I Was an Amateur Thespian
IT’S A STRANGE hobby for a grown man. Not for me the sedentary delights of stamp collecting, train spotting or constructing model aeroplanes out of lollipop sticks. I spend my evenings and weekends larking about in draughty community halls, putting on make-up and humiliating myself in public. No, I haven’t joined Gordon Brown’s election campaign team – I’m a member of an amateur dramatic society.
I first became stage struck almost twenty five years ago when I made an inauspicious debut portraying an abused horse in a production of Peter Shaffer’s Equus at the Crescent Theatre, Birmingham. Since trotting onto that stage in a fibre glass mask, six inch metal hooves, grey tights and a G-string (or should that be Gee-Gee string?) any hopes I’d had of a stable career were dashed forever. I immediately became addicted to the roar of the grease paint and the smell of the crowd.
Goatee
It wasn’t long before I got snapped up by another local drama group, not because of my dashing good looks or consummate acting skills but because I filled two basic requirements; I was male and I could read. Male acting members are a rare commodity in amateur dramatic societies these days, especially those under sixty. Strange really because it offers the most fun you can have without committing adultery! With young men being such a rare commodity I was surprised to find that my first speaking role was going to be a septuagenarian Judge in the comedy Harvey. Fully made up with my hair sprayed white and sporting a long goatee beard I somewhat resembled Colonel Sanders of “Finger lickin’ good” fame!
Having got into my costume and with half an hour before curtain up I made the first of several visits to the toilet where I discovered what adrenalin looks like. Stage fright can be the worst enemy of any actor, no matter how experienced they may be, Sir Laurence Olivier and Stephen Fry being just two of its more famous victims. Nerves can cause you to forget every line of carefully rehearsed dialogue in a split second and leave you doubting even your character’s name. The first glimpse of that seething mass of humanity who have paid good money and abandoned Strictly Come Dancing to be entertained by you can leave any aspiring thespian quivering in their tights.
Pickled Onion
The actor’s second worst enemy comes in the form of props, lights and sound effects. In our case the latter were left in the highly incapable hands of Len, our stage manager, who was pushing eighty and possessed the razor sharp reflexes of a Portuguese snail. For a modest entry fee audiences were treated to amazing feats of audio wizardry; A taxi drives up to someone’s house and the doorbell is activated before the driver even turns off his ignition; Or a man falls from a one storey building and manages to resist the force of gravity for half a scene before the resounding crash of his descent is heard.
Without doubt one of my most un-nerving experiences occurred during my first production with The Brookland Players, Barnet, in a play called A Night on the Tiles. We had reached a highly charged emotional scene in the play and I was about to deliver a passionate solo speech after discovering that my wife had been seduced by my brother, who may or may not be the father of her expectant child. As the scene reached a crescendo I noticed that an elderly chap in the audience had been so affected by my performance that he was in the grip of a convulsion. The St John’s Ambulance man rushed to his assistance and with considerable disruption managed to remove him to the back of the theatre. Old trouper that I was by then, I managed to complete my speech but was highly relieved to make my exit at the end of the scene.
Backstage there was much excited conjecture as to whether the unfortunate gentleman had suffered a heart attack or a stroke. We were later informed that it was in fact an undigested pickled onion that had 
robbed me of my finest dramatic moment.
