A school of fish.  A gaggle of geese.  A murder of crows.  A dignity of cannons.  And of course, a cry of actors. 

Why a collective of actors would be named after a piercing shriek or a weeping indulgence is anyone’s guess. 

And ‘twas from a cry of actors opposite me in a homogenous Southwark coffee shop that the following revelations came: 

‘I saw some of our old drama school the other day.  The year below.’ 

‘Really!  How are they?’ 

‘They’re fine.  Fine.’ 

SEETHING PAUSE. 

‘They’re setting up their own theatre company.’ 

GOB-SMACKED PAUSE. 

‘What?!’ 

‘Can you believe it?  Their own theatre company!  I can’t believe it!’   

‘They’ve completely ripped off our idea!’ 

‘I know.  And that’s not the worst of it.  Their mission statement.  It’s…’ 

LABORIOUS PAUSE. 

‘Its…Dedication to emerging writers and new work!’ 

‘But…but…our mission statement is…’ 

‘Dedication to emerging work and new writers.’ 

‘Those bastards.’ 

HOPEFUL PAUSE. 

‘Can we sue?’   

And so the great wheel of artistic compassion proceeds.  What this reveals (other than the fact that the humble PAUSE has an impressive repertoire) is that a theatre company is now essential accessory to an actor — a kind of tribe.  We might as well get sorted with a talking wizard’s hat, Hogwarts-style, upon graduation.  Then to band together, clamouring against the wretched unfairness of the profession.  Maybe it’s similar to the childhood desire to be in a band of superheroes; that you, and only you, are responsible for the salvation of artistic humanity.   

The problem with this being that there aren’t really any super-villains to battle against.  Unless you envision the Arts Council as some sort of writhing Hydra, ferociously discriminating against you because you don’t have the good fortune to be an olfactory-hindered omni-sexual mime artist from Tahiti. 

Companies work because many actors need to work.  It’s mimomania   I’ve collaborated with a few theatre companies now, and no matter how purely intentioned they’ve been, the ships of each have all been rocked by brigand tussles, piratical infractions, poop-deck flagellations and far, far, too many captains.  This doesn’t necessarily highlight how bad actors are at co-operation, or admin.  What it might suggest is that actors, trained from stage school to rely on the vision of the director, tend to capsize when they find themselves behind the wheel. 

That being said: within these companies I’ve also seen some of the warmest-hearted relations, integral acts of sacrifice, and quixotic determination to repel the mundane.  And anything that can give an actor (more often than not these days, someone who’s accepted that they’ll be working temporary jobs FOREVER) a sense of self-government in a world where fortunes can be made or dashed with the nod or shake of the right head, I think is okay. Even if you start getting overly possessive about mission statements. 

Meanwhile, I think I really will start a theatre company that’s some sort of superhero team.  An astronaut, a shaman, a bishop and a ninja.   

Imagine the press night! 

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It’s that time of year!

Dust off your drag-act and twiddle your moustache!  Boo to your black heart’s content and roar ‘he’s behi-i-ind you’ like a certified loon!  Titter at innuendoes fit to make a milk bottle blush, and pay through the nose for a fairytale that’s been recycled so many times it’s officially carbon neutral!

Alternatively, you could quietly book for a pantomime.

A little guerilla Latin:

Mime = One who acts.

Pantophile = One who loves everything

Hey presto, ala-ka-zam, ‘pantomime’ therefore = One who acts all the parts.

Now, you must trust the historical gurgling of this Grecian’s blood:  the pantomime was, in ancient times, the lonely fellow who’d take on all the roles (Equity would certainly have something to say about that).

But now it’s become a wallet-pillaging soap-star-fest.  And the Fonz’s fee for playing Captain Hook, rest-assured, will be enough to sink a small pirate ship.

I had an actor ferociously defend the pantomime once as vitally important, being the first theatrical experience that children ever get.  This was certainly true of me.  But, alas, whether it was Reading Hexagon’s budget (barely fit for seven dwarves) or my incipient pretension (see previous columns), what I remember of my first pantomime was the theatrical equivalent of discovering Santa doesn’t exist (if any children are reading this, he does, we’re just not telling the adults).

Which is an extraordinarily long fork around to the beef of this week’s column.

Deep breath now:  Frantic Assembly, DV8, Complicite, Shared Experience, Told By An Idiot, Punchdrunk, Unpacked, dANTE OR dIE, Chopped Logic — all successful or successfully burgeoning companies with a mighty dedication to physical theatre up their sleeves.  Why this slavering stampede towards the physical?  What about contemporary movement, Latvian ballet, robot-dancing on football pitches?  Since when did theatre start paying attention to Olivia Newton John and agree to get physical?

Back in the day, your average Elizabethan playhouse was illiterate.  But what they did have, from their priests, was an in-built tolerance of hefty sermons —brimstone-this and Spaniards-that— a voracious capacity for concentration.

The play I’m doing at the moment has shattering moments of poetical beauty.  But could we still get the story across if we took away the words?  We’ve devolved from sermons to advertisements, and the opposition is clear (about two hours to twenty seconds, thanks for asking).  Good physical theatre capitalizes on this slacking of the rhetorical canon, grabbing audiences by the collars and hurtling them into the story.  In the words of my acclaimed pantomimic pal, Freckles:  it appeals to them because it’s visual and makes people think viscerally, emotionally rather than just intellectually.  Which is a slipstream back to our fire-and-brimstone days, and rather exciting, I think.

So now I’m off to book tickets for my first pantomime since the Hexagon debacle.  But have no fear, I’m staying put in my alphabetical pumpkin.  You see, this Cinderella’s been written by Stephen Fry.  And he’s ever so good with his words. –>

A theatre in the wild west of London, approximately 7:25pm:

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In my drama school days I lived with a talented and utterly nutty Japanese photography student.  She would sweetly enlist me into her projects, and I’d innocently oblige.  I posed all but naked with a guitar as my fig leaf.  I modeled topless and she craftily warped my lower torso into a horse’s body (thereby fulfilling my childhood ambition of becoming a centaur).  Then she shot me on a rooftop without a stitch.  At no point did I think that any of this was particularly untoward.  I was happy to be helping a friend.  A friend who pointed her camera at my privates.

A year later I arrive at her end-of-degree show in Brick Lane, and ferret through a swathe of people, all with hands on chins as if their heads were incapable of self-government.  I grunt an expletive, at which a few people startle.  And then, they gape.  A woman gags.  An old man applauds, harrowingly.  I look up at the colossal photograph they’ve been gawping at, and a very familiar, erm, feature stares back at me.

Needless to say, it got picked up by a Japanese businessman in return for a ridiculous sum.  I received roses and the rather chilling knowledge that, somewhere in a particularly boring quarterly evaluation in Tokyo, people are still gawping.

It’s not that I looked bad.  I looked awful.  I looked like a feral escapee from The Island Of Dr Moreau (the low-budget fat-Brando remake).  But maybe nudes have the power to make everyone feel a little better about their own skins.  So to speak.

Actors are famously precious or effusive with their birthday suits.  The roo-hah-hah caused by Harry Potter’s wand in Equus and McKellen’s sceptre in King Lear mimicked the hysteria over Nicole Kidman’s The Blue Room, and is tantamount to the eternal playground squeal of ‘Nicky’s got her knickers down in the sandpit’.

I recently saw my first Graeae (the UK’s leading disabled theatre company) production, The Flower Girls.  My indispensable companion Boz found it difficult to follow the drama in the text because he was so fascinated by the drama in their bodies.  If those girls can be courageous enough to revel in the rarity of their physicality, allowing us to partake in their uniqueness, then surely nakedness for your average Johnny Rep should be a cinch, and as equally liberating for an audience.

So here’s to the upcoming national naked theatre week, rejoicing in the human form in all its nuances, foibles and disfigurements, making everyone feel a little easier with their appendages.  There’s something shifty about actors reflecting nature whilst hiding their own.  The idea of the untouchable idol onstage is dead, the game is up — the fabled beard of Santa Claus has come unstuck, leaving his doughy chin whiskerless and defiant. 

Of course, that then poses the threat of a naked audience.  But then how would we tell the difference between them and the actors? 

That’s taking bare-faced cheek a step too far.   

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