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| Tonbridge Grammar School For Girls 1975 - See if you can spot yours truly! (Clue: I had long hair!) |
Good very cold morning to you all!
Its quiet and dark down here in the kitchen. Nita said yesterday afternoon that the days are drawing out and it was still light at 4.30pm. So the teasing scent of spring will be with us soon.
Coffee now in hand my thoughts turn back to my early years. In sharing this, I wondered if it was maybe a bit indulgent, and then talking to my special friend Amari yesterday, she reminded me that people enjoy real stories. Sharing our life stories perhaps lights up areas for other people, from which they might take something of some small value for their own lives.
My purpose in sharing this stuff is driven in part by the few requests, but mostly it is to open up the journey of a small girl turning into a young woman who wanted to make her way as an artist but didn't know how
My mind frequently returns to the young people we work with and most recently the 16 I had the privilege to work with on Cinderella. They stand in the foothills of their own futures, and many like me are searching for their own way. Maybe my story might resonate for some of them, I hope so.
The funny thing about deciding that theatre is your life at an early age is that people often support you hugely at the beginning, believing that its important to explore all possibilities when the world lies open before you. But perhaps in spite of their goodwill it often seems to some a little far fetched. And so it was for me.
However, as I have mentioned before, the minute you hit 11 things can change overnight. A safe passage through this period at secondary school is important, but it also presents an opportunity to experience the ups and downs that will be an inevitable part of a life in the arts. So I guess that's a positive.
Having lived in encouraged imagination at St Augustine's Catholic Junior School, I found myself sitting the 11+ and getting a place at Tonbridge Grammar School for Girls. It was an accolade, the sheep were sorted from the goats. At the time I had no appreciation for those who were catergorised so young as goats. Cruel.
Being reasonably academically able meant that all emphasis from now on would be on that. I remember excitedly buying bits of uniform and pencil cases and bags that summer before I went to TGGS. We had little pudding basin grey velour hats, purse belts and knee high grey woollen socks, and a scratchy wool skirt that had to be three inches below the knee.
I couldn't wait to go. I had seen the hundreds of girls walking up Pembury Hill for years like a well formed army. I wanted to be part of that.
The first walk up that hill was largely uneventful. My Mum had made sure that I had a friend to walk with. She was very sweet but not really my sort of person. So we walked dutifully and quietly, that was until I felt a warm splash on the back of my neck, and putting my hand up to this ridiculous pudding basin hat I discovered that a pigeon had decided to christen me for my first day! I was mortified and tried to rub it off with a bit of paper. But there it was, a sign of what was to come perhaps!
Rigid school days, kindly but often aloof teachers processed us through the well oiled machine. There was no question that we would not go to university, which in those days was largely the domain of the public and grammar schools. Noone ever bothered to ask what we might want to be.
I know this experience at TGGS wasn't the same for all my friends. I am still very close to five of them, and our friendship is testament to the time we grew together there. I was never happy though, not really. It felt like treading water. This was literally old school. Gone were the French plays and silage. In their place rows of desks in 1945 annexes, Latin and maths. There was some music and singing, but as for anything else creative -zilch.
I realise now that those first five years at secondary school were soul numbing for me. I didn't feel that I fitted in. Maybe this is a common experience for many children as they find out more about who they are through adolescence. But I definitely didn't fit it. I would have happily carried on playing imaginary games, but there is something unseemly about galloping around the playground as an overgrown horse! So I curtailed these activities for the sake of conforming.
I felt very lost. Teachers rarely inspired me, apart from a couple of notable exceptions. Mrs Johns comes to mind easily. She was my english teacher in my first year and I remember enjoying reading out loud from the Rose and the Ring by William Thackery, but mostly because I loved doing the voice of Princess Angelica and making myself the class clown. That was about the sum total of anything remotely resembling acting!
So for the first three years of secondary school, I felt that I disappeared really apart from the moments when I played class clown, and everyone would laugh and encourage me. And then when I got into trouble for fussing and got a detention it was really down to me! It makes me laugh now, as I have met kids like me many times in a workshop or a classroom, and whilst they can be quite funny, they are mostly a pain! But I guess that is also about recognising what they might need to keep them on track and encourage their creativity. Its a fine line and I was certainly likely to have been a bit of a pain to many of my teachers.
My mum and dad knew intuitively that all wasn't great for me at school and with their insight that I now appreciate hugely, organised for me to have private drama lessons with Joyce Ashton who had her own drama school in Tunbridge Wells. The halcyon days of Mrs Donovan's elocution lessons in her rose covered cottage were now behind me and Mrs Ashton called.
It was a saving grace. I started the Guildhall Speech and Drama exam route and that was just what I needed to counterbalance the intense deadness I felt at school.
That's probably enough for now. I will pick this part of my blog story up again shortly.
Today - off to a number of very interesting meetings - and head down with Natalie to write a proposal for funding.
Have a good one.
Director's Suggested Exercise of the Day
Pick up a favourite book with lots of dialogue and have fun with a friend reading the story, finding a narrator voice and really exploring the voices of the characters. Children are often asked to read in class and this exercise for fun can help to extend their vocal range and the colour of their voices.
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