‘my advice is to just watch and learn, and never stop learning’
KITTY RANDLE – SUSANNA WALCOTT

How did you get into acting and who were your influences?

Well I’ve always, since primary school, been a bit of a drama queen and made up plays and dances since I was really little. I was a very, very shy child but I loved performing. So I think the main way I started was firstly by being aware that I enjoyed performing. Then when I went to secondary school I did GCSE Drama and also came to The Crucible Youth Theatre for a while. After school I did a BTEC rather than A Levels because apart from acting there wasn’t anything I really wanted to do at school. So I did a BTEC in Performing Arts at RCAT (Rotherham College of Art and Technology) which was a brilliant two years. As well as learning acting techniques, dancing and performance it also allowed me to do a lot of theory as well and gave me a lot of research time. After that I really knew what I wanted to do so I applied to university and got into Bretton Hall to do a BA in Theatre Acting and Devised Performance. At Bretton, as well as doing a lot of script work, I also did a lot of my own devised, unscripted work. It was a really good three years. It’s a really good place to go.

Last year I was living in Sheffield doing community arts work when a friend of mine saw a notice that they were looking for a local girl to play in the community chorus in Iphigenia at The Crucible, directed by Anna Mackmin. So I wrote to Anna and was offered an audition. From the audition I was chosen to be part of a chorus of eight girls. Even though it was unpaid work I thought it was really important for me to do, as I’d done a lot of small scale theatre tours but never worked in a big theatre. I learnt so much and working with Anna was just brilliant. It’s taken me a few years to get it going but Anna helped inspire and encourage me to really push my chosen career.

My other influences, when I was young, were Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers and I used to watch a lot of black and white movies. I also used to watch Kenneth Branagh a lot, especially in Henry V. Even at aged 12, I must have watched it at least 10 times. So when I came to see him perform here it was brilliant because he was one of the people who really influenced my decision to become an actor.

How did you get the part of Susanna Walcott in The Crucible?

I had kept in touch with Anna and let her know what I was up to. I had also asked her to let me know if there were any productions she could consider me for and I was then contacted about The Crucible. The audition was at the National Theatre in London. It’s a very big theatre and I’ve never been there before. I sat at stage door waiting for my audition and usually I’m very calm at auditions but because I was at the National Theatre I got really starry eyed. At the audition Anna was there and Toby Whale, the Casting Director, who I’d met before and they really looked after me. I just had to do a reading and I’d practised the night before and it must have gone alright because I got the part!

Is there any advice you can give to anyone who wants to make acting their career?

I think my advice is that you just have to go for it and get involved in as much as you can because it builds up your confidence. Also don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t do it - just do it!

The best thing I’ve done is to learn from the many different people I’ve worked with. So my advice is to just watch and learn, and never stop learning. You can learn everything - from technique, from how to breathe to how to capture emotion. I’ve learnt different ways and different techniques just from watching people. Another piece of advice is also to train, in whatever way you can. Also really stick at it and don’t let anything distract you.

Also when I went to auditions, after I first graduated, I really messed up as I was so nervous. So just treat auditions as workshops and have as much fun as you can. Be as real as you can - be yourself and don’t put an act on because they want to see who you are.

Kitty Randle as Susanna Walcott and members of the company in The Crucible, photograph by Manuel Harlan

Tell me about the character you play.

My character is Susanna Walcott. I’m one of the young girls who is caught dancing in the woods and cries witchcraft against people in the community.

She is a serving girl who is around 17 and she lives in a very hard and strict community where children are seen and not heard. The girls are caught dancing in the woods. Dancing is forbidden and punishable by whipping and I think Susanna is really very scared about what will happen to them.

The girls create hysteria in the community and in court they have a huge impact. They go in and out of trances and cry out the names of those who are witches.

I think that the girls really get caught up in the power and respect they gain and it’s probably the first time they have had real respect. As a group, I think the girls are very frightening to the other characters because if they cry out your name you will be put to trial and possibly to death.

At this moment in rehearsals the group of girls, as actresses, are discussing what we did do in the woods and our relationship with each other. Also we’ve been discussing what happens to us when we become possessed and cry out in court.

Kitty Randle interviewed by Susan Weaver, Education Projects Officer, on Tuesday 20 January 2004.

	‘I see Hale as someone who wants the truth’
MICHAEL GOULD – REVEREND JOHN HALE

How did you get into acting?

My debut was as a skeleton wearing a leotard with luminous bones painted on it and I remember having to chase the main character going “flee, flee, flee”. I was about 12 and that put me off acting for about 10 years. There was also another part where I played a miner in something and we had a disaster because the set fell down - it wasn’t supposed to but it did.

I got into acting as a hobby when I was at university – that was where I discovered it. The course I was doing was History and I found my mind getting really scrambled and I really liked acting because I could use my mind, my body and my imagination, I suppose. So it was a sort of undiscovered part of me which then made me wonder if I could do it professionally. Some good friends and I set up a theatre company and we toured for a year. We all found that we did want to do it full time but we felt we needed training. So I worked for a year to raise the money to go to drama school and did a one year postgraduate course at the Academy of Live and Performing Arts in London. And that’s how I started.

I left drama school in the days when, in order to get your Equity card, you had to get eight professional contracts as an actor first or you couldn’t get a legitimate Equity job. My brother worked at Brentford Football Club and he was in a position to give me the eight contracts. But he didn’t just want to give them to me so he said would I mind dressing up as a bumble bee which is the mascot of the club. So I did it once and worked one day as a bumble bee, handing out sweets for children and shaking the referee's hand.

Then I got a legitimate job in Theatre in Education (TIE) in Hull. I worked for a year in Hull for Humberside TIE in what was quite hard hitting political TIE at the time and I also worked for Hull Truck Youth Theatre. Community touring was the next thing and a couple of fringe shows. Then the RSC saw me in a fringe show where I was playing Lord Byron and they cast me. I worked for the RSC for two years and that was what put me into the mainstream I suppose. But when I was younger I would have quite happily continued with the TIE and community work as it’s invaluable and important. My career has tended to be more classical, text based work just because I’ve got a big gob, and I can shout!

What advice would you give for anyone wanting to make acting a career?

The thing to do really is to read plays. When I was starting out I didn’t really understand plays, particularly Shakespeare, and I felt I really needed to get hold of it. So I promised myself I’d read Hamlet until I understood every word. It was a little bit of a mind bending trip but it was useful because it broke the back of the problem and I started to see how fantastic it was - how it all hung together.

In terms of making acting a career I am hesitant to recommend it to anyone in a way as it is quite a personal thing, but I think if you really, really feel that your heart is in it and you are strong enough to pursue it, then do. If you feel any part of you doubting it then be careful, that would be my warning.

My other advice would be to see shows as much as you can to have a broad range of theatre experiences including physical theatre as well as text based theatre. Obviously, getting involved in youth theatres is a good thing, although it’s not something I did. It might be that you do youth theatre and realise that it’s not for you, so it’s a good thing to find out.

Do you do preparation before you come to the rehearsal room?

If there’s plenty of time I do and I have with this production. My first piece of research was in regards to the playwright, Arthur Miller. I’ve always been a fan of his and I remembered his autobiography Timebends which I read back in the 1980s. So I basically checked the index and looked up references to The Crucible in that book and that was my starting point. In his autobiography he also mentions a book by Marion L Starkey on whose work he based his play. He knew about the Salem witchcraft trials but his knowledge wasn’t in any kind of constructive order. Marion L Starkey had put it in quite a good order and that’s basically the source for the play - so I read that.

Between the play and reality there are some differences. You sort of wonder when you are reading the play why he made those differences - why has he constructed it like that. For example Abigail is eleven and Betty is nine in reality, but in the play they are a bit older. What he seems to be saying in other books and essays I’ve read is that he really wanted to bring the sexuality thing to the front because in reality Abigail was removed from the Proctor household and she probably was his servant but there was never any real explanation as to why that happened so he’s constructed an explanation for it.

Since we’ve been in rehearsals we have been trying to find out more about possessions, witchcraft, exorcisms, that sort of thing. I’ve been trying to find out exactly what a Minster such as Hale would do.

Other types of preparation I might do is break the text down into sections like bite sized chunks. It’s the Stanislavski way of working - trying to work out where it changes, where it moves forward, just what’s going on. I also kind of extrapolate from the play what I understand of the plot and I sometimes write it out as a story. In the first instance I avoid my character as I want to get an overview first. I also have these seven questions I use - Where am I? When am I? Who am I? What do I want? Why do I want it? What do I do to get it? What obstacles do I have to overcome? It’s a crude version of the Stanislavski method but I know it does cover all the bases - it gets everything done. I can use those questions as loosely or as specifically as I want to.

Michael Gould as Reverend John Hale in The Crucible, photograph by Manuel Harlan

How would you describe your character, Reverend John Hale?

He’s a Minister of the Lord. I can think of two modern parallels to him. The first is a genetic scientist, somebody who is in search of the heart of the matter, what is the core of human existence. Nowadays people look at genes - for example it might be that a genetic scientist might be looking for the intelligence gene, really trying to explore the human body to find it, knowing that there is something in there that explains everything. So I think in a way Hale is trying to develop a theory of everything.

The other modern parallel is someone who has come to the fore in the press recently as he is the expert witness in cot death trials. At the moment 250 or so people are having their cases re-examined where supposedly they’ve killed their babies and it’s all based on this expert witnesses’ evidence. Basically he says that two baby deaths could be described as coincidence but three is murder. In that case there are many people who have been trying to prove their innocence rather than the prosecution having to prove their guilt. Hale is the expert, but I don’t think for one moment that he was conning anyone or necessarily had criminal intent, he really thought that was how it worked.

Recently I have been considering his utter belief that there are witches in the world and his total conviction that he could help this community with that. Miller describes his objectives as trying to find light and the preservation of goodness. Although some people might see him as a collaborator with the court and a prosecutor, a guilty man, I see him more as someone who wants the truth. He doesn’t want to prove there are witches if there aren’t witches. He’s just in pursuit of the truth. Hale denounces the court eventually when he realises it can’t reveal the truth of the situation.

Michael Gould interviewed by Susan Weaver, Education Projects Officer, on Tuesday 20 January 2004.

	‘Mary's caught at that extraordinarily confusing and strangely powerful time of crossing the threshold between the young girl and woman.'
LYNDSEY MARSHAL - MARY WARREN

How did you get into acting?

I had a very inspirational drama teacher when I was doing my GCSEs in Manchester called Sue Hilton. She was so passionate and encouraging. I suppose her enthusiasm was infectious. We used to go on lots of trips to the theatre. She told me about the National Youth Theatre and so I auditioned and... well, got in.
So I did a three week acting course in London, which proved to be an all round wonderful experience, but an expensive one! I worked at my school in the office during the Easter holidays and wrote off for grants and sponsorship to finance it. It was hard, but you just have to persevere.

After that I went on to do A-Levels, choosing Theatre Studies as one of my options and it was at this time I became involved in the Manchester Youth Theatre. This was such an influence on me, I had such a special time. I'm still best friends with people I met there. So over the six weeks summer holidays I'd spend my time doing plays with Manchester Youth Theatre and we performed in some great Manchester theatres such as: The Library Theatre, Contact, The Green Room and the Royal Exchange.

When I’d finished my A Levels I took a year out to earn some cash and just to decide what I wanted to do really. During this time I worked with some theatre groups connected with Manchester Youth Theatre then I started applying for drama schools. This was a confusing time. There was no-one to really advise me. I didn't know, for example that I could apply to drama schools independently, I thought I had to apply to UCAS. It was also really difficult financially as each drama school charges you up to £40 to audition. So if you're applying to seven or eight schools and having to travel there, and in some cases stay overnight, it becomes quite an expensive affair.

I was offered a place at The Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. They offer a degree course in acting so I was able to apply for a Local Authority Grant.

That’s it really. I trained for three years and had the most amazing time. I learnt so much and loved living in Cardiff.

Do you have any advice for someone thinking of pursuing acting as a career?

Yes, make sure its definitely what you want to do it because if you're not sure, you will not do it for long because it’s hard work - and non-stop hard work. Even if you get a big break at the end of it you still have to go back to the drawing board and start again in some ways. Also if you do want to be an actor, go and see things - see how other actors work. I knew I definitely wanted to act when I went to see a production of John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger at the Royal Exchange. Michael Sheen played Jimmy Porter. Wow, he just blew my mind, he was so inspirational.

Also get to know what the theatres in your area are doing and see if they run any Youth Theatres you can get involved in. As well as Manchester Youth Theatre, I worked with a youth theatre connected to the Royal Exchange.

In addition, if you apply to drama schools be selective, apply to the ones you think would suit you best. When I applied to The Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama I went to Cardiff to stay with a friend and spent a couple of days watching lessons and looking around the place.

Lyndsey Marshal as Mary Warren and Douglas Henshall as John Proctor in The Crucible, photograph by Manuel Harlan

Tell us about the character you play, Mary Warren.

Mary is a really hard girl to play. It's definitely one of the most difficult roles I've played. She's interesting because when we meet her, she's at a point of crisis and her crisis is never really resolved.

She finds herself at a point where so many people and events are dependent on her - and she has the power to make or break things.

It's interesting how a young girl with all this responsibility copes under intense pressure from all sides.

She's also a very isolated and lonely character. There are also interesting parts in her life you don't get to see in the play. For example, we never see her as a member of the group of girls who 'point out' the people doing the devil's work. She's a character always on the cusp. She’s never quite with the Proctors, the girls or the court.

She's caught at that extraordinarily confusing and strangely powerful time of crossing the threshold between young girl and woman. In the world she lives in the puritanical way of life is repressing everything that has to 'come out' and the consequences of this repression has disastrous effects - and we see this in the play. If the pressure cooker of these emotional, physical and sexual feelings are left too long, sooner or later its going to explode.

Lyndsey Marshal interviewed by Susan Weaver, Education Projects Office on Thursday 22 January 2004.

	‘Parris - he's neurotic, he’s paranoid, he’s selfish, but he’s not the only one.’
JOHN DOUGALL - REVEREND SAMUEL PARRIS

How did you become a professional actor?

It all started at school really as a way of avoiding double maths - always good! I used to enjoy school shows as it was always a way of not doing your normal routine. My first ever part was as Chief Weasel in Wind in the Willows, when I was about 11 or 12. Apparently a mate of mine had to be dragged out of the assembly hall because he was laughing so much at me. He found it highly entertaining and so unlike the person he knew. That was where I got the interest and it was all down to the power of actually being on the stage.

What really set me on the journey was when I was still in school in Scotland and I got a season with the National Youth Theatre in London. We did a complete flop of a show called Magnificence which was a morality play written by the tutor of Henry VIII and we did it as a musical as well! I was in the chorus in tights and some nights there were more people on stage than in the audience. But I loved the experience and suddenly realised that this was something that I really wanted to be part of and so that was what convinced me to go into acting.

Then I went to drama school in Glasgow and did three years of training and after that I did a year touring theatre in education. Then I came to London and the rest is history!

Have you done any preparation for the production before you came to the rehearsal room?

Well, I was in this production a 100 years ago, with one line. It was a very, very good touring production with the RSC and we took it to Poland which was very interesting. It was a great show and we toured around the country. We didn’t come to Sheffield but we were in Doncaster. It was during the miners strike of the 1980s so it was a very interesting time. So I’ve got a very strong memory of the power of the piece. Not so much about the performances but just the kind of spell it weaved.

I didn’t do any particular preparation for Parris because I believe that you have to stick to what’s given to you on the page. Miller has written the characters based on real individuals but what they did historically doesn’t always add up to the reality of the piece. I’d be wrong to go in thinking, I’ve read Parris and he doesn’t do that in the play because in reality he did this. That’s where you have to let the past go.

Now we’re in rehearsal we’ve all read and looked at books and you can keep on researching. The great thing of working on a piece with Anna is that you don’t sit around a table for two weeks talking about it, you get up and start doing it. That’s the only way to do it for me, and to learn as you go.

I did think a lot about the dialect before we started. Only because in the last play I did I played an American. I thought about getting the balance of not losing the natural rhythms of the play and not overloading it with Americanisms. I thought about trying to find some kind of accent somewhere between English and modern American, so that’s something I was conscious of before I came to rehearsals.

Can you tell us about your character, Reverend Samuel Parris?

I think in this piece he is a victim as much as he is an instigator. They are all victims. He’s a man whose intentions are very good. He lives in a society which is very tough, very hard and he’s got tremendous character flaws as a human being.

Miller says that Parris is a very unsympathetic character and these types of parts are very challenging but I can see a journey for the man and I don’t think he’s two dimensional. He’s neurotic, he’s paranoid, he’s selfish, but he’s not the only one. He’s in a community that is imploding - something is very rotten.

John Dougall as Reverend Samuel Parris and Sinéad Matthews as Abigail Williams in The Crucible, photograph by Manuel Harlan

Have you got any advice for anyone wanting to pursue a career in the theatre?

The thing with acting is that for all the celebrity glamour image of the soaps and people on quite a hefty wage - the reality of acting is completely different. Don’t go into it if you‘re after money. You can make a living, and of course if you work for film and TV you can make a very good living, but it depends where you want to go. With basic theatre acting there are going to be points where you will struggle for work but in no way let that put you off because if you want to do it you will do it. If you realise it’s not for you, you won’t. Remember it’s going to be tough but the opportunities now are much greater.

Think about training in some way but not as a must. In fact training used to be a requisite when I started in the late 70s because you had to get your Equity card or you couldn’t work. Nowadays it’s much easier but some people are put off by three years at drama school. Although I think it’s great because I went straight from school. Some people go to university and then decide to go to drama school or some people do post grad one year courses.

John Dougall interviewed by Susan Weaver, Education Projects Officer, on Friday 23 January 2004.

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