claytoncast

As yet another Bank Holiday, for us freelancers the problem of how to fill another day of leisure presents itself. Two interviews last week. Nothing has come of them so far. A third more informal interview has resulted in me agreeing to direct a play for the Edinburgh festival this year. It's all happened rather quickly and I'm quite excited by it. My last visit to the festival was in 1990 when we took "Lady Bracknell's Confinement" the superb one man play by Paul Doust to the Pleasance for a week. I'd previously played Lady Bracknell in London and to take it to the festival for the last week was great fun. I have memories of very cheap digs- a hall of residence as I remember. Nice houses, a great review in The Scotsman to give me cred, late night drinking sessions with the Comedy Store players after their gigs at the Assembly Rooms, and coming back home having had a great time with a very big hole in my bank account. It was a unique occurrence and now twe

This week has been dominated by interviews.  Not interviews for work by me. That’s next week I hope. No, I’ve been sitting on an interview panel to interview for a very important position for an organisation I am connected with. It would be wrong of me to comment in any specific way, but it is interesting to draw some general conclusions from what I observed from spending ten hours meeting people. Actors interview a lot. While most people might have five or ten job interviews in their life, actors can have that many in a month if they are very lucky. I would hate to think how many interviews I have done, but given that I have been acting for 33 years this I rather suspect that it has to be well over 3000.  One still takes them seriously. At the end of the interview there is the chance of work and this is always guaranteed to whet the actors appetite. For people who do not do so many job interviews, they must rise up from the tranquil sea of life like a huge mountain to be climbed

So the property search has slowed right down at the moment as we can't seem to interest anyone in buying our flat. When you love a place as much as I love our flat it can seem to be a bit of a slight against you. We try to be out when people come for viewings as the idea of having our lifestyle examined by people while we rate here is quite off putting. We viewed a house on Saturday while the owner and his children calmly sat and watched tv or played in the garden and it was hard to have an objective discussion as one went around the place. That house - which actually we didn’t like - and others will have to remain pipe dreams at the moment until we get an offer on our own place. We’ve been on the market for about five weeks now and we are going to be on for another five weeks. Then the flat will come off the market and we’ll go on holiday and consider our strategy. We know it's a gorgeous cosy flat. We just need to find someone else who thinks that too. Work has picked up a

It’s easy to get out of the habit of things.........like work! The whole country has been enjoying an April of short weeks and long weekends. Three weeks ago I decided that my attitude to having no work till the 3rd of May would be to declare a two week Easter holiday. As a ploy it worked a treat. Absolved me from the guilt of the freelancer that a day at home should really be a day working. So imagine the shock to my system when on Tuesday this week I had to go into town for a casting and then do a three hour job in the afternoon. Thursday and Friday also saw a trip toAmsterdam for a job so that by the end of the week I was ready for a long weekend once more. It’s the bane of the freelancer that when you’re working you are thinking about time off and when you’re not working you are worried that you should be. For an actor the best time is between getting the job and starting it. Once it’s started you’re looking at how long each day is and when you will get a day off. The promise

So we’ve all had a long holiday and now the prospect of summer term is upon us. I could rather get into this idea of four day weekends, and I have to say that I haven;t got bored throughout either of them. As an actor who has endured some long periods of unemployment, I can tell you that there used to be nothing worse than a Sunday or a Bank Holiday. It’s still the reason I do my weekly accounts on a Sunday morning. Something to do that feels like work. One of the best pieces of advice I ever received from a lovely tutor called John McGregor at Drama school was “Do one thing each day which might lead to work and then get on with your life” It’s a piece of advice that I have passed on to many young actors who I have worked with and it’s a great standby to help cope with employment.  The thing is that on Sunday and Bank Holidays there was nothing once could do. No chance that the phone would ring, no one to call and even if you posted a letter you knew it wouldn’t go that day and land