Catering for Everyone

My partner and I are very lucky to be invited out on many occasions to enjoy corporate hospitality. With my experience in the corporate world, and quite often working with the companies who are providing it. In order to give people a happy corporate freebie, I have acted in whodunits on the Orient express while travelling from Milan to Geneva. I have been shouted down by a group of boozy accountants in a pub in Henley. I have appeared in a costume that would only have graced the stage of the worst of pantomimes as a grand vizier at a major London nightclub complete with dubious accent. I can only hope that all the guests of these various functions had a fabulous time. Usually alcohol ensures that they do.

The main feature of the successful event is to ensure that everyone is catered for. Now as a  non-alcoholic drinker, I frequently despair of the imagination of the organiser who provides water as the only non-alcoholic alternative. Given the rise to fashion of the elderflower, the very least one can expect these days is a ginger and lime infusion with Rutland Spring water. Indeed now I judge the success of many of the events we attend on their choice of provision of non-alcoholic beverage. I'm more sympathetic in the food department. As someone who thinks that vegetarians should probably be catered for in a separate room, I don't shed too many tears when there is no risotto alternative to the rare beef. Mercifully I have a partner who, although he has an absolutely no seafood regime, has no problem in disposing of any other living animal. I'm not sure I'd find life tolerable on a vegetable and nut roast basis.

Yet the success of any event will be based on the fact that everyone has been catered for. Everyone's needs have been taken into consideration.

 Tomorrow, Monday 15 September, we hold a networking evening at the Actors Centre for our final workshop season of the year "The Working Actor" which I am thrilled and proud to have been asked to put together. It's based on my theory that actors who are using the Actors Centre are looking for work, and one of the things that we should do is help them maximise their potential and their opportunities to get work. Actors in work who use the centre regularly are quite a rare thing and yet of course when you have a job, that is the very time when you can choose to enhance your skills  in an unpressured environment. So the key to making the Actors Centre work as successfully as we can for everyone, is to provide something for everyone. Looking through the workshops that are available from the beginning of November to the end of December, I think we've done just that.

Workshops that have proven successful in the past, new workshops, practical workshops, discussion sessions, question-and-answer sessions, and innovative new steps into areas that actors may not have thought of taking before, are all part of the curriculum for the next three months. Brilliantly put together by the excellent Michael John, who is the course director at the Actors Centre, it is a prime example of catering for everyone. If you want to taste a little Meisner, or if you want to nibble on a little TV technique, it's on the menu. And as that extra little bit of elderflower, ginger and lime zing, there are The Working Actor workshops sprinkled liberally throughout the next three months. Chances to meet people who are working hard in their profession. Producers, PR representatives, authors, actors, casting directors, photographers, accountants, and..... yes...... and me!

 To all the people I meet on Monday night night a huge thank you for coming along and investing in what we at the The Actors Centre think should be a great year end. The Tristan Bates Theatre has a really exciting program to complement the workshops, and on Tuesday the 16th, we take our first steps outside the building to the Theatre Royal Drury Lane where I'll be conducting our monthly "Off the Record" chat with the three-time Olivier award-winning star of 'Charlie and the chocolate factory", the delightful Alex Jennings.

Even if I weren't involved, I think I'd have to be there.