HORSES
Horses from another event being presented at Carisbrooke Castle, Isle of Wight, gave one of the performances there considerable problems. Unfortunately the entrance of the company’s vehicles clashed with the exit of the horses and the gear they were pulling. The nature of the terrain made it difficult for either side to back off and after the vehicles were driven to one side the horses struggled past. The next day the owners of the horses were so angered by the incident that they piled their rubbish by the theatre company’s changing tents, an action which the company, given the strength of the horses, wisely chose to ignore.
A FOX
The actress performing in the 1995 performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream wore a long curly red wig for the role of Hippolyta which she put with her costume in the off-stage right changing area of an open air performance of the play at Wollaton Hall, Nottingham. When she came to change into it she was alarmed to see a fox racing off into the distance, the red wig in its mouth. Evidently the fox had mistaken it for one of its cubs. She later complained:
“It is a dreadful thing to see the wig which transforms your character being carted off by a fox!”
A STUFFED GIRAFFE
Wollaton Hall provided the play and its audience with an indoor alternative venue in its hall should the weather be stormy. In the early days of performances there the space where the play could be performed was set out as a museum of stuffed exotic animals. Most of these were in glass cases, glaring with artificial eyes at both the actors and the audiences, but the huge giraffe stood proudly at the back of the audience area with some seating beneath it. Children were especially astonished at the size of its masculine glory when they looked up at it during the performance!
INSECTS
Any outdoor venue is likely to run the gauntlet of insects which plague both members of the audience and the actors. Theatre Set-Up discovered that the insects in Northumberland, Yorkshire and Cornwall were far more robust and numerous than in any other county. Over the years, strategies had to be developed to cope with this. Any exposed flesh of the actors (as well as the tights-clad legs of male actors) always needed to be sprayed with insect-repellent, and mosquito coils were always lit beside the changing tents to the sides of the stage and often interspersed with the sun-floods lighting placed in an arc at the front of the stage area. On one occasion when Anne was commuting between her teaching job in London and performances in the grounds of Wallington Hall, Northumberland, she arrived ready to change into costume and do her stage make-up minutes before the start of the play. She was hit by a wall of insects as she rushed to the changing area.
“Quick, everybody,” she shouted to the cast, “Do as I am doing. Put on loads of insect-repellent to see if that will help!”
However such was the density of the insect hoards that even that was insufficient, as the insects went into the open eyes of the actors and into their mouths as soon as they opened them to deliver their lines! When Anne suggested to the gardeners of the venue that the site of the play should be sprayed to kill any insects, they were most offended:
“The insects live here. They were here first. You are only visitors!”
Anne adopted a strategy to help members of the audience in insect-plagued venues. This was necessary not only to protect them from irritation and possible bites from the insects, but to stop them twitching and flicking them away during the performances. This constant movement would be a distraction for both people in the audience and the actors. Therefore before performances guaranteed to be insect-bound, Anne would go around the audience offering to put insect repellent on the hands of anyone who had not provided themselves with their own repellent and then they could apply it themselves to any exposed flesh, plus over their hair, into which insects loved to nestle! This usually worked but sometimes an extra application had to be made in the interval before the second half of the play. Insect repellent became a very essential part of the company’s gear!
In the early days of the company’s tours the primitive sun-floods which lit the play in an arc around the stage area were not glass-fronted, and insects, attracted to the light-bulbs, would be burnt by them, sending smoke rising as if in their funeral pyres. On one occasion the smell of this smoke alarmed the company’s patron during a performance in his garden on Tresco, as his property on the mainland had recently been largely burnt down and he rushed to the scene to see if another fire had also been ignited, this time in his island home.
On the Isle of Wight, sensitive local residents were more concerned about the cruel fate of the insects themselves:
“Please can you get sun-floods with glass on the front to protect the insects. We can’t stand seeing them burn to their deaths during the play and cannot come to performances again if this continues.”
Fortunately it was possible to replace the old sun-floods with new glass-fronted ones and everyone was happier.
However some actors (like the residents of the Isle of Wight) became upset by any of the operations of the company causing the accidental deaths of insects and they were distressed by the deaths of insects who crashed into the windscreens of the travelling vehicles. It was a company rule that, with the exception of touring to venues many miles apart, the company vehicles should not travel very fast. Thus generally any insects accidentally landing on the windscreens had time to escape from them.
In some areas, however, where many animals were in fields beside the roads on which the company was travelling, there were so many insects in the surrounding air that many met a sad fate on the windscreens. The car carrying three actors always followed the van (a customised white Mercedes Benz high-top van) fairly closely so that the company was travelling in a safe convoy. On one of the occasions when suicidal insects on the windscreen were distressing actors in the car, the actor who was driving the car decided to create a diversion by singing the main songs from “Half a Sixpence,” the musical he had recently been performing in. He was an excellent singer and soon all the actors in the car joined in singing with him. Soon this impromptu performance became the main focus of attention in the car and the task of following the company van was neglected. After a while someone in the car noticed that the route the car was following was not the one leading to the venue where the performance would be held that evening.
“Oh, where are we?” the driver cried, “I’ve been religiously following the company van.”
Looking at the white van in front of the car more closely, everyone in the car shouted out:
“You’ve been following the wrong white van!”
So in future journeys in which many insects performed death crashes onto the car’s windscreen, sung diversions were monitored by the car’s passengers to ensure that the insects’ accidental self-sacrifices were not revenged by their souls causing the car driver to lose sight of the lead vehicle, and steps were taken to ensure that right white van was followed!
CHAPTER 2
“FOR THE RAIN IT RAINETH EVERY DAY”
RAIN AND INDOOR ALTERNATIVE VENUES
The free-from insect audiences like those in Wollaton Hall who were happily accommodated inside when inclement weather made the outdoor performances challenging, rejoiced in the comfort of the dry conditions so different from those experienced by casts and audiences when no alternative spaces inside were available and performances braved rain, wind and cold.
It is a tradition of English outdoor theatre that should an indoor alternative for the performance not be available and unless the weather produces a dangerous electric storm, the performance continues in any rain that should fall on the performance. Aware of this tradition (which people often elsewhere class as