claytoncast

So on Wednesday evening this week, it might be thought I became a traitor, As Chairman of the Actors Centre, why on earth was I to be found delivering a workshop for the Actors Guild, our supposed rival. I had a great evening, was well looked after, had a very keen and attentive group and hopefully by the end of the evening, seven people were more clued up on skills to enhance their corporate roleplay than they had been before. So why on earth wasn’t I on home turf delivering this in the Actors Centre? Truth of the matter is I have done so and it's always gone down well. However, in a world where one of the choices actors do have is who they pursue their skill refreshing with, I wanted to reach as many people as possible. The Actors Centre has a pre-set curriculum with workshops advertised up to 3 months in advance and this was one of the very reasons that caused a group of actors to break away and form The Actors Guild. They wanted more control over the workshops ...

At some point in July I decided that my summer would be one in front of the word processor creating articles and blog posts and working on my book. How wrong I was. Within a week of settling into that frame of mind, my agent had sent me for three interviews and in a casting coup unprecedented in my thirty eight year career, I got all three jobs. As a result the summer has been much busier than intended and has merged seamlessly into that back to school feel always associated with early September. Now spending a week in my home town of Rotherham creating a children's gala for the amazing charity Grimm and Co of which I am a patron, work is booked in for my return to London next week and ongoing. I know how lucky I am. Quite often in the past, my younger self would have not felt so relaxed about turning off from the prospect of work for the summer. Yet it might often have been the most beneficial thing I could have done. August is remarkably quiet. It's like a very long 198...

I remember how much easier it is to cope with the pains of unemployment during the summer months. A hot day could mean a trip to the park, or simply lying out on the communal patch of grass behind the flat in which I used to live which stood in for a garden. The approach of August is probably one of the times of the year when I worry least about the prospect of having no work. If the sun is streaming through the window, and the humidity is making me just a little bit moist, then the idea of a lazy chair and a good book is probably all the fulfilment I need.  Which means  that it is the most difficult time to be a working actor. To self motivate, to do one thing every day that might need to work, but it's also the time of year when doing one thing every morning, can leave you a day free to enjoy the benefits of the climate and give you the inner peace you have done something that might move things onwards on the work front. Several young actors have said to be duri...

Having suddenly noticed that I haven't blogged since the end of May, I cast my mind back to recall what I've been doing for the last month or so, and I'm instantly reminded of Snow White's melodic trill "Busy Doing Nothing".  Actually it might seem like nothing, but in reality  there's been a hell of a lot going on. Of course I'm not even going to touch on the matters that have been in the public eye. Incensed, jubilant, or plain tired, whatever you are, you don't need to hear more about the Westminster Game of Thrones from me.  A trip to New York at the end of May for four days to deliver one 90 minute seminar with my favourite corporate acting associate  Marianne O'Connor was a joy, even if our return was slightly marred by a cancelled flight at 12:15 AM   resulting in a very short nights sleep,  an incredibly expensive flight back for the  two of us  the next day, and a Twitter battle to achieve compensation. A pleasant Devon we...

The joys of mentoring are many, as I have found out over the last four or five years since my involvement in the Alan Bates award began. It's great to get a new perspective on the profession in 2016, one that I as an actor approaching 60 years of age would not have had, and indeed it's a lot of this information that is inspired me to write my recent tome "The Working Actor" which the Twitterati tell me is  Being received extremely well. Indeed doing a book signing  and a discussion courtesy of Samuel French a week or so ago has meant that I've had the chance to sit down with a couple more young people and find out exactly what they're up to what the world is like out there today. The guys I mentor to the Alan Bates are now working and doing well, and it's an unexpected joy to have to once again take to the road visit the repertory theatres of England to see them in action. A slow train to Stoke-on-Trent and a stay in a hotel  straight out ...

Last week was the week of the Bates, or the Alan Bates Award, to give it the full correct name. I've been involved with this for the past five years and every year the team at the Actors Centre have managed to up the stakes, the level and the profile of the event. this one has to have been the best yet and on Thursday last week, the building was positively buzzing. Finalists, three girls and three boys this year much to the relief of the gender police, arrive in the building early. It's the first chance they have had to meet and work with their duologue partner, and I get a quick chance to pop in and look at the work of each pair. I don;t direct, but I may just offer a few words of guidance. After all, I want them to look at their very best when they play the dialogue in front of the judges that afternoon. They are nervous, yet excited - experiencing for the first time probably just what it feels like to be waiting to interview for a job that you really want. O...

Over the last couple of years writing has had an increased predominance in my life and I'm rather thrilled to find that I like it.. I have several friends who are writers, mainly writers of television material, and I have always admired the self-discipline they have to sit down at their computer screens each morning and conjure up words out of the air. That was always the problem for me in being a writer. The self-discipline and the self-determination to do that. In acting, for a great amount of the time, there is somebody there to set us a deadline and to make us do the work. We have to learn the lines by the morning. We have to turn up for rehearsal at a certain time. We have to be in the theatre by the half. I like all that. It's good and it lets me know where I need to be at any given point. In writing, those are targets you have to set yourself. When I wrote my first book "So You Want to Be a Corporate Actor?", although I was keen to write the book, the actu...