Growing Old Gracefully

It is fast approaching that time when I celebrate another year on the planet, another notch on the stick, another tick in the book. It's not a particularly memorable one this year, and in the last 12 months I decided that I wouldn't have a numeric birthday  and would just spend a period of 24 months calling myself  " approaching 60".

I don't have a problem with the big milestone birthdays. I think  they are  a great opportunity  for looking  back and celebrating achievements and events, and looking forward ready to launch oneself off into a new decade. Thanks to my partner, my 50th was incredibly memorable, and I hereby publicly excuse him from any responsibility for making my 60th even more so. (I think a 60th deserves warm seas, sunshine, and relaxation - think that might be regarded as a hint). I will certainly find a way of celebrating such a milestone with my friends and those dear to me.

My 40th, which I suppose is the first real big milestone when we feel that we are technically getting old, came at a very good time. Having been told on the first day of my professional career by an esteemed actress  "when you get 40  you'll  never stop" it turned out she was right. Following on from my 40th birthday, work took off in a way that I probably couldn't have envisaged. Three months before my 40th birthday I also met the man who has been such an important part of my life for over 19 years now, so it seemed that my 40th was an opportunity to draw all the positive strands from the years before into a really good way of moving forward . It involved drinking (something I still used to do them), cake, parties, and gifts.

In 2018 the Actors Centre will be 40 years of age. An incredible achievement for the people who set it up in 1978, and an incredible testimony to all the people in the interim who have helped to keep it going, and made sure that it  continues to be a valuable resource in a world where  training is expensive, and anyone can become "a star"for a transitory fifteen minutes.  It provides a haven for professional actors to develop and enhance their abilities.   A place where actors work and play. So huge thanks to those founders.

 Part of that legacy now lies in my hands as chairman of the board of the Actors Centre,  and while I just missed the 30th anniversary having not been appointed in 2008, the opportunity for drinking, cake, gifts, games, and general celebrations that the 40th birthday of the  Actors  Centre will bring is one I look forward to.

 But we do have to get there. While the ideal of the Actors Centre is still strong in our hearts, and has found a new place in the working days of a whole new generation of young  talented actors, the physical fabric of the organisation needs repair. I'd like to be able to say needs improvement,  but actually our building in Covent Garden needs repairs just to make it compliant with the many regulations now in force. At my 40th birthday, I didn't have  problems with my waterworks, and I'd like to make it the same for the Actors Centre building.

We have poor soundproofing, toilets that can sometimes fight back with a vengeance, air-conditioning that seems to be equipped for only the North Pole or the equator, and walls that just need a jolly good lick of paint. This is what I'd like to achieve by the 40th birthday of the centre in 2018.

Last year we did a sponsored walk in order to raise some money to get a feasibility study done as to just what work we need to do.. We raised quite a lot of money, though we didn't get very much support in terms of people walking.

We need to raise much more money to complete the study, get the plans for the building updated, and make a realistic proposal to the bank for finance for the repairs. We don't have big black-tie supporters,  though some of the founding members still divert sums of money towards us whenever they can. We don't have a brilliant fundraising profile, and many of the trusts and foundations who have supported us over the years now no longer give grants, or are struggling to exist themselves.

We have to earn money.  We need to create new material in the programme and we need to encourage more people to come into the building. We have got a lot of new material planned, including a series of lunchtime seminars very competitively priced. There is a school of thought that we could sell the existing premises and, with the undoubted profit that we might make, buy some premises in Outer London and run workshops there.

While making it financially easier for the organisation, I don't think it would really help the membership. The building we have is in a superb position slap bang in the centre of Covent Garden. As one who regrets the enormous journey involved when travelling for a costume fitting to the BAFTA award-winning Angels since they relocated to Hendon from Camden Town, I can't see people coming to an industrial estate in Colliers Wood for a cup of coffee with some fellow actors. People do drop into the Covent Garden building for just that because of its location.

We've had an incredible take-up of new membership from this year's graduates, and I'm hoping that they and the graduates of previous years will be able to take on part of the responsibility to keep this fantastic institution in the condition that it should be. Just like the wisdom that is handed down from generation to generation in many of the workshops and seminars that the Actors Centre provides, so the building itself is a resource which we should be able to hand on in a great condition as it grows older.

I'm looking forward to our 40th birthday, but before then I'll probably be asking people for money. One of them might be you.