john

When I first spoke to John he told me that throughout his life and travels he had been in about 40-50 productions. He sent me a spreadsheet which, along with a series of scrapbooks, were meticulously kept by his late wife Gill. I went through and counted how many shows were on the spreadsheet and there were well over 80. 

All but a couple of productions on the list had not only featured John, but also Gill, who never set foot on the stage but felt much more comfortable backstage, and she’s normally credited as stage manager or front of house although at times she’s down as writer or director. It’s clear as soon as John starts talking that this is something that they did together to help with the process of moving to new communities over and over again. This is just a collection of the 6 most important productions to John and span from the USA to Papua New Guinea. All of the words attached to the piece are from John and the photos are scans taken from the scrapbooks that Gill kept. It’s clear that they were always so together in these productions, so it only feels right that they’re both represented.  

1. 1965 Menelaus in The Trojan Women at Barry College - Miami, Florida USA

So I was 24 before I took part for the first time. I was on a contract living in Florida (USA) when I saw an advert in a local newspaper that a local women’s university were looking for male actors for their next production. I went to an audition and landed a part in Barry College’s Production of ‘The Trojan Women’ by Euripides. It was an all-girls Catholic College so they looked outside for male actors. I guess Sister Marie Carel saw something in me, or maybe it was the accent. It was quite hard going to learn the lines in a Greek tragedy but I stuck to my part as Menelaus, Helen of Troy’s husband who she had deserted to go off to Troy with Paris. It was fun to rehearse and take part in – remember I was single and surrounded by the young women in the cast. The prologue to this play is normally recorded by someone famous and so it was that I appear in the programme further down from Jose Ferrer, the Oscar winning American actor!

2. 1986 Tinman in The Wizard of Oz at The Waigani Arts Centre - Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea

We joined the Moresby Theatre Group which was really good. There was no professional theatre so our productions were certainly semi-professional. We did two week runs of all the productions, and my highlight was as the Tinman in the Wizard of Oz. I had to audition for our musical director (we had a live orchestra) and after I had sung for him, he responded ‘I’ve worked with worse!’. I got the part. Gill was only used for support roles but actually ran the coffee bar which opened for performances. The quality of productions was brilliant and on the final night when the full cast on stage sang ‘Over the rainbow’ at the finale, the whole cast was in tears as we had come to the end of an amazing experience.

3. 1994 Co-director with his wife Gill for Cleopatra’s Soiree up the Nile by Gill Coffin at the Civic Arts Centre, Virginia, South Africa

Gill wrote a musical evening called ‘Cleopatra’s Soiree up the Nile’ which I co-directed with her. I thought she had done a great job here and so did the audience. We picked a large number of comfortable songs for the cast to sing, so for example, Gill had a blind soothsayer singing ‘I can see clearly now’!

4. 1997 Director of Agnes of God at Roodepoort Little Theatre, Roodepoort, South Africa

I directed a play called ‘Agnes of God’ which is quite heavy-going, but I was nominated as Best Director of a Drama, and all three of my cast were nominated as Best Actress in a Drama, so we must have been doing something right. These nominations came from the Association of Amateur Performing Arts, which was a South Africa wide organisation. In 1999, they held their annual one act play festival over a week at the Wits University Theatre, and Gill and I were the comperes and convenors for each evening. Your Gill only ever appeared on stage for that!

5. 2013 Director of Hickory Dickory and the Superbug, Silchester Hampshire with the Silchester Players

Our last production with them was the panto in January 2013 – ‘Hickory Dickory and the Super Bug’. I directed and Gill was, as usual, in charge of props. This was a really enjoyable show to finish up on.

6. 2019 Magistrate and Grumpy Hedgehog in Wind in the Willows at Wheatley Primary School with Wheatley Productions, Oxfordshire.

Currently, John’s final production. 

After a year, I went back with Wheatley Productions annual panto in January 2018 and 2019. I enjoyed that but it was not the same. I would look around and be sad that Gill was not there to give me the support that she had backstage for all those years.

When Gill left us in December 2016, I could not believe the turnout at her funeral. There were people there from Silchester Players, Faringdon Dramatic Society, and one from Roodepoort Little Theatre who had served on the Committee with us. I think, genuinely, that your Gill had no idea of the impact she had over some 30 years on the theatre groups that we had belonged to, nor how much she was fondly remembered by the members. This was reinforced by Silchester Players dedicating their panto in January 2017 to her memory, and fondly mentioning her in the programme.

In retrospect, I think that we were a perfect combination in our chosen hobby. The only thing that we ever seriously argued about in over 50 years of marriage was the theatre, and we always managed to resolve those disagreements in the best interest of the production!