DISCLAIMER: This is a prototype page that uses interviews from a project I worked on when I lived in England. The site we will make for the "Humans of the South Bay" project will be all about residents of the South Bay, not British actors and playwrights.
"You're talking to somebody who has ceased to be a playwright for quite a long time. I mean, I write plays, as you know, and I write plays all the time.
You know, it's a shame really, I was saying, an opening line for a talk by me or an article by me about my work might be 'At an early age I got into the bad habit of writing plays,' because I think it is a bad habit in some ways - it's a literary style that is half something else. I do think there is something coarse and muddled and knock-about in the theatre that I have always tried to exploit in perhaps an ironic way." -Peter Nichols Playwright |
"Monday I used to get up at half past six and meet a man with a little van outside the theatre at seven o’clock. And we used to drive around with last week’s furniture and props, delivering them to all the places that had lent me stuff, while I picked up what people had loaned me for this week. We didn’t buy things.
I’d even knock on people’s doors and say, ‘Excuse me I see you’ve got some very nice Victorian mantelpiece pieces, is it possible to lend them to Her Majesty’s Theatre for the week, beginning next Monday?’ And you’d be surprised what people would lend. The local vicar used to throw his vicarage open and say ‘take what you like.'" -Margaret Jackman Actor and Stage Manager |
"I walk in the room, and I’m a young director of course, and they may have known I was a first-time one. Well you’ve got no authority that you’re walking into the room with. I started on a very simple exercise of getting the actors to do the skeleton of the play, the actions of the play, in their own words, with their own moves, and do the whole play in this way. And they went along with it and got quite excited about it, they quite enjoyed this. It was unusual, but they didn’t believe I’d go on doing this, you know, they thought I’d turn “serious” after a while and start directing properly. But instead, I kept going. And I kept it going for about two or three days, by which time they could do the whole play, in their own words."
-Philip Hedley Director |
"One of the top teachers and directors at the Old Vic Theatre School was George Devine. And I remember him coming in one day in our last term – and I had a wonderful part for the final show. George came in one day before our rehearsal, and sat on the edge of the stage, and drummed his feet like he did. And he said, ‘I was in a tube train today, and a man said to me ‘what do you do?’. And I said, ‘Well I’m an actor and a teacher in the theatre’. And this man said to me, ‘Well, what do you want to do with your life?’ And George Devine drummed his shoes against the bottom of the stage. And he said, ‘Well, I said to him “I want to change the face of British theatre”.’ And I thought ‘Oh charming! I mean, that’s a very modest desire George!' I thought sarcastically."
-Rosalind Knight Actor |
"I found the atmosphere in the Bristol University drama department very exciting. It had an atmosphere unlike any other department because we spent so much time together, you know. We were always rehearsing some play or other, and it was a good community. And indeed my experience later - because I mentioned to you that I went on to teach at Hull University drama department for five years and then Glasgow University drama department for a further two - and my experience of all those places was that they were exceptional in universities because of the amount of time that we all spent together. It offered lots of plays to be in and lots of opportunities to show off."
-Nick Hern Publisher |
"I decided that I would stage my own productions, and I concocted a stage. In the garden, we had an air raid shelter, built of brick with a concrete roof. I don’t think it would have sustained a direct hit from a bomb, but it was supposed to protect you from any fallout, and shrapnel, and things of that sort. So we used to assemble there at night whenever there was an air raid. But later, when it seemed that the war was going in Britain’s favor, I ransacked the shelter and used the bunk beds – they made an ideal platform for a stage. So I put them in a basement room in the house, and covered it with some boards, and converted that into a platform for a stage. And with the help of my mother, I put up a curtain that I could hide behind and pull."
-Brian Murphy Actor |