in Arcadia

thinking about Sir Tom Stoppard

The year is 2008.

I’ve gained two stone after my ‘big break’ in Harry Potter and it’s Christmas time. I am waiting to hear back about an recall I had for a west end run of Arcadia by Tom Stoppard. If I don’t get the job, I will go back to art school with my tail between my legs for the third time (I’ve dropped out and gone back two times already).

I get the call. I’ve got the part of Thomasina. I am elated for about two minutes before I realise I have to go onstage every night to hundreds of people and start to panic about my voice; will it last? Will they hear me? Can I actually do this? Do I want to do this? (I then lose my voice over Christmas and spend three months in speech therapy before rehearsals begin… an ominous start to my west end career).

The few friends I have at this point are all away getting drunk and fucked at university. I’m quite isolated, living at my family home in Ealing. I’m 21. I’m very innocent for my age, not sheltered, but I’ve kept myself at home a lot, perhaps having a delayed reaction to my teenage rape? perhaps trying to heal from all the dangerous, reckless experiences I had when younger? Or maybe I just liked being at home.

I recover from the call with my agent’s assistant, who always makes me feel nervous when I chat to her. She’s not that soft, doesn’t seem to like me, I am not that important to the agency since I haven’t scored any jobs with them until now. Around this time I actually walked past my main agent on Berwick Street and he didn’t say hello because didn’t know who the fuck I was. I was so insecure about my weight gain that I thought he didn’t recognise me because I was bigger.

For a moment I let myself fantasise about doing Arcadia….meeting a handsome stage manager (I have never fantasised about an actor) and going out every night after the show in Soho and getting to know all the other west end stars/stage managers and being cool and networking and then going on to have an amazing, successful career as a first rate actress. Move over Kiera! More over Carey! Jessie Cave is in town!

My fantasy was just that….. pure fantasy. I ended up being bedridden for a large chunk of the summer run because of an extreme STD/tropical virus; the whole cast turned on me and I was ostracised for saying “chill out man” in my Bart Simpson voice to the pretentious director (which I’ve spoken about on almost every podcast I’ve ever been on). For the record: I said it to try and find humour in the situation - I just didn’t understand why he kept telling me to “be Thomasina! BE THOMASINAAAAAAAAAA” as if I didn’t understand what acting was.

I had very few fancy nights out with the stars and I spent most of my weekly earnings on sugarfree muffins that weren’t in fact sugarfree from a cafe near the covent garden theatre.

An older actress in the cast made me come to her dressing room to have lessons on posture and kept telling me off about my giant headbands, granny glasses or my outfits (I had just bought my first clown suit and was wearing that unironically a lot)….

It was a brutal start. Everything felt so prickly and stern. I felt like I kept making mistakes, my natural instincts were derailed.

BUT!

I am writing this because of Tom Stoppard.

He died this weekend at the age of 88.

I never met him again after doing his play, but he had a profound impact on me.

I am not writing this because I want to show off and say something like “Tom Stoppard believed in me! He said I was talented! HE LOVED ME THE MOST”….. No, no. To be honest I don’t know if he thought I was very good, and looking back, I probably wasn’t. I was so naive. I wasn’t that good an actress. It’s hard to admit but I wasn’t.

That’s fine. I’m at peace with that.

Tom took a chance on me by casting me as Thomasina and I might have let him and his great play down. He was very gentle and I liked his humour. His son, the actor Ed Stoppard, was in the play too, and I remember watching them interact in the rehearsal room and I could sense genuine affection. Son and Father liked each other - what great success! I liked them both a lot.

He gave me an itching of Lord Byron as a gift at the end of the run and wrote me a nice note. When we moved recently, I found it in the middle of one of my old sketchbooks and was transported back to the rehearsal room.

On the day I said “chill out man” to the director, my life really did change.

The director was so utterly mean and aggressive and handled the situation so badly that I shook for hours, all the way home - I didn’t sleep for days. I remember I had to go on to do a full run through of the play moments after he grabbed my shoulders and hissed cigarette breath into my mouth “don’t you fucking speak to me like that you 22 year old actress” …. and just before I said my first line, holding back tears and shaking - I looked at Tom. He smiled encouragingly at me, not knowing that seconds ago what had happened to me behind a pillar. I thought I’d get fired after the readthrough, so I better perform my best, for Tom at least.

I didn’t get fired.

But the rest of the rehearsals were incredibly difficult. I tried to tell the cast about what happened with the director, but no one gave a shit because they couldn’t quite believe i’d said “chill out man” to an esteeeeeeemmmmmed director. It was my fault for not taking the play - a play! - seriously.

I ended up taking it all too seriously, and that director ruined my confidence for years. I became so scared of being myself on jobs, afraid to ever get loose and joke with director or anyone in a position of power.

Midway through the run, long after Tom had done his bit with sending the play on its way, I was told I had to come in every day early to have “lessons” with the assistant director one on one. It was never confirmed, but heavily suggested to me that the producer, Sonia Friedman, had told the director that it was my fault that the play had “changed”.

Yes of course, it must have been all my fault! a 21 year old must be to blame - not any of the elder cast or more seasoned performers! The plays change of energy was solely down to me.

I believed them. I felt ashamed.

I hated those one on one lessons so much. I felt like I was at school, began to hate acting - it all so INTENSE and SERIOUS! It’s no wonder to me that soon after this experience I started comedy…..

The only relief came when I was onstage. I loved saying Tom’s lines. I loved the set design. I was transported to Arcadia for a brief two hours, and then I was back to no one talking to me and recovering from my STD on the Picadilly line back home.

I’ve put up the poster I was given from Arcadia in our dining room, next to my favourite drawings my kids have done for me. It was a definitive experience for me because ever since, I have vowed to never let anyone - however important- talk to me like that again.

I found my way to comedy after Arcadia, and found a way to be myself onstage in my one woman shows, in smaller theatres, off west end.

Sir Tom Stoppard seemed to be so kind and relaxed with himself. Unlike the anxious, self-hating director, who treated me as he did because I was a nobody - Tom looked at me when I spoke to him, even though I was unimportant. He seemed to have a life outside the rehearsal room, outside the theatre. He seemed interested in other people, which must be why he was such a good writer.

Needless to say, I’ve never got a west end audition since.

But how cool for my one play to have been by Tom Stoppard!