claytoncast

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...

Even though my school days  are now nothing but a distant memory, this time of year always feels like a new beginning. September brings a new term with new hopes and new targets. I've just taken the whole of August off to work on my new book, and  other than one days corporate training in mid August, it's been a month of tracksuit bottoms and typing. Next week sees me get back to work. The suits will have to come out of the wardrobe. A trip to Amsterdam for a job, a two-day corporate training programme, and an Actors Centre board meeting, and a voice-over if I'm lucky. I'd like to think that the next year will be like a new term. Lots of new things to learn, and new experiences.  "I like to think I learn something new on every job" is a phrase that has probably become slightly hackneyed. Most of the jobs I do I'm given because I know how to do them. Yet I would hope that I learn something new about human nature, people, or which car park not to pa...

 lt's always difficult when I haven't blogged for a little while to work out what to talk about. Lots of things going on, yet are they things that might be of interest to other people? Well, it's August, and holiday time, and as I'm having a month off from work to buckle down and write my new book "The Working Actor", it would seem the appropriate time to take a little respite from giving advice, and to have a little indulgence. We just had what for me was a trip down memory lane. A weekend away in Stratford-upon-Avon to see two shows and catch up with several people who I know  in the company down there at the moment. Eliott Barnes Worrell has been mentioned by me before, as I had the great pleasure of mentoring him two years ago as winner of the Alan Bates bursary award at the Actors Centre. Joan Iyiola was a gorgeous National youth Theatre assistant director who worked with me in 2010 on a less than happy production and who has  stayed a firm friend an...

Some people think I'm a dreadful actor. And they are right. Mercifully some people think I'm rather good, and, of course, they are right too. The point here is that acting is never something that can be measured quantitatively. It's always going to be something that's subjective. We can sit side by side together in the theatre on the same night watching the same actor in the same play and we can have widely differing opinions. And that's great. But how does that work at the end of three years training and an investment of around £27,000 when you step out into the world?  Your drama school doesn't grade you. It can't. Even those drama training establishments which are now part of larger educational bodies and offer degree status mainly award the level of degree on the written work involved in the course, rather than the level of talent. That's why drama schools offer up their final year students in showcases knowing that some of these people are prob...

As a child and this was probably one of the most exciting times of the year. Next weekend would see the start of the big long summer  holidays. Six or seven weeks of no school, and long empty days to fill as you would, with all sorts of games and leisure. And, of course, boredom. Inevitably by the end of August, the novelty of lots of long unstructured days had begun to wear off, and one craved a little order and routine. As an actor long unstructured days are not only the province of the summer, but things can feel even harder when there is a holiday feel all around you, and all you desperately want is work. The dread that if you've not been cast in something by the end of July, then you probably won't be actually working until at least early September is one that can bring dark clouds into even the brightest of summer days. Yet as an actor you are working all the time, whether it is for someone else, or yourself. It's easier to convince yourself you had a good day whe...

Actually we have just come back from our summer holiday. Two whole weeks of gorgeous sunshine, delicious food, and the fabulous hospitality that is Turkey. Of course today I am paying for it all with a desk full of emails, invoices, post, and a week ahead of meetings etc that require preparation. That, and a guest appearance in the Sydenham community play next Sunday afternoon, should mean that the holiday will soon become a distant memory. Yet it is incredibly important. It’s two whole weeks that I get to spend exclusively with my partner. It’s all about me and him, and allows us to renew our batteries, and the joy we have in spending time with each other. It also allows me to step away from my work, and see things in perspective. It’s very easy for actors, desperate for work, and constantly having to chase every opportunity that comes up, not to allow any time for themselves. Between leaving drama school in 1978, and meeting my partner in 1996, I took one holiday. Sometime in ...

As an actor in training, one of my favourite games was "Yes...let's". An exercise to encourage the ability to accept ideas from fellow actors. "Let's go the Zoo..... Yes, let's"  "Let's all lie down and pretend to be in the Arctic...." Yes......(Sideways glance for a skulking polar bear) ....Let's". The whole concept of being open to things and reacting to them in a positive way.  To build and not to block. The whole idea of trying something out wholeheartedly before rejecting it is key to the way we work in the rehearsal room and in front of the camera. Yet there is a very important place in our work for the word "NO".  It's all part of the process of knowing yourself, and knowing that what you bring to each and every job you do as an actor is yourself. You have likes, and you have dislikes. You have standards, and you have an ability to compromise. You also have the choice to decide when all those things co...