Answering Questions

I have often been asked many questions about my career as a jobbing actor, some I always find infuriating like; how do you learn your lines? Some that I must ponder on and then consider if I should give an informative and truthful answer.

One such regular question is; what was your most enjoyable play, film or TV production?

To answer this question, I have to take some time and try and wrack my ageing-hard-drive as I’ve been performing professionally for over fifty-eight years and one’s memory does decline as the years pass by.

On stage, two productions immediately come to the fore. Diary of a Madman and Gulls, both these performances were in the nineteen-eighties when I was still in my early middle-age and they happened in the space of three years. I also won awards for both, a small cup, a medallion, and a paltry amount of money, which was quickly spent in a bar celebrating my thirst and that of many others. Once Toddie was filled and a dozen or so rounds of drinks was purchased for friends and hangers-on the prize money became an empty hole in my pocket. This is myself going to the podium to collect my medal and pittance.

I’ll start with Gulls, a superb play by Australian playwright Robert Hewett. It premiered in Australia in 1983 and won Hewett The Green Room Award.

A well-travelled and doyen of South African Theatre at the time Moyra Fine, who had established a production company in 1982 called Volute, with the original intention to stage plays that the People’s Space Theatre, the first multi-racial theatre in South Africa could not finance, secured the performance rights.

The director was Mr Keith Grenville and here is caught here having a cuppa with Moyra.

I was offered the role of the leading character Bill, a forty-year-old man, who because of a car accident had supposedly the mind of a brain-damaged eight-year-old child. I was immediately attracted to the part and accepted the role. The production opened at the Nico Malan Theatre in Cape Town on the 17^th of July 1987.

The other cast members were Jeremy Taylor, Bill’s close friend who was driving the car when the accident occurred, Diane Wilson, Bill’s sister, and the late Joy Stewart-Spenser who played Molly, their next door neighboured who looked after Bill while his sister was at work. 

This is myself with Jeremy in the opening scene.

The play utilized the incredibly talented Adrain Kohler and his newly formed Handspring Puppet Company. Adrian designed and made the two seagull puppets, which were an integral part of the production. The puppeteers were Mark Hoeben and Andre Rootman.

The production won three Fleur du Cap awards in 1987 and went on to play in Pretoria, Johannesburg, Durban and finally closed two years later in Port Elizabeth, and the present day FNB Theatre Award (National) is named “The Moyra Fine Award for Outstanding Contribution to Theatrical Life”. This award is for individually and jointly continuing to encourage and develop theatre for all, in the face of stringent apartheid legislation.

As you can see the production was a massive success and played to full houses in all the cities across South Africa.

For me?

I enjoyed it, the whole production team and cast became close friends, we were like a family for over two years, even though there were a couple of cast changes.

I pranced nightly across the stage gurgling and talking to the other characters as if I was from another planet and then suddenly the action froze, and I talked directly to the audience in standard Australian-English.

This transformation seen her with  my sister on the left, from a crippled brain damaged idiot to a normal man, transfixed the audiences and every night for the two years we received standing ovations at the curtain call.

It was certainly enjoyable and exhausting. I consumed an enormous quantity of liquid refreshment till the early hours of the following morning after every performance without exception.

Bizarre and eventful jaunts happened throughout the run. I remember a party at the residence of co-producer of the production when we played a season at the Baxter theatre.

John Slemon, seen to the left after imbibing was infamous at the time for his ability to consume all alcoholic beverages and was the former manager of the Abbey Theatre in Dublin. He was brought out to South Africa to start up and run the new theatre with enormous success. He retired in 1995,

One Friday night we all ended up in the plunge pool for his sauna at his house in Simonstown and raucously sang old Irish republican songs.

At four in the morning the police were called by a neighbour who was complaining about the noise. We obliged, and the party ended. I drove back to my friend’s house in Devils Peak where I was staying. I had just purchased a new old vintage BMW and that was it last drive it had as I drove headlong in to a city transport early morning bus that was weaving its way down the winding Devils’ Peak road.

The car was a write-off but fortunately I was unharmed, and the city bus driver received a handsome gratuity from my friend as we surreptitiously towed the wreckage away to Don’s garage. There were no other witnesses as the bus, which was basically undamaged apart from a bent bumper, was empty.

So, the handsome bride, which I repaid to Don was well spent. The BMW underwent an inspection by my insurance company who were amazed that so much damaged could be caused by me accidently driving it into Don’s gate.

I never bought another car after that incident and always purchased old Bakkies, like a 1984 Nissan Champ 1400, which I still carts away the garden rubbish weekly to this day.

The final party after the closing of the production in Port Elizabeth was also a grand affair. It was in the Opera house Theatre, the oldest theatre in the Republic.

As a farewell gesture I ordered four hundred of the finest Port Elizabeth harvested local oysters to be delivered and Moyra Fine, who incidentally was Raymond Ackerman’s sister, arranged that the liquor costs were covered by the supermarket chain which Raymond owned.

The event was drowned in oysters with Guinness and Champagne chasers to wash them down.

The other play that offered equal enjoyment and exhaustion was Diary of a Madman, I have written about this play in several previous posts and madness certainly came very close to the surface in my own hard-drive! I start off as a lower-class civil servant and end up in the lunatic asylum.

This was the first production in which I was the script-adaptor, part director, transport manager and co-producer as well as lead and only performer.

My long- time friend, Karoly Pinter came up with the idea that we should adapt Gogol’s magnificent short story into a one-man play. A psychiatrist who worked with us as a medical advisor said it was the best description off paranoia schizophrenia he had ever read. Doctor Bass who started everyday of his working life at the Rustenberg psychiatric clinic with a double brandy and coke, so that he could deal with an elderly black patient who could recite every word of Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth daily.

We started work on this straight after Gulls has closed and spent six months in rehearsal interspersed with visits to the local psychiatric hospitals while we adapted the short story and turned it into a one hour fifteen-minute monologue. It was gruelling work, but we finally had a finished product which opened at the Windybrow 100-seater theatre in I think 1986.

It was a huge success again winning 4 awards for myself and Karoly, the production ran for nine weeks to full houses. We then toured down to Cape Town running at the Nico Malan for ten weeks, a return season of six weeks at the Market theatre.

Because Karoly and I were co-producers of the production we kept a very careful eye on the bookings and how much income was coming in at the box-office. We had struck up share deals with all the theatres on a sixty forty percent split of the box office takings.

At the closing of the production which was after about a year three months of hard graft Karoly and I sat down with a calculator had did some mathematics. It turned out that over the one year and three months we had worked on the piece we had earned the princely sum of one Rand eighty-two cents each per hour of work!!!!! We even added in the prize money we had received from the best director and best actor awards we had won!!!!

The life of a jobbing actor is not financially rewarding as many of you may think.

On this production the most memorable event occurred on Karoly’s and my drive down to the mother city of Cape Town, a fourteen-hour haul with an unloaded bakkie, which we both owned. My 1984 Nissian champ and Karoly’s Alfa Romeo. We loaded all the set and numerous props into the vehicles and we set off. I had the home constructed cell toilet, a metal box with a bucket covered with a toilet seat, as my friend resting precariously on the passenger seat.

This is me as Poprischen with the toilet seat around my head in the show.

Just about ten kilometres after by-passing Bloemfontein Karoly’s Afla showed signs of overheating and after discarding the idea of pissing in the radiator we decided to drive into Bloemfontein and seek mechanical help. After an hour we received the verdict from the Bloemfontein mechanic, the radiator was completely fucked and would have to be replaced. The fastest he could do this was a week as the spare part had to come from Port Elizabeth over a thousand kilometres away.

It was decided we should try and load all Karoly’s props and set into and onto my Bakkie. We purchased about fifty metres of nylon rope and we set of with the cell-toilet and various other things tied onto my roof rack. Twelve hours later we arrived in Cape Town and started setting up the set in the Nico Malan theatre. Karoly was also the lighting designer so he had to stay and rig the lights and work through all the sound and lighting cues with the local stage manager. I at least could retire to again My friend Don’s house where I had been invited.

The following day we opened again to rave reviews and the local producer from CAPAB assured us the advance booking were excellent. They were and ten weeks later we drove ladened northwards again with the set to firstly Bloemfontein to pick up the Alfa and on to Johannesburg.

After the return season at the Market we were invited to do one show in what was then called a homeland. Bophuthatswana was created only for the Tswana people and was one of the homelands created by the then Afrikaner Nationalist government.

These Bantustans or homelands were established by the Apartheid Government. They were areas to which most of the Black population was moved to prevent them from living in the urban areas of South Africa. The idea was to separate Blacks from the Whites and give Blacks the responsibility of running their own independent governments, thus denying them protection and any remaining rights a Black could have in South Africa. In other words, Bantustans were established for the permanent removal of the Black population in White South Africa. This is a shot of the set-up in Bophuthatswana, with Karoly instructing the positioning of the lights.

The show was a huge success and we amazed at the number of Black Africans who saw the performance all spoke with American accents. We observed this at the after-show function which was organised by the theatre in conjunction with UNESCO, thus explaining the amount of Americaneeze spoken. Also, Bophuthatswana had its own broadcasting corporation which aired mostly American TV programmes!

Some of Poprischen’s lines remain with me today as he spoke of the real-truth about the world in which he lived and many of us still do today:

“I need people not dogs! I need spiritual nourishment to feed and enrich my soul. Why ? Why is it always generals and gentlemen of the court? People like me who manage to scrape together a few crumbs of happiness and just as we are about to reach out and grasp it along comes a general or gentleman of the court to snatch it away.”

A good observation on life in general!

I hope that answers the question. I deal with my favourite films in another post.

Please comment, it will be appreciated!!