UPSTAGED BY PEACOCKS. Wendy Macfee

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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 English eccentricity), Anne followed this principle in all the Theatre Set-Up venues when she founded the company, the policy being advertised on all printed material as “Performances continue regardless of weather”. Regular members of the theatre seasons’ audiences would always come prepared for this, wearing warm, rain-proofed clothing. It would have been inconsiderate to people sitting behind them for audience members to put up umbrellas, so their weather protection had to include rain-proof headgear and covering for all the body including the legs. It was discovered that two black plastic bags served these necessary functions and the company learnt to take rolls of these to give out to unprepared people in the audience. The performances in the Chateau de Prangins, Switzerland, organised by very efficient people from the USA, went one better than this and in rained-on performances provided the audiences with hooded plastic ponchos which they reclaimed at the end of the performance, only the actors becoming drenched.

      Sometimes the initial rehearsals for the plays in the “home” London venues were threatened with rain. Technical and dress rehearsals were usually re-scheduled inside any possible available space no matter how small, as the chaos of drying out soaked costumes would have delayed the opening performances. However sometimes during earlier rehearsals if relative shelter beneath trees was not available, the rehearsal had to take place in the rain. This occurred to spectacular effect in 2005 in the garden of The Bothey, Avenue House Grounds, London N3, when Lindsay Royan, the choreographer, needed to teach some of the actors a comic dance that was required for performances of Love’s Labours’ Lost. As this needed to be blocked into the actual stage space, it was not possible to plan them inside the only small room available. Anne and the actors not needed for the dance were then treated to the extraordinary sight of Lindsay and the dancing actors vigorously performing a comic period dance executed with admired accuracy in the driving rain!

      The first rained on performance that the company endured was in As You Like It in the grounds of Wallington Hall, Northumberland in 1980. The actor playing the character of Charles the Wrestler was bare-chested in the role and as the torrents of rain poured off him, one of the other actors commented that he actually looked as if he were taking a shower, and only the lack of a “soaping” blocked that illusion. Anne moved performances in Wallington to earlier in the season when heavy rain was less likely, but moderate rain often occurred, the stoical Northumbrian audiences ignoring it with full houses of 400 people every night of the five performances there. The actors were astonished when people turned up in wet weather and complained of being turned away when the allowed quota of 400 in the audience had been reached. Each year there was a group of people, who, regardless of the weather, always liked to stay on the performance site of the play after it was over, huddled together by the lighting poles. This was because they wanted to see their delicious picnic desserts as they were eating them. The actors called them “The Strawberry People”. Local residents explained to the actors that if Northumbrians did not tolerate events in rain there would be no events at all!

      Many people in the audiences went to the performances to enjoy this unconventional form of theatre but most of the actors dreaded the stormed-on performances. They were aware that their shouted dialogue was probably in vain because often audiences, in spite of weather-proofed sound amplification, could not hear the dialogue in the rain from under their headgear. For the actors it was like performing the plays while in the shower and the knowledge that the costumes would need to be dried off before the next performance was galling. Anne always advised the actors anticipating a dreaded rained-on performance with the words:

      “It shows that we are prepared to do it!”

      The Forty Hall audiences in the venue on the West Lawn which was home to the company from 1976 to 2006, became very astute in wet weather provision. Parents with children would bring small tents for them which they put up at the edges of the auditorium area and the children would watch the play from the tents’ doorways. As Forty Hall was open to the public, gangs of unruly youths roamed in it and could have sabotaged the plays’ performances there. Anne found that the best way to cope with them was to invite them to come to the performances as guests. Many members of the audience, those not with their children in tents on the edges of the stage area but at the front, joined in this hospitality, sparing the youths from sitting on the damp grass:

      “Would you like to sit on our rugs?”

      Anne learnt to make sure that the costumes were made of mater­ials which did not become bedraggled when soaked with rain. Silk velvet and brocade were good for this and feathers and net were out! “Wet weather” cloaks, made of rain-repellent materials such as trevira and woollen cloth (but never plastic which would destroy the period look of the costumes) were always set, ready to wear if the weather became wet, in the casts’ changing tents. These protected the actors’ shoulders and part of the costumes but had to be open to allow for arm gestures. Out of consideration to those who were responsible for drying out the costumes, it was a rule of the company to wear these cloaks when the weather was wet. Wigs with hats sewn onto them generally protected the actors’ heads but when the women actors wore veils (always, however made of nylon chiffon which tolerated rain), attached to headbands in Renaissance-styled productions, their hair became soaked. The drying out of the costumes became a stressful necessity after a drenched performance. Anne’s garage had been equipped with clothes lines and heaters so a return to London guaranteed their drying out there, often the heritage sites had boiler rooms which could function as drying out areas, and sometimes there were sympathetic land-ladies who could supply a heated room where the costumes could be hung on their costume rails, but if none of these means were available, the dripping garments had to be hung on their rails in Anne’s bedroom in the digs at the risk of her health!

      There were a number of locations which were guaranteed to produce deluging rain. These СКАЧАТЬ