Randomly, my boyfriend's parents suggested we join them in a trip to Europe. We felt a holiday was out of the question, but if we gave up our rented flat and sold our cars and loaned out our fridge...we could go for a year to get experience in the form of courses or performing experience.
We hatched a plan to travel Europe (the second time, for me), then go to Italy to do a course in Italian in Perugia, then settle in London and see what might happen.
Before getting to Italy, we made an appointment with an agent that my boyfriend's family had put us in touch with. He recommended that if we wanted to work in theatre, then we better get started straight away.
Perugia never happened.
I remember being counseled by this same man to dye my eyebrows and to learn how to speak RP. I remember being affronted at the first part of the advice and never really getting how to choose a good headshot. I made a number of terrible mistakes with my Spotlight shots. The idea of one photo being a single descriptor somehow horrified me.
I did take lessons in RP with a woman somewhere in Chelsea. She had me working on a speech that had this sentence in it - 'We shall have champagne, buckets and buckets of it.' I was annoyed that it had to be buckits. This is England. It's spelt 'buck-ets'. She taught me to say pockits as well and of course dahnce, not dance with a short a. I worked at it and spoke it. One day I asked someone 'is that a plahstic hahnd bahg?'
There was an Australian guy in London who had been in 'Precious Moments' in Brisbane, who had had a job in the tv series Tenko. He spoke very poshly. It mentioned Ayckbourne to me and I kept saying pardon. I thought he was saying 'egg warmers'. 'I'm probably a bit too plummy now. ' he said, in a voice that sounded made out of sherry.
There was an Australian guy in London who had been in 'Precious Moments' in Brisbane, who had had a job in the tv series Tenko. He spoke very poshly. It mentioned Ayckbourne to me and I kept saying pardon. I thought he was saying 'egg warmers'. 'I'm probably a bit too plummy now. ' he said, in a voice that sounded made out of sherry.
One day on the Kings Road, I ran in to a woman called Pauline Walsh who had been in the cast of Captain Midnight and who had been touring with Hull Truck for a number of years. She said somehow a lot of loud singing had been required and it had ruined her voice. She said, 'You're interested in Mime, aren't you?' and I said 'Am I?'
I guess she'd seen Act Without Words or heard about me being in it.
First thing I did was a weekend workshop with this man Desmond Jones. I learned how to articulate my body. You can make a movement head chest or chest head. I had a small but profound epiphany when I remembered a moment in the La Boite production of Tales From The Vienna Woods. If I turned to the other character 'in a certain kind of way' it felt right, and if I missed that, then I felt disappointed, that I had lacked creating something in that scene. I realized that turning to him chest, head carried the more special, more emotional sensation I preferred. This, I felt, was useful and important information. This was the the first whisper of how body and movement and meaning might intersect in a way that interested and excited me.
We learned to walk on the spot in two different ways, we learned how to pick up a suitcase, a glass, a heavy glass, how to throw a glass away. Desmond would say fascinating things like 'Time replaces space and weight'. And cheesy thing like 'out to lunge, back in ten minutes' We learned how to appear to be riding a bicycle. Agony. I could hardly walk. I was working harder physically than I had ever done before in my life. My boyfriend booked for us to go the the famous Ronnie Scotts. As is usual in Jazz world, the main act (Georgie Fame) started incredibly late. Delighted though I was to be at such a landmark venue, my eyes were closing. And my legs, even seated, were very, very sore.
Desmond championed a small booklet called The Canadian Airforce Exercises. I took this up with gusto. Every day I followed the programme. I started working myself to medium, then maximum fitness for my age, then over the years, I started to increase to the peak for younger and younger ages. Lisa Lyons the female body builder had been photographed by Robert Mapplethorpe. I longed for gender-stereotype-defying biceps like hers.
I joined the regular evening classes. I loved the camaraderie of the after course drinks at The World's End Pub as much as I lamented the impossibility of getting a nice cold glass of white wine, or nice cold gin and tonic, or nice cold anything. I met a woman, New Zealand by birth, called Tessa Schneideman and a lovely young man called Robert Clayton.
Concurrent with these new studies, I auditioned for and got a job with a company called Mouth And Trousers. The show was The Death of Harlequin, and that was my first performance at Jacksons Lane. I also played Madame for the same company in The Maids in the York and Albany Pub Theatre at the top of Parkway in Camden. One performance I accidentally laughed too soon resulting in the other actresses having to rush the plot to the interval. Humiliation and shame.
Desmond decided to start a school. Tessa, Rob, Zena Dilke, William Dashwood, Claudia Prietzel, Denise Stoklos, Linda Coggin, Franki Anderson, Rachel someone, a punky Australian girl, a Dutch boy called Elijah and a chap called Jon something and I were among the first class of the 3 month school. I was living in Marylebone and would walk there everyday along past Baker street and Madame Tussauds to the then BTA British Theatre Association in Fitzroy Square. there was a theatre space. We the class would stand on the stage area, if I remember rightly looking down at Desmond on the auditorium bit. I would do my Edgeware Road walk doing my finger isolations for the finger ripple exercise and practicing doing the Decroux-ian hand shapes - palette, trident, coquille, salamander, margueritte. Then learning how to do the sequence in canon, each hand doing a different shape on each beat.
A boy at school one day said to me, 'I feel sorry for you. You seem to be very ambitious and it will be hard for you as a girl to get anywhere.' This was not really news. My brother had already told me that 'Girls can't do anything' but there was a women's movement going on somewhere and perhaps that would change the rules at some point. Or at least I thought I might have a bit of a go at making a slight fuss about the state of things. The main thing I felt was slightly pleased that this chap felt I was ambitious. I have largely held the impression that I am a lazy, ignorant coward without anything resembling a plan.
Desmond held a 'graduation' showing. I did a solo 'A la Carte' a woman dining in a restaurant, moving from nervy constraint to voracious indulgent to cannibalism of her waiter ( well, a biting of his arm in the typical mime sketch finish 'freeze blackout'). There was to be a printed programme and and I felt, well, if this is the start of public performances in this country , I better start as I intend to carry on and I changed my name from my unpronounceable, unspell-able surname to a name from my mother's side of the family.
Desmond held a 'graduation' showing. I did a solo 'A la Carte' a woman dining in a restaurant, moving from nervy constraint to voracious indulgent to cannibalism of her waiter ( well, a biting of his arm in the typical mime sketch finish 'freeze blackout'). There was to be a printed programme and and I felt, well, if this is the start of public performances in this country , I better start as I intend to carry on and I changed my name from my unpronounceable, unspell-able surname to a name from my mother's side of the family.
I was invited at some point to join Desmond's troup. Desmond had his own performing troupe called Silents. Silents included Tim Dry, Mollie Guilfoyle, Barbie Wilde, Ian Cameron, Robert (?) and another chap called Dennis. And now me. I was incorporated into the group piece and I think I even got to perform my solo piece. We performed at the London International Mime Festival at the Battersa Arts Centre (now BAC).
Tessa asked me and Denise of we'd like to keep on working at Mime. I said yes and we would meet in my basement flat in Marylebone. One day I said (rather grandly) that I didn't want to carry on just doing this unless we were working toward something, like a show. Tessa took the ball immediately and booked the York and Albany. We graduated to rehearsing in her home in Brixton. Tessa had been a fine artist and we rehearsed in the top room, once her studio. She was a very good painter. She exhibited at exhibitions in the RA and the ICA. She said she gave it up for mime because it was less lonely. She was 10 years older than me. Denise Stoklos was a Brazilian girl who went on to make many solo shows and star in a Brazilian soap opera for many years.
As a group, Three Women, we decided we didn't want to do 'mimey mime'. Why is it interesting to open a window or pick up a suitcase that's not there. And I suddenly realised that there was this irritating phrase 'everyman', which your classic mime, Marcel Marceau was meant to represent.
In Mouthpiece, we stood and sucked each other's thumbs, we made a fat lady with two of us hidden under a black lycra dress and Tessa constructed a giant cherry topped bun that swallowed one of us. Yes, we were wild renegade mimes, with props, sound effects, sometimes words and music! And we work hideous black uni-tards. All the time.
Tessa was highly imaginative and suggested we create a piece that showed just our feet. We worked from instinct as much as anything else. I realised that I had learned a lot from years of watching Warner Brothers and Disney cartoons. Efforts and dynamics and beats and visible emotions. Causality - action and reaction. Footnote showed a host of fleeting encounters or passages of different characters: barefeet trying to strike up some kind of intimacy, air kissing fancy shoe wearing women, a mother with a train of shoes dragging behind her like a ball and chain (*Claudia's puppetry training inspired this prop idea), a flasher and a skipping little girl who foils him with a kick.
We made an abstract work inspired by Theatre du Mouvement after we had studied with them.
Brabarella was not a take on Barbarella but the story of Cinderella told in lingerie. Separate from their made-for function, bras are incredibly interesting and versatile obects. Cindy's ball gown was cascading tiers of B cups and if you've never seen a strapless bra be first a mouse's ears and then a moment later horse's blinkers then you have not lived.
The closing piece was called Circus. Housewives (aprons over yes, black uni-tards) perform an entire circus using household implements. an eggbeater became a unicycle. A dustpan brush for the bearded lady, brooms for a stilt walking act, saucepan lids as cymbals for a hoover-hose snake charmer. tea-strainer goggles, oven 'riding' gloves and a shower cap for daredevil motorcyclist with a jaffle iron as the handle bar of the bike. An old hair dryer hood and hose for the elephant. A magic sword act with panda teddy, colander and skewers. And a disappearing act that used a sheet, a peg and an audience member (once it was the then very famous musician Joe Jackson). It was clowning before we learned how to clown.
...to think I wonder what happened to my serious acting career.
Later Desmond created an advanced School in Shepherds Bush where we shared the hall with a dog training class (not at the same time, luckily). Our leg warmers (yes, the 70's, the first time round) would get rather furry.
Theatre du Movement came to the UK and we studied with them in a beautiful church hall in Belsize Park one glorious spring. Their work was amazingly expressive, dynamic and heir anatomical knowledge was brilliant. Desmond was great at inspiring us and getting us creating right from the go-get (there were advanced students of Theatre du Mouvement with superior technique to us who were contemplating years more training before setting foot on stage).
Theatre du Movement mixed Yves Marc's sporting training with Claire Heggen's dance training. They incorporated african dance, animality, isolation work, impulses that travelled through space and intersected with martial arts (kicks, falls, pushes and presses) and exquisite articulation through isolation (at last that Martha Graham contraction with an emotional or narrative possibility!) and shifting flow. We studied undulation. We worked with voice and breath. Desmond's class instructions were, in my memory, based around 'yes', 'no', 'that's it so-and-so (usually a male student)', and more tension! Desmond was keen that mime not show up to be 'effete'. There was a lot of debate on what mime was or wasn't allowed to be. Mime is an amazing skill but in the wrong hands it can be mannered and tedious.
One day in search of 'clay man', I ignored Desmond's cry for 'more tension' (I had knee problems that tension was not helping) and I used a Theatre du Mouvement undulation. 'That's it Peta!' Des exclaimed. I feel disloyal writing this as teachers should always be honoured. But when the student finds more knowledge and freedom elsewhere, they have to go.
Although my Australian accent was for the most part modified, it seemed to me that most of the acting jobs were for people with wonderful regional accents. And the plays I saw were so soaked in class. Would I ever know how to convincingly play a gritty girl from Birmingham, I asked myself. (I can see now how timidity, laziness and unconscious arrogance have held me back). It seemed to me that British theatre was still largely about location location location and concurrently social station, social station, social station. I had no context here. So mime was a gift for me. I would never have got started in theatre making in this country if not for the opportunity that Desmond and Tessa (and the random meeting with Pauline Walsh) gave me - the ability to create work from nothing. Work that could also tour to Europe without translation.
* The three women who originally rehearsed in Tessa's top room were Tessa, me and Denise. Denise is a fabulously talented woman. There was a difference of opinion around how much rehearsal we felt we should do. Denise preferred a more improvisatory approach to things. Tessa had taken advice with someone in the business and was told that it might be best to get a clear coherence in the company before we did our very first run. It was a hard choice for us and not pleasant for Denise. Tessa suggested asking Claudia Prietzel to become our third woman. Together we had a better work rhythm. Robert Clayton became our technician. We were to work and tour together for three amazing years.
I had arrived in England to maybe take a year out and get some extra experience in Theatre. Once Three women was touring I was able to give up my waitressing job. I was earning a living doing what I loved. What a privilege.
* The three women who originally rehearsed in Tessa's top room were Tessa, me and Denise. Denise is a fabulously talented woman. There was a difference of opinion around how much rehearsal we felt we should do. Denise preferred a more improvisatory approach to things. Tessa had taken advice with someone in the business and was told that it might be best to get a clear coherence in the company before we did our very first run. It was a hard choice for us and not pleasant for Denise. Tessa suggested asking Claudia Prietzel to become our third woman. Together we had a better work rhythm. Robert Clayton became our technician. We were to work and tour together for three amazing years.
I had arrived in England to maybe take a year out and get some extra experience in Theatre. Once Three women was touring I was able to give up my waitressing job. I was earning a living doing what I loved. What a privilege.
