OTHER PLAYS I HAVE BEEN INVOLVED IN.

       My father was keen on drama so I was brought up in  this hobby of performing make believe.  I think I was about 8 when I had my first part in a play, it was a Shakespeare production of I think Twelfth Night.  It was taken on tour round the villages near Tunbridge Wells.  The bit I remember is having to shoot a bow and arrow on stage as a ‘boy’.   My father was the producer with the Tunbridge Wells Drama Club, and my mother made the authentic looking costumes, no mean task in the 1940’s when all material was still rationed.  Old cleaned and dried food sacks were dyed and became “luxurious” velvet.   Old parachutes were the silk  and any scraps of old sheets etc were turned expertly into fabulous linen.  I think I was in one other similar play before reaching secondary school.   At the school I was in Julius Caesar (“Oh you blocks, you stones you worse than senseless things “  etc) and one of the Henry’s. In the latter I had to learn to fight with swords , a bit frightening being a pacifist!   

Medway College of Technology Amateur Dramatic Society, or McTads  for short.

 After being at this  college  for a year  a group of us started the above society, and I became the treasurer.   We decided to begin with a sure-fire audience drawer. “Ten Little Niggers” by Agatha Christie.  Nowadays the  play has been renamed  “And Then There were None”  This is  the only play I have had a part in TWICE.   In this production of April 1960 I was the  nervy Doctor.  After our premier success  we next put in an entry in the Tunbridge Wells Drama festival of one act plays (Nov 1960) I had the  lead part as the Apollo in “The Apollo De Bellac”. Although  we did  not win we were give  high praise. The  following Spring we performed Terrence Rattigan’s  “The Deep Blue Sea” (Which I did not have  a part in due to having to work to pass  my exams!)  Then our third major production  was Monica Dickens’ (A relative of Charles Dickens)  “A Happy Prisoner”   This  was the  biggest part I have ever  played,  most of it in a wheel chair as the invalid from the war, who fell in love with his  nurse. My second stage kiss  finished  off the  play!

    My year at Swansea University gave me  two more chances at acting, the Drama group of the student teachers  first of all put on  “the Seagull”   By Anton Chekov, Feb 64. In which I had the part of the School teacher. Later in that year (June) I had THREE  parts in the Merchant of Venice, the  main one was Old Gobo,  the other two were walk on parts!

    My  next part was nearly  4 years later, when the staff of Edlington School put on  “The Happiest Days Of Your  Life”  in my final term of teaching there.              It was  a long time before I had a chance to act again.  This was when the  village of Kingswood near Tadworth Surrey put on the George Bernard Shaw’s play  “Pygmalion”  (The play on which the  musical My Fair Lady was based).  I also had a part in two different Xmas Pantomimes  “Dick Whittington” and two years  later in “Snow White & the 7 Dwarves” . After that I moved to Scarborough, see  previous page!

 

Hope  to add a few  pictures  here  soon

Email:   Chris

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