Life Less Literary

Speaking of reading aloud, we did some play readings last Friday night. We managed to get through four plays, and the first was one which holds a lot of meaning for me: Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Rex (Ubu Roi). I first read this aloud to Ed, Jim and Rachel in Ed and Jim’s East Ham flat, circa 1990. Somehow I managed to come up with a different silly voice for each of the characters (well, perhaps not all the individual members of the Polish and Russian armies, but at least all of the speaking members) and I was actually able to remember these voices through to the end of the play and switch to the correct one when appropriate. This is something I’ve tried to do ever since when reading plays and stories, and I don’t think I’ve ever succeeded.

The play has all the more meaning because 10 years later Ed ended up marrying Anaïs, who is in some way related to Alfred Jarry (although I’ve never managed to determine their exact relationship). I was best man at their wedding and, in view of the number of French people present, I thought I should at least make an effort and say something in French as part of my speech. I scoured Anaïs’s French editions of the plays for inspiration, but soon got lazy. In the end, I wrote something in English and asked Anaïs to translate. It went something like “ten years ago, when I acted out Ubu Roi in front of Ed and his friends, little did I suspect that he would end up marrying one of the author’s descendents. I searched through the play to see whether I could find something suitable to say in this speech, but I got as far as the first word and decided this would perhaps not be appropriate for a wedding.” (the first word of the play is “merde”, or in the rather flakey English translation “pschitt”).

So, on Friday I got to loudly exclaim pschittapot over and over again, by my green candle, and O! what fun it was (even if I did only have to use one voice this time).

I love reading aloud. It’s something I’ve enjoyed ever since my second year at University, when for a while Rachel, Sanjida, Dave, Sacha and I used to settle ourselves down in one of our bedrooms (usually Rachel’s) with mugs of tea, a double-pack of bourbon biscuits and, if we were lucky, a spliff, and we would take it in turns to read to one another. We read Lady Chatterley’s Lover (which almost redeemed Lawrence for me after I’d learned to hate him at school), Douglas Adams’s The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, and when the others were busy elsewhere Rachel and I worked our way through One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. I’m sure there were other books as well. It was a series of magical moments of sharing reading pleasure, the kind of experience which, like spliffs and bourbon biscuits, leaves a warm fuzzy imprint in one’s mind.

After university I got out of the habit, but when I moved in with Gill I soon took it up again. During our first few months in our squat in Leytonstone we (mainly I) read Clive Barker’s Damnation Game. Later our reading tailed off: I whizzed through a few of the Viriconium Nights before Gill left me for a three-month trip to India. We polished off the whole of Midnight’s Children while living in Hounslow and East Ham. In a tent near Porlock, I struggled to read 1982, Janine to a five-month pregnant Gill but its bleak, repetitive subject matter, frequent drifts into experimental typography and the fact that Gill kept dozing off meant that we never reached the end. And since then, I’ve read bits and pieces but other than short stories very little of it seems to sink in; Gill can rarely stay awake for more than a couple of pages and many a wonderful Alexi Sayle yarn has been spoiled by the need to re-iterate the punchline the following morning.

Of course I do a lot of reading to the kids nowadays. Lola is still on picture books but I can see her progressing onto something a little more mentally demanding during the next year (I have some Moomin books stashed away which Rowan refuses to let me read: I’m sure Lola will be more accomodating). Rowan almost grew out of being read to, but seems to be enjoying it again now even though her late-night TV-watching habits combined with my random lifestyle mean that I only get to read to her about once a fortnight. Reading to her has been a wonderful excuse for me to revisit my childhood (which, of course, is nothing like I remembered it at the time) and to read a few kids books that I like the sound of. The Harry Potter books were fun at first, but before very long their repetitive structure became tiresome. The Hobbit seemed to have a huge vacuum at its centre, but I think that what was missing was my eight year-old self. The Lord of the Rings was fun to come back to after twenty years: Tolkien’s worldview and politics seemed much less appealing, but the Anglicised landscapes he paints over several pages, which had so bored my young self, now seemed beautiful enough to stand alone. I also revisited Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH and am currently reading When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit - both have stood the test of time particularly well, especially the latter.

But I really would like to read grown up books to other grown ups who can listen, stay awake and chat about them afterwards. I’ve started reading a little to Ed (Things that Never Happen, The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman) when I’m in London, but those moments are rather snatched and, more often than not, rather stoned, more than a little fuzzy around the edges.

A while ago I wondered about offering my services to Old Peoples’ Homes: people in there must often get so bored in between the weekly/monthly/whatever visits from distant relatives, and I’m sure that some of those with poor eyesight would appreciate it (though of course I’d have to be careful about what I read: strictly no Barbara Taylor Bradford. I guess they might appreciate hearing some of the classics, which would also be a good excuse for me to read some of the many books and writers [e.g. Dickens] who I am almost totally ignorant of).

This morning on the World Service, at about 4am, I heard a short story "Adult Video" by William Boyd. In the course of the story, the narrator mentioned that he was currently engaged in reading a Joseph Conrad book to a blind Italian boy. This dragged my mind back to 1988 when I saw La Lectrice at the Arnolfini in Bristol, I think it may have been the first foreign film I ever saw at the cinema and it really captured my imagination. The film is about a woman who loves reading aloud, and she decides to offer her service as a reader, picking up a fascinating string of clients (including a nutty old socialist general’s widow, played by a very old María Casares who I recently saw in a very different light, as a stunning dominatrix in Jean Cocteau’s 1949 film Orphée). The two stories gelled in my head and I wondered whether I should perhaps do the same thing as La Lectrice: advertise my services and see whether I end up with my own crazy eccentric string of clients. It would certainly be interesting. At the moment, all sorts of thoughts are preventing me from doing either this or the old peoples’ home gig: how will I find the time to do it (reading a whole novel aloud can take quite a while, and is something which demands to done in frequent sessions), do I have the confidence, erm… help! But, there’s no denying it, it would be interesting.

Last night I met Matthew, a film production student at Sheffield Hallam University who is currently directing a short film, Given Identity. I offered myself as a Rockabilly extra, but it looks like Matthew might actually be writing in a small part for me, which is very cool. I’m quite excited about the film - something Matthew said made me think of City of Lost Children, I mentioned this and Matthew admitted that it was a big influence (Given Identity will have a vaguely similar 1940s sci-fi feel).

Something led me on to thinking why I want to act, or at least why I have recently got back into acting (from the ages of 11 to 18 I was in several plays, first as a member of Bernice Warrens’ Childrens’ Theatre, then with Youth Action Theatre where my contemporaries were Rufus Sewell and Martin Freeman). I remember when the idea first came to me: I went to see the Ecclesfield Priory Players in 2000 and it brought back memories of the fun of being involved in a production. It also made me long to try my hand at some more weighty roles: when I was younger I tended to get bit parts of the “second policeman of the left” variety; either that or I would be asked to play some authority figure (”Securicor”, president of the galaxy in “Dazzle Star”, the White King in “Alice”) only because I was much taller than everyone else. And all I ever did (from what I can remember) was learn the lines, go on stage and speak them: I don’t recall ever thinking about how I ought to say them, or indeed doing any sort of work on my “character”.

This led me first to thinking that I would like to see what would happen if I acted a part and did think about the character, and from there my thoughts stewed onwards. I started wondering what it meant to be an actor, and in particular what it meant to be a good actor. Although I could see various skills involved, often it seems that a good actor is just a person whose own personality and behaviour makes an audience naturally drawn towards them (for instance, About Schmidt aside, I think I’ve only ever seen Jack Nicholson play Jack Nicholson; not that I have a problem with that, he makes a very good Jack Nicholson). When Channel 4 broadcast its list of 100 Greatest Movie Stars I got even more worked up about this idea.

So, finally I got to try it when I acted in Marriage. And of course, it was everything: far more work that I was prepared for to make a really convincing character, but at the same time most of what you give out on stage is what you’re already born with. It’s made me wary but possibly even more excited about trying new stuff, aware of the many areas in which I need to improve (at the moment I think that voice training is a real priority), and wondering how much better I can inhabit another person’s being next time around.

So mainly I act to test myself, to see how far I can push myself and how well (by other peoples’ standards for the most part, because I am still not a confident enough judge of myself) I can take on a role and win over audiences. But of course there’s the other reason why I (or anyone) wants to act: sheer bloody egoism, “look at me”. I sometimes think that’s an element of any creative endeavour, it’s a desire to show the world how well you can do something, how beautiful and mind-affecting you can make it, but with acting it’s stripped down even further than with, say, painting or composing, because the canvas on which you’re showing is your own body and voice.

Holy sneakers Popeman…. why?