What is it like for an actor waiting in the wings in the moments before they go on stage? What has their journey been to arrive at that point, in full costume and make-up? And what motivates them to overcome their anxieties before stepping out in front of an audience?

For some actors, Hollywood stardom beckons. But for many, success in the industry looks very different.

Outside of coveted castings in illustrious Marvel series or Broadway productions, thousands of actors will apply their craft in village halls and local theatres, as well as commercial gigs such as role plays for professional training.

“I’ve always had this thing five minutes beforehand - I don’t want to go on. It says start at 7.30... at 7.35 I’m hating everyone. I’m like, ‘I don’t want to do this. I don’t have to be here. I’ve got other things to do’. It’s five minutes of absolute fear.”

— Saul Jaffe

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In this revealing discussion ranging from things going wrong in front of a live audience, to the importance of tight teamwork with backstage colleagues, playwright and director Mary Swan hosts an entertaining and insightful exploration of the work/life realities for modern actors.

Mary's guests for this episode are

Mary Rose, who has performed on Broadway alongside Kristin Scott Thomas in a Royal Court production of The Seagull, as well as an acclaimed one-woman show, 12.10.15 at the Edinburgh Festival.

Mary plays artist Catherine Shaw in Proteus Theatre's stage production, Indestructible.

Paul Huntley-Thomas appears in the Disney+ Marvel mini-series Secret Invasion and the 2DF Studios feature Lost Women Spies.

Paul plays art collector Robin in Proteus Theatre's stage production, Indestructible.

Saul Jaffe is an actor, dramaturg and creative consultant. He has worked for Shakespeare's Globe and performed at the National Theatre, as well as his one-man show Merrick, The Elephant Man, which appeared in the Brits Off Broadway festival in 2009.

Saul is the dramaturg for Proteus Theatre's stage production, Indestructible.

“When you’ve got a full house (at) the Royal Albert Hall clapping and cheering... you think ‘this is incredible’. But again... I love doing the village halls. Some of my best memories of doing the village halls was the impact that you make on communities.”

— Paul Huntley-Thomas

Chapters

2:20 Early career building in theatre

5:38 Working on village hall productions

7:03 Comparing big budget work to community theatre

10:47 Training at The Poor School

12:51 Chemistry with the audience

14:11 Performing in a one-person show

17:34 Working with the backstage team

19:50 When things go wrong on stage

25:07 The value of non-acting skills

Mary Swan 0:03
Hi. Thanks for joining us for Indestructible. I'm Mary Sohn, artistic director of Proteus and director of Indestructible, The Show. My guests for this edition are Mary Rose Sourdough and Paul, Honey, Thomas. All three have had successful careers as actors, and they've joined me today to ask the question, Is an actor's life really for me?
We'll chat about their career paths, the ups and downs, the realities of being an actor that so few people outside the profession really understand.
So to properly introduce my three guests, Paul Honey, Thomas is playing Robin amongst other parts in the show Indestructible, and he's toured nationally, internationally. He's done several film and TV appearances and most recently you can see him in Secret Invasion for Marvel. And he made a one man show with me called My Bad and Dangerous to Know, which he also co-wrote. And we based on the life of Lord Byron Soldier. He's an actor, writer and storyteller. He's working with me on Indestructible, not as an actor, but as dramaturg. He's performed on some of the largest and smallest stages across the UK, including the National, The Globe and Birmingham Rep and across Europe. And we've worked on several shows together and probably most notably on Merrick the Elephant Man, which ended up at the Brits off-Broadway festival in New York. Mary Rose is playing Catherine Shaw in Indestructible, and we've worked together on and off for a long, long time. She made probably most notably the one woman show with me, 12, ten, 15. She's also worked with Pilot Theatre. She did a three month run on Broadway in New York, but also worked for theatres like The New Walls in Ipswich, Chichester, Salisbury Playhouse. So that's alcohol for the conversation today.
Hello, everyone. Hello, welcome. Nice to see everyone. So what I wanted to talk to you guys about was being an actor, the realities of being an actor. We've all worked together for a long time. Full disclosure, we've all worked together on and off. And you've all worked with each other in different forms. And we you know, we've all been in the industry for quite some time, so. So what's been your career path? How did you get to this point?
Saul Jaffe 2:20
So I went to university and that time it was a very physical theatre course. So everything was about the actor, which I absolutely loved. So the first couple of years were about what your ideas were and you were just given space to perform and make your own work. And then the third year was more community focused. So by that point we kind of spent so much time working an ensemble together, working with, with other people, and a lot of people coming out of that process went into their own theatre companies. They set up their own stuff, made their own work. So I think the disadvantage of it was we just weren't prepared for the business world, the business of acting. We didn't have the contacts of CV to say, I played this, I played that, I've done this play. But we had a great ability to work together with people. So that stood me in good stead for those companies who look for those sort of actors. Once I'd kind of got in, had a foot in the door, I just started being recommended to other people. So that developed. And again, disadvantage from my point of view, is that I never really tried to look for commercial things go into the business of having an agent to represent me and somebody else looking out. So that's a pitfall of that side of things, not knowing the business side of things as well as somebody might come out of drama school, but it was just having time on stage, really learning my craft, being on stage as much as possible, making mistakes, and then just saying yes to things. And when people said, Do you want to do the studio Shakespeare? Do you want to try this? Do you wanted to try that? Had a notion of just saying yes to stuff and seeing where it took me.
Mary Swan 3:48
And doing that first show, not just doing a show here, but then going to the former Yugoslavia and working in those communities. That's a really I mean, for anyone that's really unusual project. Buffy First show, though.
Saul Jaffe 4:00
Yeah, I mean, that was it. Yes, I loved it. Let me just say that first of all. So I have to admit to being a tad bit snobby. You know, I was a physical theatre actor. That's what I wanted to do. I worked very much in ensemble and there was this group called the best sellers, who everybody said, Oh, you must go and see them, You must go and see them. And they were brilliant. And I just thought, my background is as a Jewish performer coming from the Jewish community, there's a sense that sometimes there can be some stuff like, Oh, and the whole community's a little bit twee can be somebody playing a guitar, singing Hebrew songs, which, you know, I'm a little bit averse to over over time and being brought up like that always going to be a little bit childish. And that play was fantastic, right? So just kept being extended and extended. I can't not go and see this. I was absolutely blown away. I was absolutely blown away by their physicality, by the fact that they used movement words and music. They said one of those things. Does the storytelling at any point? Not all three. So if you've got music telling a story, the physicality has to do something else. The words have to do something else. And I watched that. I sat gobsmacked. And the only company that I've really written to and said, I would like to work for you, please, I'll pass and cross for many years. But when it did, then we got together and I sort of understood their language in terms of physicality, and then they had to show that they just needed somebody else to take one of the parts for, and that was me.
Mary Swan 5:23
That's great. And you've done over your career, as you say, the largest in the smallest ages because you did huge ensemble work at the National and then we've done for it all. To us, that is small.
Saul Jaffe 5:38
I still have children, but for ladies in Aldershot, I think there's a there's a bakery called the Three Buns or something or we did some street theatre there and I added two buttons to their view when I was doing a quick change in the street. So I don't think they were overly impressed by that. But we have, we have some of my favourites are still, if you remember, a midsummer Night's Dream. Yes, it was beautifully interrupted by some of the ladies. I mean, certainly. Yeah. Just as you get to the do more of the play, which is just say go for lunch. No, just setting up a load to rattle that rattle. So it just that's the reality of bringing shows to people. And that was my background again from Exeter was you take theatre out, right? You take it to the people, you don't expect people to come to you, so you make it relevant to them to their community, you make it engaging and you have to think about what the audience wants from this. So you have to adapt stuff. But yeah, so we've done
taking my clothes off in public kids, staff teaching and then going to big stages as well. You know, the National was amazing, but again, it's a very different demand.
Mary Swan 6:42
Yeah, Yeah. And, and I suppose that variety is, is great because that's for you Paul That's been quite a big thing because I mean, you know, just doing a marvel series and you've done a Bollywood movie and then you've done tiny stages and big stages as well. What was, what was your for you? What's been the most interesting experiences?
Paul Huntley-Thomas 7:03
I think it's those ones where you don't you don't know what to expect because I've done stuff like The Wall, Our Home. I did an opera there and I applied for it because I thought, I've never done that before. I'm not a singer. And they wanted actors for that. And I thought, Wow, well, that sounds fun and interesting. So I went along and auditioned the parts one of the soldiers, and then you realise how different a world is to the world we're used to. You know, when you're suddenly you're rehearsing a three studio and they've got the London Philharmonic in every day. And I thought, This is incredible. And then when you've got a full house, 10,000 people, the Royal Albert Hall clapping and cheering and you think, this is incredible. But again, that doesn't serve my career. But it's the experience I love. I experience I love doing those odd jobs that you would never normally possibly get to do, but also tying them in together. I love doing the village hall. Some of my best memories I was doing, the village hall was, and the impact that you make on communities. When communities say to you this is the only thing now that we have as a community, because the post office has gone, the pub is gone. So this is all we do. So you felt like, you know, you're really changing people's lives and you felt like to a lot of children as well. This might be the first time they experienced theatre, so those always felt so precious. It was more about being in the community for those few hours than it was about the show, really. So yeah, I loved those.
Mary Swan 8:29
Yeah, We did a show together called Missing in Action, and that was one of the most visceral moments in a village hall is about PTSD and people who were serving in the military and returning service personnel. And we did a lot of research and at its heart was a homeless individual. We tell his story backwards and you always find at the end that he's actually the main character in the play. And Paul would sit outside wherever we were playing, whether it was a village hall or a theatre we did at the Mercury in Colchester or Tiny Village Hall. And again, it's one of the things we've always done is take shows from village halls into main theatres as well, and he'd sit outside in costume as this homeless character and just see what people's response was. And the show started with him walking through the audience, which was just because then everyone had to re-evaluate how they'd looked at or reacted to this person. Yeah, but in that village hall in Salisbury, there were quite a few ex-service personnel, weren't they, who got up at the end of the show and started talking to you guys about their experiences.
Paul Huntley-Thomas 9:28
Yeah. And you could see people on the front row, you know, all the guys holding their partner's hand really tight. And I think I remember somebody saying to us, if he has to leave, it's no comment on the play. It's just it might be a raw in for him. But I was thinking today about this whole thing and think about sort of characters I've enjoyed playing and characters I missed when when I let Spider go, I missed him. He was one of those characters I really enjoyed playing. Yeah, something about him. I don't know what it was. Perhaps his reaction with the audience, or perhaps it's also being cast against type. I'm not that sort of down and out type and I've got a friend, he's got long hair and beard and he's always getting cast as those things. Or wizards or something, you know. But yeah, so it's playing those things where you think I'm really making a difference. You know, this is a really important piece and he's got a lot to say and so yeah, you miss those little parts.
Mary Swan 10:18
Beautifully written by Brendan Murray as well.
A merry Yule. I mean, it's interesting, Paul, talking about being cast against type because it is a perennial issue for female actors. But pull myself in you, we all did drama degrees. It was your time. It's Tom Cruise. Well, yes, we're all degree graduates as opposed to drama school at graduates. But then you went to the Paul school. Yeah. Which I don't think exists anymore, sadly.
Mary Rose 10:47
No, no. It was a really special school because it was set up to support people who wanted to train, who couldn't afford to go to drama school, who might not get grants. The training was around the evenings on the weekends. So you would work all day down. Tools go to King's Cross, where the school was, and it wasn't very salubrious at the time, and we would work there four nights a week and one day at the weekend and I look back now, I did that for two years and I think, wow, actually the stamina I had to have and the discipline. And actually that really has helped me with my acting career.
Mary Swan 11:26
Yeah. And of course, you did three months on Broadway, didn't you? Proper Broadway.
Mary Rose 11:31
Yeah, I did. I did three months on Broadway. So I was in a production of The Seagull for the Royal Court, which transferred to Broadway. Really interesting thing about it, though, I've been thinking as we're having this conversation, it doesn't matter where you are or what you're doing. In the end, the repetitiveness is the same wherever you are. So there would be times when I would be backstage on Broadway and this amazing theatre, the water occur and I think, Oh, I've got to do the show again. I've got to get myself geared up. There's a whole audience out there and be being my beautiful costume, there'd be dresses. The budget was amazing. You couldn't have anything better. And yet I sat there and thought, I still need to really get myself going and get myself in the mood to do this production.
Mary Swan 12:22
Yeah, and it's the same process, isn't it, if you're sat in a toilet, you know, I think it's been a show. And also people always thing. I think people don't think these places are really glamorous and everything and they're really not all they are the amount of faces, particularly Western theatres. And I think I don't know what the face was like where you were on Broadway. There's one thing I loved about the film. Birdman is like this dreadful dressing room that the character has in that people just think it's so glam and lovely and it's really not.
Mary Rose 12:51
I think what makes it really special and we've all experienced this is the chemistry with the audience, the alchemy, and that's why I think we're all driven to it like a drug. You don't know which night it's going to happen. You don't know what situation you're going to be in or you're going to be in a village hall. Are you going to be in a school hall? Are you going to be in a West End theatre? There is some magic moments where you and the audience are in communion. It's it's quite a yeah, you hear it said that the muse has visited you. I'm sure we've all experienced a moment where there's just something. I don't know, an extra thing. Yeah.
Saul Jaffe 13:30
I've seen that happen. I've been in performances where you see it happen. There's a Spanish phrase that when they, when they enters you, particularly for flamenco dancers and singers, and I've seen a dancer who just sort of got taken over and you just go, This is extraordinary. She is now dancing with something else that that is that has come into her and just taken over. And you just absolutely enthralled and seeing people just reaching another level and feel the audience changing as a result of that. You know, something you kind of live for as an actor. Can I go, please? Can I just do once? Maybe tonight, maybe tonight?
Mary Swan 14:11
We've all done one person shows together, interestingly. Yeah. And I just wonder what the difference of doing something as a solo performer and then in an ensemble, how that comes out.
Paul Huntley-Thomas 14:23
The cast party afterwards is really done. Yeah.
Saul Jaffe 14:26
Yeah. I find the companies terrible.
Paul Huntley-Thomas 14:28
As I say, no conversation. No, no. It's that kind of banter.
Saul Jaffe 14:33
It's extraordinarily different. I remember being in America, so we were in New York in the fifties on the Sun Theatre. We had a wonderful sort of start and the team were there, you know, we were kind of like, Wow, we're in America, we're doing this right. And then you left, and I was left for a sort of week on my own, and it was an entirely different experience. And the venues are welcoming and stuff, but you go, Oh my God, I live and die on my own now. And everything that happens is down to me now. The production manager who was also calling the show turned out to be fantastic. She was just amazing and we had a great rapport and she started to learn about because with the one man shows, one person shows you're not always given the same cues. Every night. You're reading the audience in a slightly improvised, and you need somebody who can respond on on lighting and sound. Do I go now? Do I give a little bit more time? And she and I very quickly found that rhythm and I was like, wow, that's skills. She's done that within a couple of performances is. And so that was really enjoyable because you really see working with somebody else and of course the audience is that somebody else as well. But I've always had this thing like 5 minutes beforehand. I don't want to go on. Yeah, just yes, it says start at 730, starts at 730 because it doesn't 75. I'm hating everyone. I don't want to do this. I don't have to be here. You know, I've got other things to do. Like what?
Mary Swan 15:51
Oh, my God.
Saul Jaffe 15:52
5 minutes of absolute fear.
Mary Swan 15:53
It's so true. When I resurrected my ill advised acting career and did a one with one woman show just so that I could share the pain, and. And I was exactly the same as I don't need to do this. The hell was wrong with me. I did. Well, who wants this? I want now. And it is it's. It's amazing, isn't it? And every time you get 70 shows under your belt and you still feel like, Hmm.
Saul Jaffe 16:20
I actually had to come up with a sort of strategy to deal with those couple of minutes because I really look forward to performing and I really look forward to going out there. And with Merrick the Elephant Man, talk about one of those roles that you really love. I was really proud of our work. I really was. I just looked forward to doing it and telling his story more than anything. So a couple of friends I said, I'm doing this one man show. The men never do a one man show, and they're really great actors. I think, Oh my God, what have I done? I hadn't thought of it like that, but it did look forward to doing every night and just being able to have a rapport with the audience and see what I could do with them and play with them. But genuinely, that 5 minutes, we just go, I really hate everyone now and you need to sit down and be quiet and mentally and psychologically, I had to kind of just latch onto something that let me vent and one guy. And going back to your point, Mary Rose, was that performance, that repetition, how are you going to make it different? And so I worked with a director, Greg Thompson, and he was like to stop yourself waking up on stage, what do you do? And he said, Give yourself one motivation every show. What is it that you want to do now? Clarity, pace, humor, pathos. What is that? You want out that show and go into that show just with that one motivator. And that's pulled me through and I went Wednesday in April.
Mary Rose 17:34
I've had that as well. So I worked with Ian Rickson as his director and he used to give people a little note and it was a motivation for that performance. It was a point of focus and it really kept it fresh. And also so your point about your relationship with the production team, we were out on tour with 1210, 15, which was the one woman show I did. I had that same thing, that fear and actually almost being talked down from the ledge. I can't tell you this absolute terror and the stage manager being like this amazing friend. Not only does she have to run everything on the technical side, but she has to help give me confidence, calm me down. And that was really special and important. Those off stage roles are so important. It's such a team.
Mary Swan 18:22
Sarah Brown was Sarah Brown. That's really interesting as well, isn't it, around that the role of someone like a stage manager, company manager, they come under different guises depending on how you're structuring your tour, how it's working. But they have to really wear all those hats because the director, I'm know every show. And so that worry crisis would have you really need someone who can cope. And it's surprising how that skill isn't talked about more in terms of the people skills that stage managers and company managers need to really help someone because it is incredibly stressful.
Saul Jaffe 18:57
It makes a huge difference. It isn't about your experiences around the table, but when I've worked with people who haven't been great at it, you suddenly realise the people who are great at it. Yeah, we've done this in the corporate world as well. When you have these massive events, you look at your lighting designers, your sound designers, everybody who's on the production desk. And again is that being able to read and understand what's going to happen next and also when things go horribly wrong, which they often do, how they deal with that and how they make you look good and how you make them look good. Thinking about it now, I mean, I realise how many of the production managers and stage managers we work with who are brilliant like that, they are absolutely part of the team. They're not on stage with you and God knows they don't want to be as like you chose to be out there. You've got to do that. I'm going to sit in the dark, but they're brilliant, you know, they are.
Mary Swan 19:50
It's a ritual. It's a been about things that have been really great and things we've really enjoyed. But it's always quite fun to share the things that are really awful about being on stage and what we do and the horror stories. And if anyone's got anything you'd be willing to share that you're not going to get sued for the talking about.
Paul Huntley-Thomas 20:10
I got knocked out on stage one.
Mary Swan 20:11
Oh my God.
Paul Huntley-Thomas 20:12
You know, not completely cold, but we were doing a production of The Tempest and I got hit on the back of the head on the logs because the log cabin scene and supposedly I don't remember the next 15 minutes, but supposedly I was wandering around the stage game. Prince, I love you.
Saul Jaffe 20:27
Really?
Paul Huntley-Thomas 20:28
Really? Yeah. And then I sort of for about 15 minutes, everybody else realised that there was something wrong. And my mate Jim, who was playing Caliban was in his basket.
Mary Swan 20:35
Played them 15 minutes to realise something was.
Paul Huntley-Thomas 20:38
Wrong. Well, yeah, you know, you know, I'm not a brilliant performer. Tends to improvise a lot, especially with Shakespeare
and. Yeah, so. So he's thoughtful. Well, that's a bit weird. Paul's got a bit off book, you know, and he popped out of his his basket. Then the slightly. She pulled me to one side and I eventually so came round to myself, sitting on the edge of the stage. Okay, it's fine, It's fine. Nobody's noticed. Nobody's noticed. And you've been out for 15 minutes before. Called an ambulance that wasn't that way that you know. Wow. So paramedics came along and took me into hospital in full costume. Nice, flowery shirt. Leaving like that always helps. That was because.
Saul Jaffe 21:18
This man things isn't in Victoria.
Paul Huntley-Thomas 21:21
Yeah, and check me out and I was fine.
Saul Jaffe 21:24
You remind me of. We did a passion play Battersea Arts Centre. It was a promenade. And Elliot Levi, wonderful actor, and I think he's just won some sort of award for Cabaret and being brilliant in that he was playing Jesus and we all got cast during the process. Nobody had been cast beforehand, so the director was like looking at this and Elliot just he had the right hair. He came forward. We hadn't practiced the bit where he ascends to heaven, so we would have to stand as these apostles stand around him, get the harness on right round his legs, and while he's talking to the audience, it's him up to these cables that would suddenly he'd rise out from this crowd. And we'd never had a chance to rehearse that all the way through properly. Got to the point. It was, yeah, your harness is on and Elliot sends and we'd never seen this. And it was beautiful. There's a beautiful background of clay which started to dissolve and it looked like mud and earth and blood and was like really moving. And we were all like, on the verge of tears, like Christ ascending. And then Elliot just goes dead. What we hadn't realised was the hardest. It cut into his femoral artery. He absolutely passed out on the top of the brooms. Take hold of you about his passing. We go. That is the best act. You got to see this. And he came down and we like to do the harness and he's totally floppy. We're all like, holding him up like a Yeah. And he eventually kind of came to and was like, What, what, what did I miss? I'm like, It's okay, you're being resurrected. Three days are over. You can come out now, but you.
Mary Swan 22:52
Think.
Mary Rose 22:53
Okay, I've got a couple if we've got time. One that happened to me and then one that I really admire, another actor. So with me, I was doing Beauty and the Beast.
Mary Swan 23:03
Oh, Go with you.
Mary Rose 23:03
With Proteus and the lovely actor playing The Beast had this really long wig, and it kept getting snagged on the set and we were in this one production. He comes onto stage, I'm sitting there, he's about to start saying, comes on to stage, almost a run, and his head suddenly jerks back and his wig has got caught in the side of the set and he's trying to free himself and say the scene. And then he freeze his hair and then he comes in, leans over me, and I've got this little tiara on and his wig gets caught in my tiara and he's trying to free himself from me. And in the end, in a very not quite the right scene, he pulls the tiara off my head, rips his hair out of it, chucks it back in my life, and leaves the stage. And I had to hold it together. I got that. That was.
Mary Swan 23:59
Hard. I do remember that. And I remember Simon, who is the stage manager and myself just being of no help at all because they were just crying.
Mary Rose 24:07
And we are all alone in those spaces. And the other the one I really admire, we always talk about Dr. Theatre when we're really ill, and you just have to keep going because you know, everyone's relying on you the rest of your company and the audience who've actually bought tickets. And a really amazing actor was doing back to the Broadway show. We had two shows on the same day. There was a matinee between the shows. Some of us decided to go and have sushi. He went and had Sushi, came back for the evening show. He had quite a large parts and he went on stage and he came off and he went, Oh, I feel very well. And he like ran like the wind up to the bathroom and basically just kept throwing up. We had buckets backstage, threw up, went back on stage, did his scene, came off, threw up, and he did the show. And I'm like, how nice. He had the antidote.
Saul Jaffe 25:03
Yeah.
Mary Swan 25:07
So I wanted to just talk a little bit about not related to acting skills, because the thing that people often don't get is that success looks like someone who is working most of the time as an actor, but often is working and using those skills in other areas as well. There are very few people who are full time actors. I did a show about Hattie Jake's and he talks about it being the character's job. Job. You know, there's your job and then there's your job, job. And the job job is the thing that earns you money and whether that's things like voiceovers or whether it's things like you do small in terms of the corporate storytelling, I know Danny Charles, who's the other cast member of Indestructible, who will talk to in another episode. He does a lot of training for the police and the NHS because they need to work with actors to do that. So Mary, what would be your skills that you have the aren't to do with acting that have really helped?
Mary Rose 25:59
The thing I wish I'd known when I started out in my career was that you need to think about yourself as a business. You need to know how to market yourself, how to write an invoice, how to put yourself forward for a job, how to network, how to make those connections. So you do all this training, all about your practice and how to be really authentic on stage. But then how do you market yourself? As I hate to say it as a product, I for so long felt it was up to somebody else. It was in someone else's hands whether I was going to get a job or not. And it always felt like a really unequal power. And I think as I've got on that idea of being a business, being able to create your own work as much as you find your tribe and working with other people who share your values is really great and exciting. Yeah, just not feeling like it's all in someone else's hands.
Mary Swan 26:56
Yeah. Yeah. I'm Paul for you. What's been what skills do you think have been really useful.
Paul Huntley-Thomas 27:01
Findings,
especially if you're working with a touring company, being able to find the other sort of job jobs stuff I do as medical role play, which has been fantastic. It's been a learning process for me as well because it's been a fascinating insight into a world I know nothing about mental health care and this sort of thing. And with that as well, I feel like I'm helping the trainee doctors to become better doctors. I think in a way we're both getting something out of it. I think of these as characterisations. You think somewhere down the line I might be asked to play a character who suffers from this and then I've sort of gone through these scenarios that they've sent me and I play those. So from that, fascinating. But especially what maybe writers are saying about this is one of the things I found a universal Steve was had great fun, three years of messing around writing stuff, but then came out and didn't know how to get work. How do I go about approaching people? I used to just write off to all the theatre companies. Yeah, and just do that and sending a CV and say, Have you got anything? And one day it landed on somebody's door and the other person had just cancer, said, I can't do that show anymore. And the next I saw ship was mine. I mean, nowadays it's so much more digital based than it was. You send out your number six and your CV and all that sort of thing and those whole things about you put your CV on yellow paper so people see it a bit more out of the crowd and this sort of thing. Yeah, but we were never taught how to find the, what we were taught, how to make the work, which is fine, but never how to find other people to make the work with or to get the permission to make the work. That's I think.
Mary Swan 28:36
Is so interesting, isn't it? Because I think that idea of actually being tenacious about it, you have to make it happen. Yeah. And I did exactly the same thing. You know, I the Yellow Pages and contacted the first Art centre under the letter A, which was Ashcroft Art Centre, and the lovely Steve Rowley gave me my first work as a theatre director. And I think sometimes as well there isn't that emphasis on actually you can have a showcase at the end of your training period. You might even come out with an agent. But actually most actors I know have agents are still getting probably 40% of the work they do themselves by people they know or asking around or doing that sort of stuff. So just to finish off with, we sort of touched on it a little bit, but I'm just interested, if you were talking to 21 year old Mary Rose, who's just starting out on her career, what would you be saying to her?
Mary Rose 29:35
I think I would say you will work if you just keep going. If you're diligent and committed, you will work. So when people say, Oh, it's too hard, you'll get lots of that. You just keep going believing yourself, believe in your craft, you will get work. Think about yourself as a business. And I definitely find your tribe network. Be part of a community of creatives that you can make work with, that share that look out for each other. I think that's really that's why I would say.
Mary Swan 30:11
Paul, what would you say to your young people? They tell them.
Paul Huntley-Thomas 30:16
I think I say, be more confident. Oh self, be more confident in your abilities and also perhaps alter how you view success because actors are told to think of successes, getting a BAFTA or an Oscar, all that sort of thing. Just being here 30 years later down the line and still working at it. That is a success, you know.
Mary Swan 30:39
And you could tell your younger self that you'll be part of the Marvel Universe and play a Bollywood baddie.
Paul Huntley-Thomas 30:44
Yeah, all those good things. And it will still be fun. You still enjoy doing it. It'll never feel like a day of work. The work is is learning the lines. Just stuff I'm doing at the moment. Line and lines and and songs and dances and that sort of thing. That's the hard work, being on stage. Play.
Mary Swan 30:59
Hmm. Hmm.
Saul Jaffe 31:00
So I totally agree with both them. You know, somebody I think as well that I work with said it's about longevity. An act to success is still being there at the end of the day, still working. I've always wanted my work to speak for me and not to shout about who I am and who I am as an actor. And I'm so great and I've seen a lot of people who do that and they get a lot of work. There's a part of me would say, You need to be a little bit more arrogant. You need to be able to talk clearly about yourself and say, These are my strengths, this is what I do really well. This is what I'm learning to do. This is what I hope to do, that this is what I can do now and this is what I want to be doing. And I think if you clear about that self, you can be very practical about going just believe in yourself that you're going to do things and I love the stuff that I've done. I love the success we've had. They've been critical, if not financial. And that's the thing. Sometimes you just have to settle for, Oh.
Mary Swan 31:49
My God.
Mary Rose 31:50
What about you, Mary Swan? Yes.
Mary Swan 31:51
Mary So what would I say to young Madison to sticking out here, I think is don't worry so much about it. If it doesn't happen in the way you envisage. Because I started out think I was going to be an actor and then became a director and then just dips the toe back in if you're not an advice. But I think it's something when it doesn't happen the way you think it is and actually the things that are going to be the most cherished projects or moments are the things that are not the obvious ones. But yeah, it's all that lovely stuff. I'm lucky with you guys are.
Paul Huntley-Thomas 32:23
Having a.
Mary Swan 32:23
Lifetime of.
Saul Jaffe 32:24
Work.
Mary Swan 32:26
So thank you ever so much. It's been lovely to chat to you.
So thanks for joining us for Indestructible. If you like what you've heard, please share, subscribe and leave a five star review. It really helps us reach other listeners. The next episode of Indestructible is available to listen right now wherever you get your podcasts. That's it for this edition. I'm Mary Swann. Thanks again for listening. I look forward to your company next time.