An Die Musik and The Dream – SuperTour – Oct 75 / May 76
Touring begins in earnest. Rod isn’t just Dracula & Roderic isn’t just the Ridiculous Man. They are also Rod & Rod the Transport team who will be taking turns to drive the touring van for the next 8 months.. We are about to embark on a tour starting in the UK, traveling up north and playing in the black box spaces of provincial receiving Theatres as we go. We will eventually reach Folkestone and board the Ferry to Dieppe to continue our tour. Rod and Rod will cover thousands of miles in the UK & Europe. Pip sells his Red Mercedes-Benz 170 convertible for a Volvo. This is just the beginning
Rod & Rod transport team
Pip Simmons-The Boss
The Dream of the Ridiculous Man is untested, an audience is needed. Chapter Arts Centre in Cardiff, always a very good place to start. Much work to do, the Dream in it’s infancy needing to be kicked in to shape, a 90 minute show with endless props, costume changes loads of music and Emil. Emil with his many circus gifts could not control his cloak, that cloak got stuck in the wings or the coffin or a wooden prop tree anything that came between him and his 6 ft cloak. His entrance firing a gun (prop) on his 6 ft stilts as Doc suicide was impressive, but not when he was stuck to the furniture . Much work needed to make this show shape up. An Die Musik can look after itself, this is a tour of both the Dream and An Die Musik, one fun, the other not fun.
Emil Wolk – Doc Suicide rehearsing his entrance
The Dream premiere can’t have been so bad looking at Chris Stuart’s review from The Carmarthen Times :
“The Pip Simmons Theatre Group is celebrated for its ability to lift people’s minds out of their earth bound skulls & suspend them tantalisingly within some wholly unique realm of the imagination. Deep down in its soul, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man deals with basic confrontations. Good versus evil, beauty versus corruption, consciousness versus unconsciousness & cruelty versus compassion. Rarely can the process of mental transplantation be so complete & so inescapably riveting as in their latest piece which premiered at the Chapter Arts Centre last night.”
Our tour takes us through Birmingham where my Mum and Dad live. An Die Musik is scheduled to play and I’m not quite sure what to tell Mum and Dad, after all, their daughter is on stage, this hasn’t happened in our family before. I visit home for afternoon tea and Mum has baked a coconut cake for the company. I have to tell them that An Die Musik is not what you would call a traditional play. I have to tell them that we all get gassed to death with no clothes on, its not an easy conversation. Dad says, I’ll go if your Mum goes, and Mum says, I’ll go if your Dad goes. They wisely decided to stay at home, everyone really enjoyed the coconut cake and Mum kept the reviews. I think my brother came, we didn’t talk about it much.
Here I am in my home town touring with a traveling theatre company. I had left Birmingham 6 years ago 1969 fresh out of Art school to find work in London. My sights were set on book illustration, I was a waitress a washer upper and a filing clerk until a proper job came along. Bingo ! I work four years in Fleet Street; a great job in the art department of the recently launched Sun Newspaper, a UK team were invited to go to an auntie news paper in New York, I still have the letter but this was not to be ! a swerve ball with mighty force came my way in the guise of Pip Simmons Theatre Group. My Significant other Rod Beddall had planned to go with the group to Rotterdam cast as Dracula; the company were looking for a female vampire. I bore an uncanny likeness to Lou Jeffrey who performed in the original group, Lou couldn’t go to Rotterdam …… would I….. could I ….. dare I ….. after all, acting experience not required.
The Pip Simmons Theatre Group arrive at Birmingham Arts Lab October 1975 this is just the beginning, 4 years and seven shows later Mum and Dad get to see their daughter in a show suitable for parents
All photos © Sheila Burnett