Musings on the Nature of Being an Actor

This is a publicity photo from the original production of Temp/Casual.

Sadly, two of these actors dropped out of the new production. The actor at the back is Marlon Solomon, who's on tour, drumming for his band Bugs in Amber. The guy in the middle is Karl Dobby. As well as looking a bit like former tennis player Boris Becker (sorry Karl), he's done some high profile acting gigs in the past: he toured Germany as a member of the Blue Man group, and played 'Mr Gap Year' in a series of adverts for Kenco Coffee, opposite actor Don Warrington (I'm old enough to remember Rising Damp). Surprisingly, Karl has jacked in acting to pursue a new career as an agent. I really need to ask him why. 

So say hello to the two new members of the cast, Curtis Cole (as Stick) and Joel Parry (as Martin). They both gave brilliant auditions. But casting is about more than being brilliant - it's about chemistry. Will Actor B work well with Actor C? Is Actor X too tall to do a kissing scene with Actress Z? Complicated.

Thinking of auditions, I'm reminded of a play by Brad Fraser called Unidentified Human Remains & The  True Nature of Love. I appeared in a student production, as a gay out-of-work actor who waited tables. But David MacMillan waited tables out of choice because, as much as he loved acting, he hated auditions. I'm in awe of people who can go through that process over and over again, and retain their sanity (and dignity). Acting is probably the noblest of all the arts; the 'business' of being an actor is borderline disgusting. In order to act, one needs to have sensitivity and emotional insight: in order to survive the process of auditioning, one needs to possess the skin of a rhino. That's a contradiction I just can't get my head around.

When I left university, I tried to be an actor but had the same problem as David MacMillan - I hated auditions. Mostly because I was rubbish at them. I remember my first ever audition for a TIE company in Huddersfield. I was nervous and ill at ease but a fellow auditionee took me under his wing and gave me some kind words. The man was called Omar, and he told me that he had just appeared in the Bruce Willis film The Fifth Element; his big scene was inside a spaceship, playing a sort of space-age radio controller (having watched the film recently, I saw that his contribution had been edited down to one line). Omar went on to tell me that he was thinking of giving up acting in favour of another line of work. I asked why. Predictably, he said he was tired of auditions, and fed up of having no control over his career. Two years later, Omar left the world of acting to become a hardcore porn star. Omar? Oh my!

You may want to read that last paragraph again. Take your time .... okay? Ready to continue? Yes, it's a big jump (no pun itended). Now, I guess Omar feels more in control of his career. Some might argue that the porn industry is no less undignified than going to audition for the role of a crap astronaut in a Go Compare advert,  or a co-starring role in a new series for Nick Berry. Apparently he's blessed with a 12 inch penis. Omar, not Nick Berry. I hope he's happy in his work. 

In the late 90's, I continued to go to auditions, with varying degrees of success. In 1997, I was offered a summer season job dressing up as a pirate at Alton Towers. The contract involved telling pirate stories to children for 8 hours a day, 6 days a week. I would have lived in a caravan. Naturally, I said no. After that, I was offered another job for a TIE company in Birmingham, doing 3 shows a day. Three! It sounded too much like hard work. Again, I said no. 

My greatest ever TIE audition was for a company in Coventry. The Artistic Director had learning difficulties, and had set up the company via a government scheme. He'd also taken control of his career by giving himself the lead role in this particular project. I was asked to do a song. Hopelessly unprepared, I chose the theme from The Flintstones. I was brilliant, even if I say so myself. But I didn't get the job. Casting, after all, is about chemistry - even if it's a road-safety drama for 12-14 year olds. That was the last audition I attended. 

TIE is the bread and butter of the acting profession, and in order to survive, actors can't afford to be too choosy. What's my point? In an ideal world, actors would be able to act for their soul rather than their accountant. We don't live in an ideal world. What's the opposite of ideal? Deficient. At the end of the day, I was not only rubbish at auditions, I was too choosy. And lazy.

I'm happier behind the scenes.

Thanks for listening. Call again.

Welcome to the World of Spent Ambition

Hello, thanks for stopping by. My name is Steve Timms, and I'm one of the co-founders (with Ben Power) of a new, Manchester based theatre company, Spent Ambition. I am also the writer of Temp/Casual. Temp/Casual was first staged at the 24:7 Festival in July 2009. The play had been around - in different guises - for several years. Entering it into the festival was a last throw of the creative dice. If nothing happened this time, I mused, then I'll just file this one away in a box under the bed. Surprisingly, it was chosen, the production was a sell-out, and got excellent reviews. More interestingly, the themes of the piece seemed to strike a chord with a lot of people - particularly those trapped in badly paid, tedious employment. We are now staging an expanded version of the play at the Contact Theatre, beginning on May 18th 2011 for five performances (including a matinee). For those who don't know, or are not from Manchester, I should explain a little about the 24:7 Festival itself. Now in its 8th year, 24:7 is a grass-roots theatre festival, with the focus on new writing. The festival was founded by local actors David Slack and Amanda Hennessy and in its early days, the  aim was to stage 24 new plays over the course of a single week. Recently, this has been reduced to a more manageable figure of 10. Much of the work shown goes on to be developed and produced elsewhere. If it wasn't for the festival, I probably wouldn't be sat here typing this blog. In life, I do have a tendency to go off at tangents, so I might as well continue the tradition here. Recently, I created an album and uploaded some old university photos onto Facebook. I was seized by a mania to share these memories with anyone who might be vaguely interested, and spent hours scanning my pre-digital snaps. Over the next few days, a wave of nostalgia swept through Facebook; a small one but a wave nontheless. Suddenly, I was in contact with people I hadn't spoken to in 15 years - albeit in the manner of abbreviated comments posted on one anothers walls. Fifteen years! Is it really that long? Suddenly it seemed very recent. I remember the last night of my degree, a farewell Communication Arts party at a club called Beyond Beach Babylon. It was a wild crazy night, great fun, but incredibly sad. The last photograph in the Facebook album features myself and a friend smiling for the camera; an hour after this was taken, I was in a taxi, and then back home to my rented student accomodation. My housemate was so drunk, he had been forced to leave the party early. The details are still vivid, I can even remember the unreadable note he had left for me, written in the fit of an alcoholic stupor; it looked like a spider had fallen in an ink well and danced across the paper. So there was nobody for me to speak with, nobody to ask the question - 'Do you feel as sad as I do?' I remember sitting on the sofa, and crying hysterically.  Grief  bubbled out of me. It was years later before I understood what exactly I had experienced - it was the pain of loss. University had been the best three years of my life, and suddenly it was over. What was I going to do now? Would I  lose touch with my friends? Why could I not go back and start again? Nothing lasts forever, sadly; we are all Temp/Casual ... I had been involved the first two festivals (2004 & 2005). To be honest, in those days, it was a more shambolic affair. I still have flashbacks about the play Lovesick, when the spotlight blew mid-performance, and one of actors had to deliver a monologue in the dark (and the technician blunderingly played the music cues on fast forward, so it sounded like Alvin & the Chipmunks). But in 2011, 24:7 has morphed into a cooler, slicker, better organised affair, and one of the key events of the theatre calendar. One of the rules is that plays must be no longer than sixty minutes. Temp/Casual was originally written as a full length play and had to be radically condensed to fulfill the criteria of the festival; with the new production, we have the luxury of putting back all those missing scenes. The pain of loss ...  what happens after university? After graduation, I spent several years aimlessly drifting. I had hopes and dreams but was no closer to achieving them. I wanted to be an actor, I wanted to write plays, stories, screenplays. I had a thousand ideas buzzing around my head. Where was I? In 1997 I had won a prestigious journalism competition; I thought the phone would ring and doors would open. Wrong.  I was working in an Oldham book shop with creaky floorboards. Some people might think this sounds interesting but at the end of the day, I was stacking shelves and standing behind a till, spitting sarcasm at the customers, and plagued by a sense of failure and frustration - that my life was going absolutely nowhere. This I found frightening. I have a talent for self pity and displayed it regularly during this period. Yes, I was  a moaning sod but the emotions were real. Surely I could not be the only one to feel this way ...? All good art is created from suffering and I'm glad I went through these wilderness years. This is where Temp/Casual was born. The play is about four friends and media studies graduates - Adam, Martin, Susan and Stick - who are hungry for fame and success. Three years after graduation, their collective ambition has begun to wane, and the quartet find themselves adrift in a world of drugs, debt and soul destroying employment. Even worse, the friendships they once shared slowly begin to fracture. I chose the name Spent Ambition for a reason. Once I was  ambitious, a classic over-achiever, driven by a need for  success. Why? Because I thought this would fill the emptiness inside. I thought it would impress people. That it would boost my non-existent self esteem. Bullshit of course. Today I care less. I still care but I'm no longer driven in the same way. What a relief!  Ambition has become a sort of short hand for 'no-talent.' The evidence is everywhere - check out all the wannabes on Big Brother, X-Factor, The Apprentice, The Only Way is Essex. They contribute nothing of value to this world but oh, how they want to own it. The epitome of this peculiar phenomenon is Katie Price. The woman is ambition made flesh (or silicon).  Her empire is forever expanding but her range of products - cheap perfume, illiterature novels, garish kiddy books - are so hideously naff, they wouldn't even be allowed entry into a land-fill site ('Your name's not down, you're not coming in.') But that's not the point. What is the point? The fact that we all know who she is. And all of us means everyone on this planet. Like a shark, Katie's restless, hungry, never satisfied. But look at her eyes - dead inside. Shark's eyes. Ambition? It's not worth the bother. That was a big tangent. Apologies. At the end, Temp/Casual poses the question 'If you had to chose between love and success - which would it be?' Some people might want both. Isn't one enough? Come and see the play and decide for yourself. Thanks for listening. Call again some time.

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10/04/2011

by Steve Timms

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