Oliver! The majority of you reading this will already know the story, based off the novel by Charles Dickens and turned into a musical by Lionel Bart in 1960.
The process for this show started way back in mid March 2016. It all came about when I happened to be out in the town, I walking back to where my bike was and I saw a huge poster outside the Alban Arena which read Oliver auditions happening on Sunday 13th March and Tuesday 15th March etc, with times for each group of people 6 - 12 year olds were in the morning, 13 - 21 year olds were in the afternoon.
I looked at this poster for a good few seconds, thinking about it. I asked myself "Should I do it?" and in the moment I felt a mixed emotions of excitement and self doubt. I do doubt my own abilities sometimes and you also just think "Oh no. That will never happen" or "They won't pick me, what's the point". And what happened was I went back to where my bike was, unlocked it, got on my bike and started to make my way home and as I was not too far off from the town, I thought to myself... "You know what, fuck it! I'm just going to do it, if I don't get it, I don't get it and that's fine and no one else has to know about it except me and I'll be fine with that" so I turned around, went back to the alban arena where I took a photo of the poster to remind me when the dates and time were for auditions.
The day of the audition, I can remember was on a sunny Sunday afternoon. I went by the Alban Arena to have my audition and as a first comer, I didn't really know what to expect. I didn't need to prepare anything it was literally just an opportunity to come along, sing, dance and act and try things out. So I came by and you fill out a form which you fill out your personal details like your address, phone number and email and stuff like that. They give you a number and a piece of paper with lyrics on one side and parts of a script on the other. They then call you in groups of eight. You go through to where the stage is, you meet the director (Alison) musical director (Jonny) and choreographer (Amber) you get up on stage and then they start off with introductions and get straight on with it. They start with singing part and we all sang the first two verses of 'consider yourself'. We all sing together with Jonny on the keyboards and then sing again as a group and then one by one by number.
Once that part was over, we then did some dancing, and I hadn't done any dancing for a long time, so it was hard at first to get my head round the steps and the moves, even though they were fairly basic.
Then we did a little bit of acting when we read for the one which we felt we'd get the most character out of. I originally went for Fagin. Then once we had finished Alison thanked us for coming, and that Rare Productions would be touch letting us know if we were successful or not. She wanted a quick chat with me before I left where she asked me if I was only interested in Fagin. To which I said Fagin or Bill Sykes. I felt I could play either of those. It was important for her to know that because it seemed silly for her to offer me a part I didn't want if I was successful. And that was that, they had other people to se throughout the day and they had another audition on the Tuesday so I just left and thought nothing else of it. I sat tight and waited.
After weeks of waiting, the moment of truth had come and it was time for me to find out whether or not I was successful. When it comes to acting, I very nervous, I opened the letter thinking "It's probably going to be a No" no surprise there, I always think that, so I don't get my hopes up and I'm not set up for too big a disappointment but when I read the letter and learned of the news that they liked me enough to want to offer me Bill Sykes, I just thought "Oh ok, Yeah. I'm happy with that". So I told my family and they couldn't be happier for me, because I didn't tell anyone I was going to the audition. That was the whole idea, I wanted it to be a surprise and if I didn't get it there would be no need to tell them that I went for this part and didn't get it.
What happened next was all the paper work they wanted all applicants to sign off before the first rehearsal. You need to pay a fee of £140 otherwise you can't do the show. This £140 is to be paid per cast member, we are paying for a various number of things:
Show director, Musical director and choreographer
Professional tuition required for the show
Insurance for all members
Costumes
Rehearsal venues
Theatre Hire
Script and/or Lyrics appropriate to the show that you're doing
Set props
Sound
Lighting
Full Tech and Back stage crew to work on the show during the run in the theatre
Show Licensing
All of those things needed to be considered. Once that was paid the your part in the show was secured. The whole idea of the show sounded cool and I wasn't doing anything else. Rehearsals were set to start on Tuesday nights at Wheatfields School from 5pm - 9pm from the 19th of April.
I can remember the first rehearsal very distinctly, it was a very chaotic one because everyone is getting together for the first time, and meeting new people isn't always the best experience for me. I am not that great at socialising with others as I don't know what to say to people apart from Hello when I arrive and Goodbye when I leave. And the first rehearsal was more of an introductory type of things where we blocked a few things and worried about moves and getting things right later, as rehearsals went on and I started to become more friendly with my piers, it all became more relaxed for me and I enjoyed going.
Rehearsal photo, Going through "Pick a Pocket"
Due to the nature of my character it meant that I couldn't get involved a lot in most of the in-between bits like Fagin's gang or consider yourself, all of my bits were with Fagin and Nancy so it was a lot of just sitting around and waiting to be used. I was told that I would be waiting around a lot and that I just needed to be patient but at times it just felt like for a main role I wasn't receiving the right enough amount of rehearsal that I deserved for my part. I wanted to learn more from my team of directors and I got very little out of the eight weeks I was at rehearsals. That was disappointing on that part. Rehearsals are the opportunity for your character to develop and try stuff out and I didn't get much of a chance to prove that. Any development that was made to my characterisation I had to make my own.
During the whole process, I found that Euan who was playing Fagin was enormously helpful to me. Evan was very late coming into this because he was playing Fagin somewhere else, and was asked if he would mind being in our show as well. He didn't come to rehearsals until the end of May.
However I got on really well with him and he was very patient with me and gave me a few hints and tips as a means to advise me, which helped me get through. In parts its almost as if he was the director of some scenes because they worked so well due to his ideas. I'm never one who's good at coming up with ideas to help scenes or make them better, so for him to advise in places to make it look better was very good of him to do so.
And then came the time where after ten weeks of rehearsals, this is what we had been working towards, getting up on stage and doing it for real. The Alban Arena is such a wonderful theatre, I loved performing on the stage. You get more of a buzz performing live in front of an audience, a feeling I never got whilst doing Jumpers for Goalposts. The dress rehearsals were the trickiest because they need to check that everything is working properly, they need to do mic checks which is not as fun for us as it is for anyone else, we then get changed into costume. We had three changing rooms, one for the male mains and supporting cast, one for the female mains and supporting cast, one for the younger children. We also has a chill out area, where we could all sit and chill out before we went on stage or before a show or during the interval, there were sofas and a fridge and a kitchen with kettles and a microwave, it was all really cool.
We got our costumes fitted, at first I was very disappointed with my costume and I brought some extra additions to add to it like a scarf and a waist coat which made it look in my opinion so much better, even though it did go against the intentions of the designer, which I apologise for. Make up was done by my good friend Euan, he did his own make up, my make up and Dodger's make up.
The show ran from Thursday the 7th - Saturday the 9th of July. We did four shows, we had a massive supporting cast of two lots of work house gang, two lots of Fagin's gang and two Olivers, this was down to licences and reduced working hours with children. So we'd swap casts round and so both casts with their own Oliver would do two shows each, whereas mains and supporting cast would do all four shows. Honestly, I feel that I could have done more than four, but maybe that would be considered as pushing it a bit.
Me and Euan on Radio Verulam Out and About Show, Talking about Oliver and all things RARE Productions! on Friday 8th of July.
The first show was very special for me because that was the first time I went out on stage and actually felt like I gave a performance. And I felt like everyone felt it and was impressed by it, by the end of the show there was an old man who waited outside for us, and wanted us to sign his posters for him, that made me feel special.
Second show, not as good as the first and I think I didn't give as good a performance as the previous night.
The Saturday was the last chance that we would all do it together, which for me made it all the more important. We had all worked so hard to get to this point, and I knew this was the last chance that we were going to get to perform Oliver together. The afternoon went down brilliantly and people seemed to enjoy it a lot with respectable numbers filling blocks of seats all around the stalls. The evening was brilliant, much better and slightly more polished a show than the afternoon. It was a very emotional end to the show, tears were shed, not by me, but by some people. I had such a great time working on this show and had a lot of fun, it certainly was nice to do this as it kept me busy and was fun while it lasted.
Me with my Nancy, the lovely Madi Cathrow.
Doing this show, really did test my acting abilities and I think showed how much I had underestimated how good I actually was. You take so much out of such a short time and the experience you get back from it is so rewarding that you can't help but feel humble and proud that you have done a great job in fulfilling your role to the best of your ability. Above all things, I enjoyed the attention of being on stage, it was excellent to stay in the moment of your character
The main thing that needs to be considered when it comes to acting is, unfortunately it is exceptionally time consuming, so with Oliver it was wonderful but by the end of the show I was absolutely exhausted, and I was in a way sort of glad the show was over. As much as I loved it and I didn't want it to end, I was glad to have the day after completely free because it meant I could rest.
Because for a time I was in the position of rehearsing two different plays at the same time. I would be doing Jumpers for Goalposts Monday, Wednesday and Friday and Oliver on a Tuesday and I would go over to an Oliver rehearsal on Tuesday which would start at 5pm and finish at 9pm and then I'd go back home, have my dinner and then I'd go to bed to wake up and do it all again and it was something that I loved and I absolutely thrived on in some respects and it was great but I'm glad to have been done with it and write it off as something that "Okay, I've done it and it was a great experience" but I need to move on. That's life. You carry on moving forwards.
There were a few people coming into this show, that I didn't get on with. It's harder not to get on with someone than to get on with them. The harsh reality of acting is you are going to get that wherever you go. There will be someone who won't like as much as somebody else, or you won't get on with for whatever reason. It was something that was a bit of a bed bug. It puts a downer on the whole experience for me as it took away some of the enjoyment of it all. Just as there was someone in Jumpers for Goalposts who I honestly could not stand. At the end of the day you need to stay professional and not let your true feelings show too much as they might be the cause of things getting in the way of a show.
Oliver was a show that was down to just a split second, or brink of thought that crossed my mind which said "I can do this". That's what in the end made me want to audition and go for it and in every sense seize the opportunity. Even though there were some let downs, and rehearsals a lot of the time were boring and very hard to sit through and there were people I didn't want to be around, It was the fact that I wanted to do well that drived me for it, all the other stuff about making friends and socialising, that all came later and very naturally. This was my first show with RARE Productions but hopefully not my last. I would like to do more shows with them.
If anything, I would say that with RARE Productions, though they offer older people the main roles it's the opportunities that they offer to the younger students that I think make up the shows that they do and the pay back they get from that is enormous. They are teaching young children, the children of the future generation, how act, how to dance, how to sing in a professional standard show, on a big stage, I wish I had that when I was seven years old. I did come in to RARE rather late, but I'm happy that I have found them and wish to continue with them as much as possible.
I am and was lucky to have met and worked with such talented, hard working people who I have admiration and respect for.
