Peggy Leask in The Man, Armidale Theatre Club, 1964
Alan Brooks with baby Peggy, 1923
After Peggy, my mother, died in 2008, I discovered she had received some excellent reviews for her role as Clara, the maid, in the Armidale (NSW) Arts Council Players, February 1950 production of Hay Fever. Born in early December 1949, I was just a few months old but surely this was my first connection to the life of the theatre which I have pursued ever since! It’s probably why from an early age I also registered that my banker father, presumably left holding me as a baby, always hoped, somewhat in vain, that I would get a ‘proper’ job! Mum, a founding member of the Armidale Theatre Club in 1956, for many years acted, directed, stage managed, and administered productions. She was also similarly involved with the Armidale Musical Society so I don’t remember a time when the local community theatre didn’t feature in our activities.1
Cecil Cooper in The Son of the Wolf, 1922
Eileen Robinson and Theresa Carmo
Dollars & Sense, Alan Brooks, Melbourne, 1923
My mother’s parents, Eileen Robinson and Alan Brooks (birth name Irving Hayward) and her uncle, Cecil Cooper Robinson, were all actors, mostly in America. Although born in Sydney while her father’s play, Dollars and Sense, was playing in Melbourne in July 1923, my mother spent most of her youth in Hollywood, where Eileen and an actor friend, Theresa Carmo, adapted their home to create a small workshop theatre space and radio studio, called the Theatre of Youth, which in the early 1930s taught aspiring actors from the age of two and presented regular performances of scenes from plays and student devised material. My mother, from a very young age, performed in many of these.
The Theatre of Youth, Hollywood, 1933
When Eileen and Mum returned to Sydney in the mid-1930s, while Eileen was participating in the management of HEC Robinson map publishers after her father’s death, she used the ground floor of the business in George Street to run The Little Playhouse. As the director, she offered children’s drama classes, facilities for adult dramatic clubs to perform, radio coaching and private lessons. She later made the space available for the war effort in 1941 for the Women’s Auxiliary Australian Air Force which my mother participated in from the age of 18.
The Little Playhouse, Sydney, late 1930s
The family tradition of classes leading to performances, which I subsequently followed, goes back even further and here I pay tribute to the inspiring Sue-Anne Wallace—we discovered with delight that we were almost related! Sue-Anne’s work on her grandfather Walter Bentley, led me to look more closely into Eileen’s scrapbook material (mostly put together by her map publishing father). I found that Eileen was a pupil of Walter’s and aged around 11 to 13, took part in student performances of play scenes presented by the Walter Bentley Players at St James Hall, Sydney, before the First World War. Eileen received a good review for her debut as the French maid in Act 2 of Camille in 1911.
Theatre going was also part of the tradition I followed. When I was 11, my mother, recognising a kindred spirit, took me to the first Sydney production of My Fair Lady at Her Majesty’s in 1960 (we went back stage to see a friend of my mother’s, and I was fascinated to be shown how the stage revolve worked). Subsequently, before we even owned a record player, our first LP was a gift from Theresa Carmo (no doubt following Mum’s report of our theatre experience), of the original Broadway cast recording of My Fair Lady—a musical I have loved and quoted since that time. In 1962 we saw Oliver at the Theatre Royal (in which my partner, Brendon Lunney, played the Artful Dodger and I still have the program he signed along with the rest of the cast!). The sense of anticipation and excitement in those moments before curtain up have stayed with me and as I get older the need for that experience is essential to my sense of well-being.
Brian Barnes and Harold Bennett, New England Theatre Centre
Theatre is a great connector. In 1962 the New England Theatre Centre touring company set up its base in Armidale. Led by Brian D. Barnes and Harold Bennett, this group of young actors toured NSW and ran holiday workshops. I wasn’t very good at acting but loved being part of the collaborative process and at least six people involved with NETC have remained life-long friends. In the 1980s, when I lived in London, as an agent representing mostly musicians, I managed Brian’s touring One Man Theatre in Europe and beyond.2
In 1963 my mother played Margaret in the local production of The Lady’s Not For Burning by Christopher Fry, directed by Ivan, the husband of my out of school drama teacher, Judy Morsley. I took great pleasure in working with Mum as she learnt her lines—and the wonderful, breathless and eccentric statement by Margaret in one scene: ‘And I’m sure there was blood in the gutter from somebody’s head, or else it was the sunset in a puddle’ has stayed with me, along with memories of being awed by a touring company from UK; Harold Lang’s Voyage Theatre, who presented Fry’s A Sleep of Prisoners in Armidale in 1966. My connectedness to Fry continued when, during my research for my PhD and subsequent book on actress/manager Lena Ashwell in England, I discovered they had been great friends. I managed to meet him and talked about Ashwell with him.
Recently I found my somewhat battered programs for the 1964 and 1965 tours of the Young Elizabethan Players who toured potted versions of Shakespeare which I saw at school. Casts included Peter Whitford, Peter Rowley and Charlie Little; many years after those tours, I interviewed these actors as an oral historian for NIDA and the NFSA.3
Almost inevitably, like my grandmother and mother before me, as a teenager I participated in drama workshops, classes and presentation of scenes. Although I have a copy of the program, but with no memories of it, apparently, in December 1964, I played the Princess in On the Trail of Father Christmas, a seasonal entertainment presented by the Theatre Club in the Armidale Town Hall. My 10 year old brother, John, played a Dwarf!!!
There was no drama taught at school in the 1960s (although I got the Librarian at Armidale High School to run drama workshops for a year as an alternative to sports activities, which of course were compulsory). Maybe that’s why I studied drama at UNSW and subsequently helped establish the Australian Youth Performing Arts Association in the 1970s to bring together practitioners, teachers and young people to provide access to drama and theatre experiences.4 After University, I didn’t teach for very long, moving into arts administration and working for the Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust before living in the UK for 17 years. Looking back, it is fascinating to see the directions such early experiences take us in and I’m delighted to be part of a tradition that is at least three generations long.
Endnotes
1. The Armidale Theatre Club (since 2010 The Armidale Drama & Musical Society) has an informative website with archive information as well as a hard copy archive held in Armidale. The website address is: adms.org.au
2. The New England Theatre Centre/Brian D. Barnes One Man Theatre material, including newsletters, photos and correspondence, is in the State Library of NSW—Brian put it together from his home in England and I arranged the donation to the Library.
3. These interviews are in the NIDA Library and available to be listened to at the Library, along with approximately 80 interviews recorded between 2004 and 2009.
4. The AYPAA archive has been deposited with the Seaborn Foundation collection in Sydney and contains newsletters, reports, manuscripts, photos, correspondence and promotional material.
Further Reading
Judith Lamb (formerly Morsley), wrote a comprehensive history of the Armidale Theatre Club, Never Whistle in the Dressing Room, published by Kardoorair Press, Armidale, 2005, ISBN 0908244614.
