Blog: Chi and I… Part 2

Extracts from Chi and I by acclaimed actor, director and playwright, David Wood : Part 2, Life as an extra, 1963

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Set design for Saint Joan design by Michael Annals

Soon after I had gained a place at Worcester College, Oxford, I was asked to be an extra in the second season – a soldier in Saint Joan and a policeman in The Workhouse Donkey.  As a summer job before going to university, this proved to be a fantastic and eye-opening experience.

As extras we were introduced into the productions in the final days of rehearsal.  First, we were shown the set of Saint Joan with its two sets of steps descending from the back wall down into the Dauphin’s court scene.  We five, plus professional John Rogers, came on three from each side, carrying a tall pike topped with a sharp-looking metal spear.  The director, the no-nonsense, sharp-tongued John Dexter gave us the cues and told us where to stand absolutely still for much of the scene.  Not long after, we were plunged into the first dress rehearsal.  Wearing our breast-plates, helmets and woollen leggings, we made our entrance.
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Blog: Brutal Utopias

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View of the exterior of Queen Elizabeth Hall

On 30 September, in an effort to find out more about CFT’s standing within the architectural world Becky (Heritage Activities Officer), Katie (Community Apprentice) and I went on a very special tour of several buildings on the Southbank.

The Southbank Centre and the National Trust ran a week of Brutal Utopias tours which took visitors around the Queen Elizabeth Hall, the Purcell Room and the Hayward Gallery all of which are, like CFT, 1960s Brutalist buildings. These three spaces are now entering the process of being restored and refurbished, much like our own Theatre building through the RENEW project, and lay dormant the week of the tours before building work got started. With the spaces empty the two organisations came together to give exclusive tours of areas of the buildings never before open to the public, and other parts that will change in the process of the site’s two-year refurbishment.
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Blog: Chi and I… Part 1

David Wood acclaimed playwright, actor, director has had an extensive relationship with Chichester and the Festival Theatre. Wood has documented this relationship in his memoir Chi and I…, which he has been kind enough to share with us at Pass It On through a series of extracts we will be posting as blogs.

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Extract from Drama Summer School programme, 1960. D. Wood Collection

CHI and I …

Memories of Chichester Festival Theatre

by a local schoolboy who watched the

laying of the foundation stone, then,

over a period of fifty years, proudly became

associated with the theatre as extra, actor,

playwright and director.

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