Not a bad face, Irene Stenhope thinks, as she deftly applies base make-up. She’s never been a beauty – always a Barrymore or Plowright rather than a Mirren. Her appearance is unremarkable, someone you would pass on the street and fail to recall a minute later. A blank canvas has been her blessing, more so than great beauty. It’s taken her from Ophelia, to Blanche, to Lady Macbeth. Irene darkens her eyebrows with expert strokes. Countless times, she’s added thirty years, shadow and pencils creating crow’s feet and lip wrinkles. Now she works to keep age at bay.
What’s the secret to being a great actress, her disciples ask, as they study her metamorphosis? They’ve come from schools where the art is taught by academics. Funded by student loans, they absorb the theory, get an A+ and a graduation ceremony, and a year later they’re making coffee and sending out audition tapes. Those with guts and talent make their own work; others gravitate to Sydney or London, and email when they get a walk-on in a sitcom, still yearning for the stage. It breaks her heart.
Irene gives thanks for that time when theatre was an event. People dressed up and a ticket was hot property. Forty years ago, Ibsen’s Ghosts was scandalous. A philandering husband, a syphilitic son, drunkenness and incest. Now such stories fuel the 24 hour news cycle and Irene understands why the audience doesn’t come. The tide has turned to spectacle and celebrity – the stadium concert, the A-list comedian – where the underbelly of human existence can be forgotten or mocked with numbing cruelty.
Irene dons Mrs Alving’s full period clobber one last time. The show is closing, they were told today. No four week season, no tour. It’s all there in the contract; it’s the company’s right. Sales are slow, the houses are thin.
What’s the secret to being a great actress, they ask? Technique, method? No, not even talent. Irene knows that, more than the ability to fully inhabit the character, the art is to forget what you know. To forget the end of the story, to forget that the show is closing, to forget that the best years are behind. To step into the lights and towards an unknown future as if for the very first time.
What’s the secret to being a great actress, her disciples ask, as they study her metamorphosis? They’ve come from schools where the art is taught by academics. Funded by student loans, they absorb the theory, get an A+ and a graduation ceremony, and a year later they’re making coffee and sending out audition tapes. Those with guts and talent make their own work; others gravitate to Sydney or London, and email when they get a walk-on in a sitcom, still yearning for the stage. It breaks her heart.
Irene gives thanks for that time when theatre was an event. People dressed up and a ticket was hot property. Forty years ago, Ibsen’s Ghosts was scandalous. A philandering husband, a syphilitic son, drunkenness and incest. Now such stories fuel the 24 hour news cycle and Irene understands why the audience doesn’t come. The tide has turned to spectacle and celebrity – the stadium concert, the A-list comedian – where the underbelly of human existence can be forgotten or mocked with numbing cruelty.
Irene dons Mrs Alving’s full period clobber one last time. The show is closing, they were told today. No four week season, no tour. It’s all there in the contract; it’s the company’s right. Sales are slow, the houses are thin.
What’s the secret to being a great actress, they ask? Technique, method? No, not even talent. Irene knows that, more than the ability to fully inhabit the character, the art is to forget what you know. To forget the end of the story, to forget that the show is closing, to forget that the best years are behind. To step into the lights and towards an unknown future as if for the very first time.
Rosemary McBryde
No comments:
Post a Comment