Drama – Page 3 – Meditations of Neilus Aurelius

As I sit here writing beside my candle, winter is upon us at last. Blizzards and snow have slowed down the country or so it appears from the news on the television. Here, where I write, in the South West London area, what snow there was has turned to miserable freezing rain. In these wintery times, candlelight is cheering and comforting as is, of course, a blazing fire in the hearth. Something we miss with central heating!

It must have been a comfort to Marcus as the wind howled over the Danube plain outside his tent. A comfort and an inspiration: as fire-gazing can lead to internal reflection and even deeper, to meditation. The fire must have been a fixed point to help him focus on the centre of his consciousness in the whirlwind of his thoughts. I am probably wrong: I am imagining that Marcus’ mind was similar to my own! From his writings, I have a sense that there was a great stillness in Marcus. I doubt he got as frazzled as I do! But then as he was a Roman emperor with absolute power it was easy for him to radiate stillness. Or is that the image he presents to us in his ‘Meditations’? Is it what he wants us to imagine he is like? And his ‘Meditations’ are, after all, the compositions of a mind in repose.

When I was a child in the North East, I used to love gazing at the fire in my nan’s back kitchen. There was a huge black cast iron fire guard in front of it, usually festooned with her stockings, hung out to dry. An Alan Bennett scene! I paid no attention to her hosiery hanging there, but concentrated on the heart of the fire, watching the wood burning to grey ashes in the bed of white and orange flames and listening to the crackling and sputtering in the grate. Looking at the flames would lead me to my first stirrings of inner reflection. I would think of ideas for little plays I might write or poems.

I did a lot of writing then. I would coerce my school mates and friends in the street to be in my little plays. We’d act them out in the road. There were very few cars then, you see. One of my friends in the street – Michael – took a play of mine and passed it off as his own at his own school.

I remember I would arduously write out the parts by hand, like a little monk. And now, what seems like thousands of years later, in my retirement I am writing again and I am still a little monk. But in between, I have been writing plays for my school too, and coercing my students to take part instead. Except they haven’t needed much coercing because they enjoy it and because it might involve a week on tour in Budapest.

I’ve been thinking about my childhood in the last few weeks a lot. I have just seen the new film ‘Stan and Ollie’ about Laurel and Hardy, the great movie comics. They were part of my childhood. Their short comedy films were on BBC TV every Saturday teatime after the football results and before ‘Doctor Who’. I was ten or eleven years old when the first one was shown. It was ‘The Music Box’: Stan and Ollie trying to get that upright piano in a wooden crate up all those flights of steps. I vividly remember watching it in my nan’s back kitchen, which was where she had the television. I was leaning over the kitchen table with an iced bun in my hand entranced by their comic antics while the fire cackled in the background.The films were in black and white but what did that matter? Television was in black and white then too!

Of course those little comic gems have been repeated on TV so many times since – but not so much now, which is a great shame. And now they are on blue ray and DVD and I am

sure you can stream them. Through these little films (which were originally fillers on a cinema programme) and a handful of feature films, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy very quickly became international movie stars and held in great affection by a worldwide audience to the extent that they are now cinema icons. It is amazing to think that their films are 80 years old in the main (and the silent ones 90 years old) yet there is still such a strong interest in them and affection for them that recently a movie about their lives has been made.

In the film, Steve Coogan (Stan) and John C. Reilly (Ollie) are very adept at adapting the duo’s movie mannerisms to situations off camera and off stage in real life. The story deals with their final UK tour in the 50’s which was initially not as big a success as their tour a decade earlier. Their working relationship is under strain not least because Ollie’s health is in decline and because the offers are no longer coming. But the working relationship survives – because they are great friends. The friendship endures. And that is what shines through the slapstick mayhem in their films – there is an affectionate bond between them.

Their humour is gentle and warm. Yes humour has changed a great deal since they were in front on the cameras – it is more cynical, sarcastic, sexual and foul mouthed – even in family movies – and slapstick is not so funny to general audiences now. I’ve played some of their movies to my pupils -the younger ones love it, but the older ones don’t find it so funny. But when Stan and Ollie were working in the 20’s and 30’s,there were caustic, cynical and sexy sophisticated comedies too.

I think part of their enduring appeal is their screen personas, which was so very different from their off-camera personalities. Though Ollie was the dominant personality of the two

in the movies, in real life it was Stan who wrote the gags, directed and produced (in this he was like his contemporary Charlie Chaplin). He had already appeared in silent movies as a solo star. Ollie was a jobbing actor who generally went along with whatever Stan had devised.

Stan had that rare quality of being able to portray pure innocence on screen and not make it sentimental or something to be jeered at. It was a childlike innocence – Chaplin was more artful (in some ways like the Artful Dodger from his favourite book ‘Oliver Twist’). Stan may be slow-witted (and gets them both into high water as a result) but it is part of his charm. We don’t deride him for it, but laugh with him.

Ollie is all politeness, Southern gentility and charm. He is always eager to help others in the films. Despite his large frame, there is a grace about his movement at times, as there in Stan’s movement too, evident in their famous dance in ‘Way Out West’. He is a Southern gentleman (making use of his roots in Georgia) or tries to be in the most ridiculous of situations.

At the root of the duo’s appeal is there inherent goodness. They are good people to be with – as a German comedian commented in a TV documentary I recently saw.

Of course it was television in the main that prolonged their longevity with the public. Though their popularity was on the wain in the mid-1950’s, when their movies appeared on TV (first in the U.S.A and later in our own and other countries) they were given a new lease of life. And years later, after endless repeats the movies were issued on video and DVD and colourised and digitally restored. Modern technology has resurrected them. Yes it’s a kind of resurrection.

Of course, without the modern technology of the time, the development of the moving picture, Stan and Ollie would never have got together at all. I ask myself what would have happened to them instead. Before becoming besotted with the movies and working in cinemas around 1913, Hardy was a singer and had a cabaret and vaudeville act. Without the movies, he may have graduated to being a actor in plays and musicals around the U.S. I guess and maybe he would have got to Broadway. Laurel was a music hall comedian, in Fred Karno’s comic troupe (along with Charlie Chaplin). That may have been how he would have carried on, along with Charlie, playing the music hall and later variety circuits. If he survived World War One.

But for technology, they would never have got together and we would never have known them decades later.

Ave atque Vale until the next blog.

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Neilus Aurelius

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As I write this meditation, the candle flickers in front of me through the painted glass of a small Christmas bowl. Painted around the bowl is a winter rural scene: farmhouses dripping with ice and a sleigh being pulled by horses in a snow drift lit by a half moon. I purchased it in Budapest and have given several others as Christmas gifts to friends and family. Candles in bowls would probably have been on Marcus’ table too as he wrote his Meditations or oil lamps of course.

The scene reminds me of the production of ‘A Christmas Carol’ which I mentioned in my last blog. We performed it in our studio theatre last week (to great success) and we used projected digital images to set the many scenes and to create the magical effects. One of the images was similar to the winter rural scene painted on my candle bowl.

In the play (and novel) Scrooge is taken by the Spirit of Christmas Past to revisit his old school days. This is where the image appeared as a backdrop. Scrooge says ‘Good heavens! I know this lane. And this is my old school!’ One of the most disconcerting experiences for Scrooge in the play is to have to witness scenes from his past and especially how he lost the love of his life, Bella, because of his addiction to creating wealth.

It would be disconcerting for us to have the opportunity to see ourselves as we once were. And to be forced to do so, as Scrooge is by the Spirit. Not only to see ourselves but also to observe our behaviour and hear what we said, especially in moments we would, like Scrooge, prefer to forget.

In the summer I experienced a little of that, when I was visiting family in Canada. My aunt Barbara has an obsession for photographs. She possesses dozens of albums from years ago. Every time I visit she gives me photos of the family or copies, for some are very precious to her. She left several in an envelope in my room this time.

One was a photo taken outside my parents’ house in Redcar. I am there standing in my school uniform with my father beside me. I must have been in the fifth year (Year 11) as we had a different uniform for the Sixth Form. I have a shock of black hair and a few discernible spots: the picture of adolescence! There I am with my trusty black brief case and a carrier bag of LP’s. Well it was 1970! I am barely smiling and I look self conscious as I never liked having my photo taken then. Photos were a rare occurrence: the age of the mobile phone camera and the selfie were a long way away. I look gauche. Lacking in self-confidence. Shy. Innocent. And I was then as I remember.

As I looked closely at the photo in my room in my aunt’s apartment on Vancouver Island I realised how far I had travelled. I was literally, physically thousands of miles away from Redcar in the North East of England and also thousands of miles away from myself as I

was then, aged 16. As I looked closely at my face I felt a sadness come upon me too. It was similar to the sadness that Scrooge feels as he witnesses his past again. Or at least, when I was watching Robert’s reactions as Scrooge in the scenes last week, I was reminded of the sadness I felt at that moment, looking at my 16 year old self in the photo in auntie’s apartment last summer.

As I looked at my young face, I thought about all the things that were going to happen to me afterwards, things I could never have predicted of course. And the sadness lingered a little. I didn’t have a very happy youth. And then I thought of those who befriended me and those who rescued me. And those who have stayed friends through all my life. And my family. And friends I didn’t know existed at the time (most of whom probably weren’t even born then). And all the places I never imagined visiting or living in then. All the places I never knew existed: like the house where I have lived for 25 years and my school where I have worked for 34. And I thought of my faith, through it all I kept my faith.

So I went out for a walk and sat on a bench looking out to the Pacific and the low grey mounds of the little islands in the ocean. And I had a Marcus moment. I recalled all my friends and their good qualities.

So the production was a success. My cast did become a company, indeed a little community, which is always my aim as a director (as I mentioned in a previous blog). And, (as I also mentioned in the same blog) the invisible ring between cast and audience was achieved I think, at least according to all the appreciative comments I have received from audience members. Even though we are a small oblong of a studio theatre and not a grand horseshoe-shaped opera house like Covent Garden. Despite the vicissitudes of all the scene changes in our 19 scene play, the actors and crew worked so well together, that I was able to enjoy the play a little from backstage and on the last night from the side of the audience too.

It goes without saying that a director sees the scenes over and over again in rehearsals and performance. It is a very special feeling to see performances grow in rehearsal and in performance and that is the real bonus for a director. Because of seeing scenes over and over again, there are individual scenes I can remember really well, moment by moment, even from years ago. And there are a few I’d rather forget of course! There are even certain lines, spoken by certain students, that I can hear in my mind. Maybe in my final moments on this earth, I shall hear them again at the last. (I hope that those of you reading this, who are my ex- Drama students won’t be bombarding me with texts and messages saying ‘Do you remember my scene? Do you remember my line?’!). There are several wonderful moments and speeches I am sure I will remember from my latest production.

But also, observing the play over and over again, a director realises aspects he hadn’t thought of. For instance, in rehearsal I began to realise that the real villain in the story is not Scrooge but Jacob Marley for it is young Marley who corrupts young Scrooge and leads him to become fixated on accumulating more wealth: ‘Business is business, Ebenezer.’

I have also realised that Scrooge (as an old man) begins the play as a person closed in on himself: ‘Secret and self-contained, as solitary as an oyster; warning all human sympathy to keep its distance.’ But by the end of the play, when he has learnt from observing his past, present and future, he opens himself up to everyone: ‘A Merry Christmas to everyone. A Happy New Year to the whole world!’

I hope and pray my own personal trajectory has been the same. This is the meaning of Christmas: to be open to everyone, not closed. It is the true open season.

Ave atque vale! Until the next blog.