In 1992 I played a bit part in
Cabaret at Wigan’s little theatre. I didn't do much, a bit of dancing and
singing but mainly sitting and chatting like I was in the Berlin Kit Kat Klub
pre WW2, and after a while it got a bit boring, so I decided to spice up my
Oscar winning performance by obtaining a pre-war camera to use during each
performance.
The camera came from the then
Manchester corner exchange from a bloke that assured me for £25 it worked
perfectly, and of course it didn’t’. I'd shoot during each show without the
director knowing and wound several rolls of Hp5 120 through it thinking I was
getting a lot of shots out of each roll, some 25+ in fact!
It was only later upon
developing the film in my bathroom that I discovered the camera was knackered
and not only was the shoot indicator faulty but the window on the back of the
camera leaked light too. This I partially solved by sticking a bit of film
wrapper to the back with boxing tape and then writing on the back how many
times I'd wound the camera, but before I knew it the play ended.
When I think back now to the
show, the director was as stern has hell but hugely brave as she dressed rugby
playing lads up as girls and got them to dance on stage with the women so that
the audience wasn’t too sure who they were looking at. I’d written off the
shots because there were so many multiple exposures and my student bathroom in
Manchester wasn’t the cleanest of places and made each exposure look like it
was shot through sand.
On top of this, all of the
shots I had to guess how far away people were to focus accordingly and guess
the exposure too, so at first glance I wrote them off and stored the negs under
my bed.
Recently I scanned them after
2 decades of looking at the Adox camera on my shelf and trying to explain to
visitors the story behind it. In the scans I started to see many wonders, like
the banality of waiting back stage and the men transforming into women.
But what does it for me is
that in several shots I could make out the audience like in a Degas painting. The
spectacle wearing man, the woman leaning over the circle barrier and a tight
permed woman grimacing. Even in one shot an audience member cupping her hands
to her mouth and is shouting something at the actors and you can see the people
sitting around her laughing in response.
I’ve been wracking my brain
trying to remember names but the only person I could pinpoint was a guy left of
one shot sitting on a chair with a massive blond permed wig and legs like a
prop forward who we all called Jodi. One day someone asked, “Why do you keep
calling him Jodi in the bar, isn’t that his name I replied? No you idiot, his
name is Dave, we all called him that because he looked so fabulous in a wig”!
