When
I was at school, Miss Iliff asked me if I would I like to be in
the school play. It was Sophocles' Electra and would I
like to play Chrysothemis? And I thought, what, stay after school
doing something like that? So I said, "No, but I'll play
Electra." I hadn't read it of course but what was the point
of staying behind to play Chrysothemis in a play called Electra?
I still don't know why she cast me. She just must have spotted
something in me. Later on she was rather proud of that. My elder
sister says it was the best thing I've ever done - she's a friend
by the way.
My first
job, though, was at Liverpool Everyman. I'd been to Paris to
study mime because I wanted to teach dance to deaf children. I
only have 40 per cent hearing and have never been able to bear
that hearing-impaired people appear clumsy, so I wanted to teach
dance through vibration. I was working as an au pair but I was
really bad at it - I got hit over the head by the Spanish maid -
so I was packed off back home to the boyfriend I was pining for
who was at the Liverpool Everyman.
It was
in the deep mid-Sixties and people like Peter James and Terry
Hands were building the theatre. You could just smell what
theatre was. Until then my idea of theatre was watching the
flying in panto at Golders Green Hippodrome, something I only
managed to do last year in Aaron Spelling's series Charmed
so I've finally come full circle.
Anyway
they were auditioning for a juvenile lead/ASM, and I thought I
could remember one of Juliet's speeches from O-level so I did
that. They thought it was funny - I don't think I thought it was
- and they allowed me in for £7 and 10 shillings a week.
Within a day I'd been sacked by stage management for being a
distraction and put on to wardrobe where I spent my time locked
away in a room avoiding the actors, including the leading man
John McEnery (who later became my husband), because they would
stop me and ask me to do things like sew on a button.
I was in
The Servant of Two Masters, first witch in "the
Scottish Play" and Lady Mortimer in Henry IV Part One.
She speaks in Welsh. People used to come over from Wales and boo
me quite a lot.
Stephanie
Beacham is in A Busy Day at the Lyric Theatre, London
