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Under Milk Wood – An Actors Perspective

To begin at the beginning…

It had been a number of years since acting at school and university, but the desire to tread the boards once again was becoming a stronger and stronger calling.  Spotting the posters for Under Milk Wood seemed to be the perfect answer, due to my south Wales valleys roots.

The first rehearsals were in July, and what a motley crew of just nine we were!  All shapes, sizes, ages, accents and experiences, with not much of a clue about anything performance-like between us.  Director Dewi Evans must have wondered what he’d let himself in for.  Yet with his guidance, training and learning through play, just a few months later we were moulded, nurtured and developed into a hard-working, proud and capable team that put on a production I think Dylan Thomas himself would have chortled at, and certainly raised a glass to.

With Dylan Thomas’s family in the audience, the pressure and expectations couldn’t have been greater, nor could we have been prouder at what we were about to do.  Did we pull it off?  Did we!  A packed audience cheered, laughed, applauded and sighed in all the right places, impressed at Dewi’s inspired direction and a cast who loved every minute of bringing alive text so lyrical, lilting and beautiful – and a bugger to learn! – that only Dylan Thomas could have penned.

Rumour has it that the resident drama group of the London Welsh Centre will meet again in January 2014 to start plotting the next production.  I’m pretty sure that in the early days of rehearsals we will be as drunk, hung-over, unreliable and basically useless as before, but Dewi will again whip us into shape, and the laughs and adventures and end product will be as memorable as the last.

Come and join us!

Jamie Robinson-Burt - October 26, 2013