Returning to One's Roots

First of all apologies for not having posted so much recently. A resolution for 2012 is to be more frequent with my posting. I will also be starting a new PHOTOGRAPHY blog to display (show off!) some of the pictures I take, as I become more and more fascinated with the art of photography. On that note I must add a further apology as to the quality of the photograph accompanying this blog post. As I am in the photograph I obviously haven't taken it myself, and the unfocused, shakiness of the picture is the responsibility of someone in my family who shall remain unnamed! However, I wanted to post the picture because it marks for me a return to the place where I stepped onto a stage for the very first time when I was 9. Before this it was also the place where I went to the theatre for the first time, and where my love of performance, theatre, show-business and all that started. I had the chance to revisit this place –The Memorial Hall in Dereham, Norfolk– earlier this month, and to inspect the results of an exciting £3-million refurbishment. I was thrilled and delighted to discover that despite the revamp, the hall had the same atmosphere that I remember from my childhood, and the stage retained its magical allure. I was so excited to step on the stage again for the first time in 31 years –even in its bare, working-light lit state- and feel that same rush of energy and magic that drew me into acting in the first place. I would have loved to have performed something there again, but we were only on the briefest of visits. For me any stage is a temple of possibilities and magic, but revisiting this one was truly special. So perhaps I am the one shaking here, rather than the photographer!

This Week’s Flashback -20th anniversary of my first play

Today, March 21st, it's twenty years since I first had a play produced and perfomed –two, in fact, as it was a double-bill consisting of two one-act plays I wrote for The Oslo Players under the umbrella title "Another Place". The two plays were "The Royal Box" –a light comedy about the panic created in a theatre when it is announced that they are to have a royal visit; and "Snail Street" -a tragi-comedy about people living in cardboard boxes on the street. I directed and appeared in the former. God only know show I found the energy and time for all this, because I was also studying full-time and working part-time too. It was a truly gargantuan adventure, and one of the most tiring times of my life, but utterly rewarding. It was also the first production of The Oslo Players –the English-speaking drama group at the university of Oslo, and the start of that whole adventure I later used the process of this production as part of my thesis in theatre studies. Of the two plays my greatest affection is for "The Royal Box", and on re-reading it today, I must say it holds up remarkably well, and is certainly very tightly written, and it is more like a full-length play than a one-acter. I am very fond of it.
Here's part of the prologue to the pair of plays..spoken by a cleaner in front of the stage:

THE CLEANER:
More dust! Don't you ever wonder where the hell it
all comes from? I do. ...Sometimes I wonder whether
there's not a huge cloud of dust, way up there; and
every room in every building in the entire world gets
like a ...a daily dose of dust. A daily dose of dust from
this gigantic cloud! I mean it's all the same isn't it...
dust I mean. The dust of a palace is just as ...dusty as
that of a prison or a church or your sleazy downtown
joint. Kings and housewives fight against it; painters
and surgeons hate it, and bakers and cooks fear it.
Yet it keeps me in a job (pause). Strange though, isn't
it, to think that when we, God forbid, die, we eventually
become dust ourselves. Sure it takes time, but sooner
or later you'll find yourself floating to the floor in a
thousand specks in places like this! That's why I stick
to my job -I come across so many interesting people!

This Week’s Flashback -Sebastion in "Twelfth Night" 1992

I Have been going through old photographs the last few days –the wet weather has been perfect for that sort of thing– and came across this picture from a production of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night I performed in way back in 1992 with The Oslo Players. This particular photograph is from a special performance at the British Embassy in Oslo. Unfortunately no one had told the ambassador that there was a sword fight in the play, and he went quite white during the performance -the reason being the stage's proximity to the portrait of Queen Elizabeth in the background. He afterwards told us that the Princess Royal (Princess Anne) was staying at the embassy a day or two later. I couldn't help but wonder what she would have thought if she had arrived to find the picture of her mother slashed! Fortunately my fencing skills proved adequate enough to avoid disgrace! I'm not quite sure about that wig though...