The Call of Blather: an miniature epic tale of spiritually-induced urban-to-rural migration

A picture of a typical stage door sign from the professional theatre.

Hello there followers and thanks for clicking in again to Blather-Attack, your chance to ask myself, the official Gus Blathermouth™ anything your heart desires (answers not an obligation).

For my first full Blog I was thrilled to receive this from a local fan of my work:

“I have heard many rumours about how you abandoned your professional acting career and came back to Suffolk to be an am-drammer. I would love to hear the full story – could you silence the rumour-room and give us the scoop? With fond regards, Shiela x x x”

Shiela McGinty, Laxfield, Suffolk

I must admit when I first received this I feared there wasn’t a question to answer, something I wouldn’t want to engage with. Blather-Attack isn’t about me discussing statements – I’m here to quench the public’s parched gobs with celebrity juice. However, underneath the sentiment is a rocket of a question to pick apart. So Shiela I accept your question, sadly the kisses will remain in the cyber-air as I don’t conjugate with strangers. So without further ado, how did I escape the clutches of the professional theatre and become the amateur theatre icon I am today?

THE BEGINNING OF THE NEW ERA

It was January. Winter. In the mid-to-late-to-mid-late-90s.  The trees stood like stick insects in theatrical freeze frames. The sky grew dark so quickly after it had grown light it was almost like my time in the Northern fjords of North Norway where the sky grew dark extremely quickly after it had grown light. Frost grew cold on the green blade-like grass, and middle-aged men scraped ice from their windscreens with seldom-used loyalty points cards. This was Suffolk in hibernation. But as in all Winters, whilst it looks as if nothing is happening in the world around, underneath the ground the tectonic plates are shifting so vociferously that life will truly never be the same again. This was what was going on inside me during the build up to the Millennium bug (or lack of).

Having grown weary of my successful career as a leading actor, including such roles as ‘Slim’ in Oklahoma! and ‘Provost’ in Julius Cesar, I began to realise my calling as an cultural philanthropist come modern day bard. I remember standing on stage in a whirlwind of applause and abuse after delivering my devastatingly funny monologue as the Friar in the concluding act of Romeo & Juliet. (I used to punctuate the line "But then a noise did scare me from the tomb" with a bottom-burp (should I have had one 'in the wings' so to speak) which was perhaps the pinnacle of that particularly comic speech). My awe-inspired cast members called me ‘Marmite’ due to my ability to split an audience’s taste buds into two different albeit utterly equal halves. One disgusted punter would spit on my shoe and another doting fan would polish it for me.

As I soaked in the deep lingering adoration and the acidic taste of tossed tomato juice as it made it’s familiar journey down my forehead, pausing around my eyebrow before taking the plunge down my cheek and off into the dark abyss of my sweaty costumed body, I felt a deep prodding in my conscience that this was the end of something. Of course the play was ending, and the National Tour was ending, but down in the earthy gutterills of my soul the ear of my loins heard the whisper of a new calling. A call. The call. The call that would blow like a trumpet-wielding Duracell bunny through the entirety of my life (up to the point of writing), calling me forward, like Pocahontas, downstream, or upstream, depending on where I was already and where I felt I needed to go.

The voice said “come on Gus, come on”. “Where?!” I said, internally with a mixture of excitement and angst, like a child responding to the invitation of a mischievous elder brother (or sister). “Wherever you want” said the voice. “But I… I…” I paused, unable to speak or say words. “I… don’t know where I want to go”. “Yes you DO!” spat the echoic ethereal unction, “You’re right I do” I conceded. And with that I walked off stage, into my dressing room, into the toilet, lingered for three minutes or eight (can’t remember which visit that one was) collected my things, nodded to my dressing room buddy, walked down the stairs, nodded to the old bint on stage door, shook my employer’s hand, signed a few autographs, went to the after-show drinks, tried to kiss a cast member, failed, hailed a taxi, got in, got out (paid first), opened bag, got out keys, inserted keys into lock, realised it was the wrong key, realised it was the wrong door, corrected errors, entered my house and passed out. And with that brief action I closed one door and opened another, which Narnia-like, lead me into a whole new world of wonder, danger and adventure.

Of course some will say that the passing was more made concrete by the lack of offers I received for further professional performance work or indeed work of any kind, but I would point not to external circumstances, but internal chimes and resonances of the heart for my hasty departure from the cannibalistic dog-eat-dog world of a jobbing actor and into the inspired, honest and majestic land of amateur theatre.

Snow.

Some called me rash, but they were wrong. My name is Gus and always will be. I had finally understood the shocking truth the artist’s way and the professional theatre’s constriction of said way, and I wasn’t about to go back for sloppy seconds. The artist is like a freshly laid sheet of snow. Exciting. Malleable. White and flat but with the potential of holding any shape one should care to mould it into. The artist looks at this snow (himself (or herself)) and sees infinite possibility, and is released like an unwanted fart to mould the landscape as he (or she) sees fit. 

The professional theatre is like an ungrateful glutton who having enjoyed the view of the natural snowy beauty walks out of his front door, too fat and lazy to wander upstairs to his toilet, and urinates all over the lawn, tainting the snow’s vibrant white with the tacky yellow of his unhydrated piss and destroying it’s form via it’s body-temperature heat. And every day is the same. Snow. Piss. Snow. Piss. Snow. Piss. Two pisses on a Thursday and a Saturday and piss-soaked snow sold in the interval. Sunday, as with Christianity, is a day of rest from snowing or pissing. The irony of this day off of course is that many theatre producers are Jewish and are actually pissing when they should be on Shabbat, which would prohibit such behaviour. This pushes my point to its furthest end.

Thus wishing to remove myself from the constriction of being a brick on someone else’s wall, I escaped the only way an artist can. By revolt. I felt 17 again, but with more bodily hair. I felt like a prisoner of war seeing light for the first time in years. The first Monday out of theatre-hell I sat on my porch and took a toast at exactly 4.46pm, which is the time I would usually catch the train from my theatre-hell temporary base in Woking, Surrey up into the gas-chamber of central London. My career had taken me global, but I was about to go home, and this time for good. Why? Well I’ve already told you, I heard the call…

But what would this call look like? What would it sound like? Who else would respond to it’s echoey bell? When would the bell end? These answers I would find through the perspiration of my second career, a career I am following to this day (unless you are reading this after my death, when for obvious reasons I will have ceased my endeavours, in body if not in spirit). 

_______________________________

So that's all for this week friends, I hope you've enjoyed getting hearing the much-debated account straight from the horse's mouth, and with that I'll shake my mane, trott my hooves, release an enormous poo as if it's totally normal, and gallop back to my stable for another week. Do get your questions in for next week. 

Sincerely yours,

Gus.

GUS' QUESTION GUIDELINES: 

Any question MUST fall into one of the following FOUR categories:

a) Theatre related
b) AMADSC related
c) Love-life related
d) Jesus related (it may be that I refer you to Rev. Wesley Biggins if my theology muscles prove too weak for the weight of your questions)

I will answer no questions on the politics of UKIP or the progress of my long-term battle with genital warts. For questions regarding the former, please read the Daily Mail. For questions regarding the latter, please watch this space for info on my companion Blog 'Gus' Nuts' for all things wart-related.

To submit your questions, simply post them in the comments section below, or on the 

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