This next part of the exhibition will take a bit of explanation and introduction, and I need to take you into a different room. This is going to be less of an exhibition space and much more of a performance space. I want it to be a place that is comfortable, but one which also lets you hold up your talent for others to help you explore.
In a funny sort of a way it starts in 1978 and a school trip to the Merlin Theatre in Frome, Somerset.
I was at school at Kingdown Comprehensive in Warminster, a small army garrison town equidistant between Bath and Salisbury on the A36. As part of my English Literature O-Level I was reading Twelfth Night. That year a touring production of the play had arrived just down the road in Frome. In this production a 39 year-old Ian McKellen was Malvolio and the theatre company was running what we would call today a “schools out-reach programme”, but I suspect back then I might have called it a cheeky skive day. On this day however, it was my school’s turn to have a workshop with the actors in the morning and to then watch the play performed in the afternoon.
For all my life I have felt that theatres are magical places where disbelief is suspended and joy, insight, tears and truth are built from words that have been handed down as a gift for us to reflect on and relish. I suspect this feeling goes back to 1978 and this day in Frome.
As we filed into the theatre for the workshop, the auditorium was empty, still and dark; every plush red velvet seat arcing around the stage in comfortable expectation. In contrast, the stage was brightly lit in a pure, almost dazzling, white light. The stage was austerely empty save for three white stage flats and one white door frame, but without its door.
I was immediately intrigued, excited and nervous. I had been expecting something a lot more, well, theatrical with extravagantly painted scenery, exotic furniture and props a plenty; but here in this empty nothingness how would a complex play unfold with barely a clue as to how anything might be told?
Of course, 1978 is a long time ago and I don’t have a perfect memory about the day, but I do remember something very clearly and it has stayed with me preciously ever since. My class was invited to sit on the stage with Ian McKellen and he asked us to work in pairs. He wanted us to hold the head of our partner to see how heavy a head can feel. He said it was an exercise in trust, because to feel how heavy a head really is, the neck has to be so relaxed as to let the head be held without any of the neck’s help.
As it happened there were an odd number of children in the class and I was the one left behind without a partner. Ian asked me to join him and be his partner for the exercise. He first asked me to hold his head and I was astonished how heavy it was. I felt like I was holding a hairy medicine ball and I needed to brace myself not to show I wasn’t that strong. Then it was my turn, and I couldn’t do it; I couldn’t relax my neck muscles to let Ian hold my head. I remember him quietly and gently admonishing me for not trusting him as I nervously and inadvertently tensed my neck again. We chatted for a few seconds and then he said, “I won’t drop it you know and let it roll off the stage.” I laughed and he held my head again. This time I did it, and I felt what it was like to trust someone else for a few seconds and how energising and reassuring that could be.
I knew it was an important moment, but I just didn’t know why or how. This would only reveal itself to me much, much later in my life.
That afternoon we watched Twelfth Night. It is such a silly play really and while I remember it fondly, I don’t want to rush to see it now. I guess that to my adolescent mind I didn’t really get past the slapstick moments and I certainly don’t think I ever really got the layers of psychological drama. However, I do remember one thing so clearly about the performance. I remember how transfixed I was by how the actors could occupy a white empty space with just a single white door frame and make me feel that I was in a real world, with real things happening all around me. I know I will never forget that sense of how they were able to create space, light, shapes and feelings by the way they were with each other and with their audience.
It would be trite to extrapolate from that afternoon and say I found a truth that guided my later work ambitions. That didn’t happen. Back then I am pretty certain I had a typical teenager’s attention span, a need for chips and no significant space for serious deep thinking; but something happened that day for sure. A spark, or a small thought, that was then and is still today very precious and very real.
When Lawrence and I sat down in 2006 to create our first training event we didn’t start with an agenda about content or even themes; we started with just one question – how do we want people to feel?
This chapter will continue next time…
Take care. Paul xx
