Those were the days!
Sir: When my old friend Paul Gane (Let- ters, 16 August) and I were members of Harry Hanson's Court Players at the White Rock Pavilion, St Leonards-on-Sea, Hast- ings, I was paid £8 per week for learning and rehearsing a new play every week while performing a different one nightly, plus two matinees.
This, to me, was a starry elevation never to be dreamed of, for before I enthusiasti- cally accepted this engagement by the rich, chubby, toupee-sporting Mr Hanson famed as a talent-spotter extraordinaire — I was a member of the Lancashire dramatist Walter Armitage Owen's Manchester Rep, which stint of slavery included a season at Blackburn of weekly repertory performed twice nightly, plus two matinees, at a salary of £4 a week.
But now the Equity minimum has so impoverished small company managers that a bizarre policy of role-confusing double- and even multiple-doubling has been adopted by some, while actors and actresses are also expected to heave furniture about the stage in order to avoid paying a stage manager.
The actor's lot has not really become any easier.
Margot Strickland
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