(Jottings from Jonah (Oscar the owl’s cultured grandson) - Number 30)
The problem is, you see... well, there are several that all revolve around these bloody galahs – the Australian pink and grey cockatoos (if you’re into the quackers’ talking picture box, somebody called Kennedy in ‘Neighbours’ keeps one all shackled up in his house) – a specimen of which Cara was daft enough to buy from Pets’ Corner at the supermarket. Look, I’m going to have to assume that you’ve been following the story in my Jottings, otherwise we won’t have enough space left for this month’s really important events at the Granary Theatre. Believe me, the stupid galah is not important.
I’ll have to remind you, however, that Oscar pretended to get mad with Cara when she hatched out one of Edna’s eggs and wanted to try and raise the tiny frail girl-chick to maturity. She even gave her a name – Bruce. Oscar stood his ground and made her take it back to Pets’ Corner. Well... naturally, after a week or two, she went back to see how her chick was getting along; she felt all mumsy towards it and hostile towards Oscar for making her give it up. The proprietoress put on a sad face and told her it had dropped off its perch, so to speak, it had not survived, it was no more, it was an ex-galah, when the truth was that this proprietoress had taken it back to the parrot-trader, who knew just how to nurture it and it is now up for sale in Bognor Regis.
Cara, of course, was completely unaware that bloody Edna had laid TWO eggs before she got recaptured. She dropped the other one in our nest, where my wife Penny hatched it out along with our own brood, so...
The other day, Cara was hurrying from the boat into the theatre when she glanced up and spotted our stupid galah flapping around our nest. It must have taken her back to the first moment she saw Edna at our nest, after she – when they called her Bazza -had followed me home from their apartment. I watched Cara stop dead to stare up, then she squeaked “Bruce!” Next, she darted into the theatre in case she had seen Edna, escaped from that ornate cage over the bar, where she now lives. Of course, I didn’t know about the perfidious proprietoress. It was a good while later – after Cara had been calmed and comforted by Oscar in the galley of the good ship “Playmaker” - that I realised she thought she had seen the ghost of her dead chick, all grown up.
That’s how the bloody parrot we raised got its name: Bruce. How could we call it anything else? Anyway, he flapped straight into the theatre and started flirting with his own mother, in her cage over the bar. That’s where he lives now, so Penny and me -now that our three have left - have achieved a bit of peace at last and the Granary has an understudy for the part of Captain Flint, when they do ‘Treasure Island’ at Christmas.
Cara, of course, is completely confused. One day, I’ll explain it all to Oscar, but all he knows is that the two galahs were squawking at each other all through the performances of that Ibsen thing that played to extremely thin houses – about 15% at the box-office, which I thought was more than it deserved. The brilliant weather we’ve been having didn’t help of course. Naturally, the Audience-members – particularly with all that space around them - were disgruntled about the racket those two galahs were making outside in the bar, even though it was obvious that Edna was teaching Bruce his lines for ‘Treasure Island’. (Can’t start too soon with a really thick actor.) All those grim Norwegian silences and interpersonal tensions were enlivened by occasional cries of “Pieces of eight!” and “Aaaaaaarrrrrrr...... it’s them as dies’ll be the lucky ones.”
As I write, new theatre rules are being framed by the management committee.
Down on the riverbank, Oscar’s old school-friend – Sam Adams (whom I like a lot) – has been delighted by the arrival of a pair of strix theatricus to complete his renovation of the old theatre down there, by nesting in a fissure caused by lightning in a nearby willow tree. He doesn’t know that they are two from our latest brood – Larry and Viv – who have set up home in a lifetime’s commitment to each other. Their sister, Barby, has of course flown off to join her new husband in Leamington Spa.
With the theatre closed for its annual clean-up and refurbishment, this year in preparation for the fiftieth anniversary, Sam and Oscar have unlimited access to the rehearsal studio. There, they work away at all hours of the day and night with the fifteen trainee actors and, often, Oscar can be seen with Snead and Skap discussing and preparing in the galley of ‘Playmaker’, assembling all the components of the new show and drawing their schedules. Cara – when she’s not with her psycho-analyst – keeps busy with her old girls in the wardrobe, stitching and patching.
If anything, the theatre is busier than when it’s in production.
The sessions I like to eavesdrop on are those between Oscar and Sam after all the students have gone home and Cara has gone to their apartment, when they sit one each side of the galley-table with a bottle between them and music playing quietly in the background. Oscar makes the place smoky and Sam doesn’t mind because that smelly old pipe has always been part of his old friend’s personality, ever since they were young. They talk about the teachers at their school and how they used to get hit with sticks when they were naughty, but the best stories are about when they were fourteen and taking part in ‘The Taming of The Shrew’ at Porton Manor Farm; Sam was Bianca and Oscar was Kate, so I have to use my imagination to see these two old grampuses as elegant teenagers. They talk most affectionately about Sir Jeremy Akehurst, in his young days, long before he was knighted, when he gave them their first lessons in the actor’s craft. I get the impression that they see the present production, and their foundation of a stagecraft school at the Granary, as a sort of memorial to Sir Jeremy, an expression of their gratitude to him now that he is a very frail old man indeed.
Sinead has gone firm on Joe Orton’s play ‘The good and Faithful Servant’ as her very first attempt at directing, and we all think it’s a good choice. Apart from anything else, it’s short enough to be presented as a double-bill with another improvised play that Skap wants to create with all the actors in workshop. Now... the decision to work the production like this has made me very suspicious indeed, because Sam did exactly the same thing with the very same play about twenty years ago, somewhere overseas.
Now, the exercise becomes interesting in that the previous production had the improvised play first, to set the scene for the Orton. The Orton is all about the way in which big business regards its workers as no more than labour-units, to be picked up, to have all the usefulness wrung out of them over about fifty years and then discarded when they are too old to work. Sam’s improvised play showed how the massive corporation on which the play is based was begun by the widow of a man who was lost at sea, simply as a means to feed and house her children. It grows until it is attractive enough to be taken over, which is when it ceases to care about its workers’ feelings
Sam described all this to everybody and showed them photographs, posters. programmes, production copies and so on from the previous show. This was enough to start the group talking and he was smart enough to draw back from the discussion and let Skap take over. Skap is a slim young man with a dark complexion, who seems to be relaxed and sympathetic until something excites or angers him, when he starts to make fantastic shapes with his body. He lives on the Porton Farm Estate in one of those houses that all look the same, all with completely unkempt gardens.
We had to wait a few days for copies of ‘The Good and Faithful Servant’ to come from French’s, but Sinead was able to take up this time with making a provisional casting. She also set up some improvisation situations to help with the audition process, and Skap took these on into development of the other play.
Then the books arrived and everybody got to read the play with some idea of what it was all about and where we were going with it. Sinead took charge of course.
They agreed with the point that Sam had already made, that Orton’s play was now a bit dated. Big business has moved on from offering lifetime careers to people.
“So....” said someone sitting at the back of the studio, “since we are all agreed that this is a bloody good play that we want to do in more or less the way that Sam has described... right?” We all grunted our agreement and urged the speaker to continue. “Why don’t we use the play as a starting point – performed first – to show the attitudes of big business pre-Seventies, and then develop a play that shows the effect of modern methods and attitudes on today’s workforce?” There was a long silence.
Penny nudged me at this point. We were perched in our usual place, up behind the grill in the air-conditioning duct, which was a bit drafty on such a hot day, but we didn’t mind, we were absorbed in the discussion. We watched a conspiratorial grin pass between Skap and Oscar. In private, they had already come up with this idea and I could sense Oscar hoping that Skap would give all the credit for it to the guy who had just spoken. He did. Skap stood up, all tall and angular, crowing “Ha-a-a-ay!” as he arose. “Great idea! What do the rest of you think?” And then the ideas started to flow.
So now we’re delighted that all the chicks of various sorts have flown the nest because we can watch every session, no matter where it happens. Of course, we have to go hunting sometimes, but at least we can do this together, always late on in the small hours of the morning, after all the quackers have gone to their nests in different parts of Malcaster. Some of them have started doing some serious snuggling and mutual preening with each other on their way home, so I’ll keep Oscar up to date about who with whom (it’s easier to head off trouble if you’re forewarned).
Skap and Sinead have together worked out a scenario and a structure for the improvised play. Now Skap is breaking it down into scenes and ideas that he explores with his cast in improvisation sessions. It really is an exciting project with so many potential advantages for the Granary Theatre, both in the short term and into the future.
Jonah was a very experience director, teacher and writer who sadly passed away in February 2006. He was also the author of the highly successful "Playmaker - The Craft of Directing Plays (The Way I Seen It)".