Cordoba

Today we are travelling by AVE Preferente *Spanish TG first class to Cordoba about 40 minutes by rail. Our hotel is the Conquistadores opposite the Mesquita. the must see in Cordoba. Unsure whether new hotel will hae same internet facilities but here is hoping eh!
We spend two days in Cordoba before traelling on Sunday to Granada,where we see the Alhambara on Monday.
Must remember to report to European Rail about the need to trael light especially on the sleeper train.
Gonna look for pottery over next few days and probably have it sent home to help decorate new dining room.

Seville Cathedral

Today we hae visited the cathedral here in Seville. By heck, it is a big un! It is third largest church after St Peter in Rome *which I saw for the first time last summer, and after St Paul in London,which I haven t been inside for ages.
The cathedral is big with columns and vaulted roofs and the guy who started it said we are going to build something so big that people will think we are madmen. Well, those guys were real loonies! I won t go into too many details as you can look the place up on google etc but it is certainly worth a visit. Today is World Tourism Day so we got in free which appeals strongly to the Yorkshireman in me and certainly to Ingrid.
When we came out we went in search of a cafe caled Ingrid before looking for somewhere to eat for lunch. Cafe Ingrid wasn t up to too much except a photo opportunity so a further search was needed. I found a recommended restaurant called Enrique Beccera but the prices were too high for Ingy so we found a nearby bodega. We had a good lunch for 46 Euros and the landlord gave us a port gratis at the end. We also gave an American couple advice on prawns in garlic for a good tapas or starter. They asked so we volunteered the information.
Back at hotel for shower and siesta before final night in Seville. Tomorrow we are off to Cordoba and the Mesquita. Still have n t sen the corrida and we may buy Spanish pottery in Granada and hae it sent on home afterwards. We have a new dining room to decorate next year.

Seville

I am working on the internet keyboard at my hotel in Seville. The keyboard doesn, like the letter v and is organised differently from my one at home. This restricts my creativity.
Seville is wonderful. We eat a big meal at lunchtime around two or two thirty just before siesta. We spend the evenings touring the tapas bars and drinking wine. The heat here is very hot but dry.
We are in the barrio santa cruz, a warren of streets in higgedly piggedly order. The taxi drier on Tuesday when we arrived had to ask his mates how to get into the barrio to drop us at our hotel, the Petit Palace, which it is and high tech as well.
Today we went to the Alcazar, which is a magnificent mixture of Moorish and Christian architecture. It is mind bogglingly tremendous and the gardens are a haen of peace and repose like nowhere I have ever been before. I would recommend Seville as a romantic destination for any young or not so young couple. Ideal for a honetmoon I would hae thought although probably not in the height of summer. This time of year is just perfect. Tomorrow we go shopping and do the cathedral before lunch and more tapas. Oh bliss.
Lovely to keep in touch with Kitten cross the distance and we love her blog. We are intrigued by Mrs W,s offer of a re enactment job back in the UK. Send it on. Feel so healthy and capable of anything.

Respite

My posting today comprises of two pieces by other people. However they are so apt I just felt it was necessary to include them.

The first was the "Wyse Word" by Pascal Wyse from Saturday's Guardian. I have raved before about "Wise Words" but this one seemed so pertinent as even the amateur drama world in Portsmouth awaits agog for the Guide Awards. So to all you nominees from the Bench out there, It is time to start practising your "Grince".

Grince One of the most challenging faces an actor has to pull, used at ceremonies when another performer wins an award for which you were nominated. It masks violent disappointment with an air of relief that the judges made, of course, the right decision. The other guy really deserves and needs it.

The second piece comes from my mother in law, Enid Caddy. Enid is a bit of a poet and produces the occasional ode. "Respite" is particularly topical as Ingrid (Best Beloved) and Zoe (Firstborn) are seeing her established in Belmont Castle for the next ten days while we are away in Spain.

Respite


I’m going to go into ‘Respite’
Respite from what I’m not sure.
Perhaps it’s because they don’t trust me,
That I won’t eat or fall on the floor –
I like all my favourite things round me,
Like puzzles and eye drops and pens,
Strepsils and make-up and papers
And tissues that have to be ‘mens’.
The telephone, mirror and timer
That rings when I’ve fallen asleep.
Not that it makes any difference,
I never can hear it go beep.
Then there’s the knife for opening my letters,
The water for taking my pills,
My helping-hand with its long handle
That helps me recover my spills.
My earpiece that connects to the telly,
The bleeper I press if I fall.
The neighbours who pop in to see me
And dear Ingrid who’s always on call.
But my life style will have to different
So they have peace of mind while away,
And I’m sure I shall like being pampered.
So two weeks in ‘Respite’ – OK.

Enid Caddy
Sept 2007

See you all when we get back unless I am prompted to do a Kitten while I am away. Adios, amigos.

Spanish Itinerary

I am publishing our Spanish itinerary, ostensibly so our family can keep up with us and excitedly to show off!

24 September
Havant dep 10.04 London Waterloo arr 1134
Eurostar booking in at 1300 (This is to remind Firstborn of a previous occasion when she had to rush to London with our forgotten passports)
Eurostar dep. 1341 Paris Nord arr. 1723
Transfer across Paris from Nord to Austerlitz
Paris Austerlitz dep. 1943 Madrid Chamartin arr. 0913

25 September
Transfer across Madrid from Chamartin to Atocha
Madrid Atocha dep. 1100 Sevilla Santa Justa arr. 1330
Stay in Seville at Petit Palace Santa Cruz for 3 nights

28 September
AVE train from Sevilla Santa Justa dep 11.00 Cordoba Central arr. 1142
Stay in Cordoba at Conquistador for 2 nights

30 September
AVE train from Cordoba Central dep 1052 Sevilla Santa Justa arr. 1135
Sevilla Santa Justa depl 1150 Granada arr. 1459
Stay in Granada at Dauro II for 2 nights

2 October
Granada dep 1133 Seville Santa Justa arr. 1430
Seville Santa Justa dep. 1500 Madrid Atocha arr. 1730
Transfer across Madrid from Atocha to Chamartin
Madrid Chamartin dep 1900 Paris Austerlitz arr. 0827

3 October
Transfer across Paris from Austerlitz for Nord
Eurostar dep 1113 London Waterloo arr. 1257
London Waterloo to Havant whenever! After a good lunch up in town no doubt!

I received a lovely comment by Trevor Hare (see "1975") about "Habeas Corpus", the first ever production staged at the Havant Arts Centre. Thank you, Trevor.

The Golden Compass

Taking my cue from the Natty Chap and Alice the Kitten, I went on The Golden Compass website and tried out finding my own daemon. It turned out to be a gibbon by the name of Calista. I am inordinately pleased with myself and with the fact that I managed to download it on to my blog as can be seen below. The Bench did "His Dark Materials" in December 2006 and it was the last major theatrical event before I retired. It has now been made into a film, the first part is called "The Golden Compass" (starring Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig), and is due for release on December 7th, whether this is US or UK , I don't know. The trailer on the website is great and is narrated by Jim Carter, who also plays John Faa, the character I played in the stage production - how cool is that!
I am appearing in Supernova this week, researching the early days of photography for "The Wild Duck" and rehearsing "Measure for Measure". I am also learning the rudiments of Spanish so I can go on holiday next week and introduce myself. Buenos dias, me llamo Senor Pedro Corrigan. Tengo dos ninos, Zoe and Alice. Mi hermano es Andrew Corrigan and mi mujer es Ingrid. Me pone un cafe, por favor. (Hello, I am Mr Peter Corrigan. I have two children, Zoe and Alice. My brother is Andrew Corrigan - told you, you'd get a mention, bro - and my wife is Ingrid. I'll have a black coffee, please.)

Expanding the Bench Season

At the Bench Theatre Annual General Meeting back in 2006, I was obviously garrulous from the number of times my name appeared in the minutes. One of the items I raised was about the prospect of the Bench touring one or more productions away from the Arts Centre. I attended a meeting this summer with the Executive Committee and the Artistic Panel at which I was asked to firm up some ideas for presentation at the Annual General Meeting this year, 2007. I didn’t really have the opportunity to develop my ideas fully and, on reflection, I am not sure that the AGM was the appropriate venue. Please note these ideas are my own and not official Bench policy. What I hope will happen is that people will respond and that we have something of a debate/discussion in these pages. Hopefully this may then lead to the formulation of a plan of action or a policy by the Company.

Firstly, I have been through the stage of grandiose plans or ideas and have ultimately rejected them on closer and more careful reflection. What I have arrived at are more organic or evolutionary ways of expanding the Bench season.

Why expand the season? The Company has grown and more opportunities are needed to keep everyone gainfully employed. The five productions at the Arts Centre are the mainstay of our operations but it is very unlikely that we will be able to increase the number of productions we do there. We could, of course, do larger scale productions five times a year, thereby extending the number of acting opportunities. However, large-scale productions cannot offer all the cast equal opportunity to develop or extend acting skills and explore depth of characterisation. In addition, one of the strengths of the bench is the variety and range of its productions. I know this is prompted mainly by the wishes of the directors – we are a director led company rather than an acting one. I wouldn’t wish to see the company’s choice restricted by constraints imposed by finding large cast plays every time.

There are two issues, which come up time and again throughout any thinking about expanding the season; these are funding and rehearsal space. I am not in a position to give definitive answers to the problems raised by these issues. I do believe that where there is a will, there is a way. If the company decided to adopt some of my ideas, we would be able to find some solutions.

To put my toe in the water, I would suggest we first consider taking a more active part in the Havant May Festival. At the moment, this is an annual event and is co-ordinated through the Arts Centre but is borough wide (if it survives in its present format or indeed if it survives at all). A long time ago we did the Community Play (written by our own Jacquie Penrose) so this is not entirely new territory. Tim Taylor mounted a touring production of “Shakers” a few years back, which again means we have had some experience of this sort of activity.

The Bench would need to work out a structure to enable us to participate before we even begin to think about what artistic endeavour we were going to present. Our participation in the Havant Festival would also have an impact on the April and July main house slots at the Arts Centre. This would have to be taken into consideration when the Company selected these two slots and the Havant Festival slot.

I am not proposing that we angle for another slot at the Arts Centre as part of the Havant Festival but rather that we find other venues in the borough. These venues would hopefully be willing to be part of the Havant Festival so I am not talking hiring here. These venues would need to be carefully chosen, vetted and approached. My first thoughts would be Bedhampton Social / Community Hall (not the Bedhampton Arts Centre), two venues within Leigh Park (church halls perhaps) and one in Waterlooville.

The Bench would have to involve itself in marketing the shows but hopefully would be aided by the venues and the general Festival. Sales and marketing of Bench shows generally needs a whole debate on its own and Derek Callam did raise this issue again at the Annual General Meeting.

The venues would dictate to a great degree the sort of material we could offer audiences. Practically also we would keep the number of venues low and the time scale of performances within the Festival’s nine days. In lots of ways I am proposing a local version of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe approach – another bank of experience we have within the company.

Another idea would be to tie us in with a particular venue, such as the Staunton Country Park. We could either perform a commercial piece within their environs or if we wanted to be really creative, produce a site-specific production using the old library or the stableyards there, for example. We could at future festivals find other venues suitable for different site-specific presentations.

The second thought led me on to thinking about outdoor productions generally especially Shakespeare perhaps. I did think about the space outside the Civic Centre and admit this would need the creation of a suitable acting and seating arena but could prove worth the effort in terms of kudos and presence. Alternatively, we could do a Havant version of the RSC and do a performance in the Leisure Centre. We could do all of these ideas in different years of the Festival.

The bolder and more public ideas could be supported by sponsorship in money or materials although the Bench itself would need to finance initially and without too much hope of profit making.

A more difficult and pressing problem, which arises now, and would be even more so, if we expanded the season, is rehearsal space. The Arts Centre simply bulges at the seams on occasions and can make it difficult for even our main house productions to rehearse anywhere in the building, let alone in the theatre. It seems to me that the Company has an urgent need to find another rehearsal space.

The room at Nineveh, kindly donated by the Dawes family, is great for readthroughs (although it was a bit of a squeeze for “Wild Duck”) or for two hander rehearsals. The Company needs to rehearse in a space, which is the equivalent of the acting area at the Arts Centre. If this space could also accommodate some of our storage needs even better. It could also be a space shared with HumDrum, as their rehearsal patterns are so different from our own and should cause no clashes. An industrial work unit might provide the answer but of course would add to the funding problem.

I have raised two issues here for debate, the expansion of our current season to include the Havant Festival, and the need for rehearsal space. I am not yet in a position to offer solutions but will give it some considerable thought.

Contributions to the debate should be sent to the editor at benchpress@bench.co.uk or to me at peter.corrigan@frostymarsh.co.uk or here on my blog as a comment.

1975

The Best Beloved and I married on 23rd August 1975 (Our Kid was my Best Man – you see, I said I would try to keep his interest in reading my blog). We had two days at a bed and breakfast in the Cotswolds for our honeymoon. On the first Thursday in September 1975, after three years’ membership and at the tender age of 28, I became the Bench Chairman. My tenure lasted three years until the arrival of the Firstborn in August 1978.

Ingrid and I had first met as members of the Langstone Children’s Theatre Company. This was the brainchild of Tim Mahoney, who as I have explained in previous "Notes from the Green Room", was to all intents and purposes the artistic director of the Bench in everything but title. It was he who laid down the way we approach plays and the sorts of plays we believe we should be doing. The professional attitude the Bench has towards the production of plays began with Tim.

Another aspect of Tim was his socialism. He believed that if people wouldn’t or couldn’t come to the theatre, then theatre was obliged to go to them. Tim taught at what was then Broomfield Secondary School as a Craft Teacher. He believed that Leigh Park was a cause worth working for. To this end, he established the Langstone Children’s Theatre (although I must confess I don’t really know where that name came from and it always struck me as being a bit out of place).

The LCT was a semi-professional group and was manned by drama teachers in the area. Tim would listen on the grapevine for new ones arriving each academic year. There was a big turnover of such and Tim would be there to greet them and invite them to join the LCT. In fact he wouldn’t go away until you had agreed!

I was considered good recruitment material, having turned up for a part in Tim’s Bench production of “The Entertainer”. The rare exception to Tim’s recruiting drive was Mike Arbour, the Havant College Drama Tutor. This was a source of some personal annoyance to Tim as he could see the potential that the College could offer the Bench. This state of affairs was soon to be rectified to the satisfaction of Tim, but I mustn’t run ahead of my narrative.

Anyway, Langstone Children’s Theatre and its company of drama teachers would rehearse productions for taking around and performing in Leigh Park primary schools. We were at that time mainly secondary schoolteachers so primary schools in themselves were a refreshing experience for us all. Tim would make bookings with the schools and we would turn up at the end of a school day to perform to a class, a section or even sometimes the entire school. Those were the days when teachers could get away at 3.30 p.m.

The connection between LCT and the Bench, in the main embodied by the person of Tim Mahoney, has meant that the academic year and teachers have helped create some of the Bench traditions such as the dark that is August. Langstone Children’s Theatre’s next artistic director was Alan Lines, who offered me a room to live in at Netherfield Close, which was populated mostly by the LCT company, including one Ingrid Caddy. I am sure you can join the dots yourself to arrive at the event with which I began above. Interestingly enough, the third and final artistic director of the Langstone Children’s theatre was…….. but that is the subject of the next “Notes from the Green Room”.
The following productions were those presented under my chairmanship. Bold font indicates where I was personally involved as actor or director.

The Cherry Orchard, Anton Chekhov (October 1975)
A Delicate Balance, Edward Albee (March 1976)
Andorra, Max Fri sch (May 1976)
All Things Bright and Beautiful, Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall (October 1976)

The production of “As You Like It” in 1977 will be the subject of my next edition of the “Notes from the Green Room”.
As You Like It, William Shakespeare (February 1977)
Tonight at 830, Noel Coward (June 1977)
A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, Peter Nichols (October 1977)

Looking even further ahead, November 1977 marks the date when we did the first Bench production, and indeed the first ever production of any kind was staged, at the Havant Arts Centre. I will devote another “Notes from the Green Room” to this aspect of Bench history.

Habeas Corpus, Alan Bennett (Nov 1977)
A Midsummer Night's Dream, William Shakespeare (March 1978)
The Philanthropist, Christopher Hampton (May 1978)
The Sea, Edward Bond (July 1978)

It was at this stage we became a family with the arrival of the Firstborn in August 1978. The Kitten arrived in December 1979. I decided professionally to upgrade my Teaching Certificate to a degree whilst still working full time as a teacher. It was tough for the next three years but we never lost contact with the Bench and our girls became Bench babies.

Our Kid

Family..the we of me (Carson McCullers)

Our Kid, Andrew Patrick Corrigan, came to stay with us this week. He complained that he hasn't been included in a posting ever despite being a regular reader of the blog. This posting is,therefore, some compensation for that fact and a determination to add him to future postings so he continues to read them.

Our Kid is two years my younger and as head of the dwindling Corrigan family I have my work cut out at times remembering that fact. He had intended to come down to the Kitten's wedding (see Alice's Adventure in Blogland link) but when that fell through, he came down anyway. The girls all like Uncle Andrew because he is a gentleman and because he loves them. He can be blunt in speech but this tends to disguise a sensitive and empathetic nature. He is also very intuitive and yet thinks situations through carefully. This is not a paradox - he trusts his gut reaction and works out the reasoning behind such a reaction.

I lean on him heavily to remind me of some of the values, especially where family is concerned, that I have lost sight of or have allowed to be buried under layers of "sophistication", "culture" or "civilisation".

We certainly needed his strength, both of character and physical, this last week. MuleBoy and Kitten have parted and this week saw the ending of their tenancy of the house they shared for the last two or three years. This aspect has been as messy as the breakdown in relationship has been overall. Generally Kitten has been very down and any attempt at clarification has been misinterpreted as pressure. Yet I hate working in a vacuum and not knowing the details - I am a control freak in lots of ways - if I can't play in my way, I will take my ball home and not play at all. Trying to find out what was going on has been difficult - not because of any deliberate obfuscation - but poor communication and poor organisation. Suffice it to say, we ended up hiring a transit van for 24 hours and for about 48 hours our front drive and garage looked like the set for the Steptoe and Son yard. We cleared beds, settees, furniture, gadgets and personal belongings galore from the house. Our Kid was a tower of strength in this and moved a number of heavy items himself. I am much fitter than I was in heart and lungs but lifting heavy objects is still not on my list of recommended activities. Without Our Kid we could not have done what we did in the time we did it. Once we got the stuff back home, we had to organise charity collections of unwanted large items, storage of wanted large items and disposal of rubbish at the tip. On another occasion, I must write about the sheer busyness of the local tip and its lack of real organisation. Besides his physical strength, Our Kid was also an inspirational leader and organiser. When emotion was getting in the way of work, he chivvied us up and along.

Kitten is established in her own room surrounded by her own furniture and possessions. She doesn't want to be back with her parents but as I said last Saturday, "I may have lost money but I have gained a daughter." She has almost cleared herself of financial commitment to the house and is in negotiation with the landlord on that point. She has expert help available if she needs it.

She is looking forward to her American adventure in two weeks time. And we to our Spanish adventure in three weeks time - a visit to La Tasco, a tapas bar, in Gunwharf, was a rehearsal for our stay in Seville.

Our Kid, meanwhile, has flown back to Bradford from Southampton airport. He did manage to leave behind a pair of jeans, which we will now have to post on to him. We, Best Beloved and I, are hoping to spend time with him in November or December. Hopefully we can persuade him to spend Christmas with us if his work schedule will permit.

The next couple of postings are 1975 and As You Like It. They deal with periods of history of the Bench Theatre and are intended to be published in the Benchpress newsletter under the "Notes from the Green Room" column.