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On the road with Gerald Dickens

On the road with Gerald Dickens

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The Season Begins (Virtually)

08 Tuesday Dec 2020

Posted by geralddickens in A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens, Christmas, Film, Library, Literature, Lockdown, One Man Theatre, Video

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A Christmas Carol, A Christmas Carol film, Byers'Choice, Cooling Church, Cratchit, Ebenezer Scrooge, Mid Continent Public Library, Orbs, Sharnbrook Mill Theatre, Spirits, Vaillancourt Folk Art

On 7 December, 2020 my Christmas season as a performer finally begun. For the first time (if for now we discount the four days in October when I was filming), I actually had the opportunity to address an audience and hopefully entertain them! The stage was my kitchen, and the auditoria were various homes in and around the Kansas City area, as I took part in a Webinar (one of those words which, like the virus itself, has seeped into our lives and taken residency there unbidden and unnoticed) organised by my dear old friends at the Mid Continent Public Library System in Missouri. You may remember from previous blog posts that the library service had been instrumental in the making of my film and so had asked if I could attend a virtual session to take questions from their patrons, a request that I was happy to agree to even it meant waiting up until midnight, which would be 6pm in the central time zone in America.

As the evening passed by I tried to find a suitable spot in our kitchen to speak from, where the detritus of our everyday could be shuffled out of camera shot. There were certainly areas elsewhere in the house that would work, but I wanted to ensure that I didn’t wake the rest of the household who would be snoozing soundly at that hour. In the end, by moving a food mixer, a toaster, a bread bin, various pieces of fruit and a couple of cake tins, I could sit at our table with an empty counter over my shoulder. To make the scene more festive I gathered together 2 carollers from Byers’ Choice and some of the chalkware Santas from The Vaillancourts and set them behind me, carefully disguising the electrical outlets.

At 11.30pm I logged onto the Zoom link and watched a screensaver made up of various still promotional photographs from the film, and some pictures taken at branches of the library service over the years. Goodness, my beard is grey these days: Ho, ho, ho!

At midnight up popped Cheryl, and welcomed the audience, whom I could not see, to the event. She explained that I would be talking for around twenty minutes and then we would virtually open the virtual floor to questions and then handed over to me. I began by expressing my sorrow that I could not be in Kansas City this year but was delighted that I could chat through this forum. It was a heartfelt and good opening I thought but one which fell entirely on deaf ears! Suddenly lots of ‘Mr Dickens, we cant hear you’ ‘Is your microphone on?’ ‘Try clicking unmute’ interrupted my flow. Ahh, technology: the saviour and bane of 2020. After checking various settings on my laptop without success I switched to my phone and the evening was rescued.

My opening remarks concentrated on the gestation of the film, how the idea had developed, how I had chosen the locations and how Emily Walder, the amazing videographer and editor, had captured my dream for the project and collaborated in creating something that I am truly proud of.

After my twenty minutes were up we threw open the floor to questions, and there were some good ones:

‘Who is your favourite character to perform….’ Ah, an easy one to start, ‘….except Scrooge!’ Oh, not so easy then! I chose Bob Cratchit because there is a most important change of emotion during the course of the book as he moves from cheerful and resigned to truly heartbroken. The portrayal of Bob has to be genuine and realistic in comparison to some of the more grotesque caricatures elsewhere in the story, so he creates a greater challenge which I was able to explore more fully on film than I can on stage – the scene when he breaks down for his lost child is a moment that genuinely brought tears to my eyes the first time I watched the completed movie.

‘If you were to meet Charles Dickens what would you ask him?’ Wow! I think I would I would be so nervous I wouldn’t be able to say anything. However, having found my tongue, I would want to chat about theatre – his feelings as he performed, and how the voices and expressions of the characters come to him. I’d like to know if he imagined his literary characters in 3D (there is evidence that he would perform passages of dialogue to himself as he walked or in front of a mirror). I would like to know about the details of his life on the road: the ups and the downs. Basically, I would like to compare notes, but more than anything I would love to stand at the back of a hall and watch him perform.

‘What is your favourite passage in the novel’ (this from a teacher who has taught A Christmas Carol for many years). This is an interesting question because probably my favourite piece of writing doesn’t feature in my show, it is the wonderful passage when Scrooge is taken on his travels by the Ghost of Christmas Present:

‘And now, without a word of warning from the Ghost, they stood upon a bleak and desert moor, where monstrous masses of rude stone were cast about, as though it were the burial-place of giants; and water spread itself wheresoever it listed, or would have done so, but for the frost that held it prisoner; and nothing grew but moss and furze, and coarse rank grass. Down in the west the setting sun had left a streak of fiery red, which glared upon the desolation for an instant, like a sullen eye, and frowning lower, lower, lower yet, was lost in the thick gloom of darkest night.

`What place is this.’ asked Scrooge.

`A place where Miners live, who labour in the bowels of the earth,’ returned the Spirit. `But they know me. See.’

A light shone from the window of a hut, and swiftly they advanced towards it. Passing through the wall of mud and stone, they found a cheerful company assembled round a glowing fire. An old, old man and woman, with their children and their children’s children, and another generation beyond that, all decked out gaily in their holiday attire. The old man, in a voice that seldom rose above the howling of the wind upon the barren waste, was singing them a Christmas song — it had been a very old song when he was a boy — and from time to time they all joined in the chorus. So surely as they raised their voices, the old man got quite blithe and loud; and so surely as they stopped, his vigour sank again.

The Spirit did not tarry here, but bade Scrooge hold his robe, and passing on above the moor, sped — whither. Not to sea. To sea. To Scrooge’s horror, looking back, he saw the last of the land, a frightful range of rocks, behind them; and his ears were deafened by the thundering of water, as it rolled and roared, and raged among the dreadful caverns it had worn, and fiercely tried to undermine the earth.

Built upon a dismal reef of sunken rocks, some league or so from shore, on which the waters chafed and dashed, the wild year through, there stood a solitary lighthouse. Great heaps of sea-weed clung to its base, and storm-birds — born of the wind one might suppose, as sea-weed of the water — rose and fell about it, like the waves they skimmed.

But even here, two men who watched the light had made a fire, that through the loophole in the thick stone wall shed out a ray of brightness on the awful sea. Joining their horny hands over the rough table at which they sat, they wished each other Merry Christmas in their can of grog; and one of them: the elder, too, with his face all damaged and scarred with hard weather, as the figure-head of an old ship might be: struck up a sturdy song that was like a Gale in itself.

Again the Ghost sped on, above the black and heaving sea — on, on — until, being far away, as he told Scrooge, from any shore, they lighted on a ship. They stood beside the helmsman at the wheel, the look-out in the bow, the officers who had the watch; dark, ghostly figures in their several stations; but every man among them hummed a Christmas tune, or had a Christmas thought, or spoke below his breath to his companion of some bygone Christmas Day, with homeward hopes belonging to it. And every man on board, waking or sleeping, good or bad, had had a kinder word for another on that day than on any day in the year; and had shared to some extent in its festivities; and had remembered those he cared for at a distance, and had known that they delighted to remember him.‘

It is such an evocative passage and one I wish I could capture it for the stage somehow.

‘What was your favourite filming location?’ All of the locations brought something to the film and each is special because they have all featured in various Dickens novels, but I think the best location was the churchyard at Cooling which we not only used for the various ‘grave’ scenes, but also as a background for the narrator to tell the story. Cooling is in the middle of the countryside, so we should have enjoyed perfect peace, but our time there was beset with a surprisingly large amount of traffic using the little street, as well as huge heavy diesel truck going to and from a nearby quarry. A nearby farm had a bird scarer which let off a loud retort every twenty minutes or so sending flocks of crows into the sky, and we seemed to be on the flightpath of Rochester airport as executive jets screamed overhead. The fact we got such wonderful material is a testament to our patience and the wonders of good editing. My favourite shot from Cooling is the very final shot of the film as I walk away into a sunset (actually a sunrise, but let’s not quibble about that), and a little green light flare, an orb if you will, hovers like one of the three spirits saying its farewell.

All too soon 1am came around and it was time to say my goodbyes and sign off. It had been a lovely evening and the opportunity to finally have contact (virtual) with my audience again was very special. Next week the Library will be hosting another session, but before then I will actually be back on stage, for on Saturday I will be performing A Christmas Carol at the Sharnbrook Mill Theatre in Bedfordshire. I can’t wait!

to View the film and see the locations visit my website: http://www.geralddickens.com/films.html

Memories from the Mid Continent Public Library Service.

11 Wednesday Nov 2020

Posted by geralddickens in A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens, Children's education, Christmas, Film, Library, Literature, One Man Theatre, Radio

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Baseball, Kansas City, Library, Mid Continent Public Library, Snow

It was no surprise that following the pictures from Omaha my phone should choose to then remind me of my times in the Kansas City area, for the two venues, being geographically close, inevitably have been paired on my tour during recent years.

Woodneath Library Centre

The picture that my phone produced was from two years ago as I prepared to perform at the Woodneath Library in Liberty, Missouri, but my relationship with the Mid Continent Library Service, who own and manage Woodneath, is not a recent one – oh, no, I have been performing there for longer than any other venue on my tour. My first visit was in 1995.

My career as a performer of Charles Dickens’ work began in England in 1993. That year marked the 150th anniversary of the first publication of A Christmas Carol and I, as an actor, had been approached by a local charity asking me to recreate one of my great great grandfather’s famous readings as a fundraiser. I reluctantly agreed, and that decision changed my life.

In 1994 I performed The Carol a few times in the UK and one show was watched by a representative from the Galveston Dickens Festival where my Dad had been appearing for the past three years. After the show we all chatted. My father didn’t wish to travel any more and was keen for me to take over the mantle, he had made the introduction with a view to making that happen.

And sure enough, when December ’95 came around I was on a plane heading to Texas. I spent a weekend becoming part of ‘Dickens on the Strand’ which was an amazing time, but when Sunday evening came I didn’t fly home to England, I boarded a flight for Kansas City, Missouri.

The superb festival in Galveston had inspired a similar event in Kansas City which was the brainchild of the Missouri Rep Theater Company and my father had worked closely with them over the previous two years as a consultant. He had attended the inaugural festival in ’94 and now I was stepping into his shoes to carry on the legacy.

But there was a timetabling problem: The Galveston festival finished on Sunday evening and the Kansas City one wouldn’t begin until the next Friday, leaving me doing nothing for four days in a rather luxurious hotel.

Enter the Mid Continent Library Service. The Charles Dickens Holiday Fair organisers thought it would be great publicity for their festival if I could get out and perform in front of as many people in as many areas around downtown Kansas City as I could, encouraging them to visit the Convention Center at the weekend. The library service, which is based in Independence, has branches all over the Kansas City region (thirty-five currently) and so presented the perfect solution.

During that first year I was conducted from venue to venue by a lady named Linda who was volunteer with the festival. I remember that she had a stylishly coiffured bob of platinum blonde hair and wore a large fur coat, so dark that it was almost black: she looked a bit like a walking pint of Guinness!

In those days I used to perform three times a day and, as I mentioned in an earlier post, the performances were given as readings and were well received. The following year we repeated the exercise, but during that year the Holiday Fair went bust, meaning that there was no reason for me to return to the Kansas City region in ’97.

Except The Mid Continent Public Library Service had other ideas. The appearances had proved so popular that they wanted to continue the relationship and booked me to return to Missouri in 1997 and I have been going ever since, except for the years when I ‘retired’.

Memories? too many to mention! In the early days I used to be looked after by two librarians in the events and programmes team, Miriam and Marlena, and we would spend whole days driving from one branch of the library to another, each performance punctuated by a huge meal in various restaurants.

Performing in a library space was strange, for although the audiences were relatively small, the buildings themselves were built to soak up sound, meaning that projecting my voice was incredibly difficult and I would frequently end up very tired and hoarse after a day’s performing.

A Library Set

Mid Continent not only enjoyed the audiences that I drew but also the attendant publicity that came with my visits and we often had to find time for media events and interviews between the branch visits. On one occasion we were due to have a very early morning radio interview at a station who broadcast out of a small shack across the state line in Kansas. There was heavy snow on the ground and the air was filled with blizzard conditions as we crawled slowly on. I was in costume as we had to drive straight to a library branch as soon as the interview was done.

At one point of the journey we reached the bottom of a steep hill and the route up was slick and icy meaning that we couldn’t proceed. However Marlena noticed that the route DOWN the hill had been well used by various trucks meaning we would be able to get up the hill by driving on the wrong side of the road. Of course a problem would arise if a car should be legitimately driving only to be confronted with us squirming up the slope, so I rather gallantly, or foolishly, volunteered to walk ahead of Marlena’s car to warn any oncoming traffic. I wrapped my scarf around my neck and pulled my top hat low over my forehead and held my walking cane ahead of me to alert anyone who may be there. It was fortunate that I did, for indeed a pick-up truck driven by a bearded guy in a baseball cap did start the descent. I waved my cane high in the air, matching the movement with my other arm until he stopped and stared at me, mouth open.

To understand his shock you have to relive the scene from his viewpoint: He was driving into a whiteout, nothing to be seen, an alien landscape ahead of him. What was that? A shape, a shadow, a figure: out of the mist appeared a ghost, the ghost of a Victorian gentleman waving in tormented anguish. If the scene had been included in a 70’s movie our pick-up driver would have looked at a half emptied bottle in his hand and shaken his head, before tossing the liquor out of the car window!

On another occasion we had a little time before we needed to be at a venue so the M&Ms decided to take me to a baseball batting cage where I could try some hits. I was fitted with a helmet and gloves but other than that I was in full costume as the automatic pitching machine pelted balls at me.

It was during these early years that I performed at the Blue Springs branch where the head librarian was Kimberley Howard. During subsequent years Kimberley rose up the ranks and began to work on the programming team, initially alongside Miriam and Marlena and more latterly on her own. For the past goodness-knows-how many years Kimberley has been the one who has booked me and looked after me during my stays.

With Kimberley (r) and the team

On her watch my performances have changed somewhat as the interest and audiences have grown. The smaller branches have not been able to accommodate the growing numbers and Kimberley has found other ways of presenting my shows to her patrons – the biggest being in a facility attached to a retirement community called the John Knox Pavilion where we pack around 900 people in, and the amazing thing about it is, that Mid Continent offer all of their programmes for free!

You can imagine therefore, given our history, that Kimberley and the team were very sad that I couldn’t travel in 2020 but as has been their way over the years they weren’t going to let a thing like a global pandemic get in the way of their programming.

Mid Continent Library Service have been instrumental in getting my new film made, and have assisted financially in the production, so our relationship which goes so far back is now even stronger and deeper than ever before.

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