I waited behind the curtain for the end of the (very beautiful) Overture, till the curtains rolled apart and, focusing like mad on the green exit light at the back of the hall, I launched into the first lines: “When all night long a chap remains On sentry-go to chase monotony, ‘e exercises of his brains, That is, assuming that e’s got any!”  I don’t think my voice had broken then, so the ‘bass’ notes on ‘’Fa la la’’ must have sounded odd.  Odd also are the sentry’s knock knees in the accompanying photo; but his extravagant moustache and dress uniform with busby make him look otherwise quite impressive.

   The third and best ‘Dragon’ part I played was that of Fluellen in ‘Henry V’.  Goethe I believe says somewhere that parts we play in our teens foreshadow aspects of our lives that we will play for real in later years.  I don’t recall going on to force any Englishman to eat a leek, but I have gone on of course to live in Wales and become in some respects Welsh  -   something of which I could have had  no intimation aged 13.  I threw myself with gusto into learning the Wenglish so cleverly scripted by Shakespeare:  “Kill the poys and the luggage  -  ‘tis as arrant a piece of knavery as has ever been put down, mark you.”  Our Scots producer John ‘Bruno’ Brown was short-tempered but inspirational and drilled us well, giving me for one invaluable training in how to move and position oneself on stage.  As for the leek episode  -  I happened to meet last year the son of  the (then) boy who played Pistol and whom I forced to eat the said  national vegetable.  His father evidently suffered no trauma  -  he’s now a JP.

   My career as a Shakespearean actor was to peak at my next school three years later when I got to play Prospero in ‘The Tempest’.  Here Goethe’s theory appears to break down:  I have not gone on to become a magician.  I am still however haunted by Prospero’s final lines, in which he renounces his magic in a way which we cannot but think of as Shakespeare’s farewell to the theatre.  They strike perhaps a good note to end on.

        “Now my charms are all oe’rthrown

          And what strength I have’s mine own,

          Which is indeed most faint…”

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Richard Paramor

I've only once performed on stage - wrapped in an old blackout curtain (the war had just ended) at 7 years of age and playing Saint Augustine in a Sunday School play.  Tripping over that damned blackout curtain made my first and only entrance spectacular, to say the least, but cured me forever and ever of any aspirations towards personal appearances at the Old Vic or on any other stage.  But I have always known the magic of the theatre.  The anticipation just before the curtain goes up.  Even whilst a schoolboy I was spellbound by visits to the Empire Theatres in the London area - Wood Green, Finsbury Park, Chiswick, Hackney.  I was lucky beyond all measure that my twenties should coincide with the Swinging Sixties, and better still, throughout that period, I was working in Kings Road (Chelsea) and living very nearby.  The Royal Court theatre was just down the road from my home so those Angry Young Men were my contemporaries, and the works of such as Jean Anouilh, Samuel Becket, John Osborne, and  Joe Orton were available to me for half-a-crown in the Upper Circle.

Better still, on the other side of London, the Theatre Royal, Stratford East was the home of Theatre Workshop and the indescribably wonderful Joan Littlewood.  Certainly one was able to smell the greasepaint there - and the dust in the seats, and the beer in the bar.  Actors, many of whom today are famous - or have moved to the great stage in the sky - were then, if not in the current production, used as barmen, box office staff, or programme sellers. Victori Spinetti, Roy Kinnear, Dudley Sutton, Harry Corbett, Yootha Joyce, Brian Murphy, Fanny Carby, Avis Bunnage - to list them all would need several more pages.  I feel as if I lived in that theatre, I was there so often; and  frequently, if it was a small house, being moved from back of the circle to front of the stalls so that they could save on electricity by keeping the circle in darkness.  Such wonderful plays - Oh! What a Lovely War; The Hostage; Sparrers Can't Sing; Quare Fellow; A Taste of Honey; Fings Ain't Wot They Used t'Be .  And the playwrights, Lionel Bart and the large-than life Brendan Behan.

Life seemed so wonderful, and so carefree.  Just enough money for the tube fare to Stratford, a shilling for a programme, and enough for half of Watney's Pale in the interval, and the most magnificent magic of them all - the magic of the theatre.

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 Richard Withers

My love of performing began to take form at my Primary school. The teacher in my first year had me playing “Wee Willie Winkie” to the entire school at the age of four. I was dressed as the character in a night-gown and ran up and down the corridors singing the first two verses of the song:

      “Wee Willie Winkie runs through the town,

   Up stairs and down stairs in his night-gown,

   Tapping at the window, crying at the lock,

   Are the children in their bed, for it's past ten

         o'clock?

      Hey, Willie Winkie, are you coming in?

   The cat is singing purring sounds to the      

         sleeping hen,

   The dog's spread out on the floor, and doesn't    

         give a cheep,

   But here's a wakeful little boy who will not fall   

         asleep!”

     Later in 1955, as my last primary school performance at an event held in the town community hall I played the part of Charles Wesley composing a new hymn to assist his brother John during his preaching tour. 'O For A Thousand Tongues To Sing',

     The following day, Billy Graham stood on the same stage attempting to convert the locals to his own brand of Southern Baptism.

     Once up at the ‘big school’ I was rapidly inducted to the Drama Society and chosen to play the role of Queen Elizabeth in ‘Richard the Third’ at the annual Shakespeare production. Playing to a capacity audience of 400 people for four evenings and a Saturday matinee is a difficult drug to resist and I have never fully recovered.

     The critics were kind to me too, and the theatre critic for the county newspaper wrote “Even though there were no women on stage until well after Shakespeare’s time; female impersonation by young boys is often a source of contention. That it can be successful was proved again at this production, and the outstanding performance of the play was by R .P. Withers as Queen Elizabeth. He has an excellent voice which he used with great ability, and the passage in which he said, “I see the ruin of my house,” was particularly moving.”

     The only way is down after that.....

     By the time I left school I had played many supporting roles in big productions including Ariel in ‘The Tempest’, the son in a play based on Icarus, whose title I have forgotten and the lead in ‘The Bed Bug’ by Vladimir Mayakovsky, a speech from which I used as part of my audition for RADA. I don’t suppose even the great ones who sat in judgement over me that day had ever heard of the play, let alone knew the story. As it happened, I was too young to be accepted as I hadn’t reached the age of 16 at the time, having bunked off school to audition.

     When I got back to school a meeting had been set up with the Headmaster and my mother on one side and me on the other. The ultimatum I faced was to continue my studies and go to university and then, and only then, would I be allowed to consider the stage as a career option. I suppose they thought I would grow out of it.

     A couple of years later, while in London, I responded to an advert in The Stage to join a new repertory company being formed by a young actor in the north-east of England.

I received a warm letter in reply welcoming me to join them later that year. The letter that arrived later that year was one of abject apology as the actor in question had been offered a role in a new television programme, but if that didn’t work out, he would get in touch again. His name was John Alderton and the programme was ‘Please Sir’.

     Shortly after that I went to Sweden to get away from the temptation of the ‘boards’ and was eventually engaged by Swedish Radio to record programmes to teach English and the Swedish Institute for the Blind to record ‘Talking Books’ for students with visual impairments.

     I also joined the Stockholm Players and acted in and produced many plays for them while appearing in various other productions in Scandinavia.

     The comprehensive state school system in Finland commissioned me to record ‘Under Milk Wood’ as a teaching aid. This was recorded and edited at a small studio in Stockholm in a single day, with me playing all the parts, and was one of many such recordings over the years.

     I always kept my name on the Central Castings list which got me small parts in a number of films over the years. Mostly it was just as an extra but it gave me the opportunity to meet and observe some of the best directors and actors in action, including David Lean, John Schlesinger, Ingmar Bergman and Stanley Kubrick among the directors and Julie Christie, Alan Bates, Terence Stamp, Max Von Sydow, Peter O’Toole, Nigel Hawthorne and even Ryan O’Neal among the actors. O’Neal I will always remember as having the wettest handshake of anyone I have ever met.

     And so to DADS. Joining in 1992 as a stop gap actor for ‘An Inspector Calls’ I have done everything possible to do within this society; acting of course, but also directing and even writing a script or two, designing and painting scenery, cooking at an event, being committee member, chairman, and presently treasurer, cleaning the club room and the toilets; yes, I’ve put my hand to just about everything. What’s next in my career? “It’s behind you....!” I hear you cry.

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Debbie Ashton

    My first performance was at age 6 or 7, as Wee Willy Winkie, in a varied show put on  by the Brownies and the Cubs at a Methodist church in Edgbaston, near my home.  I also took part, as everyone does, in the yearly Nativity plays in varying capacities, during my primary school years.  The next time I had anything to do with theatres, was when I started to attend  'Theatre 67 Club' at Birmingham Repertory Theatre, on a Saturday morning.  This was in what is now the old theatre.  I saw the transition to the new theatre which stands next to the International Convention Centre in Broad Street.  

    At school I helped to stage a production of A Christmas Carol, by doing the props and scene shifting, with some of my friends whilst some of the lower years did the acting.  I enjoyed doing that, as much as taking part in something.  

   The last production I was going to be a part of was a production of The Pirates of Penzance and I was in the chorus.  It was rehearsed over a long period (18 months), and unfortunately I had left school, before the show was actually staged, at my father's insistence.  I went to see it, as many of my friends, were in it.  

    I ran Llwyngwril Gallery, I established a voluntary group in order to hold concerts and projects in the building.  We started a Drama /club, which was led by my friend Sally Kirkham.  It started with quite a wide age range, but eventually settled into a project, with a £10,000 fund from Social Risk Fund, with the Teenage  members.  I secured funding from the Social Risk Fund  for the project and  with the help of Sally and other Drama teachers, they put on a showcase of the work they had produced, for the local community, which was excellent.  I also raised a £20,000 (two funds of £10,000 each) for a Film Project in 2006, for 15 young people from 14 upwards.  Each of them were to make a short film, and I collaborated with Emma Macey, who is a film-making teacher from Machynlleth (well, she is Australian originally).  Between us, with me conveying what I have in mind, and Emma formulated a series of teaching sessions, which were 6 full days on Saturdays, to teach them the basic skills needed.  After this, each youngster wrote a 'storyboard' for their 5 minute film.  They had to organize everything for themselves and Emma over saw what they did and ensured that nothing was left to chance. Acted and crewed for each other, which gave opportunities to those who enjoyed the Drama side of things.     They all  The outcome were about 14 films, which were entered into the Pink Snowball Awards, which is a film festival, that Emma had started with Mach Fringe in October, 2005, at Y Tabernacl.  All actors and film makers attended the Awards night and also other groups that Emma had worked with on other projects.  Our films were very well received and the Winner, went on to win a national competition in Ireland as well as here in Machynlleth.  This was the first of the Film 15 projects and Emma went on to do several more projects, in this vein.

   During early 2009, some of our young people took part in a Murder Mystery.  This story was written by a dear friend who was so supportive of everything I did in the Gallery, and the event was to raise funds for the Scarecrow Festival which would take place later that year at Whitsun.  The story was given to them, and we ran through the different scenes,  with me directing, and helping them to improvise the dialogue.  When they had difficulties with getting the dialogue right and ringing true, I helped them, with finding the right things to say, and the right way to say them, and including dialogue that they had omitted, in order to make the story complete.  In this story there was a motive for every member of the cast, to kill the victim, and so the audience was to decide which of them actually did it, which we decided before hand.  My friend, who has worked as a prosecuting solicitor  and so has the experience and wit to do the narrative between scenes, casting doubt on the various evidence, which was acted out.  It went off really well and they kids were thrilled with how it was received and I was really proud of them and myself too! I had never done anything like that before!

   Since closing the Gallery, I felt that I needed to be involved in something theatrical.  I am not massively confident as an actress, and definitely need a Director to tell me what is needed,  but I do like to have a go.  However, I am equally happy in supporting roles, doing the props and am currently working through the many costumes we have in the theatre,  washing, and measuring, repairing, photographing, and labelling and cataloguing each of them, with the aim of making them available for Fancy Dress Hire Service to help bring in a little income for the Theatre, which is always in need of something, being an old building.

   I also do the best I can with the publicity for the events we hold here, as I had to promote the events I had in the Gallery, and developed strategies and contacts to spread the word, sometimes not the most obvious or apparent, but my plugging away, I hope that we can increase our audiences , which will again, help to keep the theatre sustainable.  

   Since joining Theatr Fach, I have helped with the props for 'Match for Match', have been a celebrity presenter at the Oscars ceremony in 'The Prize' and been the Baron in 'Cinderella' the Christmas Panto, all in 2010.  I am doing props for Ladies in Retirement which will be staged in May.

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