Andrew Ryan Interview: Dame and Director
Title
Andrew Ryan Interview: Dame and Director
Date
11 January 2018
Description
Oral history interview with Andrew Ryan, actor, director and regular Pantomime dame
What's the story?
Born in Bradford, Andrew has an extensive and wide-ranging acting and directing career, working in both the West End and theatres up and down the country. He is well-known to Theatre Royal audiences, through his regular involvement in the annual Classic Thriller Season.
His Pantomime career spans 31 productions. 2017 was his 27th year playing the Dame, including four appearances in many extravagant frocks at the Theatre Royal.
In this interview, Andrew discusses the challenges of being both director and dame when rehearsing the pantomime and the complexity of getting his dresses on and off!
It’s like I’m the only person that doesn’t get to rehearse really. I’m there sort of telling everyone what to do and say oh shall we try this and do that and do the other and then it’s always like oh yeah I’ll just do my bits quickly and we don’t get to.
So that’s a challenge and then when you get in the theatre, when we get to production week. So we get we rehearse in London for a week and we’ll do all the scenes and all the music and all the dancing and we are just in the rehearsal hall. Then we get here, and we get to the stage and it’s the fit up where they get the set in, the get in, the fit up, the lighting.
So, we rehearse in the hall for a couple of days and then the cast sort of go home, we rehearse daytimes. And at lunchtime I’ll be in here while they are having lunch, checking how it’s all going, and then come in and do some night-time lighting with the lighting designer and talk through that and do rehearsals with the crew. So, I’m just on call. You know from 10 in the morning until 10 or 11 at night, just keep going.
Then all of the cast come in sort of midweek and we start the tech rehearsal. For the technical rehearsal, which is very slow and laborious; I was in the auditorium with a microphone running from stage, from the auditorium to the stage. Then doing my bit on stage, then running in the auditorium and watching.
So that was quite full on and I didn’t get to wear my costumes. Although I bring my own costumes, because I design them all, but for the wardrobe team, which is my as dame, the difficult bit is off stage rather than on. Because when you are off stage you are changing and certainly in this show, because it moves so quickly, some of the changes are ridiculous and we didn’t get to rehearse those until dress rehearsal. Normally you do those at tech, during tech you will stop tech and do the scene change and then go back and you’ll say okay we’re going to carry on so we’ll do the scene change so anyone that’s changing costume do it now and it normally works out and then when you get to dress rehearsal it’s really just polishing up.
But for me during tech I didn’t do costume changes because I didn’t get chance, I was looking at what was going on. So, dress rehearsal was my first time to put the costumes on in full wardrobe which is hairy for them and maybe not fair, but they are so good here that we did it. I think I missed one entrance but by the time we got to opening night I did it and it was fine.
His Pantomime career spans 31 productions. 2017 was his 27th year playing the Dame, including four appearances in many extravagant frocks at the Theatre Royal.
In this interview, Andrew discusses the challenges of being both director and dame when rehearsing the pantomime and the complexity of getting his dresses on and off!
It’s like I’m the only person that doesn’t get to rehearse really. I’m there sort of telling everyone what to do and say oh shall we try this and do that and do the other and then it’s always like oh yeah I’ll just do my bits quickly and we don’t get to.
So that’s a challenge and then when you get in the theatre, when we get to production week. So we get we rehearse in London for a week and we’ll do all the scenes and all the music and all the dancing and we are just in the rehearsal hall. Then we get here, and we get to the stage and it’s the fit up where they get the set in, the get in, the fit up, the lighting.
So, we rehearse in the hall for a couple of days and then the cast sort of go home, we rehearse daytimes. And at lunchtime I’ll be in here while they are having lunch, checking how it’s all going, and then come in and do some night-time lighting with the lighting designer and talk through that and do rehearsals with the crew. So, I’m just on call. You know from 10 in the morning until 10 or 11 at night, just keep going.
Then all of the cast come in sort of midweek and we start the tech rehearsal. For the technical rehearsal, which is very slow and laborious; I was in the auditorium with a microphone running from stage, from the auditorium to the stage. Then doing my bit on stage, then running in the auditorium and watching.
So that was quite full on and I didn’t get to wear my costumes. Although I bring my own costumes, because I design them all, but for the wardrobe team, which is my as dame, the difficult bit is off stage rather than on. Because when you are off stage you are changing and certainly in this show, because it moves so quickly, some of the changes are ridiculous and we didn’t get to rehearse those until dress rehearsal. Normally you do those at tech, during tech you will stop tech and do the scene change and then go back and you’ll say okay we’re going to carry on so we’ll do the scene change so anyone that’s changing costume do it now and it normally works out and then when you get to dress rehearsal it’s really just polishing up.
But for me during tech I didn’t do costume changes because I didn’t get chance, I was looking at what was going on. So, dress rehearsal was my first time to put the costumes on in full wardrobe which is hairy for them and maybe not fair, but they are so good here that we did it. I think I missed one entrance but by the time we got to opening night I did it and it was fine.
Type
Oral interview
Location of item
Theatre Royal and Royal Concert Hall Nottingham
Rights
Theatre Royal and Royal Concert Hall Nottingham
Contributor
Interviewers: Liz Mackenzie and Stephen Bray
Transcribers: David Chilton and Charlotte White
Transcribers: David Chilton and Charlotte White
