My Heart
My Heart is a stage drama for two people written by Robert Gillespie to try to come to grips with what is one of our last, big, social taboos; it’s subject is death - something lots of people are scared to talk about in ordinary conversation, even now. But times are changing, as you will see from the many places we have been asked to play.
The story of My Heart so far.
It kicked off with a preview at The Actors’ Centre, Tristan Bates Theatre, on October 25th, 1999.
Nicholas Albery then welcomed us to The Natural Death Centre which he ran with his wife (see his web site) and we played it on April 16th, 2000 in the evening as the final event on The National Day of the Dead. Nicholas used it partly to raise money for the Centre, but also to prompt a lively discussion after; there was some really great chat. (Also a generous whip round for the actors!)
Beryl Pearn happened to be at this performance and she was able to recommend it to Dr. Tony Walter who runs an M.A. course at Reading University on ‘Death and Society’. On June 28th we played My Heart to students on the course - a tremendous cross-section of people of all ages and trades, plus the Head of the Faculty of Archaeology who dropped in. Again, a great conversation afterwards - which is part of what we offer to those who want it.
Before then, June 16th, we played at St. Michael’s Centre, Chiswick which is, amongst other things, the playing venue for a local Am Dram group. Forty or fifty came, they sold tickets to raise money for various activities, were jolly generous with the cakes and ale and we had a really good crack after. I was drawn a diagram illustrating how the wave activity of the brain is what ‘lives on’!
June 30th, we played for CRUSE at The Old Market Theatre, Brighton, raising money for them. Fascinating; that’s the only performance from which people have walked out - about five, I think; but that’s Brighton, or rather Hove, for you. I think the first chap went when Jo started on as a Vicar (or was it when I said the word orgasm, I can’t remember). However, the feed-back from those who stayed was terrifically positive. (Actors got some champers and a bunch of flowers.)
July 15th we played Hawkedon Village Hall, Suffolk. This was, blatantly, to raise cash to finish off round the outside of the spanking new hall they’d just built. Among several memorable performances this was right amongst the tops. Hawkdon is a village of about a hundred with a very high proportion of in-coming week-enders who happen to have a very strong local sense of community; so Diana Park, who lives down the road in a lovely farmhouse, was able to organise them to within an inch of their lives. Fifty odd came, farmers, architects, writers, etc. etc. and there were three surgeons out there, so I got laughs I’d never got before, or had since. A lot of hundreds of pounds was raised, (a generous brown envelope for the actors, too) everyone was very warm and helpful and the conversations, after, went on and on; a tremendous evening.
September 18th, 25th and October 2nd, Robert Bowman (with whom I shared a dressing room at the R.S.C.) offered me three Mondays to perform My Heart during the run of a production of his own he was setting up at Theatro Technis in Camden. It’s a terrific space to play in and was an opportunity to get people out who might help us promote the show. But... as I forecast, in competition with a million other fringe shows out there screaming for attention, not really the way to go, which is why I have been marketing My Heart in an unconventional way, targeting audiences and having so much early success. The third Technis show was well attended and we had some key people in, too.
On the afternoon of September 19th we dashed down to The Royal Berkshire Hospital, Reading, to play for a young group of training palliative care nurses. The hospital chaplain (a splendid woman, who didn’t have to dash off back to the wards, as many did) clearly enjoyed My Heart immensely and is threatening us with a performance to a an entire group of hospital chaplains. It’s one of my chief interests, though, for people and organisations to use My Heart as an aid to training and a starting point for an intelligent conversation about a difficult topic.
October 9th, we played in the Drama Studio run by Melanie Jones at Marylebone School in Marylebone High Street, to an audience raised by Jo Girdlestone (the actress who plays Clementine in My Heart) and her partner in Theatre Alba, Janet Gordon. They’d done a pretty successful fringe show at Edinburgh but were down a few shillings, so thought we could claw a bit back this way. Played to a very special audience, very appreciative, many with lots of ideas for taking the show further. There may be a return engagement, so keep in touch.
October 26th, at 2p.m. we performed at Sir Michael Sobell House, which is part of Oxford Brookes University, to an audience mainly of senior palliative care nurses and counsellors taking a course called ‘Death and Dying’ which will give them either a degree or a diploma; but there were several member of the clergy present, also, and again a hospital chaplain. Very interesting discussion afterwards, with differing views on how much people seem to want reassurance and comforting and how many wish to be stimulated, challenged, made to think freshly about the entire process.
November 2nd at 10a.m. we played My Heart at Phyllis Tuckwell Hospice, Farnham to one of the brightest, most perceptive groups of people we’ve come across so far - all women, incidentally, this time. They’re volunteer bereavement counsellors with varying professions and when I first glimpsed them I thought, “We might get a shocked reaction from some at the religious passages of the show, or the sex or even at the odd, very occasional coarse word that’s spoken” - how wrong can one be! There was, instead, the most understanding, mature, deeply sensitive response possible which continued in the all-too-short discussion after. Hints of on-going interest here, so I’m keeping fingers crossed. Joanna Fenning asked us to Phyllis Tuckwell and led the event; was a pleasure to meet and work with.
January 12th and 13th 2001, My Heart sold out for both performances at The Hampton Hill Playhouse and there was a waiting list for tickets. I’m amazed.This wasn’t a specialised or targeted audience, but a cross section of folk out there like you or me. The response was vivid and subtle, amused, eerily silent at the right time; very good to play to. The show’s gaining depth and variety, also, which must help. Jo had a proper costume for her Zen character, at last, and rolled on to the stage as she was meant to - to gasps from everyone. And the screen (behind which Jo makes her changes) has a brilliant new covering - stars - from the kids’ section at Liberty’s! We played at 7-45p.m. in the studio theatre. Hampton Hill Playhouse is the most perfectly built, brand new, two-auditorium playhouse. It’s in Teddington. No whip round this time - we got a box office split! Real money. Contact Laurie Coombs, 07957 307370, for how it works.
February 7th, we were asked back to St. Marylebone School, this time as part of a drama course and played to a packed house of students and parents. Fascinating contrast in audience response compared with Hampton Hill. Not so hot on hunter-gatherers and mysticism, but very sharp when it came to orgasms and booze and gags involving the handful of bad words in the show. Melanie Jones, imaginative drama director at the school, worked like a fiend to make the show a success and also offered us a box office split - more real money!
May 15th, at long last...! we were able to play for Caris (the ‘i’ is a candle on their logo, but I don’t know how to do that). They’re a group of volunteer bereavement counsellors based on Islington Churches. We were an ‘unusual’ training event for them and at 7-30p.m., or so, found ourselves playing in a semi-basement, part of Christ Church vicarage - the smallest space yet, apart from Nicholas Albery’s front room at The Natural Death Centre. We now have lights, so that makes it hot and there must have been thirty-odd people there, mostly counsellors, but some family and theatre folk, too. A very perceptive response and considered-question-and answer session after - I was particularly interested by the woman counsellor who empathised especially with the off-stage character of my daughter in the show - she has to cope with Michael Smith, her dad (the part I play) sliding steadily out of her life while she gets on with her own busy life.It all happened because Anne Baker (Assistant Co-ordinator) had had someone who’d seen My Heart way back tell her how good it was. Lydia Constantinou, Bereavement Service Co-ordinator, surprised us with a generous collection after.
On May 21st, in startling contrast, we could have been playing in a cathedral nave. The Philosophical Society of Petersfield has a Barbara Rae Memorial Evening (she was their founder) and we were asked to perform My Heart because a member had seen the show at the Phyllis Tuckwell Hospice. There we were facing raised seating, screens behind us, at one end of Churcher’s College’s great, wood-panelled hall; echoes of the Middle Ages and the morality plays they got up. Here’s an extract from a letter I wrote: ‘Jo and I really enjoyed playing for you. Because the acoustic was so fine in that splendid hall, we felt we were engaging in a very personal conversation with everyone present. The discussion afterwards was also one of the most probing and thoughtful we’ve had. I was surprised, as I said on the night, that not more of you out there risked letting yourselves laugh! The good doctor on the front row was an exception! Give him my regards and thank you for passing on the affecting letter from Mavis.’ That letter was the give-away; it suggested that Mavis was so involved and so moved - something new for us - that she couldn’t come to laughter; well...Danielle Balmforth, secretary of the society, who brilliantly set the whole thing up, told me that their previous two speakers had been Richard Dawkins and Susan Greenfield; wonder how My Heart compared? They charged people to come and kept only their own expenses and gave the rest to us; very generous.
October 30th, at the invitation of Jane Appleton and Gillian Chowns based at Oxford Brookes University (and for whom we’ve played before) we performed My Heart at Heatherwood House, Heatherwood Hospital, Ascot at the odd time of 1p.m., once again as part of a module in a course called “Death and Dying” which Jane and Gillian run for palliative care counsellor/nurses. It was one of the best responses we’ve had - everyone in the audience had clearly ‘lived’ so they picked up pretty well all the nuances in the script; philosophical, scientific, spiritual - sexual! Followed by a very animated discussion; several clergy present and I noted the gentleness, the lack of authoritarian certainty, the questioning often puzzled state of mind they conveyed to us. I felt I could risk saying - given how much time I and my partner had spent in great church buildings - that I felt that the Church of England had misked a trick somewhere by hammering the literal, historical reality of the New Testament at their congregations instead of daring to sell its hugely rich, symbolic meaning - thus taking in the effect of the grand building, the chanting, the ritual, the dress - the whole experience, as well as the content of the Christ story, which I think is much more powerful and charged with meaning as myth rather than as objective ‘reality’. Especially as the clergy itself has, largely, in private, abandoned belief in miracles and magic. What a missed opportunity, I suggested; could they have a word with the Archbishop?
Then on November 1st we returned to Sir Michael Sobell House on Churchill Hospital campus, Oxford for what should have been a 2p.m. performance. But Jo Girdlestone, my fellow performer, for once not travelling with me, broke down on the M4 and ended up chucking her car on a tip in High Wycombe. Gillian Chowns rescued her - none of this would have been possible without a mobile ’phone - and we started our show at 3.30p.m. Perhaps miracles can still happen! Same kind of tremendously perceptive response as Tuesday - perhaps a little more subdued because not quite so many out there - but we missed the discussion; Jane had already led a pre-show talk (while I set up the props. and scenery and waited for the miracle from Wycombe) again to palliative counsellor/nurses on her “Death and Dying” course. Terrific people to play to and work with.