THE PROMPTER'S NIGHTMARE

I am sitting in the prompter’s box with my feet perched up on the corner of the stage. I’ve a glass of red wine beside me for refreshment, my hand bag is tucked away under my legs and I have in my hand one of those miniature battery torches that usually sit on your key ring to help you find the keyhole in the darkness but on this occasion will serve to light up my script in the darkened passages of the play. The light on the prompter’s box has broken, you see, (for this is amateur theatre) and we have not yet sent someone on an errand to buy a new bulb.

Actually I am the director of this play but as the Bard says we all have to play many parts and as our usual prompter has duties at a wedding, it falls to me to snuggle myself into the box and prepare to watch Saturday’s entertainment at eye level to the stage. I will say this, though: you get a wonderful view of the shoes.

Our Chairman comes on, the audience hush. He makes the usual announcements, remembering to include the variant of that otherwise rather tedious mobile phone injunction. “We know that members of the audience lead busy lives on which live, death and junior members of the government may depend. We understand therefore your absolute need to keep your mobile phone switched on. All we ask is for a small contribution of £50 should you need to receive a call.”

I turn on my torch, noticing it has been provided by RIAS - insurance for the over 50s. Well that’s well-targeted, I think. In this place 50 is positively juvenile.

Or not quite: for on stage is a 15 year old, participating in her first play as a whiny, adenoidal youngster. Nevertheless, I have had to work hard on her. Why do teenagers think it only necessary to pronounce the first five syllables of a sentence, leaving the rest as a sort of swallowed gurgling? There isn’t a tax on articulation.

In fact none of my cast were regular actors. For reasons that needn’t detain us here I found myself directing Fumed Oak - a one act play by Noel Coward - a rather spiteful and misogynistic piece, not chosen by me I hasten to add. It’s about a bickering grandmother, mother and daughter from whom a hen-pecked husband walks out amid scenes of great calamity domestic upset.

Still, my cast were wonderful, bless them, even if they wouldn’t often do that which I asked of them - to look at the audience when they were speaking, rather than at each other. We have a natural compulsion to look at the person we are talking to. But if you do this on stage, all the audience sees is the back of a head. And all it hears, if it is lucky, is a bit of a mumble.

In the theatre as much information is conveyed by an actor’s face, by their eyes, by the unconscious set of their mouth and by subtle tones in the voice, as by the words themselves. If the audience cannot see the actor’s face then it sees only half the story. It’s a book without pictures. But to get inexperienced actors to speak out forcibly into the black void when saying something intimate and personal to someone behind them is a problem with which all directors have to struggle.

Never mind. If you are prompting, you need your head down in the script and to disregard where people are looking. It is only at rehearsals that you can make frantic hand gestures, like a football manager on the touchline. You have to follow the text like a hawk for if an actor dries up, you need instantly to know the line.

But actors don’t often dry up. What happens more frequently is that in the adrenalin stress of a live performance lines are often skipped. It’s quite surprising actually how little this matters and rarely does the audience notice.

The prompter’s nightmare is when an actor skips not just a line or two, but a whole page. Like a train jumping the tracks an actor can start a line on page thirty-one and follow this with something from page thirty-four - conveniently missing perhaps a vital ingredient of the plot.

No quiet hiss from the prompter then - you have to bellow above the actor’s voices, attract their attention and hope they have the nous to realise the mistake and ad lib their way back to page thirty-one again. Last Saturday, however, none of this happened. ‘Fumed Oak’ was followed by a happy rendition of the Frank Vickery comedy ‘A Night Out.’ None of the actors needed prompting. We had a happy show, a good audience, food and a wonderful atmosphere in the bar afterwards, and we all went home happy.

Picture shows our little theatre looking at the auditorium from the stage. The prompter's box is just out of sight in the bottom left hand corner of the picture.