November 2009 Archives

I am officially exhausted. No matter how tired I am, and no matter whether or not it is a Sunday, by 7am my body clock thinks that I have overslept and refuses to let me rest. Most days I am out the door between 7 - 7:30 am, and it is rare to arrive back before 6pm. This leaves very little time to fit in “real life” - all I want is some bread and toilet roll! - especially when an actor’s job tends to be more physically exhausting than most “ordinary” jobs. (I am sure some of you will argue with me on this. All I can say is, try doing two musical shows a day, rushing to drive through London to a different venue in the middle of the day, doing the get-ins and get-outs yourself with 3 other cast members, with only one day off a week to relax/get everything else in your life organised!)

I am therefore looking forward to an afternoon off today to help me catch up with a long list of incomplete tasks. Unfortunately, as we are completely booked up on the tour, our afternoon off is due to a cast member becoming very poorly. This means that our male understudy will be filling in again this week (but this time for the other male role), leaving plenty to organise this morning!

I maintain I have a very good sense of direction. The poor chap I navigated to Scarborough via a bermuda triangle of Lincolnshire villages and against oncoming bangers on a dirt ralley course would probably disagree with me. What can I say? I often believe I know better than the AA route planner.

Nothing makes me more anxious than being late. As an audience member, trying to sneak in during a scene change, or ‘after the first number’ just doesn’t sit well with me. Number one, I feel guilty about disrespecting the actors, number two; the shame… oh the shame! The filthy looks received by those who are forced to drag themselves out of their seats whilst you breath in and try and make yourself as skinny as possible, as you shuffle past them to Row J Seat 14 is a big enough incentive for me to wind the watch ten minutes forward.

I sort of get the feeling I feel asleep and woke up half through November because Winter has definitely arrived and its almost December already! Don’t get me wrong, I love this time of year, it just seems to have crept up on me like a rather cruel surprise.

Apologies for my blogging absence - Ben Hur has taken me to Munich and Zurich in recent weeks, and then dropped me back in London with a thud, having ‘postponed’ the rest of the tour dates for November, December and January until 2010. Now, I don’t want to harp on about this too much, mainly because it’ll bore you but also because I’m likely to get into trouble, but what I must say, is it is a huge shame for such a hard working cast who have already gone above and beyond the usual actor duties to be treated in this way. The jury is still out as to what happens next with the tour - the company are hoping the full cast will return in January. After 2 months off. At Christmas. Hmmm… we shall see.

On a lighter, much more joyous note, The Stage this week revealed plans for London’s very own Fringe Festival. About time! This is long overdue and will hopefully prove to be a huge success. My one concern is the obvious problem of attempting to rival Edinburgh. The Scottish theatrical highlight has grown over many years to what it is today, can we Southern folk create something to match the intimate, hap-hazard, bustling nature of the most famous Fringe festival in the world? I’m not too sure we can match it just yet, but the opportunity for performers to showcase work in the theatrical hub of London is unquestionably a marvellous thing.

So its back to the audition rounds for me come new year. Crikey. It’s always a strange thing going from a long term contract back into the slightly crazed world of rep folders, monologue learning and remembering if Julie has seen you before, or is Ian the pianist that plays deathly slowly? And yet strangely refreshing as well. It reminds you that this job is oh so fickle and success at one audition is balanced out with 2 rejections from first rounds, a recall for a TIE in Scunthorpe, 3 no replies to job applications you don’t really want anyway and then a final no to the advert casting where you had to spin around like you were drilling though the floor and then grin insanely as you wave frantically at the camera - although to be fair, I’m sure that would’ve been a fun way to spend a morning regardless.

Welcome to Phillip and Gemma, our new Grads Club bloggers - looking forward to hearing about everything you get up to. Fate has dealt me a remarkably chipper hand since we finished Hur, and so have some odd jobs which will keep me in festive cheer over Christmas until I’m back with NYT in January. I will keep you posted.

Joy and hoorah to all!

Rejection is part and parcel of the career we have chosen as performers, and it still stings no matter how many times you go through it or how much you prepare yourself for it. After auditioning and receiving a recall for Box Clever Theatre Company I walked away empty handed. I must say, as frustrated as I was at not being offered employment, I found a solace in an interesting place.

Since relocating to London I have discovered that in my day there is a good two and a half hours where I sit doing very little - commuting and lunch breaks at work - and, like most Londoners, have taken to reading pretty much anything I can get my hands on to colour in the boredom of these hours.

Sometimes it’s a case of skimming through the Standard or an overly large novel just to get the general gist of the story. But occasionally you come across something that not only captures your imagination but also you heart.

Sunday. My one day off. Only it isn’t a day off because it is the only day I have to catch up on the reams of tasks I haven’t had time for during the week: grocery shopping, laundry, audition hunting, flat hunting (yes, I am moving out - again!), trying desperately to keep on top of my finances, and catching up with people I know outside of work (just to remind myself that there is life outside of Beauty and the Beast!).

This is made all the more harder when two thirds of the tube network is closed and one is left standing at a bus stop for a bus which is due every 12 minutes, and yet after 40 minutes not a single bus has shown up. (If only I had been waiting for the 207 - there were hundreds of them!) Today has certainly been an education in finding my way around London without the aid of an internet-enabled phone with access to the TFL website.

At the end of today, like any other day since the tour began, I am ready to flop down on my bed and pass out with exhaustion. Only tonight of course, the writing of this blog is preventing me from entering the inviting world of slumber.

It has been a busy week. I have forgotten what my housemates look like and I don’t recall a time when my feet have hated me quite this much. I am writing to you, dear blog readers, after the fourth consecutive day of retail temping — and I come with news that will affect women the world over: three inch heels are no-ones friend.

It is very, repeat very, difficult to embody glamour and style when you want to hack off your own limbs. However, the show must go on (and there’s that pesky Career Development Loan to pay off).

I was previously unaware of the parallels between theatre-land and temp-land. Firstly, it appears there is a migrant population which divides its time between both. The shop floor is teeming with actors, dancers and singers. Only yesterday I bumped into a fellow TIE auditionee brandishing some cologne.

Secondly, there’s the preparation involved: costume, make up and, of course, learning your lines. Then there’s the performance. With sales, as with acting, it is vital to truly believe what you’re relaying to your audience. Whilst passing through either territory you must respect the local customs, be courteous and friendly and adapt very quickly to your surroundings and the people who call that place ‘home’.

Luckily in my case, the natives are friendly and the climate ain’t half bad! Still, I can’t help but hope my sojourn in temp-land is a short one, and as my metaphor is wearing thin, it’s probably time get back to theatre-land…

I stepped off the tube the other day and staring me right in the face was a poster depicting a scantily clad lady and a topless man advertising ‘Erotica 2009’. After a long day at work it did make me smile, although I’m sure I won’t see those two particular people at the event if I were to go and pay it a visit.

I like posters on the Underground I think they make the subterranean tunnels almost bearable. But I do get really frustrated when I read reports that the underground authorities have made certain demands of advertisers in order to comply with ridiculous rules. Most recently TfL demanded that designers of The Calendar Girls increased the size of two cherry bakewells covering Kelly Brook’s modesty so that underground passengers don’t get offended. However in the same breath they turn around and propose plans that buskers should be obliged to play recognisable advert slogans, despite the fact they are unpaid, not allowed to sell their own CDs and are criticised for advertising their myspace pages.

The trouble with touring a TIE, children’s, or community production is that performances tend to be during the day. Based in London or not, this makes attendance at auditions virtually impossible, and so we are left with no option but to look for retail, sales or bar work to sustain us once the contract is finished. To make matters more complicated, the contract for this particular show which I am currently performing in finishes just before Christmas; and rather than taking on new recruits after Christmas, the seasonal staff are being laid off with a handful kept on to fill any gaps. And so I expect jobs will be few and far between, and so I look forward to yet another period of unemployment.

Hello world! Well, this is all highly exciting!

I’m afraid you’ll have to forgive excessive use of exclamation marks on this, my debut blog- promise to be more restrained on the punctuation front in future! Anyway, I had best introduce myself…

My name is Gemma and on the 25th of September 2009 I graduated from Mountview on the Postgraduate Acting Course.

That evening, in a ceremony at the Actors Church in Covent Garden, the class of 2009 were handed our diplomas by Mountview Alumni, actor Don Gilet. Then and there I waved goodbye to tutors and timetables and said a great big ‘Aloha’ to endless hours on internet casting sites, erratic heartbeats every time an unknown number pops up on call ID, and a growing addiction to Jeremy Kyle (please… somebody say there’s a remedy for this!?)

Now, as a self-confessed control freak, (I refuse to believe I’m the only one to go wild in the aisles for a brand new Pukka pad dedicated solely to ‘to do’ lists …) the biggest adjustment for me has been the sudden loss of order with regard to my schedule. More than once I have found myself wistfully look back to the days when a nice colour coded timetable told me exactly what I would be doing the following Monday at 1.15 after Games.

I think its brilliant that the Royal Court is dominating the Evening Standard Theatre Awards shortlist. I am a great admirer of the aims of the Royal Court and you can guarantee that 90% of any published work bearing the Royal Court logo at the top will be a play worth reading.

One of its writers who has benefitted from its suppot is Lucy Prebble. Her debut work The Sugar Syndrome is one of my favourite plays. With a dream to star in it and fond memories of directing it, it is a well leafed script on my book shelf. It is therefore wonderfully satisfying to see that Prebble’s new play Enron features heavily on the shortlist, including Best Play.

"Networking" - that dreaded term that makes many actors want to cringe into a corner and simply disappear. But instead we put on our best smiles and do our best to appear interested without seeming simpering. And this week it has become apparent yet again that it can indeed be a case of "who you know". A friend of mine secured a top agent this week - despite the agency supposedly having closed their books for the time being. (I should know - before securing an agent recently, I contacted the agency myself who reiterated the message on their website declaring that their books were currently closed.) But apparently having a family member working for the agency helps, and he was finally able to get his cousin onto the books after an initial promise to take her on (before actually seeing her work!) several months earlier.

In this case, the actor's talent is well deserving of the top representation; but it raises the question of just how much being a successful actor depends on "who you know" when it is possible to secure a top agent based on relationship over talent. (I reiterate, the actor is very talented, but the agency had actually not previously seen her in performance when the initial offer was made.)

And indeed little did I know that in the short period since leaving drama school I’d taste such an array of metaphorical flavours. In true chocolate box style, however, things haven’t always been toffee pennies and strawberry creams… I’ve had to endure the odd coconut éclair as well.

I recently made the big leap from freezing cold north to the slightly refrigerated south, and like Dick Whittington before me set off to make my fortune in the golden streets of London. In reality all I’m trying to do is get by in whatever way I can, unfortunately this means I cant accept or offer myself to low paid jobs no matter how good the credit looks on my CV or how desperate I am to perform. As my agent said, “There is a constant tension between the day job and auditions/acting work” and there is nothing like working in retail to make your feet itch for a bit of Pinter or even to tackle the meaning of Beckett.

With one cast member still poorly, an understudy was called in for “Beauty and the Beast” this week. With time for just a short rehearsal with the remaining cast, it certainly hasn’t been a boring week! The understudies have a tough job, with such little rehearsal time dedicated to them. Additionally, they are often required to move and/or act as the actor who usually plays the part moves or acts, rather than being free to follow their own impulses. However, as many of the scenes are underscored (based on the original acting choices made in rehearsals), this direction of movement is often necessary. I was lucky enough to be involved in some scenes which gave the understudy a little more freedom and allowed both of us to play and react a little more freely.

Having somebody new in the cast injected a new energy into our performances. That’s not to say that the performance was in any way lacking in energy before, but merely that, having been so attuned to the performance we have now given many times, the difference that a new presence made in terms of the shifts of dynamic was hugely apparent to us. Although “energy” is a difficult concept to describe, actors are made even more aware of different energies than most walks of life, particularly when a new energy is brought to a familiar performance. It is fascinating to experience, and can help to keep a performance fresh - and actors on their toes!

Although we had no children running off stage in fright this week, we did encounter a child who cried so loudly when the Beast emerged that the action on stage simply could not continue until the Beast declared that the child was lucky he hadn’t seen him first thing in the morning, the audience laughed, and the parent (finally!) removed the child from the audience.

With half-term over, the company will be making some appearances at some London schools this week before finishing up at the Swindon Arts Centre in Wiltshire. As always, dates and venues can be found on my website.