General Strike 1926

The next show I was involved in was another of the New Factory Of The Eccentric Actor's mass cast historical epics. As the name suggests this one concerned the General Strike of 1926.

It was presumably intended for performance in 2006 on or around the eightieth anniversary of the strike, but it wouldn't be staged until September the following year.

I played a journalist and Charles, a toff turned bus driver who was enjoying the strike enormously.

This show was enormous fun and the cast were fantastic. There were 68 members of the cast. Here are just two of them: the late, great and much missed Matthew Eggleton on the left and the phenomenal Annie Firbank to the right.

Over the course of three nights there were somewhere in the region of 450 people in the audience. On the last night, just days before her hundred-and-second-birthday, Hetty Bower, a real life general striker, in the audience. She stood at the end of the play for her own rapturous round of applause.

It was featured in The Guardian's theatre blog.

AK-27

It's been a while since I've posted an acting post. It's time to change that.

In 2007, I took part in the New Factory of the Eccentric Actor's production of AK-27. The play concerned the 1927 visit to Mexico by Russian revolutionary, Alexandra Kollontai. Hence the name. Kollontai was only the third woman to serve as a diplomat in modern times. She was made Chargé d'affaires, a diplomat who runs an embassy but is not a formal ambassador, to Mexico. Alexandra was payed by Penny Dimond, who had made something of a career of playing her in a number of plays sets at different stages throughout her life.

Here's the flyer:


I played her son, Mikhail Alekseevich Domontovich, known throughout as Mischa. Due to the nature of her work, she was a largely absent figure during his childhood and he was raised mostly by his grandparents. Later, during the First World War, she used her position to help him avoid conscription. In 1927, Mischa was aged 33, while I was a sprightly 26.

This was the first New Factory production that I took part in at the Torriano Meeting House. Previously, I had only known it as a rehearsal space. It's a small venue which New Factory shows manage to cram with people testing the fire regulations to their limits. During one of these 'standing room only' performances I was waiting outside for my entrance through the front door, when Jeremy Corbyn showed up to see a huddle of people trying to watch the show through the window. Someone offered to get him in, but he refused to jump the queue. It was a brief conversation, but I was very impressed with his demeanour and principled reaction.

After 1848

By rights I should be posting my M chapter today, but it's been a very busy week. So instead here's a bit about 1848. The show was free, but managed to sell out. It sounds like a contradiction in terms, but we filled the Conway Hall to its capacity.

I've been in several shows for The New Factory Of The Eccentric Actor and so the process is a familiar one by now. People rehearse when they can and sometimes do not meet the other actors in their scenes until the first night. It's always a matter of piecing together a jigsaw puzzle. For me, 1848 was a jigsaw puzzle with smaller pieces and I didn't see the whole show until the performance. It's not for me to speak to the quality of the show, but I enjoyed it. There's a review here.

Niall McDevitt played Baudelaire and has written this about the process.

Hopefully, we'll do it all again sometime.

1848 Today

1848 is tonight at 8pm.

It's at London's Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, near Holborn and it's absolutely free.

1848

I'm in a play. It's been a while. This one is absolutely free and as if that weren't enough, they'll give you soup as well. It's called 1848 and as the name suggests it concerns the events of that year that saw revolutions occurring across Europe.

It's at Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square in London on the 22nd January at 8pm. The nearest tube station is Holborn. There is talk of more performances later in the year, but at the moment it's for one night only.

Lenin's Launch

Lenin's Lunch is now available online.

Lenin Lunched

Eighteen months ago, I took part in the filming of Lenin's Lunch for the New Factory Of The Eccentric Actor. The film received its premiere the other day, which is very exciting. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend. It has now been unleashed on an unsuspecting public and I'm very much looking forward to seeing it. The film is a lo-fi, continuous single shot taken from Lenin's point-of-view as people compete for his attention whilst he attempts to eat his midday meal.


The script was by Penny Dimond and was filmed in collaboration with Agnes Hay. It was shot in a lovely garden in North London. Most of us were wrapped up in Winter coats and scarves on an absolutely beautiful Summer's day. Gary Merry, who directed and played Lenin, had this to say on his blog about the filming.


As well as Gary and Penny, the cast includes the supremely talented Ann Firbank, David McGillivray, Anthony Best, Eva-Mary Carroll and Kathryn Hamilton-Hall among others. It's people like these that keep me coming back to work for the New Factory time and time again.


Kathryn and I played a pair of Dadaists. We had a ball.


All the photographs here were taken by Daisy Wormell. Here's one which shows off my lipstick.


I'll post the film itself here once I've managed to see it myself.

Send The New Factory To Cesky Krumlov

My friends at the New Factory Of The Eccentric Actor are off to Cesky Krumlov to perform a new translation of A Jubilee by Anton Chekhov as part of the first Soulandi Festival in July 2012. You can help them reach their destination:



Here's what they are looking for, in their own words:

"Who we are:

The New Factory of the Eccentric Actor was formed in 1996 with the aim of staging both large and small-scale radical theatrical work in unusual spaces (not usually used for theatre) - a collective of performers, musicians, writers, designers, and others. Since 1996 we have staged 26 pieces in many different venues before thousands of people. It has only been possible to create our work by utilising the commitment of more than 250 individuals, who have given their time, skills, and energy for free. Core to our work is that our performances have been free to the general public.

The Project

The New Factory has been invited to perform at the first Soulandi Festival in Cesky Krumlov, in the Czech Republic in July 2012.

The Festival is headlined by the renowned Czech performer Jaroslav Dušek, and we will be presenting a brand new translation of A Jubilee by Anton Chekhov. We will in fact be performing in both Czech (with local collaborators) and English, and bringing to bear the full eccentricity of the company on the work as we perform in a large Chapito (tent). There will be music, passion, not a small amount of madness, and a mass eccentric dance.

10 members of the company will travel to and from the event by train to keep our carbon footprint down to a minimum. Travelling light, taking the bare minimum in terms of costume etc., this is a carpet bags and suitcases trip. Our designer will create the set from found materials when we arrive, as we create the show specifically for the space. (With the support of members of the local Cesky Krumlov community) We will be accommodated in a mixture of local homes and tents.

Having dipped our toes into the world of film last year with our short 'Lenin's Lunch', we are very excited about filming the entire trip, and releasing a Lo-Fi documentary of the whole process as a key part of the overall project.
Your support

As ever with The New Factory all those involved are working unpaid, and the company itself will receive no fee for the production. This is definitely a no-frills trip for everyone, but we are looking for support to help with what is for us an expensive enterprise. By far the largest expense is the cost of travel to and from the Czech Republic, and we are looking to raise £4,000. We have to do it quickly as well, to take advantage of cheaper rail fares. Any support you can give, large or small, will be greatly appreciated."

N Is For...1905

My fourteenth post for the A-to-Z Blogging Challenge, N is for... 1905:

I've been working my way through my CV and writing about the various shows with which I've been involved. I'm up to 1905 (or for the purposes of the alphabet, Nineteen Hundred And Five AD).

In 2005, the New Factory Of Eccentric Actor staged 1905, a show about the failed Russian revolution of that year. The play was a promenade performance mounted twice during the hundredth anniversary year of the events, initially at Brunswick House and then at Mary Ward House in London.

The play followed the year's events, including the original Bloody Sunday massacre, and showed how they affected groups as diverse as strikers, their families, students, the Russian royal family and historical figures like Leon Trotsky, Henry Nevinson, Colonel Theodore Trepov and Tsar Nicholas II. However, The central characters for the audience to identify with were fictional: a student named Boris and the Petrov family with whom he stayed.

I played Tolya, an artist studying at the university and friend to Boris. I had about a half a dozen lines across three scenes and, apart from the ensemble scenes, was in the enviable position of watching the rest of the play with the audience.

Typically, New Factory shows have a very large cast and a rehearsal schedule that means people do as much or as little as they can, work permitting. This sounds chaotic, but it's really not. It may mean some actors do not meet until the day of the performance and yet it just goes to show that actors make it work despite the adversity.

The New Factory are a great bunch to be involved with. This was the first their shows that I took part in and I've been in another half a dozen or so since. I count myself very lucky to have met them. During the first production of 1905, I was lucky enough to befriend the late Matt Eggleton, who then introduced me to the Globe Players, which lead to me auditioning for Sleeping Beauty, and therefore me getting my first professional job. I owe him a lot.

Here are couple of reviews:

Morning Star
Reviewer: Zoe Corbyn
6th December 2005

Make space for political theatre
ZOE CORBYN reports on the New Factory of the Eccentric Actor and its extraordinary large-scale free theatre events.

"Maggots in the soup!" The puppeteers' chants grow louder and louder as a camera made of cardboard zooms in on angry toy sailors throwing their tyrant captain overboard.

A director screeches instructions in Russian through a giant megaphone.

The scene is a reconstruction of Battleship Potemkin, the famous silent film by Sergei Eisenstein which tells the story of the 1905 uprising onboard the Potemkin and its spill onto the streets and steps of Odessa.

Puppetship Potemkin is being bought to life by the New Factory of the Eccentric Actor.

It's a scene from their fifth production, entitled 1905, staged last weekend at the Mary Ward Hall in Bloomsbury in central London.

The play commemorates 100 years since the 1905 Russian revolution and tells the story of the fictional Petrov family, caught in a year of unrest in Russian history that is often seen as the dress rehearsal for the 1917 victory of the Bolsheviks over tsarist Russia.

But 1905 is not just any play. Indeed, the New Factory's political theatre has a rather special ethos.

"The production should be an event, an extraordinary event," explains the company's playwright and founder member Penelope Dimond. "We want people to come out saying: 'That was amazing - I've not been to anything like that before'."

And that it is. Staging large-scale shows in big spaces is a New Factory hallmark and 1905 boasts a cast of over 60 professional actors, musicians and performers. They intermingle with the audience to draw everyone into the show.

To see grand-scale experimental theatre is unusual these days. That it portrays an important piece of political history in such an interactive, entertaining and thought-provoking way is a rare and wonderful treat.

But working with such large numbers of people is no mean feat. "The first time everyone is actually together is on the first night," explains co-director Garry Merry. "I really relish it, it gives the scenes a real kick," enthuses actor Sue Maund.

Also extraordinary is that New Factory shows are free and the actors give their time for nothing, which means a short intensive rehearsal period of under a fortnight.

But, as well as drawing people in, this is to make a political statement.

"Theatre has become very very expensive," says Dimond. "Even small fringe theatres are charging a lot and the whole point is that theatre should be available for everyone. This is really theatre for the masses."

For Merry, the bottom line is that the New Factory will do a show with the money that they have got and the goodwill of the performers.

In the case of this production, the company received a grant.

Most of it has gone on venue hire - the kind of spaces that they need are expensive - but they also performed the same production earlier in the year in a space that they were lent for free.

The core of the New Factory is a team of five. In addition to Dimond and Merry, there's writer-director Josh Darcy, designer Jonathan Swain and musical director Martina Schwarz.

Schwarz's original music scores dance to accordions, oboes, trombones, and more - whatever instruments are available.

The design also adds to the extraordinary air. Swain is on stage throughout holding up signs or creating art works as the event unfolds.

Dimond, Darcy and Merry act in the shows too. The play sees Dimond make her entrance as the only woman in Lenin's government Alexander Kollontai, Darcy as Father Gapon, grasping to come to terms with the uprising that he has started, and Merry as the writer Maxim Gorky.

The company's name pays homage to the Factory of the Eccentric Actor, shortened to FEKS, a group staging large-scale extraordinary events in St Petersburg in the early 1920s.

The New Factory was born in 1995 after Dimond read Jonathan Treitel's The Red Cabbage Cafe and knew that she had to adapt the novel for the stage.

Its premiere, where the audience were given bowls of soup in the cafe, set the pattern for future shows.

The New Factory now produces steaming bowls of vegetable soup to welcome their audiences.

"It's quite an undertaking, really, because you might have to feed 300 people, so there's an awful lot of chopping up of vegetables for hours and hours," says Dimond, unperturbed.

"We try to have food that's appropriate to the productions.

Occasionally, you might be lucky enough to get a tot of vodka - but we can't promise that."

The second show was New Babylon 1871. Staged in 2001, it was the first political history for the company.

Inspired by a FEKS film, it charts the rise and fall of the Paris Commune.

It solidified the tradition of singing the Internationale at the end of the shows.

For New Babylon, it was a French rendition. For 1905, Russian rings out.

Then came two smaller productions, though 20 performers still somehow seems quite large.

Lenin In London portrayed Lenin's home life in London between 1902 and 1903 as he was producing the underground revolutionary newspaper Iskra, riding his bicycle to Primrose Hill and eating ham sandwiches.

The company have also charted the eating habits of historical political figures. Backunin's Breakfast, Engels's Elevenses, Lenin's Lunch, Trotsky's Tea and Stalin's Supper.

And the future? Well, we won't have to wait too long for the next production.

The company are looking to do a show next year about the 1926 General Strike, with the Internationale sung in English.

Beyond that, who knows, but I'm guessing that 2017 might be a year to mark in your diary.

- - - - -

And whilst looking for reviews I found this comment on a forum, which is a nice little review:

Urban75
Reviewer: Justuname
28th November 2005

I've just seen a brilliant play in London about the 1905 Russian revolution put on by a group called something like the new factory of eccentric actors - anyone heard of them?

It was a big, free production with the acting taking place amongst the people coming to see the play, good old political theatre, quite inspiring in these ironic days. One of them told me they've been putting on plays for years about stuff like the paris commune and they're trying to get union support for an 80th anniversary play about the general strike. Ken Campbell was there but I don't know if he's anything to do with them.

Lenin In London Tomorrow

Lenin In London is tomorrow. Details are here. Entry is by a donation of £5.

Lenin In London

I'm playing Alexeyev in The New Factory Of The Eccentric Actor's production of Lenin In London on Monday the 19th of September at 7:30pm at the Marx Memorial Library.


Marx Memorial Library,
37a Clerkenwell Green,
London EC1R 0DU,
UK.

The nearest train stations to the library are Farringdon on the Circle, Hammersmith & City and Metropolitan lines and Thameslink for British Rail. Buses numbered 55, 63, 243 and 259 all stop near the library.

Lenin's Lunch

I'm filming today with The New Factory of the Eccentric Actor. They are making a film version of Lenin's Lunch, performed a few years ago as a theatre piece, and parts of it were in Visiting Revolutionaries. Gary Merry, the director and actor playing Lenin has written about it on his blog.

Visiting Revolutionaries

The New Factory Of The Eccentric Actor are staging another show and this one is in memory of a great supporter of their work: the poet and anarchist John Rety (below). Rety co-ran the Torriano Meeting House with Sue Johns. Sadly he died earlier this year, and the show entitled Visiting Revolutionaries, is a sort of greatest hits of all the shows the New Factory have staged there over the years.


The Torriano Meeting House is at 99 Torriano Avenue, London, NW5 2RX and Visiting Revolutionaries is on the 3rd and 4th of December at 8pm and on the 5th at 3pm, and it's Free.

George Pensotti 1937 - 2010

To Moscow...To Moscow... was written by George Pensotti. Sadly George died on the 22nd of August this year after a period of ill health.

George (pictured below on the right, with Gregory Cox), had an impressive career as an actor, both on stage and on television where he made appearances in episodes of No Hiding Place, The Wednesday Play, Grange Hill, Holby Blue, Doctors and culminated in his playing an array of judges.


In addition to being an actor and writer, George was also a much loved director and teacher. Having taught some of the founder members of the New Factory Of The Eccentric Actor, George kept track of their work and after seeing General Strike 1926, he decided to write a play with them in mind. It was very clear to all concerned that To Moscow...To Moscow... was a labour of love for George (pictured below on the set of Privates On Parade).


I only really met George once, but we got on very well. It was at the first read-through of his script for To Moscow...To Moscow... and my abiding memory was that for the brief time we spoke, despite being in a busy rehearsal room with about thirty other actors, his attention was so focussed that whoever he spoke to felt like the most important person in the room.

Sadly he was in hospital during the performances and never got to see his work staged. He sent cards each night, the first was something along the lines of 'Break a leg', but the second stayed with me as it read "I'm sure you were all wonderful and awful last night". Naturally enough, the end of the play concerned Anton Chekhov's last days and the parallels were not lost on the cast.

Last Thursday, a memorial service was held for George at the Actor's Church in Covent Garden and fittingly it was a full house. Initially I felt slightly fraudulent being among people who knew him so much better than I, but one of the sentiments mentioned during the service was the line from Alan Bennett's The History Boys "Pass it on, boys, pass it on". This was mostly in reference to George's teaching, and although George never taught me directly, I have definitely benefited through the work I've done with the New Factory.

These (much better) obituaries were written for The Guardian and The Stage, by his wife, Diana Quay.

The Tables Turned Again

Last week The New Factory Of The Eccentric Actor were asked to perform another rehearsed reading of William Morris' play The Table's Turned in Ladbroke Grove as part of an event called 'Notting Hill Roots' for an organisation called History Talk.

The event was followed by a Q & A, during which I was thankfully asked to provide neither Q's nor A's.

Once again I played Lord Tennyson (above) with the aid of a wonderful hat. And with some the cast from last time being busy I also played the wonderfully named Constable Strongintheoath. Which presumably Terry Pratchett references in his Discworld novels with the name of one of the Dwarves working in the Ankh-Morpork City Watch, Constable Stronginthearm (possibly pictured below).

To Moscow...To Morrow...

To Moscow...To Moscow... starts tomorrow.

Details below.

To Moscow...To Moscow...

Rehearsals have begun on The New Factory Of The Eccentric Actor's To Moscow...To Moscow..., a play described as "a promenade through the life of Anton Chekhov". I'm playing Ivan, one of Chekhov's brothers.

Pictured below are the Chekhov family and friends in 1890. (Top row, left to right) Ivan, Alexander, Pavel (yes, Pavel); (second row) unknown, Lika Mizinova, Masha, Yevgeniya, Seryozha Kiselev; (bottom row) Misha, Anton (aged 20).


To Moscow...To Moscow... is at 7:30pm, from the 21st to the 24th of July. The venue is:

The Conway Hall
25 Red Lion Square
London
WC1R 4RL

Entry is Free.

The Tables Turned

I'm taking part in a rehearsed reading tomorrow of a play by William Morris.


He is, of course, the William Morris more famous for this:


The semi-staged reading by the New Factory of the Eccentric Actor is of his only play, the brilliantly named The Tables Turned or Nupkins Awakened, described as 'A Socialist Interlude' and to my knowledge it hasn't been performed in decades. I'm playing Lord Tennyson.

The performance begins at 7pm here.

P.S. There seems to be a difference of opinion as to whether or not we are featured but the BBC coverage of the London Marathon is about to disappear from the iPlayer Marathon Part 1, Part 2 and the Highlights. I haven't been in a position to watch it so I suppose I'll never know.