Cut and Run

I pulled with all my might and still it barely moved. There were three of us along the length of the rope, and on the command of the first in line we heaved in unison. The scene was reminiscent of the children’s book The Enormous Turnip, where the whole family, including pets, are called upon to help haul a huge turnip out of the ground. Only we were not desperately trying to unearth an enormous root vegetable, we were trying to hang a human being by the neck from a tree.

I got a bit trigger-happy responding to ‘expenses only’ casting calls in my final year at Drama School, and found myself cast in a student film in Luton. The actor we were attempting to hang was wearing a harness under his clothes by which he was attached to the tree, but we were finding it very difficult to lift him off the ground. Every time we did get a few inches of air beneath him, his legs and back would swing way out behind him so that he formed a straight diagonal line from head to toe, making it very obvious that he was not in fact hanging from the (rather slack) noose around his neck at all. The poor actor was also having problems with the way the harness ‘cupped’ his nether regions, so we had to release him at regular intervals in order to give him a ‘ball break’. After a number of hours on this conundrum, which my fellow actor mainly spent skimming the ground with his big toes, the director called a state of emergency and recruited the help of a third party – a stoned, greasy-haired friend of his. Greasy Stoner was immediately put to work lifting Hanged Actor by the legs, requiring the rest of us to maintain the established position rather than having to haul him bit by ball-breaking bit off the ground. This was easier still once we had drafted the help of a nearby tree trunk around which we could tie off the rope. We just about made it work. You know, with a lot of close-ups and clever camera angles.

This was the first of three short films that I appeared in during the last months of my training and although the final cut was pretty disastrous, I did manage to salvage the odd clip for showreel purposes. Which is a whole lot more than can be said about my next foray into film…

The ‘vision’ for the so-called ‘art film’ was inspired by the works of the artist Caravaggio. The director (a Bob Marley lookalike, who if he’d been any more chilled out would have been moving backwards) wanted to depict passionate kisses between an eclectic group of couples, in extreme close-up. The film was being shot in a dilapidated nightclub (another unsanitary venue for the list) somewhere off Brick Lane. Once I had negotiated the barbed wire fencing structure that was the front gate, I was hustled in and introduced to my kissing partner, Maya, an elfin South African beauty. The slo-mo director placed us in front of the camera and instructed us to snog continuously until we heard him call ‘cut’. We awkwardly puckered up, giggling nervously, and leaned in for the kiss. After a spot of nose bashing, we began what must have been the longest non-stop kiss I have ever had. When we were finally permitted to come up for air, Bob Marley slowly ushered us out so that he could start on the elderly couple that were lurking in the shadows awaiting their turn. So, job done, Maya and I went home. Not together, mind, don’t get too excited.

There was some progression on the short film front though, and I remain proud of my third and final endeavour to this day. It turns out there is quite a leap in standard from Luton University to London Film School (perhaps comparable to the leap from studying Performing Arts at Southampton Solent to Acting at RADA). The days were long, but the director was meticulous and the writing was great. The sting in the tail was a massive (think Mount Vesuvius) continuity error that became apparent at the screening. In my defence, on this particular filming day I had no means by which to rectify the situation as all my belongings had been left at the studio whilst we jaunted off on location. Consequently, in the final cut of this otherwise brilliant film, wildly announcing its presence, but only in occasional scenes, is an enormous turnip of a spot on my chin.

Call of Duty

“Good afternoon, you’re through to Best Tickets on behalf of Very Important Theatres, West End Tickets and Theatre Club, Madeleine speaking, how may I help you?” I rattled off my spiel and waited to hear how many top price seats were required for a Saturday matinee of The Sound of Music with ‘that girl off the telly in it’. The party would no doubt contain a spoilt three year old who simply must have the best seat (like she’ll even notice) because she’s such a fan.

 “I wanna order one of them invisible bras.” Came the baffling response.

“Um… sorry?”

“I seen your advert in the Daily Mail ‘bout invisible bras and I wanna order one”

“Er, we sell theatre tickets not invisible bras.” I’m stifling a laugh.

“Well your number’s in the paper so gimme one of them bras.”

This is an example of the sort of idiots you speak to when working in a call centre. Only most of the time they’re a little more on-topic.

“Lesley Garrett won’t be performing that evening, Sir, would you still like to book?”

“Oh, no, I want to see him!”

“Ookaay…”

“How do I get to the theatre?” was a common question, and not too stupid on first glance.  Although I would rather they looked online or flicked through an A to Z, I would happily (well, dutifully) explain how to get from Covent Garden to Drury Lane.  It was a slightly different matter, however, when the directions they were asking for were from their front door in Shropshire. The question, “Which bus should I get from *insert London borough*?” was another classic. Was I, granted a fountain of all theatre ticket knowledge, expected to know every single bus route over the whole of London? And all the National Rail services going into and out of the capital as well? Not to mention every motorway, B road and country lane in the entire United Kingdom? I was once asked how to get to the theatre from Brazil. Working in a call centre makes one begin to lose faith in humanity.

I wasn’t one of the coolest in the call centre, but I always got a seat on pod seven when one of the cooler people was off. Pod seven was the equivalent of the back seat of the school bus. It was the furthest away from the supervisors’ desk meaning we could use the secret ‘back door method’ to hack in to the ‘blocked’ internet. From here we could email agents (we were, of course, all actors), submit ourselves for endless unpaid jobs on casting websites and surf Facebook, mouse perpetually hovering over ‘minimise’, ready to bring up the company intranet should we spy a supervisor on the approach.

Every five minutes you could get away from the desk, was two calls you wouldn’t have to take. Walking out of the office with a sheaf of papers and an intent expression was a skiving technique often employed, although you then had the problem of where to hide out, so it helped if you had friends (or members of ‘the resistance’ as we liked to call them) in other departments. Failing that, the rear stairwell was a favourite. Engaging the strictest supervisor in a discussion about his latest screenplay could keep you away from your desk for a good hour, but this was a desperate measure, as it was only just the lesser of two evils. The best skiving trick came with the arrival of The Phone Bug. If you were lucky enough to be linked to an infected phone then you would be forced to hang out in the kitchen until the bug was removed, giving those afflicted an extended break. We soon figured out how to contract The Phone Bug and would infect ourselves as often as we could get away with, feigning innocence as we were sent to join our pals in quarantine the kitchen.

The call centre was rife with bizarre characters, namely, the Full-Timers. These were career call centre operatives who have provided reams of material for any future sitcom writers among us. There was the eccentric lady who stole the office plants, the pompous older gentleman who arrived to work in a three piece morning suit, and Dracula, as he became known. An ashen, angular fellow who would close all the office blinds and peer at us over the desk dividers, never uttering a word to anyone.

It is safe to say I didn’t enjoy working in the call centre, but I look back on my time there with a fondness that I can only attribute to one thing. Humility should prevent me from sharing this but forgive me, I am weak. Despite stiff competition I was once awarded, by ‘public’ vote, the accolade of ‘Fittest Girl in the Call Centre’.

Driving Me Crazy

I’m a good driver. Honestly. I passed first time four months after I turned 17 with only two minors. I have no points on my licence and have never made an insurance claim. I can tell you categorically that it is not driving that I have a problem with so much as cars. And directions.

I didn’t have my own car until I was 25. It was a 15 year old Skoda Felicia that I won in a bidding war on eBay. She was all mine for £320, taxed and MOT’d for a year. Bargain. Felicia and I were a good team. We toured the country together for two contracts and two pantomime seasons.  She really was a little godsend. Well, apart from all the breakdowns that is.

Our digs in Stoke were in a village outside the town and the theatre was a 20 minute drive away. After a couple of days transporting myself and castmate Tom without event, Felicia refused to start unless she was pushed. Tom and I became quite used to this arrangement (although once had to commandeer the help of a passing policeman) until the car gave up starting altogether. Before a matinee. Panic descended but my elderly landlord took pity on a damsel in distress and drove me all over the local area until we found a used parts yard that could sell me a new alternator (or something). My next problem (besides the steady ticking of the clock to the half) was finding someone to fit it. We sped off to a garage and upon arrival my chivalrous landlord convinced the mechanic not to charge me for the fitting as I was a poor young actress who will promise to remember him when I’m famous. Ahem. Promise made, Tom and I were back on the road and made it to the theatre with screeching tyres and minutes to spare.

Our next venue was Gillingham. On our last day I got a puncture in one of my previously screeching tyres, in the driveway of my digs. Once again I was reliant on my landlord who spent his Saturday afternoon whilst I was mid-matinee, driving around local garages to find me a new tyre. When I rushed back in-between shows with my Victorian hairdo still in place and chequebook in hand I was greeted by a fully-fitted new tyre and a car ready to take me home.

By the time we reached Ipswich, Felicia had developed a bit of a nervous tic. The dashboard light would sporadically go off meaning I was unable to see my speedometer. A problem I was able to rectify by keeping a pair of trainers in the passenger foot-well. (One learns to be resourceful when the owner of a 15 year old banger). Whenever the light went out I would simply reach for a trainer and with it whack the top of the dashboard with all my strength. And there would be light.

On my drive back from Ipswich I discovered that it wasn’t just the dashboard light that had the problem. I was driving along the M25 in torrential rain at 2am when all the electrics went. No lights, no wipers, nothing. Not even Tom by my side. I quickly ran through my options. I couldn’t see. I had to stop. The hard shoulder without lights would be too dangerous so I would have to continue to the next exit. I was squinting through my rain hammered windscreen trying to see the lane lines on the road. Eventually a lorry came in to view and I kept close behind it, piggy-backing on its light until I was able to exit stage left and wait for Green Flag in a McDonald’s car park.

I spent the miserable journey back to my house in the cab of the breakdown lorry listening to my rescuer tell me about his dysfunctional family situation.  He ‘couldn’t be arsed’ seeing his 12 year old son because his ex was ‘a bitch’, and his current girlfriend/mother of his baby daughter had just chucked him out because he cheated on her. Twice. He seemed to see this as a good advert for himself and at the end of the journey gave me his phone number. And asked if he would have seen me on Eastenders.

It soon became clear that Felicia was no longer giving me what I needed and with a 500 mile journey to panto approaching I knew that I could rely on her no longer. I packed up all my shoes from the backseat and cassettes from the dashboard and moved them out. I waved a tearful goodbye as Felicia was carted off to the scrapyard but soon came to terms with my loss, trading her for a younger model - Kallie, the 9 year old Ford Ka. She went like the clappers.

The Worst Little Warehouse in Peckham

I am trundling my wheely case behind me, squinting at Google maps on my phone and delicately balancing my umbrella in the crook of my arm whilst scouring the arse-end of London for the audition studio. I am not at the plush Jerwood Space in Southwark, nor the centrally located Drill Hall, Pineapple Dance Studios or in fact ANYWHERE where one would expect to find themselves for an audition with any kudos. I am on an industrial estate, where buildings aren’t called studios, they are called units. Corrugated iron litters the ground, and graffiti covered concertina doors flank me as a battle rages within me as to whether I should trust my instincts and run away before I get stabbed. Or worse - actually have to work for a company that sees this as a fitting location for an audition. I dread to think what the touring conditions would be like, let alone the rehearsal space. I spy a lone man looking apprehensive on a bench. He looks clean and out of his comfort zone. Almost certainly another poor unsuspecting auditionee. I approach tentatively and he informs me that even though it is pissing with rain we have to wait outside as the door to the warehouse (upon which is a hand-scribbled sign saying ‘Auditions here’) opens straight onto another auditionee giving their best Hamlet. It is then that we realise we are about to embark on a group audition.

By the time we were allowed in out of the rain (approximately 45 minutes later) ten of us had gathered outside. Not one of us was feeling in any way enraptured with this company and more than one had suggested leaving. But of course we didn’t, far too desperate were we for the seven months' work that was up for grabs, not to mention the fear that a no-show at one audition will tempt karma to ensure that you never get another. It wasn’t long into the audition before I was cringing so much that I felt like I was turning inside out.

“Walk into the space... make eye contact with each other... remain neutral... keep the pace...imagine you nearly drowned on the Costa Concordia...” Sorry, what? After slo-moing an emotional reunion with a loved one on an Italian dock came the impro games (sinking stomach). And the weird arabesque-style stretches that the director informed us he had learnt "whilst driving" (I wanna go home). And the running around the room jumping into the air and yelling “yah!” on a “note in the middle of our register” at every person we encountered (inside I am screaming).

The unit was opposite another which contained one of those weird new-age pop-up happy-clappy churches (far from the holiest of venues - unless we are referring to the windows, most of which had been gaffa-taped together). The odd rousing chorus or shouted affirmation of faith came drifting across the yard, giving the Costa Concordia improvisation far more depth. Or something. Of course the warehouse was unheated so what with the holey windows it was decidedly baltic in there.I promised myself that I will never again audition in a warehouse unless it is preceded by the word Donmar. Once all improvisation ‘games’ had been exhausted we were then tasked with presenting our two prepared monologues. A few waifs that failed the initiative test (finding the building) had straggled in, wet, breathless and apologetic, throughout the earlier proceedings so there were now a fair few monologues to endure watch.

 An hour and a half of monologues later, we were finally given some script to wake us up play with. By this point the audition had gone on so long people had started to leave to catch coaches back to Manchester and trains to Birmingham. Others were frantically trying to find cover for their bar shifts that evening. Just as I sunk my teeth into my script we were informed that the room was only booked for another twenty minutes. The scenes were quickly rattled through before we were all herded out to make way for a yoga class. A yoga class? In the coldest, dirtiest ‘unit’ in (the untrendy bit of) East London? They must have invented a new yoga style, I thought to myself. The opposite of Bikram maybe. Biksub-zero? Bik-baltic? Bik-shit.

I didn’t get the job but I did get a cold.

A Commercial Endeavour

“Mmmm…summer fruits!” I trilled, licking my lips and beaming into the camera. I was holding a toilet roll tube with a tennis ball resting on top in one hand and an imaginary tennis racquet in the other. The camera was still rolling so I gave the tennis ball a few licks. This was a workshop in commercial castings that our acting teacher cooked up for us one miserable Thursday of our final Autumn term. It was one of the funniest days of my life, and was actually pretty useful, as without it I would have entered the weird and wonderful world of commercial castings blind. I would not have known the correct way of showing my profiles to the camera when asked. Nor indeed would I have known the precise length of time one should display her palms to camera before flipping them over to show the backs of her hands.

What it did teach us was that in a commercials casting, anything goes. I thought watching my bespectacled friend wearing a fishing hat and wellies and patting an imaginary horse whilst saying “Lovely horse chestnut” was about as funny as it could get until I experienced some real-life commercial castings and discovered the lengths to which the directors will ask you to go…

I was recalled twice for a yoghurt advert which I really wanted as it was being filmed on location in South Africa and I quite fancied a little holiday (not to mention the hefty fee). My agent had informed me that I was on ‘heavy pencil’ as the clients loved me. All I had to do was wear a Swiss looking dress (?) and plait my hair in an authentic (read stereotypical) Swiss fashion. Oh, and to sing an Abba song a capella. I belted out ‘Mamma Mia’ and Swissed up my looks as best I could whilst mentally sunning myself on a South African beach. I thought of the deposit I would be putting down on my first house, and the clothes I would be treating myself to. I left the audition and waited for the offer. It never came. They had chosen someone else. I now know that this happens ALL THE TIME with commercials. They may well love you, they may well pencil you, lightly, heavily or otherwise, but what you never know is exactly how many others have also been given this glimmer of hope. You could be one of ten people mentally sunning themselves on a South African beach safe in the knowledge they have been heavy pencilled for this job.

Something else I have learned about commercial casting directors is they have a massive lack of imagination. Whatever is going to happen in the commercial must be mimed by the actor without the aid of set, props, costume or special effects. In one casting I was instructed to imagine I was being chased by a space ship and all the roads had turned into an obstacle course which I had to navigate to get away from the ship. I ran, I ducked, I dived, I climbed rope-nets and scrambled underneath barbed wire, continually checking the sky in terror for the proximity of the space ship. I didn’t get this job either.

On one cringeworthy occasion I was briefed by my agent to wear a bikini top underneath my clothes as the advert was set in a bath. I duly donned my finest black bikini top but upon arrival it was revealed (pun intended) that my brief (pun also intended) hadn’t been complete. They actually wanted us to strip down not just to a bikini top but to a full bikini. Now this I wouldn’t have minded (much) had I been prepared but that day I had on a white lacy thong. I informed the two male directors that I had been misinformed but was met with the response “As long as you’ve got something on under there!” I was also wearing tights which every girl knows don’t lend themselves to a glamorous de-robing. I stripped off, turned my back (or my bum) to the camera, climbed into the bath (the line of chairs), reached for the loofah (nothing) and wished the ground would swallow me up. I hadn’t even shaved my legs.

Infinite are the stories I could continue to regale of humiliating and/or hilarious commercial castings, but I will end with this nugget of advice. Make like a boy-scout and be prepared. For anything. Oh, and never pay any heed to anything to do with pencils. Even 2Bs.

Play Of A Thousand Casts

I was tweaking my curls in the interval of Cinderella and listening to my Fairy Godmother’s tales of her beguiling granddaughter when something incredible happened. Something that I had never experienced before, nor have I since. It began with the ringing of my mobile phone and ended with the acceptance of a role in a play, starting the day after I was to close Cinderella. Pretty normal for an actress, you might think, but you would be forgetting that I am a struggling actress who had just been offered her next job whilst still currently performing the previous one. I was almost hysterical with the fantasticness of it – today Canterbury, tomorrow Chelmsford, next week surely - the world! For the first time in my life I felt like a proper actress...

I was like a rabbit in headlights on our opening night, a mere three days of rehearsals later. I and two others had joined an already established cast who had enjoyed a successful tour the previous year and had been booked for a second leg. According to our tight-fisted producer this meant that three 5 hour rehearsals would be ample. But that didn’t seem to be enough of a challenge. He also decided not to invite the director back to rehearse us in (that would require paying him), or even to work from the stage directions written in The Book, but instead to re-direct the entire piece despite having never even read the play. It was frantic. The old cast were trying to remember the new location of the off-stage kitchen and which entrance now lead to the ‘front door’, whilst also trying to unlearn all the blocking they had spent 9 months touring. The new cast were just trying to get from one scene to the next without omitting any vital plotlines.

By the time we got to our third venue I finally felt as if I knew what I was doing. And then the Butler went off sick. He was our top-billed actor and not only was it he that was drawing in the crowds but there were no understudies. The cast gathered at the theatre the morning of the show for emergency rehearsals – but rehearsals with whom? Where would we find a 1930’s Butler at such short notice? By some stroke of luck the original director was coming to watch the show that night and agreed to go on with the Book. Of course, this would have been far more straightforward had we still been using his blocking…

It was a success, but the next day our Butler was still off. The original director was now on holiday so the producer sent the actor currently playing the Spaniard home with instructions to learn the part of the Butler for performance the next night. But who would play the Spaniard? The producer had got in touch with the original ‘Spaniard’ actor from the first leg of the tour. He had a free week before starting his next job and so agreed to reprise his role for one week only, to help us out of a tight spot. Once more, we cursed the changing of blocking as we taught the old Spaniard the new Spaniard’s blocking and the new Spaniard the Butler’s blocking. In three weeks I had gone from being total novice to almost resident expert in the staging of this piece. This was also the venue where Act 1 was brought to a halt during one pensioner’s matinee by a cry from the back of the auditorium of ‘Is there a medic in the house?’ An audience member was suffering a cardiac arrest in the midst of one of my character’s finer moments. So now it seemed we would have to find replacement audience members too. However we resumed after a twenty minute hiatus during which the resuscitated man was taken to hospital with cries of ‘But I won’t know who dunnit!’

The following week, our Butler was still not back. The old Spaniard was rehearsing in Scotland and the original director was on a beach in the Maldives so what were we to do? Our producer’s luck had not yet run out – he tracked down an actor who had played the Butler for another company a few months previously and still remembered most of his lines. Our old Butler never made it back to the show so we finished the run without further incident with new Butler and newish Spaniard. But even now, rather like our ailing audience member, I’m still a little unsure who actually dunnit.

This tour has to be one of the more extreme incidents where the well-known theatrical phrase has come in to play, but The Show Must Go On, and by George, Tom, Dick, Harry et al, it did.

Backstage Pass

I held the big light steady, making sure to keep my subject in the centre of the spot at all times. The liberal use of oil was making my subject very shiny and an energetic area around the mid-section proved to be quite a distraction.

 I was on work experience backstage at my local theatre and had been given the not insignificant responsibility of operating the follow spot that evening. I was fourteen years old and working on an ‘adult only’ male strip show, lighting 5 men waving their artificially pumped members in drunk women’s faces.  Let’s just say my eyes were opened.

 “Sin one you sin ‘em all really ain’t ya?” One such inebriated lady quipped to me on my way to the Green Room in the interval. Well, once was certainly enough for me, although being only 14 I loved the assumption that I was old enough to be a regular at events such as these. Upon arriving at the Green Room I was greeted by the much-older-in-the-flesh strippers greasing up the couches with their almost naked bodies, openly and lasciviously chatting me up. “You got a boyfriend, love? ‘Cause you've got five now!”

Another eye opener came in the guise of the Head of Sound’s office. It had been covered in posters with the commitment of a teenager to their favourite pop star. But these were not images of pop stars (well, that would be weird), or even sexy centrefolds pulled out of FHM or Nuts. This room was wall to wall covered with pictures of naked, heavily tattooed, pierced and implanted ‘bitches on bikes’. My 14 year old self, although far from prudish, was never quite sure where to look when visiting ‘Dan’s dungeon’ so settled for the one little corner that was in stark contrast to the rest, containing nothing but crayon drawings of flowers by his beloved 5 year old daughter.

I counted these two weeks of work experience as two of the best of my life, not least because of the stage manager’s faintly (with hindsight) inappropriate flattering of me. He’d take me for candlelit meals in Indian restaurants where I pretended I was perfectly au fait with Indian food having never eaten anything more exotic than spaghetti bolognaise and quickly scanning the menu for the word ‘vegetarian’. These were often followed by sedate walks in local parks and even dubious ‘necessary’ trips to the pit under the stage where certain advances were rebuked although secretly delighted in.

 This ’friendship’ continued long after my 2 weeks work experience ended with hour-long phone calls between his office and my bedroom extension of my parents’ landline.  I pretended to understand his problems with the Inland Revenue and he listened to what I’d been up to with my friends after school – clearly this was a meeting of minds.  Of course this eventually fizzled out but we remained in loose contact and by the time I had reached what I deemed to be of a womanly age (16) I satisfied my interest with a couple of brief snogs. What a bad girl I wasn't.

* * * * * * *

Fast forward another few years and I am back at the theatre playing the lead role in their annual Youth production. I nearly choked on my Marmite sandwich when I discovered the show was being directed by my lothario’s wife.  ‘Awkward’ doesn't come close.  The awkwardness did subside, however, upon hearing said wife regale stories of her infidelities with high-profile entertainers. Oh, and just to bring all this full circle, another couple of years on I returned once more to the theatre to see a friend in panto. Over a drink after the show my friend confessed that he had had a liason dangereuse with a local dancing girl. More choking ensued (this time on a glass of pinot grigio) when he told me her name. It was none other than my lothario’s 17 year old daughter.

I've not been back since, for fear of what the next instalment of this sordid little saga may bring. Perhaps I would be greeted by a community of children running around with webbed feet or other telling symptoms of small town incestuousness.

Maybe it’s time to find out…