My dear blogging friend, Frances, from New York, commented recently on a theatre production that I had just directed. What she wrote was: “I am curious to learn more about how your group arose, how long it's been going, whatever you'd like to tell, actually. It amazes me that folks are willing to give their time to such an activity...not just for one production, but for season after season.”
Well, let me try to respond to that. But before I do I have to say that I am astonished that a city like New York shouldn’t be teeming with amateur drama, opera, dance and circus groups of every kind, catering to every possible taste. While amateur theatre here in Britain may not be thriving quite so vibrantly as it did thirty or forty years ago, there is still a strong tradition of theatre over here.
As you know we Brits tend to be rather more formal, more constrained, less expressive of sentiment than many folk. We still try not to cry and to keep a stiff upper lip. Yet despite this stereotype - or maybe even because of it - we seize any opportunity to ‘let our hair down.’ Charades are played with vigour in elegant drawing rooms, regiments in the field hold concert parties, prisoners put on plays and pantomimes in jail, out of work actors ply for coins in the streets. (You can still see London people busking in Covent Garden, for example, by reciting Shakespeare).
Wanting to perform seems to me to be a basic human instinct. And acting when you can step for a moment out of your personality that everyone knows and metamorphose into a charmer or a villain is truly liberating. The shy person becomes the extrovert and the extrovert, fretful and shy. The young become old, the rich poor. In some bizarre sense which has to be experienced, the stage is a runway from which people can take off and remain airborne so long as the 650 watt spots play upon them. As a therapy for the wayward and for the deprived, the theatre is rightly acknowledged.
So that’s one reason why we do it. Another is the magnificent camaraderie. There are often fierce and spiteful battles too, but camaraderie wins each time. Not for nothing do theatre people call themselves ‘luvvies.’ You may think that calling people ‘darling’ all the time is repulsive - and it is a little - but a company in front of an audience does experience a feeling of togetherness, of experience shared, of genuine happiness that binds them together in such a way that they do feel like a family.
As the old song has it ‘there’s no business like show business’ - and that is true no matter on how humble a level the show may appear.
Our own theatre and our own little group started right after the Second World War ended. I am not familiar with the details but after the trauma of that experience folk rebuilt their communities after years of austerity and began to have fun again. At someone’s initiation a group came together here to put on plays.
You may think that is a difficult thing - but it isn’t. Just a few people can sit in a room or in the park with a theatre script and just read a play. That’s a start. From there you can go on - learning the lines, finding somewhere to rehearse and perform, somebody volunteering to build the set and make costumes - little by little you move forward. It is not actually difficult.
Our group managed to acquire a couple of ‘portacabins’ - imagine trailers without wheels perhaps - and leased from the council some land on which to install them. In these they used to store costumes and build sets and rehearse. Performances took place on the grand stage of the Town Hall.
But then luck came our way and we got a grant from the National Lottery to put permanent walls in place of the ‘portacabins’ and so our little 70 seat theatre was built. And it was built largely by volunteers, laying bricks and pouring concrete. Much equipment, seating and so on was obtained secondhand and bit by bit the theatre developed into what we have today. This, sadly, all took place way before my time.
Now we have to keep the theatre going, which is less easy than putting on plays. In the old days the company had 60 or 70 members. It was hard to win a part in a play so great was the competition. Now we have about a third of that number and far fewer patrons prepared to be generous with their funds.
Partly this is due to people working longer and harder; it is not just our society, voluntary societies everywhere have seen a fall in their numbers. As the older folk retire, there are insufficient new and young recruits these days coming along to replace them.
I do my best to encourage them! There really is no better place to get a buzz. I think of Sammy Davies Junior and his remark “ I’m a ham - I really am. When I open the refrigerator, the light goes on. I do twenty minutes!” And yes, when the lights go on it is as if a part of that electricity goes not into the light but into your very soul.
Let me leave you with the Little Prince - star of our last show - and who says “You can only truly see things clearly with the heart. What is essential remains invisible to the eyes.” he could have been speaking of the theatre.
And that’s why, there really is ‘no business like show business.’
