“A friend is someone who understands your past, believes in your future, and accepts you just the way you are.”
– Unknown

Actor, director, scriptwriter, screenwriter, editor but more importantly, one of my truest friends – Shirley Johnston!
Now please, all of you non-theatre people, don’t think: “Ah uh, this blog’s not my type!”
Shirley goes much further than mere theatre and film, as you will see!

Shirley and I have been friends for about thirty-two years.
“How did we meet, Shirley?”
Knowing my shocking memory after my fall, she filled me in.
“We met at the Othello audition. I didn’t get the part I wanted but you were cast as Bianca the whore. You were a beautiful up-and-coming young actress from Durban and you made a huge impact on me as a glorious and talented performer. We soon became friends. You often came round to our house in Bramley to visit and play with my young sons, who were then aged 6 and 8. I always remember arriving home from a long weekend in Durban and on our doorstep was a chicken casserole which you had cooked and left for us.”

Shirley and I were both rehearsing at The State Theatre in 1989. She was rehearsing Under the Oaks and Over the Hill with Bobby Heaney directing. I was rehearsing Camelot. The night I had my fall as understudy for Guinevere, they had already moved to the Windybrow Theatre. She heard the shocking news at their interval but ‘the show must go on’!

Two year after my fall, Shirley and her husband, Dave, gave me this wonderful thirtieth birthday party. All my friends came and it was there that I gave my first post accident speech. The speech was slurred but understandable. I concluded with the e.e.cummings poem: i thank you God for most this amazing day
There weren’t many dry eyes but that is the enchantment of his poetry. It was the most unbelievably happy day for me. 

Shirley is like that. She is a Giver. She always makes my heart smile!

My parents bought me a computer after my fall. The idea was to coax me into using my right hand which was now spastic. I tried, I really tried but eventually my left hand became my right. I used to labour for long hours writing letters to friends. I wrote often to Shirley and she promptly answered back. I moved to Headway in Johannesburg and whilst there, I stayed at St Giles, a home for the disabled. After my therapy, I used to come home and write. I wrote about things that were important to me: my loss of memory, my deafness, my spasticity. I knew that Shirley, as well as being an actor was also a writer. So I duly sent these missives to Shirl. I would always get  encouraging letters back. One day I sent her my sixth re-write of an essay on my deafness. Instead of getting a reassuring, positive letter back, I received a letter that blatantly criticised everything I had written. How dare she? I was totally furious! I went to bed and tossed and turned with resentment. The next morning, I re-read her criticism. Calmer now, I was able to see that everything she had written made sense.
I wanted to write a book. I could only do that with Shirley as my editor. Shirley agreed. 
My book writing began.

Shirley said: “You sat there doggedly typing with one finger for weeks and weeks on end. You ploughed on determinedly, displaying that amazing Gaynor Young mettle which few people in this world possess. We argued like sisters. I remember spending a weekend with you in George and your parents heard raised voices. I had to talk loudly because then you were very deaf. It was before your cochlear implants. Your mum came into the dining room.
‘Are you two fighting?’ she asked, concerned.
‘No, just discussing,’ was the answer!”
My book My Plunge to Fame was published in 2000. I could never have accomplished it without Shirley’s encouragement, criticism and her absolutely belief in me.

In 1993 Shirley wrote Plastics and was mind blown to win the National SACPACS Best Playwright Award. It was produced in Johannesburg, Pretoria, Cape Town, Stellenbosch, Grahamstown and Australia! A few years later, in 1999 she won the M-net New Directions Scriptwriting Award, for Clean Hands. Shirley was on a roll!!!

Early in the 2000’s, she came across a story that she had written for her sons when they were youngsters called Felix the Flautist. She could turn this story into a film script, she thought with mounting excitement. And so Felix, King of the Sax was born. I had no idea that with this script, Shirley went on to win the Sithengi’s 2004 Writer’s Forum Award. She was a finalist in the US Specscriptacular Competition; and was a quarter-finalist in both the Francis Ford Coppola’s American Zoetrope Screenplay Contest and the Moondance Screenwriting Competition. 

If I had been winning all those awards, I am pretty sure that I would have phoned all my friends and let them know in no uncertain terms how brilliant I was! This is one of the many things I love about Shirley. She enveloped herself in the satisfaction of the prizes and began looking for a way to get it made into a film. It took nine years before the wonderful Roberta Durrant got things swinging into motion. The script was filmed and released in 2013 as Felix! The film went on to garner seventeen international awards, including the Muse Award for Best Screenplay in 2014.

Recently Shirley has been performing with Lynita Crofford in Gertrude Stein and a Companion, directed by Chris Weare. It amused me the way it all began. Lynita Crofford had been performing successfully in two one woman shows. You either shine or you die in a one woman show. Lynita’s shows did wonderfully. But it is a lonely process. I remember longing for someone else onstage with me during my one woman shows. So Lynita was searching for a play for women. And she found the perfect script in Gertrude Stein and a Companion.

She had been directed by Chris Weare before and loved his work. He said yes instantly. Lynita needed to find another female actor to play opposite her. She didn’t even consider her close friend, Shirley. She knew that she was involved in writing projects. On Shirley’s birthday, while having coffee with her, Shirley mentioned that she wanted to take a break from writing. Lynita’s smile engulfed the room.
“I have the perfect birthday present for you, my friend. How would you like to play Gertrude Stein opposite my Alice B. Toklas?”

When I acted, thirty years ago, there were theatre companies: PACT, CAPAB, NAPAC and PACOFS. These companies provided work centres for the actor. Now they no longer exist. Actors are employed by various theatres that put on a constant variety of shows. Shirley, Lynita and Chris formed a small, independent theatre company. It is difficult for them to make a profit. They have to pay for the cost of hiring a theatre, publicity, stage management, employing technical staff and the rights of the play. I know that Shirley and Lynita teach during the day. Because of this, they could afford to put on the production. The three of them worked all day and then met and rehearsed in the evenings. The result was astounding!

They opened Gertrude Stein and a Companion at the Alexander Bar in June 2018 for two weeks. It was such a resounding success that they returned in October for a further two weeks. In 2019, they took it up to Johannesburg, the Hilton Festival and also to Dublin, Ireland. In Ireland both performers were nominated for best actress in the Dublin International Gay Theatre Festival.
Lynita won! 

“Never have I ever wanted to jump up and shout “Encore” at the end of a play, that is, until tonight!” wrote Correy Sutherland in her review of the production.
Megan Furniss in her review says: “I am seldom jealous of beautiful scripts, but this one made me wish I had written it.
Both Lynita as Alice, and Shirley, as Gertrude, are superb. I have never seen either of them do anything like this and they are absolutely charming, clear, bold and amazing. Lynita’s Alice is solid and terse and grumpy and witty. Shirley’s Gertrude is expansive and cheeky and bold and lyrical. Her warmth and sparkle radiate from her. I loved the characters and I loved the performers playing them.”

Being involved in the theatre nowadays is tough. Nothing is handed to you on a plate. Gertrude Stein and a Companion came about through three people’s intense passion and a desire to see the production come to fruition. The winners of course are us, the audience!

In June, Gertrude Stein and a Companion is being performed in Hermanus. This is a performance I will not miss!

My memory of becoming friends with Shirley is gone. I have no memory of a before and after.
Shirley has always just been a part of me. At that Othello audition, a special person entered my life.
For life.

I think of Shirley and once again, my heart smiles……..

The post My Multifaceted Friend! appeared first on 'ear 'ear! by Gaynor Young.

Creativity is a combinatorial force: it’s our ability to tap into our ‘inner’ pool of resources – knowledge, insight, information, inspiration and all the fragments populating our minds – that we’ve accumulated over the years just by being present and alive and awake to the world and to combine them in extraordinary new ways.”
Maria Popova, Brainpickings

I hate the saying: “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try again!” 

I want to klap a person over the head when this is said to me. The worst thing is when you start saying it to yourself. After my fall, I had to learn to do everything from scratch. Among a host of things, I had to learn to walk, talk, handle my right side once more. I would mutter this mantra to myself before finally ‘hurling’ it out at the world in utter frustration. Thank goodness, that as the years progressed so did my skills. Nevertheless that sentence still causes me to shudder!

I met Rosie Fiore.
And, she demonstrated to me how successful a person can be by trying and trying and trying again. Innumerable times. Indeed this is the pattern of her life!

We hadn’t been ‘friends’ before my fall. We knew each other. I was delighted to hear that Rosie had seen me “give a great performance” in Othello! We would probably smile at each other at theatre get togethers and move on. I had my fall and gradually moved back into the land of the living. Rosie became my friend on Facebook. She has an astute way of phrasing things. She expresses herself in a way that often causes me to think or draws a smile onto my face. I liked this person and so four years ago, on a visit to England, I arranged to meet her.

She has a face that is transparent. It reveals what she is thinking. Rosie’s eyes laugh together with her mouth. We sat and spoke for ages which was when I learned that she was an author.
“I thought you were an actor,” I exclaimed. “I’m sorry, Rosie, my memory isn’t all that good.”
She explained that she had studied drama at Wits. Her first paying job after drama school was to dress up as a cherry. She wore a giant fibreglass spherical costume complete with green tights. She then had to hand out leaflets for a travel company. She was an out of work actor who needed to feed herself. Glory, what a nightmare, I thought. I remembered my out of work days spent toiling in a restaurant. That didn’t last long. I was groped by a customer so I placed his food on the floor, where he deserved to eat it. Naturally I was fired! 

Things didn’t improve much for Rosie and in desperation she approached her agent. He suggested that she write a play about out of work actresses earning their living as strippers. Rosie didn’t believe in doing things by halves. And so, with a 21 year old’s confidence, she worked as a food and beverage manager in a strip club on Bree Street, Johannesburg. This was certainly a dangerous place for a young woman to be frequenting. There she met other girls, her age, who were earning money by doing what strippers do! The experience was eye opening! What amazed Rosie was that these women were not all victims. There were those that actually chose to do it. It gave them pleasure. There was one woman who worked as an investment banker by day and stripped at night. These strippers gave Rosie her first play This is Not My Real Job which was short-listed for the Amstel Playwright of the Year Awards. At this time she also began writing for children’s TV.
Forget acting. Rosie was now a writer.

In 2000, Rosie moved to London. This was a big step. A new work environment called out to her. She began doing the thing she knew best: writing. This time she didn’t write for anyone else. She had a novel inside her that was like a caged bird waiting to be freed. She finished writing it and on a visit to South Africa,  Struik Books agreed to publish! Her first novel This Years Black was out! She was overjoyed and returned to London ready to live the life of an author.  After all she now had a published book behind her. She was sure it wouldn’t be difficult.
She couldn’t have been more wrong.
“It took me four years and about thirty rejections to get a UK agent. Then another five years and a further three novels to get an English publication deal.”
Nine years before she finally managed to crack the English system and get a book published.

My admiration for Rosie is vast. To write three novels and have them rejected would have crushed me. How did she have the courage to put aside a finished book that she had slaved over for about a year and then begin another? And another?
“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try again!”
When things didn’t go easy for her, she didn’t curl up into a metaphorical ball and abandon all hope. Her flame of optimism continued to burn. She tried again, struggled on and finally succeeded.

I laugh at the fact that Rosie writes about 1200 words a day. With my brain damage, I battle writing ten lines. Two different women, two different histories!
Rosie has now written  eight novels that have been published. I asked which was her favourite and she replied unhesitatingly: “After Isabella. I wrote it after a friend died of breast cancer. It was a way to explore complex relationships between women and the care of the dying. It was painful and difficult to write but I think there’s truth and compassion in it.”
I am so glad that I’ve got it on my Kindle!

Recently I read The After Wife which she wrote under the nom de plume of Cass Hunter. She was under contract to another publishing house and they owned the name ‘Rosie Fiore’. I had forgotten that this was my friend’s book and just found myself utterly enthralled.

I love Rosie’s attitude to her writing.
“I just want to be a better writer. I wish to close the gap between the book I dream in my head and the book I finally manage to write.”
Rosie is a person that is ‘awake to the world’. This aliveness is a quality that I treasure.

Recently she has branched out into something new. Or rather, went back to taste her past! Rosie has written an adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula and she is now directing it at the  Bridewell Theatre in Blackfriars.
It is an enormous project. It has a cast of twenty, a large production team and they are working in a beautiful London theatre. She has been used to working on her own with imaginary characters conversing in her head. Suddenly that aloneness has disappeared and she has other creative minds contributing to the process. This is an exhilarating, collaborative procedure. 

“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try again!”
In every walk of life, there will always be things that you have to try, try and try again. You only have to look at the Springboks recent rugby past and their phenomenal victory last weekend, and this saying causes you to smile. Indeed it wants to make me dance!!!

We were suddenly interrupted by a young boy who threw himself at Rosie.
“Found her, Dad,”  he shouted to this man walking towards us, smiling broadly.
“This is Ted,” Rosie laughed giving her child a kiss and here is my husband, Tom.”
I was about to greet them when Ted, unable to control himself, blurted out:
“Mum told me that you jumped down five storeys.”
“Well, I…um…”
“You are just so cool!” he enthused.

My heart smiled. It is a remark like this that makes me pleased that I have tried, tried and tried again…….

The post If at first……..! appeared first on 'ear 'ear! by Gaynor Young.

Dear Gaynor

I am a friend of the director, Janice Honeyman and Denise Goldin.
I am a professional actress, born in Cape Town but now living in California.

The way I came to know of you is this:
I was in Cape Town staying with Janice. I am working on a play about a tragedy that has also brought me to know Denise. I was talking to Janice about the trials of having been an understudy – specifically for Angels in America, Parts I and 2. I told her that I had not been rehearsed on the stage and had to go on for two three hour length parts of that play. In one instance, I was a few seconds late in coming down a revolving platform and got stuck. Who knows what would have happened, if not for an alert stage hand who reached in to pull me out?

Janice got quite upset and told me about what had happened to you, about your horrendous fall offstage. A few days later, at the Naledi Theatre Award ceremony in Johannesburg, I was blown away when you came on the stage. I realised you were the actress Janice had told me about. I immediately bought your book on Kindle and read it all the way from Johannesburg to London, to San Francisco.

I am so profoundly impacted, so deeply touched by your story but also by your light and power which I was fortunate to actually experience from the stage that night. I asked Denise for your email.

I would very much like to be in touch with you. Because of my own tragedy – an avoidable accident that killed my gorgeous 21 year old daughter, Annais in July 2013. I was introduced to Denise Goldin online. I met her at the Theatre awards for the first time. Stayed with her. Did the first reading of my play at her house and then boarded the plane back to California…and of course devoured your book.

I have many things I would like to ask you about. There are many similarities although both cases are different in their specifics. But still, there are elements that screamed out at me.

So, if you would be open, I would love to be in touch.

Very warm regards
Penny Kreitzer

I immediately read about Annais on: www.JusticeforAnnais.com and was horrified.
Several dozen members of staff were happily eating breakfast under a large oak tree in Camp Taiwonga, California in 2013. Disaster struck. A thirty foot branch cracked and hurtled downwards, killing Annais and severely injuring several others.

It would appear that six months previously, Camp Taiwonga had been warned about the instability of that oak tree. Nothing was done! The oak tree with it’s overloaded precarious boughs remained untouched. Why had that tree not been looked after and pruned? For goodness sakes, it was a disaster waiting to happen. The entire catastrophe could have been avoided.

Instead a dark haired young woman with dancing eyes is now dead.

Three years later, Penny has written a play about her daughter. That disaster and the resulting anger gave birth to Penny’s writing talents.
“I do know that without that anger, I would never have begun to write the play. It was anger that drove me to the computer and that rage punched word after word onto my keyboard. And yet, suddenly in the midst of that raw anguish, beautiful tender pieces of poetry began to emerge. I have no idea where some of the characters in my play appeared from. They are funny, poignant, honest and compelling. And gradually the story took over. I found I was able to handle it with a gentler spirit. I believe the discovery, tears, anger, shock, awareness and love will affect the audience in different ways. I am hoping that the story will speak for itself.”

Anger is a painful, powerful and complex emotion. Not dealing with it effectively, increases its potential to be destructive. After my fall, how I longed to lash out with my fists or my tongue and deliver ‘felling’ blows. The problem was: my fists and tongue would no longer ‘work’ as they used to!!! I was given a computer and the light began to dawn. My darkness eased as, like Penny, I discovered how through writing I could expel my anger.

With the computer in front of me, I was able to ‘write’. My creativity was given free reign. My anger was the gelignite. Explosively, I wrote about the ‘me’ I had been forced to become due to my fall. The frustration of my deafness, my memory loss, my fury about my spasticity and no longer being able to use my right hand for writing. It all exploded forth onto the computer screen. Those pieces were fuelled by my rage at the way my life had changed so drastically. I had lost control of so many areas of my life. Yet I was lord of that keyboard. That was where I could shout and weep and ‘vent my spleen!’.

Like Penny, I had to turn the pain of my anger and loss into energy for change. It was from those early ‘gnashing of teeth’ that I eventually calmed myself and finally my book My Plunge to Fame was born.

Anger is a useless emotion. The only person it affects is YOU. One has to rise above the anger; to get beyond it. I did this while writing my book. It was a cathartic experience and hopefully the reader can learn something about our wonderful, tragic, amusing, devastating, beautiful and horrific human existence.

Anger has been the fuse for so many works of art – paintings, music, plays, books and poems. Through his monstrous anger at the futility of World War 1, Wilfred Owen created so much powerful poetry. There is a kind of macabre beauty to his poems that contain such a dreadful waste and horror.

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned out backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.-
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin,
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,-
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Wilfred Owen

If you are unfortunate enough to endure some horrifying trauma, I hope that the resulting anger is constructively channelled and transformed into something beautiful. Penny discovered that in the midst of the destruction and horror that surrounded her, there was a chink of light.
Creativity beckoned.
And where there is creativity, there is always hope.

The post Scream! appeared first on 'ear 'ear! by Gaynor Young.

This is my first post. Yep, now I am officially a blogger!!!

So why, you may be thinking, has Gaynor suddenly decided to blog. Well, this is something  I have  been thinking about for a while. I love writing and I enjoy entertaining and inspiring people. My   imminent second cochlear implant operation has given me the impetus to start. I have a very exciting subject – me!

I hope to make you laugh with me, and at times probably cry with me.

I hope to make you see life from a different perspective.

I hope to make millions of Rands from all the advertisers who are going to want to sponsor my blog…..okay, I want you to dream with me!

Please subscribe to my blog and Facebook page and enjoy the next incredible part of this journey called Life with me.

I promise you, if what has happened to me so far is anything to go by, you are in for a thrilling adventure!

I kiss your eyes Gaynor!

The post Hello World! appeared first on 'ear 'ear! by Gaynor Young.