All the world’s a stage…
I’m often asked about my slightly unusual career path. The journey to who and where I am today has been a winding one, full of happy accidents. Serendipity has played a huge part in my life, as has following my heart and gut, when many people’s mouths (and sometimes my own head) were telling me to do the opposite!
Words have always been a passion, for as long as I can remember… their power, their precision, their playfulness - especially word play that tickles the brain. My favourite riddle when I was a child was:
Q: What’s the difference between a duck?
A: One of its legs is both the same.
My favourite limerick (best said out loud) was;
There was a young man from Japan
Whose limericks never would scan.
When people asked why,
He answered, “Well, I
Always like to get as many words into the last line as I possibly can!”
I think you can trace a direct line from those two bits of word play to my work with Shakespeare’s complex language! I love it when words ask a bit more of us, and give the brain some exercise - a puzzle to solve or a double meaning to unpack… anything to light up an unexpected connection.
I was also obsessively drawn to books and films about the world of theatre and performance - Noel Streatfeild’s Ballet Shoes and Curtain Up, or Kiss Me Kate - with Howard Keel and Kathryn Grayson bickering, singing and falling back in love both backstage and onstage. So it was probably inevitable that the first part of my journey took me towards the theatre.
Cambridge University is a hotbed of theatrical opportunities (even though you couldn’t do a drama degree there at that time). I read English, and was a Choral Scholar, and managed to get a First despite doing 29 shows in my three years - that’s at least two a term and some in the holidays too. After graduating, I did a one-year actor training course with The Acting Company at The Arts Educational Schools, where I trained in Voice with Barbara Houseman and Anne-Marie Speed.
I spent more than ten years as an actor and singer - mostly doing Shakespeare or musicals (and sometimes both at the same time). Most jobbing actors have to supplement their earnings, so I developed sidelines as a workshop leader and as a researcher/writer, including projects for the V&A Theatre Museum website and the British Library.
After a serious broken leg took me out of performing for nearly a year (ironic, given the way we wish each other good luck in the theatre - “break a leg!”), I started to shift direction. I spent some time weighing what I really cared about - voices, words, Shakespeare - and landed up on the MA in Voice Studies at Central School of Speech and Drama. I graduated with Distinction but it was while I was procrastinating over my dissertation that I did something I’d never done in my life… I went to the Royal Shakespeare Company’s website to have a look at the jobs available. I happened upon an advertisement for the inaugural Voice Internship - a chance to work at the company for a year, learning on the job. The deadline for applications was the following day…
I was thrilled when Lyn Darnley, then Head of Voice, offered me the post - and even more thrilled to find myself sharing rooms with Cicely Berry and John Barton, two gods in my Shakespeare pantheon. It felt like coming home - every day a new challenge, a new discovery, a new delight. And the delight seemed to be mutual. Half way through my year, I was invited by Lyn and by the then Artistic Director, Michael Boyd, to become a permanent member of the Voice Department. I am forever grateful to them both for their trust in me.
I worked full-time as a voice coach for the RSC for nearly eight years, five of those as Senior Text and Voice Coach. I worked on many, many productions (I don’t know the total number) including Michael Boyd’s award-winning Histories Cycle - a life-changing two-and-a-half years with one company of actors working our way through the cycle of eight History plays. Working alongside Michael Boyd over the years has been a joyous collaborative journey, and it’s thanks to him that (after we had both moved on from the RSC) I began another creative adventure with Theatre for a New Audience (TFANA) in New York, with whom I have worked on several Shakespeare productions since becoming a freelancer.
Other highlights of the RSC years include Rupert Goold's Romeo and Juliet with Mariah Gale, Sam Troughton, Noma Dumezweni and Jonjo O’Neill, Greg Doran’s Antony and Cleopatra with Harriet Walter and Patrick Stewart, Nancy Meckler's A Midsummer Night's Dream, and - after I became a freelancer - Iqbal Khan’s Othello with Lucian Msmati. The collaborative rehearsal rooms promoted by Michael Boyd were a dream environment in which to be creative.
And alongside the work in the rehearsal room and one-to-one sessions with the actors, daily show warm-ups, and so on, there were so many other ways to develop my practice at the RSC - devising and directing recitals and events; creating a two-week Poetry workshop with four young actors, culminating in a performance on the main stage of the Courtyard Theatre; not to mention directing a production of Othello as part of the RSC’s partnership with Ohio State University.
My work at the RSC also included a strong component of corporate work, offering workshops and events in conjunction with the Development Department, the Events Department, and a great deal of work in schools and other educational establishments with the Education Department.
I am deeply honoured to have been made an Associate Artist of the RSC in recognition of my contribution to the company.
And during the Complete Works Festival (2006/07) I began a collaborative partnership with Grzegorz Bral and Teatr Pieśń Kozła (Song of the Goat Theatre) which became another major strand of creative inspiration on my journey.
The work at the RSC was endlessly stimulating - mentally, physically, emotionally - but sustaining those levels of focus, concentration and openness also takes a toll. I couldn’t see any way to do the job properly without investing my whole heart, soul, body and mind. And theatre can be unforgiving schedules-wise… the number of family Christmases cut short for Boxing Day matinees, or weddings of close friends missed because of Tech and Dress rehearsals began to mount up, and I decided it was time to rebalance my life.
Leaving a well-paid permanent job in the Arts (never mind one which is exciting and fulfilling) is an act of insanity - they’re a vanishing rarity - but for the sake of my sanity it had to be done. I thought I was leaving to free up space for friends and family, but suddenly a new creative passion rushed in to fill the void.
After helping my sister-in-law to create a special birthday album for my mother, I found myself travelling into a world of paper and ink and stamps and paint. The realm of visual creativity suddenly leapt into focus alongside the words.
In some ways, it was a return rather than a wholly new passion… As well as reading, I had always loved colouring in as a child, and the Caran d’Ache pencils I once bought with all my childhood savings were a treasured possession. I’d also often helped out with my mother’s miniatures hobby by making tiny things for the dollshouses and 12th scale shops she creates. So the world of arts and crafts was all both entirely new and somehow familiar at the same time.
I started a blog, Words and Pictures, to share what I was making so obsessively, and found a world of like-minded creatives travelling similar paths. I was invited onto several Design Teams, working for craft stores who would send me lovely things to play with in exchange for making projects to display on their websites. And a glorious journey began when PaperArtsy stamps got in touch to invite me to design with their amazing stamp designs and paint line, contributing regularly to their website.
Eventually, that led to me designing my own line of stamps for PaperArtsy. They were (of course!) collections of words… each stamp plate containing quotes based around a particular theme, drawn from writers and thinkers down the ages and from around the world. I’m very happy to say others were as excited about them as I was - there was nothing really like them out there in the stamp world. Little motivational phrases and single words aplenty, but I think the Eclectica Alison Bomber quote stamps offer words with some more depth and contrast for all sorts of projects.
And just a few months ago I launched a new set of designs with PaperArtsy, and this time they are a combination of words and pictures. They include some of my botanical sketches paired with advice from Culpeper’s Herbal (1653) and ephemera drawn from the worlds of theatre, performance and medieval history. My two creative paths have joined in one on these new stamp plates, and that makes me so happy.
I’m now based in the Czech Republic (where my maternal grandparents were from), trying to live a little more lightly on the planet. After a life that has been lived constantly on the move, it’s about putting down roots, both metaphorical and literal. Time spent gardening and growing more of my own food is another part of the new equation.
Although I will still be happy to travel for special theatre projects, I hope to continue sharing my love of both Words and Pictures through online workshops and classes, as well as sharing art on Instagram and the Words and Pictures blog, and sharing language with my upcoming podcast, Wild and Whirling Words. Watch - and listen to - this space!