Rebekah Pickering-Wood Interview: A Christmas Carol, An Actor's Life - Part 1
Title
Rebekah Pickering-Wood Interview: A Christmas Carol, An Actor's Life - Part 1
Date
21 November 2018
Description
Oral history interview with Rebekah Pickering-Wood about her childhood experiences of performing at the Theatre Royal in Great Expectations in 1994 and A Christmas Carol in 1995.
What's the story?
Born in Nottingham in 1983, Rebekah Pickering-Wood performed as a child in two Christmas shows, Great Expectations and A Christmas Carol at the Theatre Royal in 1994 and 1995. These two Dickens stage adaptations replaced the traditional Pantomime for two seasons.
From the audition process to performing on stage, Rebekah provides a vivid account of this period in her life, as well as an insight into the life of the theatre.
In this interview Rebekah reflects on the life of an actor and at the age of 12 maturely realised that this wasn’t a career for her.
Funnily enough, around this time, one of the actors who I took a photo of, this is an actor called Gary Philp and he was a bootblack, he was just one of the more general cast members, he didn’t have a major part, he was just a “normal” actor, I would say, he wasn’t one of the principals. And I said to him and I remember it really clearly, I remember saying to him “why did you become an actor” and he said “sometimes I don’t know” and I remember thinking “oh, well that doesn’t sound very good, it sounds like you don’t actually like being an actor”. And then he said something along the lines of “at any one time, nine out of ten actors are unemployed” and it terrified me. And as a 12-year-old I thought “well, I’d really prefer not to be one of the nine people that’s always an unemployed actor” and I realised, I think at that time, how hard it was to be an actor. How you’re constantly either on tour, so you’re away from your family, or you’re having to take jobs that are not close to where you live and most of the actors were London based. They lived in London, but for two months they were up in Nottingham, so they were away from their families over the Christmas period and it made me realise that actually did I want to do a job where I would be away from my family or having to have that sort of lifestyle?
And I think at that point it made me realise I really didn’t want that. I was probably too much of a homebird to want to be constantly doing the travelling lifestyle. And I think that conversation probably had more of an impact on my life than anything else because whilst I loved the getting ready and the preparations etc, I’d got to do it in my home town. If I’d been made to travel away and do that away from home, I think I would have got quite lonely and quite homesick. And I think that that was one of the things that I realised about why the cast members were so close to each other, why they were such a family and that was because they weren’t with their actual families for large periods of time. They were staying in hotels, they were living in this sort of lifestyle which was very great and grand, but you’re on stage till 10 o’clock at night and then they were exhausted. They’d maybe go to the bar afterwards, but you were away from home and I remember thinking “no, that’s not for me, that’s not what I want to do”.
From the audition process to performing on stage, Rebekah provides a vivid account of this period in her life, as well as an insight into the life of the theatre.
In this interview Rebekah reflects on the life of an actor and at the age of 12 maturely realised that this wasn’t a career for her.
Funnily enough, around this time, one of the actors who I took a photo of, this is an actor called Gary Philp and he was a bootblack, he was just one of the more general cast members, he didn’t have a major part, he was just a “normal” actor, I would say, he wasn’t one of the principals. And I said to him and I remember it really clearly, I remember saying to him “why did you become an actor” and he said “sometimes I don’t know” and I remember thinking “oh, well that doesn’t sound very good, it sounds like you don’t actually like being an actor”. And then he said something along the lines of “at any one time, nine out of ten actors are unemployed” and it terrified me. And as a 12-year-old I thought “well, I’d really prefer not to be one of the nine people that’s always an unemployed actor” and I realised, I think at that time, how hard it was to be an actor. How you’re constantly either on tour, so you’re away from your family, or you’re having to take jobs that are not close to where you live and most of the actors were London based. They lived in London, but for two months they were up in Nottingham, so they were away from their families over the Christmas period and it made me realise that actually did I want to do a job where I would be away from my family or having to have that sort of lifestyle?
And I think at that point it made me realise I really didn’t want that. I was probably too much of a homebird to want to be constantly doing the travelling lifestyle. And I think that conversation probably had more of an impact on my life than anything else because whilst I loved the getting ready and the preparations etc, I’d got to do it in my home town. If I’d been made to travel away and do that away from home, I think I would have got quite lonely and quite homesick. And I think that that was one of the things that I realised about why the cast members were so close to each other, why they were such a family and that was because they weren’t with their actual families for large periods of time. They were staying in hotels, they were living in this sort of lifestyle which was very great and grand, but you’re on stage till 10 o’clock at night and then they were exhausted. They’d maybe go to the bar afterwards, but you were away from home and I remember thinking “no, that’s not for me, that’s not what I want to do”.
Type
Oral interview
Location of item
Theatre Royal & Royal Concert Hall Nottingham
Rights
Theatre Royal & Royal Concert Hall Nottingham
Contributor
Interviewers: Sally Smith & Phil Smith
Transcriber: David Chilton
Transcriber: David Chilton
