Reading it Out

Having now seen the television footage of our six Alan Bates bursary finalists, I really have absolutely no idea who will win this Friday in the final round. It should be very exciting and, mercifully, that decision is in the hands of our wonderful judges. The casting director Catherine Willis, the agent Kevin Brady, and the actress and national treasure, Anita Dobson.

Although it's impossible to predict, I would make one guess. Our six finalists should stand a good chance of working in their first year, and as any actor who starts a new job will tell you, the first thing they will have to get through is the read through. A minefield all of its own, and the place where first impressions are formed by you and about you.

Readthroughs used to be de rigeur on the first morning of any theatrical production.. Now they have most likely to have been replaced by a meet and greet, where everyone from the director to the wardrobe mistress and the stage door keeper to the accounts department will stand around with a cup of coffee and say hello. You may then never see the person from accounts again, but at least you might know who to go to when your overtime is incorrect, and it gets them out of the office for an hour or so.

You may then go into three or four days of detailed text work before the director feels that you're capable of being let loose on reading the whole play.

Television likes a readthrough to get everybody together. You can guarantee on a television production, no matter how large or prestigious it is, that there will be more people in the room who aren't actors than who are. A series readthrough can involve a whole rainforest of scripts laid out in places around the table, and you can guarantee that, even though you only have five lines in episode four, you will have been given all six episodes which will be identical to the six episodes you printed out at home at great expense.

At last year's read through of "  Him and Her -The Wedding" I made a brave attempt to use emailed scripts on my iPad. I lasted an episode and a half, before I resorted to picking up one of the paper scripts in front of me and joining in the group page turning that was going on.

As a director, I always used to say to my actors on read through morning that this is the last chance you have to show me what you want to do before I mess it up. My very first outing as a director was for a production of "Gaslight" at the Watermill Theatre Newbury in 1990. I had assembled a cast of whom I was inordinately proud, and having gone through all the greeting preliminaries, and introduced the theatre staff, I outlined some basic ideas I had for the production, allowed the designer to show them the stunning set with its "special concept features", and then looked forward to settling down while the actors gave us a rattling good read through of what is a gripping melodrama.

Actors sometimes have other ideas. The opening scenes between the heroine and her housekeeper were read incredibly sotto voce.  Read as if neither actress was prepared to commit to what she was doing, and therefore didn't want anybody to hear it. In that they succeeded in spades. Sat at the other end of the table, I could barely hear what was going on. I was reduced to following the script, rather than being able to listen to two embryonic performances. The attention of the theatre staff began to wander to, and had it not been for the old school actor who was playing Inspector Rough, and who on this particular morning was giving it 120%, it would have been rather like sitting in a silent doctor's waiting room for two hours. I do not hesitate to say that all five members of the cast went on to give absolutely great performances in what I must modestly declare was a rather good production, but God that read through was endless.

 For actors the read through is a chance to show what you want to do. You will  have read the play alone at home. Some of you may have even read it aloud. You don't need to let anything settle in your brain. After all, everything you do on stage should be affected by what people do and say around you. There is no harm however in having made some initial decisions as to the direction you like your performance to take. If they are incorrect, any director worth his salt will be able to re guide you. You may find actors who bring a performance to the readthrough, and keep that same performance for the opening night several weeks later.  That's a shame  and every actor should be prepared that the decisions they have made for this readthrough are there for change. Better to have made some decisions though and to share them at this stage

 Such an attitude from an actor can instil confidence into all those concerned with the production. At Stratford in the 1980s we had a wonderful young actor, handsome and keen, who was playing small roles in several of the productions. On stage he was confident and eloquent, but in real life he had a stutter that could at times become quite paralysing. For the third production of the season, an Elizabethan comedy to be staged at The Other Place, he received his lucky break. He was to play the romantic lead. Plucked from the realms of the "play as cast" artists around him, this was his moment. We were all genuinely thrilled for him. 

 The following Monday we all assembled at the theatre for the readthrough. A large circle of chairs were in place on the stage. I was not alone in having realised over the weekend that this readthrough would be an immense challenge, not only for the actor himself, but also for the rest of us who would have to cope with his speech impediment for some three hours as he worked his way through what was an almost impenetrable text. The reading began. He came on in the second scene and his reading was effortless. Beautifully placed, fluent and commanding. We were all a little amazed, and from the safety of our scripts we cast sidelong glances to where he was sitting. The actress sat next to me leant over and whispered "He's not looking at the book, you know". And as I looked, I could see that his eye line was to the floor. Keeping the words out of his sight, he obviously knew all of them. Yet not wanting to flaunt this fact, he was trying to make it look as though he was reading. This must  have been a Herculean task, to learn the whole role before the readthrough just so that his stutter would not hold things up and detract from what turned out to be an amusing and energising morning.

It must be very difficult for actors with dyslexia in a readthrough situation.  Perhaps taking those few extra moments to think about it. Printing out the script in a larger font, or on a different colour background. All of it will help.

For the rest of us, it's about doing something. Not mumbling into our beards, but sharing a few ideas as to how we would like our characters develop. Seed the way forward with our fellow actors,  and to do the one thing that we should be able to do as actors. Speak up.

My seven-month run in Hollyoaks came to an end this week. At least it has on E4. I believe my death will be repeated for the Channel 4 viewers on Easter Monday evening. My work elicited many tweets, mainly plot concerned, but this one particularly amused me.

@MissTrunchbull

Why doesn't that dodgy copper (Marlow) talk properly..?! #Hollyoaks

@flowersbyshamini

Do you watch Peep show?  He plays Sophie's dad in that... he mumbles a lot!

 If only they'd been at the read through.

Press escape to exit indeed! Supt Marlow is no more.