A BRIEF HISTORY OF CLIVE BARKER

I was born in Middlesbrough, in 1931, and it's been uphill all the way since then. To a certain extent
my life has been a process of being sold a dream, which has never been realised, along with many
other people in my generation - from Henry Livings and Harold Pinter through Wesker and Arden to
John McGrath. We were the war-time generation, the last generation to remember what life was like
before the war and during it. Each generation has its own distinguishing features. The years that were
bridged by the War shaped mine. The dream was that after the war things would be different, it
wouldn't be like the First World War when the soldiers were promised homes fit for heroes, which
never materialised. After this war we were going to be part of the effort to build a better world from
which want and inequality would be banished. Of course it never happened. Even though there was
nationalisation, the same people were running industry as before but with less commitment because
they were making less profit. By the time my generation reached military age we were involved in a
sequence of wars which we had been promised wouldn't happen. Along with the rest of my generation
there is an intense sense of déjà Vu, an inescapable sense of having been sold a pup. Osborne, in
"Look Back in Anger", speaks for us when he talks of the chinless wonders who have taken over the
control of society, ignoring him with his education and his aspirations. Themes such as these run
through Dennis Potter's work. All of my life has been a search for a community - and in saying this I
do not mean to devalue the importance to me of my children and grandchildren.

During my life this search has thrown me into two tribes. The first was Theatre Workshop. As Shirley
Dynevor once said "We all have the mark of Cain on our foreheads and we'll never lose it. Whatever
we do will always be referred back to the fact that we once worked for Theatre Workshop." The other
tribe is the collection of practitioners and scholars who centre on Eugenio Barba and Odin Teatret.
With them I feel at home.

The other big feature of my early life was an involvement with Spain. The Spanish Republican
Government was elected the day before I was born and took office on my birthday. My first memory is
of the women in the street talking of the War and one of them saying she had had a letter from her
son who was in the International Brigade and who had written that he had picked up a mouldy crust
from the gutter to assuage his hunger. "And that, mark you, is the boy who turned his nose up at
many a good hot meal", I can still hear her saying that. I worked on the documentary play Sad
Presentiments of Things to Come, based on the war with a group I taught in Birmingham. I met the
best audience I have ever encountered in the theatre at one performance. Half the house was made
up of republican exiles who had fought in the war, or people who had been involved in raising support
for refugee families and the other half was made up of young people from a Teachers' Training
College. More I could not wish. Now my eldest son lives in Madrid with his family and I go there to
visit my grandchildren. His mother-in-law hates Franco more even than I ever did.

I jokingly claim that I was the person who started the National Health Service. When the government
started to take over the private insurance firms and consolidate them in the Department of Pensions
and National Insurance, the country was divided into regions. The North-East was Region 1. Within in
each region, each office was numbered. Middlesbrough was Office 1 in Region 1 and I was the first
person in that office. There was a dream there as well. I was just sixteen at the time and there was a
girl in the office who had been at school with me. The management was largely made up of elderly
men who had been unfit for military service. Whenever there was a difficult case, the managers would
send the girl or me to deal with it. What I discovered from these visits was that although I belonged in
the working class there were levels of poverty well below mine. I gained something of an education in
how people lived and had been living for a long time in Britain. There was a man who had suffered
from shell-shock since the First World War, who was living with his wife on two shillings and sixpence
a week - 15 pence in modern terms. He gave me a recipe for getting rid of acne spots.

When I was first at the Ministry of Pensions and National Health there was quite a lively social scene
going, due mainly to the peculiar mix of people who were there, insurance agents, civil servants,
young people who had been called up and the released when the war ended. While we were trying to
change society we were also bringing disparate elements into contact with each other. Outstanding
among the denizens of this world was J W Taggart-Craughan, usually known as 'haggard and drawn'.
He had spent his life with the Saltburn Pierrot show as La Taggart. He was a great ham and wove
fantasies of going on tour, managing me as "the infant Roscius". Life was never dull.
National Service in Malaya

When the time came I was called up and sent to Malaya. I was on a troop ship crossing the Indian
Ocean when the Korean War broke out. Half of us got off at Singapore and the other half sailed on to
Korea and hit some of the worst battles in the opening months of hostilities. For me, Malaya was an
eye-opener. I had grown up in a tight working-class community and principally eaten only my mother's
cooking. I was suddenly dumped into a multi-ethnic, multicultural and multi-religious society. I was
surrounded by Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims, Chinese, and given the equivalent of a university education in
how the world lived. The army food was almost uneatable and I used to abscond and spend my
weekends living with a family of Malay rubber-tappers. On one occasion I was approached by a group
of village women who were employed as servants in army family houses. They had been happily
feeding their babies when they had been told by the army wives that this was bad and it was better to
make up powdered milk for the children. I became an expert on matters I knew little about. But I fed
well and was always made welcome. I was nineteen when I landed there and I stayed nineteen
months.

When I came back the world had changed. The disparate bunch of outcasts who made up the Health
Service had all changed into civil servants. My childhood friends had all got engaged or were taking
night-school classes. I had one friend who I went drinking with. When he got too drunk I pushed his
bike home and he did the same for me. Then there came a time when my friend told me he had got a
job with the Bristol Aeroplane Company and was leaving; half-joking I said "get me a job and I'll come
down with you." I couldn't stand the prospect of being alone in Middlesbrough.

Training at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School

The following week I opened Plays and Players, which had just started publishing and there was an
advertisement for applications to the acting and stage management courses at the Bristol Old Vic
School. Since I didn't think anyone would see me as an actor I applied to be a student stage manager.
At school we had been taken to the Middlesbrough Little Theatre, which was a very good amateur
group and since returning I had started going to performances again. I thought I should join in. I did
one weekend fitting up the next show. Nothing untoward happened. They were friendly and efficient
but a voice in my head said "Either do this professionally or don't do it at all." I have no idea where this
came from but it was there and I heeded it. I had had some ideas of writing and had bought myself a
second-hand typewriter. When I wrote I ran into problems. I could manage the description but couldn't
progress on to dialogue. The idea struck me that if I wrote plays I wouldn't have this problem, so I got
books on playwriting out of the library and began work. I was interviewed in Bristol by Nat Brenner.
He asked me what I wanted to do and I said I wanted to write plays. He asked me what I was working
on but didn't seem very interested in what I had to say. Then I received a letter saying I was accepted
on the course. Years later I talked of this with Nat who said that when I opened the door he had said,
"Good God, it's a man", and accepted me straight away. So much for vocation.

I handed in my notice at the office. My family thought I was mad. My father asked me how much
money I had and I replied, "Six Quid". They thought I was barmy, which I was, but I went down to the
Labour Exchange and asked if they wanted me to play cricket for them. They replied, "Oh, yes
please." I specified my terms. I would play if they found me a well-paid job for the summer. They sent
me to work on knocking the brick lining out of a blast furnace and labouring for the bricklayers
replacing it. After that I worked as a bread-slicer in a bakery - a job no-one wanted at any price. I
managed to work double-shifts and at the end of the summer I had £149 in the bank. I never asked
nor expected any financial support from my family. My brother has told me since that there was a
family meeting which had declared there would be nothing for me. Oddly, the short period I was in the
works I remember as being the closest I ever felt to my father. We were in the same world for once.
Someone I met in the works told me he had a reputation. "If you want to be a steel moulder,
apprentice yourself to Sam Barker".
Bristol was something of a disaster area. The week I arrived, my friend left for Luton. I took over his
digs. The previous head of the school had left the school in a shambles and I learned more working in
the Old Vic Theatre than I did in the school. There was a highly skilled professional back-stage team
who took a liking to me and went to some lengths to teach me how to work a show. The whole thing
was supervised by Nat Brenner, and no-one could do it as well as he knew how. I also supplemented
this with tutorials at the University Drama Studio with John Lavender. In the third term I went to see
Duncan Ross, the new head, who was still trying to sort things out and asked if I could direct a
production with the first year students. He suggested I did two. With the exception of two scenes from
Henry IV Part 1, which I had got some friends to put on in school, this was the first directing I had ever
done. I directed John Whiting's Saints Day and a short Tennessee Williams play Hello from Bertha. I
collapsed and was taken to hospital with a duodenal ulcer the day before the dress rehearsal. I had at
the same time been working on other school shows, building the sets for the Western Theatre Ballet
tour and working at nights as night-watchman in the theatre. When I came out of hospital I found
Saints Day was being lauded to the skies. When I asked about the Tennessee Williams people
shuffled their feet and looked the other way. I was left trying to work out why one worked and the other
hadn't. However, as Albert Hunt has always said "Nothing succeeds like failure" and I learned a lot
from the experience.

During the time at Bristol I tried to persuade some of the acting students of the possibility of starting a
company when we left. We would move to some place without a theatre, take jobs and work on
theatre in our spare time, building up to becoming a full-time professional company. There was a lot of
interest and talent but eventually the actors felt they had to go out and prove they could earn a living
in the professional theatre before we did anything like that. Recently, when I was teaching at Rose
Bruford, one of the student directors came to talk to me about a dream she had. She outlined pretty
much what we were planning in Bristol. The dream isn't dead. The dream of theatre being a
community, a family, dies hard. Working in theatre can be a desperately lonely life. I understand her
quest since it returns me to my roots. Strangely none of my family have ever seen me work, beyond
the odd half day, or occasional performance.. It all happens in another room. "Large actions in small
rooms, locked away." None of my family knows what it is I do.

First Encounter with Theatre Workshop

Just before that school production a designer called John Blezzard, who was teaching the stage
management bunch said to me that he had just met a group who he thought would be the ideal
company for me: "They all wear sandals and beards and have dirty feet". This was odd because I
didn't have a beard and never owned a pair of sandals and my feet, I thought, were scrupulously
clean. I wrote to this company, Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop, asked for an interview to work in
stage management. There is a curious anomaly in all this. The company had been given a base in
Ormesby1 Hall, just outside Middlesbrough. I had played cricket in the grounds of Ormesby Hall but
had never heard of the company. I got an interview but, since there was a train strike on, I had to
hitch-hike to Stratford East to get there. And back to Bristol after it. I met and talked with John Bury
and saw a brief spot of rehearsal of a Ted Allen play "The Legend of Pepito". Having seen Littlewood
work I knew this was the company I wanted to work with, although to be honest, what else did I have
to choose between? Of course, shortly after this I was in hospital. At the end of the summer I wrote to
John Bury again and asked if they wanted me. His reply was that they did but were not sure they
could pay me.

So I came to London, slept in the theatre and signed on the dole. That was in 1955. That's how I met
Joan Littlewood and became an actor. Little did I know the legendary advice, "If you want to act with
Littlewood, don't audition, get some other job in the theatre and she'll pick you up. Besides, I was
cheap. Two workers for the price of one. I was stage manager and bit part actor. I made my debut in
both capacities in Fuente Ovejuna by Lope de Vega. Technology caught up with me. Littlewood had
asked Ewan MacColl to make up a tape on which the speeches of the King and Queen of Spain were
recorded, personified by two dummies in the house boxes. Having thought I was an ace sound man
on panotropes I was suddenly handed a Ferrograph tape recorder. I think this was an innovation. I
have met no-one who worked a tape-recorder for a show earlier than I did. There is one big drawback
with the Ferrograph. Its spools start up at different speeds. In Ewan's mind they were infallible. In

1
This was in late 1945, early 1946 before they found a base in Oxford Road, Manchester
practice, the tape began to run off before the take-up spool started moving. This created a run-off tape
loop which was then whipped up by the run-on spool. The effect was to snap the tape tight just at the
point where there was a splice. The tape would then snap and leave me with a mass of loose tape.
Eventually my explanation was accepted but not before a lot of heart ache and one amazing
performance where the royal pair sat dumbly in the box and the voice of the Queen came from the
gallery and the voice of the king from behind the pros arch. I stayed with Joan nine months, largely
totally mystified, since she never explained anything.

Stage Management in London and the Regions

One thing was clear, if I was intending to continuing working in the theatre I had better learn how to
act. Working with actors like Howard Goorney and Avis Bunnage made me realise how far I had to go.
I did pick up and enjoyed classes in movement, which owed a lot to Laban, often mentioned. I bought
his book and spent the next six years working through it on the kitchen table. I left after the production
of Schweik ended its West End run. I worked for an Indian Magician and then moved on to stage
management at the Arts Theatre for a year. Then I spent two years moving around, learning my trade.
I worked as a designer but not a scene painter. I was a wardobe mistress, and LX technician, all I ever
asked was that I was learning something I had not done before. Then I got a job as stage hand with
the Festival Ballet. I progressed to First Stage Dayman and First Flyman. I briefly toured with them as
master-carpenter and property master. I adore dancers. In general they are lovely people who get
treated like dirt. I tried to add dancing to my catalogue of self-taught skills. I did various jobs with the
Festival Ballet but nothing permanent looked like arising, although they found me work in television
through their contacts. I became stage manager of Cool for Cats. All good experience but I could not
see where it was all leading. I reached a low point and considered returning to Middlesbrough and
writing. The Observer ran a play competition and although I didn't win it, Peter O'Toole assured me
that I had come in something like ninth place. I'm not sure how he found out, but I was easily
encouraged.

Acting with Theatre Workshop

At this point I was by chance near the phone when Littlewood rang Brian Murphy to see if he was
available to be in a new Brendan Behan play. He wasn't but she offered the part to me and I returned
to Theatre Workshop - with The Hostage. We ran The Hostage at Stratford East and took it to Paris
for the Théâtre des Nations festival. We followed it with Fings Aint What They Used To Be and
Marston's The Dutch Courtesan. During this time, Littlewood let me lead a few training sessions. I
continued to read and study avidly and to observe rehearsals to study the actors and Littlewood's
approach to directing. We also had the benefit of having Jean Newlove to lead training based on her
work with Laban. These sessions were fraught with division. The company split into two groups. Half
of us turned up at 9am and did class. The others turned up at 9.30am, took a brief look at us, with
expressions like "Bugger that for a game of soldiers" and went off for a coffee.

When we opened in the West End we lost contact with Jean Newlove but some of the company still
wanted to persist with the training classes. We hired a rehearsal room in Great Newport Street and
assembled, myself at one end of the room and everyone else at the opposite end. I moved to join
them and they all moved en masse to the end I had just left. I got the point, I was appointed to lead
the classes. I started and two things became clear. I didn't have the trained skills of Jean and when I
tried to correct myself I became self-conscious and clumsy. Whatever I understood about Laban was
in my head not my body. In desperation I remembered games I had played as a child in the boy
scouts and I started feeding these into the classes. People began moving, so something was being
achieved, however rudimentary. At this time my friend and fellow actor Brian Murphy and I began to
wander round the streets of London observing how people moved. We would go to places like
libraries, art galleries, railway stations and compare what movement patterns we observed. We
learned to distinguish the various types and degrees of dis-coordination, time stress and non-
stressed, A natural consequence was applying the lessons learned to observation in the classes. We
also carried out experiments with the physical nature of texts. Things began to progress. The Hostage
ran for a year after which I returned to odd jobs and writing. I also directed Shelagh Delaney's second
play The Lion in Love, on tour and at the Royal Court Theatre.

Centre 42

At this time a further aspect of my dream emerged when I became involved in Centre 42 with Arnold
Wesker. Centre 42 emerged as a response to Resolution 42 of the Trades Union Congress calling for
Trades Unions to foster Arts projects. It largely took the form of Arts Festivals in various parts of the
country during 1961-1963. Wesker was named as Administrator and I became Festival Organiser
liaising with the Trades Councils. With one notorious exception all the artists involved were asked to
name the lowest fee they could afford to work for. The general philosophy was that events, since the
end of the war, had contributed to the break-up of the old working class communities, for good and for
bad, in the rebuilding of housing estates and the increased centralisation of the artistic work in
London. For me it was a very happy time, not so much, I must admit for my wife and children. There
is a hit and run aspect of my search for community, I have to admit. I am at my happiest moving from
group to group in short bursts of intense activity. Centre 42 more or less ended at the end of 1963 for
financial reasons and I left. While Wesker laboured on trying to establish a base at the Roundhouse,
which had been given us.

I parted from Wesker amicably, on a matter of principal. He saw the future in terms of a fixed base
providing work to be sent out. I saw the future in terms of developing the network of provincial
contacts we had set up to the point where they could be independent and literally create their own
cultural activities. I returned to Littlewood and the West End production of Oh What a Lovely War.
While at Centre 42 I had organised some workshops with children at one of the Festivals and had got
together a group of actors, including Glyn Edwards and Mike McKevitt, to work with me. Lovely War
provided an opportunity to sum up what I had learned as well as being a very stimulating experience.

Influences

I think Eugenio Barba can help us here. In several pieces over a period of years he keeps returning to
this theme. I am grateful to him for the image of the Master as a Gate rather than an authority. In his
most recent piece he constructs a family tree for himself, where Meyerhold and Stanislavski are his
grandfathers. Grotowski is his cousin. I know where I come from, and if I had to put a name to them,
Piscator and Copeau are my grandfathers. Stanislavski is my Uncle. These people have opened
gates for me leading to such influences as Delsarte and other movement pioneers. Copeau has had
an enormous influence on me, as have his colleagues, such as Jouvet and Dullin, and , of course
Jean-Louis Barrault, my hero. One of the greatest moments of my working life was after a
performance of The Hostage in Paris, when he came up to me and said he had enjoyed my
performance. I put that with the occasion when Groucho Marx paid to see me work. There is a
wonderful essay by Barrault which John Hodgson includes in his collection of essays The Uses of
Drama, in which Barrault addresses the theme of "The best and worst of all Professions". My
favourite film is Les Enfants du Paradis. I will never tire of watching it. When I was learning French at
school, at the end of the war, we went to the cinema to see the films of Jean Renoir, Marcel Carné
and other great directors. I might not have learned much French but I saw marvellous acting from the
likes of Jean Gabin, Jouvet, Arletty, and many others. I am enormously influenced by them in my own
work. They had a sense of dignity, a presence, and that is important to me as an actor. Certainly
Laban is a big influence on me. I also learned a great deal from two of the older and great dancers,
Anton Dolin and Alicia Markova from personal contact and their professionalism.

But then I think what influence can I be? I don't have a school. Nobody "follows" me. Recently Rose
Bruford College with whom I still maintain a relationship, laid on a weekend to celebrate my work.
Nine artists turned up, who I had either taught or who had taken things from my work in developing
their own, to run workshops with students. Their work was very impressive and I was flattered. In this
sense I hope I have been a gate. My work has always been open. I hope that people don't follow me. I
haven't followed Laban, Alexander or Feldenkrais but I have taken some things from all of them in
constructing my own work. Yat Malmgren who worked with Laban, told me that in a late conversation
with him, Laban had said that he wished the Nazis had burned all his books since people were now
teaching 'Laban' when they should have been teaching movement. To a certain extent we all have to
find our own way. I have laid out my work, grateful to the other gates through which I have been
privileged to enter the past. It is there whoever can find it useful and take from it. In 2002 I suffered a
stroke and I lost the ability to balance and move. I returned to the work of F. Mathias Alexander, as I
remembered it and began to teach myself to move again. In the initial stages, the pace of recovery
was sensational.

On violence

The strongest weapon I would like to see used in society is a pillow. I am a non-violent person.
Violence is the easy answer. It is the ultimate in making a statement instead of asking questions in
dialogue. It reduces a human being to a thing and so diminishes them. For me improvisation is not to
be about making statements. It is about dialogue, asking questions and answering them. In this there
is a clear debt acknowledged to Martin Buber, the European Jewish Philosopher. Buber began in
theatre editing a theatre journal in Vienna in the early years of the 20th Century. His co-editor was
J.L.Moreno, the founder of Psychodrama. Buber moved, extracting from theatre into philosophy. His
thought is a large part of my religious beliefs but his positing of I-Thou and I-It relationships in all their
complexities is a basic part of my belief and theatre. Both I see are founded in dialogue.