Would you believe it? This week’s guest President is the magnificent David Schofield and after a brief encounter with darts, Yorkshire tea and a suspicious-looking path through the shed, the enchanted bingo machine sends us off into the great outdoors once again.
Our first destination is 324 — Political Processes, which turns out to be a surprisingly good place to begin. Does an actor have to be political? David thinks not. His job, he tells us, is to interpret the writer and director, even when the character’s views are entirely opposed to his own. We wander through Valkyrie, Our Friends in the North, corrupt policemen, the responsibilities of an actor and the dangers of being told, particularly on social media, what you ought to think. But politics also takes us back to David’s childhood in Wythenshawe, and to his father, a committed socialist who worked on the railways and found his political convictions in a very simple realisation: being ordered to stand on a mat so that his working boots didn’t mark the boss’s carpet was, quite simply, wrong.
Then the machine gives us 470 — Latin and Classical Languages, which provides our rather tenuous but entirely legitimate route from Rome to Julius Caesar, Shakespeare and the Royal Shakespeare Company. David talks about iambic pentameter, the extraordinary musicality of Shakespeare’s language and the way the rhythm itself can carry an actor through a speech. We hear about his love of Henry V, Michael Bryant’s extraordinary ability to make pentameter sound like ordinary speech, and the strange magic of knowing that Shakespearean text can remain lodged in the memory for decades.
Finally, the machine produces 024 — General Reference Works, Libraries and Books, and we find ourselves talking about acting itself. David remembers the extraordinary Michael Bryant, the dangers of trying to “show” the audience how much acting you are doing, and the importance of remembering that the audience is paying to feel something, rather than simply watch an actor feeling it. There is room for Chekhov, The Cherry Orchard, Pirates of the Caribbean, the difference between theatre and enormous Hollywood productions, and David’s feeling that the industry has perhaps become rather too serious about itself.
And then, back in the shed, comes perhaps the most revealing moment of all. Asked whether his extraordinary career turned out as he expected, David remembers the advice of his first proper agent, who asked what he wanted from acting. He could have said fame, money or stardom. Instead, he said he wanted to make a living out of it for the rest of his working life.
Presented by Paul Carmichael & Allan Lear
With their special guest President David Schofield and Sir Stephen Fry as the voice of the Bingo Machine.
Music composed and performed by Michael Livesley & Andy Frizell
The voice of Pwfthhh- Michael Livesley
www.michaellivesley.com
Series Researcher- Soula Carmichael
Series Producers- Erica Lear and Mark Hutchinson
Producers- Alan Dyebing & Stuart Morris
Executive Producer- Mark Strickson
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