Treading the boards: Part two

Two weeks ago I embarked on a multi-part essay in which I talk about my experiences of doing theatre — as an actor and as a producer. I broke off last week because I urgently wished to discuss a current news item. So, not exactly on cue, I now pick up the thread of “Treading.” My first role as an actor came when I was around eight years old. In a primary school entertainment, my mother once told me, I played the part of a bee. I have no memory at all of the event, but my mum made the …

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Then came secondary school, where we had brilliant English and German masters who were very much into theatre, so we did a lot of it. We also had frequent trips to see professional theatre. Because it was a set-text for our Advanced level German exam, we were taken to see Bertold Brecht’s The Caucasian Chalk Circle.

A play by Brecht was my second production when I came to Africa, but that’s for a later installment of this piece. The main role in Circle was taken by the Israeli actor / singer Topol, best known for his role in the film Fiddler on the Roof. Absolutely thrilling.

Another of these trips was to Oxford, to see the great actor Barbara Jefford play the Madam of brothel in Jean Genet’s The Balcony. That play is so controversial the master who took us to see it said we shouldn’t buy programmes to take home (incriminating evidence) and we should try to avoid telling our parents much about the play we’d seen. Before the play we had a couple of hours to wander around Oxford — my first time there — and I decided “this is where I want to be.” A dream that came true.

There was an unfortunate follow-up. One lunch-time soon after the trip several of us decided to re-enact scenes from the play on the school stage. This involved one of the group sitting on a chair and me, as a brothel client, kneeling in front of him and kissing his feet. Unfortunately the school hall was also where lunch was served and a big group of first-year kids came up to just below the stage to cheer us on. The headmaster witnessed this and called the relevant master to give account. The master later told me the interview went like this:

“Mr. B_____. I gather you took some of the senior boys to Oxford to see Genet’s play The Balcony.”

“That is so, Headmaster.”

“Are you aware how some of the parents might react if they knew this?”

“I should imagine with heart attacks.”

“Or, more seriously, they might complain to the School Board. And another thing. I have just witnessed on the school stage a sight I fear I shall not forget for many days, namely [deep grimace] Dunton kissing Hawkins’ bare feet.”

“Ah yes, Headmaster. He must have been remembering Barbara Jefford.”

“Do you mean to say you took the boys to the theatre and at some point — through what arrangement I cannot imagine — you had Dunton kiss the feet of one of this country’s most revered actresses?”

“No, sir. What you saw must have been Hawkins taking the role of Barbara Jefford, and Dunton as her client”

“[Head in hands] I am amazed and know not what to say.”

“[Big smile] That’s a quotation from Shakespeare, sir.”

“Go away.”

When it came to acting at secondary school—as distinct from playing the fool — my experiences weren’t entirely happy. First off I was cast in a play called A Penny for a Song, as a clergyman who was also an amateur swordsman. One of the masters taught me and another lad the rudiments of fencing (swordsmanship as a sport); the problem was, the physical strain of the position you have to take up as you advance towards your opponent, which is rather like sitting, but without a chair.

A couple of years later we did Max Frisch’s superb play, The Fireraisers, and I was cast as Chief Fireman. I remember I was rather good at barking orders at the other firemen, but once again the physical discomfort put me off. I had to wear a uniform and heavy metal helmet (on loan from the local fire brigade) and a huge moustache, a stage make-up thing glued to my upper lip. The straggly bits of the moustache curled over into my teeth.

A further production comes to mind and this is my earliest memory of theatre going wrong. There is a very successful comedy called The Play that Goes Wrong — scenery falling over, actors coming on stage on the wrong cue, and so on, and this was just like that.

The play was John Mortimer’s The Dock Brief, which is a two-hander, a play with just two characters. The setting is a prison cell and the two characters are a prisoner and a lawyer called Morgenhall who consults with the prisoner in his cell to prepare his defence. I played Morgenhall.

We had a set built (by a multi-talented Maths master) to make a very realistic cell. At the beginning of the first scene Morgenhall is let into the cell by an unseen warder and consults with the prisoner. At the end of the scene I had to call out to the imaginary warder to unlock the door and let me out. Unfortunately the lad who was supposed to do this had disappeared and I was trapped.

I thought to myself “ I must stay in character” and turned to the prisoner and said “I’ll have to climb out of the window.” Then I walked off into the wings (the curtains at the side of the stage) and made strenuous climbing-out-of-a-window noises, hoping the audience would assume this was a comic climax in the play. Around that time I realised I didn’t enjoy acting, but wanted to try my hand at production.

To be continued

Chris Dunton is a former Professor of English and Dean of Humanities at the National University of Lesotho.

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