Goodbye David Arnold... We Will Miss You

This blogpost is going to be different from many others due to the fact that this is in memory of one of my acting colleagues.

David Arnold was truly one of the nicest men I had ever had the chance to meet. He was just over 2 years older than me and we lived in  the same town and grew up in the same church parish community, he was for a short time at the same Primary school as me and I knew of him. What I didn't know was that like me David had a passion for acting and performing that was very strong. I should probably also explain that David had Downs Syndrome and before I knew him he had been regularly involved with groups that gave people with disabilities training in dance and drama. David was extremely dedicated to his training and whenever he had done something new or learned a new dance step he wanted to talk to LibraryGirl and myself about it and show us. My interaction with David mainly came from rejoining my childhood Amateur drama group: The Pilgrims. It was when I rejoined about 3 years ago that we caught up on all the things that had happened since I had last seen him several years before. He was doing so well and had such a great grasp of life, he wanted to be a good actor and he really made every moment on the stage count. I remember when we would rehearse David would be always coming up with ideas just like me and suggesting them to us to see if they could help us make the shows better. David was really smart and was so bright and he knew when you told him what his role was how exactly he would do it. He really was living proof that having disabilities doesn't stop you from doing what you truly want. I lost touch with David after we left the Pilgrims and I regret that, I was just looking in my mobile address book the other day and his number was there and I thought I should contact him but I didn't. David developed leukemia in the last few months of his life and by all accounts was fighting it with a smile and his usual optimism but just after Easter at the age of 25 David fell asleep and didn't wake up.

I will always remember David for his enthusiasm and smile which was contagious and everytime I look at the top of St Mary's Church Broadwater and see the star I will think about him.

Rest in Peace my friend.

Theatrical Events in Kent/London

Easter is on its way and as we make our way towards the holiday weekend that indulges our every wish for chocolate and a new beginning I have gone up to Dartford to spend a fortnight with LibraryGirl's family. Being just outside the Capital means I am basically staying on the fringe of theatre land and here at the moment there are some really interesting events lining up in the forthcoming months for the area.

Hall Place a 16th Century house built for former London Mayor Sir John Champney's has several events listed as coming to their beautiful property over the coming months. These include Chapterhouse Theatre Company on the 17th of June with their production of 'A Midsummer Nights Dream' by William Shakespeare. Then on the 26th of August the Cambridge Touring Theatre will be doing their musical version of 'Robin Hood'. On Sunday the 6th of June there will be a talk by 'Mr Mackett', played by an actor named John White, a Victorian School Master which is sure to be an interesting educational performance piece. Then on the 3rd of October John White will return as 'Master Peter Simpkin' a Tudor Privateer who sailed round the world with Drake. For more events please go to the very helpful and informative Hall Place website here. Or if you want to read their leaflet on upcoming events you can read their pdf file here.

The Orchard Theatre in Dartford is having a brilliant event on Sunday: an open audition for 9-19 yr olds who want to be part of a 250 strong cast in the summer youth project of FAME. If you want to take part you can find the information at this link here. In the evening of Sunday 28th of March the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra will be playing Mozart, Handel, Grieg and Dvorak. On the 7th of April Rory Bremner will present his satirical stage show 'Rory Bremners Election Battlebus'. Then from the 14th of April until the 17th of April DAODS, Dartford's premier Amateur Musical company, will present The Wizard of Oz.

The Geoffery Whitworth Theatre a reperatory amateur theatre based in Dartford is currently in the middle of their 2010 season and is presenting next week their GWT Youth Theatre show 'Grimm Tales' by Carol Ann Duffy. From the 24th of April to the 1st of May they present 'Miser' by Moliere before moving through May and June with plays by Minghella and Nick Dear. This is a company with a wealth of experience with a real drive to put on good community theatre, I would highly reccommend attending any one of these shows or indeed all of them.

That rounds up my pick of the happenings in the Dartford area, however other people to look up include: The Riverside Players, The Miskin Theatre and Erith Playhouse.

As always, all comments welcome below and if you wish to contact me then email me at chrisandrewpilgrim@yahoo.co.uk

Xtofer

Just a Small One: The Tom Thumb Theatre Margate

Today's addition to the ranks of my 'Just a Small One' columns is the Tom Thumb Theatre in Margate which is one of the most well known small theatres in the country. It consists of a former double garage/coach house built in the late Victorian period which was converted in the 1980s to a theatre space. Between the 80s and late Noughties there was a drama club on the premises and an entertainment agency as well as the Theatre. Sadly the theatre closed and was put up for sale in 2009.

However the good news it that it is now open once again after being purchased last year. It was purchased by a family group who pooled resources to buy up this important venue. They now have their own theatre company based out of the venue called the Tom Thumb Players. It looks like things are on the up once again for the Tom Thumb Theatre and with only 60 seats (according to BBC Kent) it looks to be a nice intimate space. They also seem to be starting some really interesting projects including in April 2 'Play in a Day' for performers 11+ where they will get to create, rehearse and perform a play with professional actors in one day. Priced at £20 for the day it is a very well thought out little project and in this writers opinion the sort of workshop young actors and talents should experience. There is lots happening at the Tom Thumb in the next month or so, so please check out their website here. You can also follow them on Twitter and join their Facebook page/group by just searching for them on each site.

Its great to see a creative little theatre back from the brink of complete closure, I really hope they go from strength to strength.

As always feel free to leave comments below or email me at chrisandrewpilgrim@yahoo.co.uk

Xtofer

PS: Special thanks to reader Andrew for sending me the link to their website in the first place

Northbrook Theatre ND 2nd Year FMP 2004: Motel Styx

So whilst sorting through the vast LibraryGirl archive yesterday we came across the program for my college Final Major Project of my National Diploma course. My final major project would end up being the devising portion of my diploma, we were working towards a piece of decent theatre with something we all wanted to say. We started out under the tutelage of Keryie Vickers a drama and dance teacher at Northbrook who sat us all down and discussed with us how the whole thing was going to work and who we should think about basing the majority of the action around. Now there were only four boys within our year group and I was the only member to not have played a lead. Now when you look at me I can't play the romantic lead because I look completely wrong for that type of role, I couldn't get a lead in either of the two musicals because I never stay in key and during the Shakespeare I was looked over for a more experienced actor. I have never complained about this because I actually quite like playing secondary characters because I know it is them who drive the story forward with their actions and words. I also like trying to make the best of a really deep character researching and exploring them so not getting a lead role ever really bothered me. So when Keryie laid it all out and said we should put our best serious actor forward in a decent role I thought of Robin but she nominated me, which was an honor, so I was going to play the central character. Even now I look back and shake my head at the chaos that ensued because of me being the lead and having the ability to write whatever I wanted. We were also placed under the watchful eye of a final year PGCE student named Keith Wallace, now Keith was such a nice guy and a very good actor. He was a mature student who when I had begun my National Diploma the year before had been in the BA Acting year group so I had watched him perform many times and he was a really good actor, great breathe control and vocal quality with a real talent for putting together complex and disturbing characters. I went into the project with great respect for Keith and he gave it back to us, it was fun devising a show but it wasn't what I would call a clever show or even a good show. The play was called 'Motel Styx' it was about this guy who had gone out drinking with his friends, great premise for a play and it was all my writing (this part at least), gotten so drunk that he became seperated from his pals and ends up stumbling into this creepy looking hotel. Now in retrospective I can see where certain films, programmes and themes permeated my work at 17, yes I was only 17 so please... cut me some slack, films such as the Rocky Horror Picture Show which I must have seen nearly 500 times and the theme of going out and partying came from my own insecurities about the fact that I didn't do those things and thought I should. So we had the typical generic scary old building entered by unsuspecting person, me, we even had a stereotypical creepy Hotel Manager played by our ASM Rick Ayres. Then the show got weirder and more complicated, convoluted and inherently unfunny. I had somehow thought I was writing a wonderful array of sharp and biting comedy when I started writing lines for the hippy character when in actual fact it was worse than any steretypical improvised off the top of the head impression of a concept of a hippy. The plot was a mess and I decided to send up a pop star during the show by referencing Justin Timberlake but I didn't just reference him I did a spin and sang in a high voice a line from 'Rock your body' which fell flat on its face, it wasn't funny. I looked like a prat, I felt like a prat and it wasn't fun LibraryGirl remembers it as being 'just awful' and it was. The show meandered on until mercifully it ended. The only good thing about the whole show was our set which was designed by a lovely designer named Amy Lin Braby and put together, organised by our set builder and foreman Nick Hollingdale, who now works on the Joseph national tours, it was a magnificent moving truck which allowed us to have doors and rooms move during the show. It was the most ambitious set I was involved with at Northbrook. Motel Styx was the final show of the ND that had helped show me what I wanted to do with my life, it also taught me a lot of lessons on how not to do those things. Thankfully I believe the script to this abomination was destroyed many moons ago and is not going to just pop up out of nowhere, however I do have the flyer still which I have photgraphed. If you go to the following link you will be able to read a little more about the production in the words of Rick Ayres.

If you wish to contact me or make a comment then please post below or send an email to me at this address.

Xtofer