Gentlemen I implore you.................

Hi all,

It’s a remarkable thing you know, it’s been staring me in the face for so long but I’ve only just put two and two together and found the answer to one of the problems staring theatre companies in the face for all these years. How do you recruit men into your company?

When I started out in theatre not so long ago, as memory serves we had quite a few guys in companies and this never seemed a huge problem, they were along, they were enjoying themselves and having fun taking part in a hobby that found us guys in a position where we could make new friends and surprisingly find ourselves falling under the footlights spell. For those of us that came into the scene at that time that spell has lasted us from our late teenage years into middle age and indeed, many of my closest friends in amateur theatre land, bloke wise that is, hark right back to those halcyon days of the late eighties and early nineties, however in the naughties (I couldn’t resist…) we hear of more and more companies throughout the land complaining that they do not have enough men. I know from experience how true that is, many of the companies I have worked with find men a little thin on the ground so to sort the problem, you have to go right back to what other factors have contributed to the gradual disappearance of the strong male chorus over the years.

Okay, no rocket science involved here but I’m a guy so I think I understand the thought processes of my brothers out there, when I started out the likes of SKY TV was just in it’s infancy and they hadn’t yet splashed out Multi Millions on their Sports Coverage, Football was played on a Saturday afternoon and you were lucky if you had the rare treat of a live match on the Beeb or STV on a Wed night. (I actually remember having a portable TV on in the dressing room during a run of ‘Oklahoma’ to watch early European Football before it was re-named the Champions league!) So the footy as such wasn’t an important issue to the guys, we weren’t missing anything. Nowadays though, football is literally shown on any day of the week! Which means even those of us who are happy to do shows and love what we do still hanker after a nice Monday night or Sunday afternoon in front of the box with an ice cold beer, it’s a genetic thing which has been ingrained in our psyche and passed down from father to son through the generations so I have to fight the urge.

So……Solution one! Form a company that rehearses on Sunday and Friday evenings (Statistically less footy on those nights compared to the rest of the week) and have a bank of TV screens installed at the rehearsal venue with the sound on mute so no important goals are missed! Then book your show week to be on an international weekend so that there are no matches in the week leading up to it and just don’t do a matinee so the boys can enjoy an afternoon down the pub.

Sorted!

So what else puts off your average guy from coming along to join the fun, when I started out I wasn’t too keen on doing theatre if truth be told, I thought it was only for the Artsy types and the ladies, but I soon realised that there were a great many of the aforementioned fairer sex at these rehearsals and if you were willing to warble a bit then you could have some success in the courting stakes, surely a little bit of squirming around trying hopelessly to dance was worth the long term gains. I know dancing isn’t the most appealing thing to a lot of blokes but it is an art form in itself and you can quickly learn how to ‘Fake it’, ©Iain Hughes, so that you look like a Nureyev without putting in too much effort.

So, how about it gents, are you willing to give it a try? There are any number of groups in your area who would love to welcome you along and I guarantee you would have more fun than you would believe and make more friends than you could shake ref’s whistle at.

Don’t miss out.

Mark.