Sunday, June 14, 2015

Equal and Opposite

Recently whilst enjoying a relaxed state of inebriation with a fellow Thespian I began to formulate a theory related to our profession. 

We were half way through a game of Scrabble and the fact that my “Toddie” was empty and the flagon of dry red my friend had brought with him was almost finished, may have been the reason we were having to consult the dictionary with increasing rapidity.

“Actinism” was the word in question. My friend, Iain Walter Mcpherson another jobbing actor going through lean times, was eager to use his “Z” on a triple letter score. I had no idea what the word meant never mind how to spell it.

I was pleased to discover from my Penguin Concise that it was spelt with an “S” not a “Z” and enlightened to learn that it is the intrinsic property in solar and nuclear radiation that produces photochemical activity.

I was amazed at my friend’s in-depth knowledge of the world of physics and enquired as to when and where he had come across the word.

“Ach,” his Scot’s lips mumbled, “I was playing Rabbit at the time in an adaptation of AA Milne’s Winnie the Pooh.”

“So,” I acerbically retorted, “You gave your character an Einsteinian-like bent?”

“No,” he replied seriously.

Not catching my creative drift he rambled on, “It was roond abute the late eighties and I had to wear some buck teeth over mi own front teeth and during a matinee performance I lost them.”

By now Iain was beginning to lose me too, as my alcohol-bemused mind could find no connection between the loss of Rabbit’s buck teeth, nuclear physics and solar radiation.

My eyes glanced down the page of the dictionary and I came across the very short definition given for an “actor.” A performer in a play for stage, film or television.

My God, I thought. What cheek!

It’s about time the world was given an explanation of what I and thousands of other jobbing actors are, what it is we do and why we do it.

I must formulate an Einsteinian-like theory.

Iain mumbled on as the last dregs of red wine in his enamel mug sat precariously balanced on his knee. He was completely oblivious to the fact that I had crossed into another dimension and was in a world of my own. We were suddenly two reminiscing monologues performing simultaneously in the same time and space.

My monologue took me back to my early days of training at the Royal Academy. A brilliant improvisation teacher, Mr. Keith Johnston, told us we were actors. “Whatcha mean by that?” piped up an ingratiating American student.

“An actor is someone who uses every part of himself, not just his voice, like a singer. Not just his arms and legs like a dancer. Not just his hands and eyes like a painter or sculptor. He uses his whole-being, he has to feed on every physical and mental attribute that his body can muster.”

Deep words for a bunch of young aspiring thespians to grasp.

We all stood dumbfounded in his class and waited for his next words of wisdom.

“Right,” he said, “I want you to blow up these balloons, and you can start by using your lungs.”

As I was blowing up mine I noticed out of the corner of my eye that he too was inflating a balloon, but before he started he took a syringe filled with some liquid out of his briefcase and injected it into the balloon. “Now we are going to take a trip inside one of the vilest monsters you can possibly imagine and one of you is going to slay it,” he said, holding his limply inflated balloon in his hand.

A ballsy female student, Annastasia Vampkov, from Bulgaria volunteered to make the trip.

Had Ms. Vampkov been born in the eighties she would have been excellent in the role of Lara Doon in the 1999 film of The Tomb Raider. This very attractive sultry looking red head was blindfolded and two male students leapt at the offer to be her guides on the trip.

The rest of us, apart from myself who was given the role of storyteller, were to be the insides of the monster. Following my draconian narration finger and toe-nails became teeth, sweaty bodies
became the tongue, hot garlic smelling breath of two Italian students became the breath of the monster, the inflated balloons, arms, legs, fingers, and torsos became the walls of the stomach and intestines.

The teacher whispered an instruction in my ear. “Now, you’re reaching the vital life- sustaining organ of the monster,” I said quickly modifying my narration to fall in line with Keith’s instruction, “if you reach out you’ll be able to feel it.”

The wet liquid-filled partially inflated balloon held tightly stretched between Mr. Johnson’s hands was placed in easy reach of the terrified Ms Vampkov. “Grasp it with both hands and rip it out”, I intoned in her ear.

She did just that. As the balloon burst covering the unsuspecting lass with water she screamed loudly and suddenly vomited. A perfectly natural reaction I thought for a Bulgarian vampire slayer.

It was at this stage in the formulation of my theory that Iain suddenly burst into an hysterical fit of laughter.

“Ye know were they were? I’d spat them rite out! They were sitting on top of this old grandma’s head in the front row of the audience!” he guffawed as he licked the remaining droplets of red wine he’d spilt off his knee.
 It just goes to show that all actors, Sir Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein are right. At any time, in any space, to every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Friday, June 5, 2015

Which one is me ?

All professions have written Rules of Conduct, ethical standards and certain unwritten Golden Rules.

The world of Thespians is no different and performers also have their strange list of “do’s & don’ts”. 


Maybe they are not adhered to with such fanaticism as the Hippocratic Oath of Harley street doctors but by and large they are observed. Many of my profession’s rules are founded on superstitions like, never whistle in your dressing room and never mention the Thane of Cawdor by the author’s given name of Macbeth.

The unwritten rule of not putting your daughter on the stage has been broken so many times by no other than Sir John Mills and Sir Micheal Redgrave, that the general public must think actors have no time at all for Noel Coward’s twee advice. They must suspect that my fellow knighted Thespians break rules with a regularity similar to the way that general practitioner Dr. Harold Shipman broke his Hippocratic oath during his fifteen-year serial killing spree.

Not so!

The majority of jobbing actors do follow a very strict Code of Conduct and behave in a discreet and respectable manner. It is more often than not that producers, with their uncreative heads wrapped around their balance sheets that bend the rules to suit their pockets.

But more of that another time.

A Never-do rule I personally have adhered to is to stoop below my station and accept work as an extra. No matter how empty my “Toddie” has been, even if I’ve had to resort to filling it with cooking sherry or Chateau cardboard dry red wine, I have never taken work as an extra or a walk-on.

Unfortunately a dear old friend of mine did.

Mr. Leonard Smirkovski, known as Smirnoff to his friends, found himself in the unenviable position of being very low on the readies. For over a six-month period prior to a trip to the United States, he never managed to stretch his social security Giro cheque sufficiently so that he could cover the cost of his addiction. As many quadruple vodka, lime and soda waters as he could drink before he reached the all-fall-down stage.

Lenny Smirkovski was born and bred in the East End of London and had he been born thirty years later he would have been rewarded with a leading role in the English TV soapie Eastenders. He had an impish sense of humour and was a superb con artist. At the tender age of eighteen he convinced the principal of his drama school to loan him two hundred pounds. In the late fifties this was a considerable sum of money and Lenny had carefully planned his ploy. He had lost one of his front teeth in a bar room brawl and wore a National Health plate.

“I need a root canal treatment and a bridge,” he announced to the principal. On bended knees he pleaded his case. No father, a sick mother, a younger brother and sister living in a squalid terraced house in East Ham. Finally the principal and unsuspecting bursar agreed to the loan. At graduation two years later, Mr. Smirkovski was still soaking his plate in a jam jar overnight, his front tooth was still missing and the loan remained unpaid.

By the end of the seventies Leonard was still living in the States. He was working as barman in a low life establishment in down town Chicago when he spotted a short newspaper article related to the filming of Star Wars. Absconding overnight with the bar-takings in his back pocket he boarded a flight to London and twenty four hours later was camped with several hundred hopefuls outside the gates of Pinewood studios.

He stayed with me in my Kings Cross basement flat during his stint as an extra in George Lucas’s epic. He spent five weeks clad in a storm-trooper’s plastic outfit. One evening he returned home in high spirits beaming from ear to ear.

“What’s the joke? I enquired.

“I did a great scene today.” He said, “I stood guard outside Princess Lea’s cell and did this.”

He demonstrated his action. Standing to attention, as a menacing storm-trooper should, he waved his arms up and down. “Were you on your own? Just you outside the cell?” I asked.

“No.” He replied seriously, “There were one hundred of us.”

“Then why the arm waving? I asked. “So when I see the movie I’ll know which one is me.”

Mr. Leonard Smirkovski was a true professional. He stuck to another Golden Rule of coarse acting. Never lose your character’s individuality!

His final role was in the hit English TV series “Silent Witness” which deals with case histories of a pathologist played by Amanda Burton.

He played a corpse.

May he rest in peace.