Читать книгу David Mitchell: Back Story - David Mitchell - Страница 15
ОглавлениеI cross Finchley Road at the Swiss Cottage roundabout (there’s a pub there which looks like a giant Swiss cottage, which is how the area got its name; why such a giant chalet-shaped boozer was built is a mystery to me) and wiggle left into the top of Eton Avenue. There are two theatres here now – Hampstead Theatre, which is newly rebuilt, having existed in a glorified portacabin fifty yards further south until a few years ago, and the Embassy Theatre, which belongs to the Central School of Speech and Drama.
Some students are sitting on the steps outside the theatre and I squint at them jealously. I don’t want to be them – they’re wearing loose, sensible clothing in order to facilitate the sort of balletic moves by which no production in theatrical history has ever been improved, and I’m including ballets; plus they all seem to be agreeing about something, and I’ve got a hunch that they’re all wrong – I’m just remembering what it was like to put on plays as a student, surrounded by friends, all beer and low stakes.
But perhaps it’s not like that if you’re a drama school student. At university, it all just felt like fun. Maybe these students feel like they’ve started work already. I’m not sorry I didn’t go to drama school. I’ve heard they make you do mime and try to ‘take you apart and put you back together again’ which, even if they mean it metaphorically, isn’t really my cup of tea. They want to ‘take you out of your comfort zone’, and I think that might mean they actually confiscate your cup of tea.
My first proper theatrical performances were at New College School. I have a vague recollection of one occasion at Napier House when I was made to pretend I was a stalk of wheat, but that was just a sort of Harvest Festival show, which involved us bringing in various foods for redistribution to the bemused and needy, then some kind of activity which I’m not going to dignify with the word ‘performance’, on a platform which I’m not going to dignify with the word ‘stage’. I remember being part of a line of children, in front of an audience of parents, and we were all pretending to grow from a seed by starting in a crouched position and slowly standing up and finally stretching out our arms. Like soldiers in a Soviet propaganda film, we were under instructions to smile. I suppose it was physical theatre really and, like a lot of physical theatre, it received a rapturous response from an unquestioning audience at pains to indulge the performers.
But my real performing career started at New College School, with an appearance as a clown. One Friday afternoon in my first year at the school, it was suddenly announced that instead of ‘Field’, which was what we called sport because you went to the college playing field to do it, we were going to be taught some circus skills.
It is a sign of how baffling so much of life is when you’re seven that we took this news in our stride. I’ve often wondered since what was actually going on, and I’ve come to the conclusion that a bunch of out-of-work performers were making some cash on the side by doing circus skills workshops at independent schools and that one of the NCS staff either knew one of the performers or had been born yesterday.
The first piece of news about the circus skills afternoon was that, sadly, not everyone would get to have his face painted like a clown. ‘Ohhhh noooo!’ the class moaned – and I assume I joined in, just like I’d have joined in at Nuremberg. What I was thinking, of course, was: ‘Thank God for that, I don’t want my face made up like a clown’s by someone I don’t know. That would be awful! And what if the make-up wouldn’t come off?!’
‘I’m sorry but two is the absolute maximum for face painting,’ lamented Miss Brown, ‘and as you all obviously want to have your faces painted like clowns …’
‘Oh yes, madly – please pick me, Miss Brown!’ we all interjected.
‘… I’m just going to have to put your names in a hat and pick out the two lucky ones who will get to spend the afternoon looking like clowns.’
I was already familiar enough with sod’s law to have a sinking feeling at this news. There seemed no way of volunteering to be left out of the hat. It was just assumed that we’d all want make-up all over our faces. Where, I thought, did that idea come from? Why is there this weird consensus about this weird thing – this bizarre concept that everyone else seems to think is a lovely treat? And why am I being swept along in it?
And yet I knew any attempt I made to opt out pre-hat would be dicing with pariah status. I was facing another, and quite unexpected, challenge in my quest to be normal: I was going to have to make it seem as if I wanted to look like a clown. I really hadn’t seen that coming. But still, I reasoned, it probably won’t be me.
Of course it was me. First out of the hat. I forced a smile onto my soon-to-be-vandalised features. Oh God, life is awful, I thought. And I distinctly remember thinking that this was doubly unjust because, not only was I going to have to endure something terrifying, but one of the many among my classmates who, it had recently become clear, had always been obsessed with greasepaint would be denied the smearing of their dreams.
And it was fine, obviously. It didn’t hurt – I walked around with everyone saying ‘You look like a clown!’, they cleaned it all off before I went home, and I had that buzz you get from having endured something you were dreading and found it, while not actually pleasant, less alarming than you’d feared.
Other than sitting still while a stranger daubs your face, the other ‘circus skills’ which the out-of-work actors were teaching turned out to be balancing a hockey stick on one finger – which takes a bit of practice but isn’t that difficult, or at all impressive, or a circus skill – and lying on a bed of nails. This involves just lying on a bed of nails. If the nails aren’t that sharp – they weren’t – the fact that there are such a lot of them means that it’s basically painless – your weight is comfortably distributed among the hundreds of nails. It’s supposed to sound brave or impressive because you’re lying on so many nails, so people (idiots) think it must be many times the pain of lying on the point of one nail, which is agonising. But of course it isn’t. I hated Field, but there’s no doubt that afternoon would have been better spent if I’d been outdoors running away from a football as usual.
You may be wondering why, as the sort of freak who wandered around inexpertly disguised as Louis XIV all weekend, I wasn’t more enthusiastic about spending an afternoon disguised as a clown. I think my horror largely came from the novelty of the activity and the people inflicting it on me. I’m not really attracted by novelty, as you will almost certainly already have guessed. (If not, wait until I start talking about Chinese food.)
That selection process for the clown make-up is the earliest recollection I have of my knee-jerk hatred of consensus. I just don’t like it, particularly when it relates to fun or fashion. Not only did I dread the thought of having to wear make-up, I hated the feeling that I was supposed to think it would be great. I hated that pressure to join in and be like everyone else. I hated it, but I did it anyway.
Who are these morons who want stuff putting on their faces, I thought. And why does their opinion prevail? I get the same shiver of contempt when I hear inane radio DJs talk to listeners about their weekend plans to ‘just chill’, ‘have a large one’ or ‘party with my mates’. These people are welcome to such pleasures, but I balk at the implication that that’s what everyone’s doing or what everyone should be doing; that these are the lives that the uncool are so often exhorted to get. I’d love to hear a caller to XFM or similar announce that they’ll be spending all weekend at a steam fair, seeing a relative with dementia, decorating eggs, desperately looking for a vital but lost bit of paperwork or just frantically masturbating to the Eroica symphony.
This is a world where people no longer indicate their enthusiasm for a TV series, actor, celebrity, band or snack bar by saying ‘Oh, I love it’ but with ‘I’m loving it’ – you know ‘I’m loving this season of Strictly’, ‘I’m loving Heston’s mini fish burgers’, ‘We’re loving Alan Carr’s new glasses’. That’s the fickle present continuous. There’s a silent ‘at the moment’ after it which there isn’t with ‘I love’. These consumers are just passing through, waiting to get their head turned by something sparkly which, once tarnished by their gaze, they’ll turn away from. They like what’s cool because it’s cool and for no other reason, and I hate them for it.
