Jean Louis Barrault
Once when I was Production Manager of the Roundhouse, we had a production from France, Rabalais, which was an amazingly exciting production, which the English actors had real difficulty with, as they were much more at home with words then action, unlike French actors, who are the other way round.
I well remember the time he had to demonstrate a War Horse to an English actor, he was superb!
The staging was really odd, being a large stage, and the audience was standing, and thus free to move about freely as they often did at the Roundhouse.
Seating plan for Rabalais
So the audience could have seats on wooden blocks or be standing, so the weekly rock concerts were a real problem for us! We had to build a stage, and demolish the set for Rabalais, which we did- but it wasn’t easy!
The girls had a clause in their contracts which specified that they had to be prepared to have their breasts exposed, so they had a lot of naked tits around, which added to the joy of the events.
We got off on these!
There were a number of “famous” actors in this production…. Several of them. Bernard Bresslaw who played Friar John, and Bill Wallis who played Gargantua.
Bill Wallis
Birds……
Pope Bird
All in all, it was an amazing experience, and we had a great time of it!
OZTHOUGHTS 