Posted by Bonnie on 27 July 2006 at
01:03
First and foremost, I would like to apologise to our regular visitors for the lack of updates recently. We have both been quite busy lately and have had a lot of stuff to sort out, what with our house renovation, trips away, visits to family, and other such things. In addition to that, I've been lacking the motivation needed to do a thorough update to the site, because I knew it would take me quite a long time!
However, last night I decided to sit down and sort things out. I didn't manage to get everything done before I started falling asleep at my desk, so I finished it off this morning. I'm pleased to say that the site is now fully updated! The last full update was in April (even though I did update last month with the scanned letter) so one really was due.
So what's new? Well, we're now aware of not one but two new productions in which Rachael will be starring. One will be a play at the Theatre Royal Bath — a 50th anniversary production of Look Back in Anger. I've added a new page about the play to the site, and that's where you can read any further information we may receive about the production. We probably won't be going to see it in Bath, but if it does move to London (as has been suggested) then we will make an effort to do so, as it's much more convenient for us to get there.
The second new production starring Rachael is a television adaptation for BBC Four, entitled The Haunting of Toby Jugg. It is scheduled to air in the autumn in the UK, but we don't yet have any confirmed airdates. A new page for that has been added to the site too and, again, I will be updating that page as and when we find out more.
I have added several new photos, with huge thanks to DianaRigg.net, JodhiMayDomain.us and Natascha-McElhone.net.
I have also added an interview, with huge thanks to Bob, and a feature on the National Youth Theatre with some quotes from Rachael.
I've uploaded an interview Rachael herself conducted on the talk show Loose Ends in April. She interviewed author Liz Jones about her new novel.
Last but definitely not least, I have also uploaded two fantastic video clips from the television talk show Parkinson, on which Diana Rigg appeared in 1979. These clips were kindly donated by DianaRigg.net and it really is a great interview. Diana speaks about her two-year-old daughter (Rachael, of course!) and tells some funny stories about bum-biting and nose-picking.
In addition to the above, I've done some much-needed general "housekeeping" around the site, such as getting rid of old news, updating the fanlisting, changing dates, adding new items to the calendar, replying to emails, things like that.
Again, I really do apologise for the huge delay in posting an update. Now that I've got back on top of things again, I'll try not to let it happen again. As always, please get in touch if you have any additional information or photos we don't have here already. Thanks everyone!
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Posted by Bonnie on 17 July 2006 at
12:00
Following the success of his first novel in 1955, Michael Croft resigned from his teaching post at Alleyn's School in south-east London to write full-time. His departure was a huge loss to the school.
His drama productions were of such a high standard that after one performance a critic from The Times was moved to write, "Considered as a school play it was a miracle."
When a group of boys asked Croft if he would continue to produce plays outside school hours, he agreed and in September 1956 the Youth Theatre, as it was then known, performed Henry V at Toynbee Hall, east London.
Although no one realised it at the time, least of all Croft, this was the genesis of the National Youth Theatre, one of the most groundbreaking and prolific youth organisations in the world.
Fifty years later, its glittering alumni include some of the best known names in the entertainment industry, such as Ben Kingsley, Helen Mirren, Daniel Day-Lewis and Timothy Spall.
Croft certainly had a knack for spotting talent. When the company's Prince Hal was called up to do national service in 1957, his replacement in Henry IV Part 2 was a sixth-former from Leyton County High School called Derek Jacobi.
By that time, Jacobi had already played Hamlet in the school play and knew he wanted to be an actor. "The Youth Theatre was a very significant part of my growing up," he recalls. "I felt very adventurous because it took several buses to get to Michael's flat, where we rehearsed on Sunday afternoons. It was unknown territory and the first time I'd acted with people I didn't know.
"At first I was very conscious of being an East End grammar-school boy amongst all those Alleyn boys. They were all rather posh and I was definitely the outsider, but, much to my surprise, once we got into rehearsals we became quite a close unit. It was my first experience of how strangers can become family very quickly in the theatre."
However, there was one person who, understandably, preferred the Youth Theatre's original Hal. "His mother was still very much part of the team," says Jacobi. "I remember her helping us get ready for a performance at Toynbee Hall. While she was using red-hot tongs to do my hair she accidentally burnt my ear. I couldn't help wondering if that was my punishment for taking her son's place."
Gradually more boys from other schools were allowed to join. In 1960, girls were admitted for the first time and the company became a national organisation. It became increasingly ambitious, performing in West End theatres and touring Europe.
Bill Kenwright, once a Coronation Street regular and now one of the West End's leading producers, joined the NYT in 1963. "I was never given a big part but it didn't matter," he says. "My first production was Richard III at the Scala Theatre and to a star-struck Liverpudlian lad, it was a huge thrill even just to walk on to a West End stage.
"I loved the camaraderie. I used to come up two weeks before the start of the season to lick stamps and put up posters. Mike [Croft] was very supportive but we were expected to look after ourselves. I used to stay in the Salvation Army Hostel in St James's and at first I was terribly homesick. On Sundays I'd go to Euston just to look at the trains going back to Lime Street."
The NYT is not a drama school and states that its chief objective is to give young people the opportunity to explore their identity and creativity through drama. Inevitably, though, many NYT members have gone on to pursue theatrical careers — and not just as actors. The company has also produced several highly successful directors and theatre technicians.
But a stint at the NYT can also be a serious wake-up call to anyone aspiring to work in the profession. "I had a fantastic time at the NYT," says TV and radio presenter Jamie Theakston, who appeared in Murder in the Cathedral and Marat/Sade alongside Daniel Craig in the late 1980s, "but I found it very hard financially. At one point I was so hard up I was forced to share a really squalid room with three other NYT members.
So when most of my contemporaries applied to drama school, I decided that, much as I loved acting, I didn't love it enough to spend the rest of my life having to eke out a living. I was just very lucky that I got another chance to act many years later." (He starred in Home and Beauty on Shaftesbury Avenue in 2002.)
Rachael Stirling, star of the BBC's Tipping the Velvet, appeared in Othello opposite Chiwetel Ejiofor, who is currently gaining a name in Hollywood, in 1996. She agrees that the NYT quickly dispels any preconceptions anyone might have about acting being a soft option. "People soon find out that pitching up to do eight shows a week and trying to make each one seem as if it's the first time you've ever done it is hard work."
Every year the NYT sees each one of the 3,000 people aged between 13 and 21 who apply for one of 500 places. Stirling, straight out of boarding school, found this diversity enormously refreshing. "We were all so different. One girl had a baby daughter and there was a boy from the young offender programme who came as part of his rehabilitation. But the beauty of it was that we all had a passion for performing."
Michael Croft continued to run the NYT until 1986, when he died of a heart attack. His successor, Ed Wilson, stayed with the company until 2004 and it is now run by joint artistic directors John Hoggarth and Paul Roseby.
Although today's teenagers may lead very different lives from those earnest Alleyn schoolboys of 1956, passion and youthful enthusiasm continue to unite the organisation. Happy 50th anniversary, NYT.
Derek Jacobi
"The NYT was an important step towards becoming independent and self-reliant. It also taught me to be part of a company and to trust other actors."
Bill Kenwright
"Everything about the NYT seemed absolutely first class to me — the acting, the costumes, the sets, everything. As far as I was concerned, it was up there with the Old Vic and the Royal Shakespeare Company."
Rachael Stirling
"The NYT gave me so much. It's a company of equals and we were taught to treat each other with generosity and kindness and not to judge each other."
Jamie Theakston
"There were times I found the NYT to be quite challenging, scary even, but I loved it. It's a wonderful organisation and we're lucky to have it."
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Posted by Bonnie on 7 July 2006 at
12:00
Rachael Stirling dashes between TV, films and the theatre. Her mantra is that she's in it for the long haul.
"I'm not particularly good about red-carpet dressing, and looking perfect every five minutes is not my bag. I'd like to be putting bums on seats when I'm 60," she told me.
Having just done a drama for BBC4, The Haunting of Toby Jugg with Julian Sands and Robert Pattinson, she's ready to return to the stage.
She'll join Richard Coyle, Mary Stockley and Ronald Pickup in Peter Gill's 50th anniversary production of John Osborne's Look Back in Anger, which begins performances at the Theatre Royal Bath as part of the Peter Hail season on August 16.
Rachael plays Helena. "She's an actress in the play. In those days, actresses would turn up to an audition in their best clothes — freshly pressed twinset and starched skirt.
This was part of the middle-class strictures Jimmy Porter was railing against in the play," added Rachael, who has been studying notes on kitchen-sink realism, of which Osborne was the theatrical pioneer.
It's all very different, she explained, from another of her projects — starring in a TV pilot, shot in LA, for American TV. Set at NASA, Rachael plays a Dublin doctor who finds herself on the space research staff.
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Look forward to the US release of both films.
