Kent in film

Back in January this year I was delighted to land a plum acting part. It was a dual role playing a glamorous cabaret star Lucinda Wallace and her alter ego, a nameless and homeless girl. The film brings together two highly contemporary issues: the cult of celebrity and inner city homelessness. The story unfolds through a surrealistic and haunting film that is thought provoking and at times heart rending.

I was staggered to realise that this was a student production. The quality of the screenplay was finer than that of some professional films. The film is the brainchild of three final year students at The University of Canterbury at Kent, James Chappell, Daniel Hayward, and Patrick Irving. 

Patrick, James and Dan.

The film-makers

Although all three of them were involved in all aspects of the film they each had their own specialist area: James as a writer, Daniel as a technical expert with camera and sound skills and Patrick as a director and overall producer.

The fantastic screenplay was devised by James. He explains, "I wanted to deal with this unhealthy obsession and desire people have to become famous just for the sake of being famous. Secondly, I wanted to bring in the pressures and dark side of fame. I thought it would be interesting to have these two concepts conflicting against each other in the internal space of one woman's brain."

The plot

The plot the three students finally came up with revolves around famous singer, Lucinda Wallace, who teeters on the edge of a nervous breakdown as she struggles to cope with her celebrity status in the vicious world of showbiz. Meanwhile, a starving homeless girl rummages in bins for food as she drifts aimlessly through London’s theatre land. She fantasizes about swapping places with the glamorous stage star. What happens when the two of them meet? Or is all this the nightmarish ravings of a suicidal mind?

The film was shot on location in Canterbury, London and Margate and I never failed to be impressed by the places the students had reconnoitred and selected.

A major highlight of the filming for me was discovering the secretive Theatre Royal in Margate which is like walking into Dr Who's tardis. It is a little jewel of a Regency theatre hidden away on a corner, a perfect miniature replicating the grandeur of a much larger auditorium. It is resplendent with late 18th century opulence and as I took to the stage to sing Gertrude Lawrence's 1930s' song "Wild Thyme" I could almost feel the ghosts of the age of Beau Brummell before me! 

Theresa Roche. Photo by Philip Sherwood.

The character

Creating Lucinda Wallace's appearance was great fun. I'd gone for a slinky long gold sequined dress which dappled lights across the stage and I enjoyed the chance to sing as well as act. James Chappell has also written into the story a sleazy and cruel agent who helps to trigger Lucinda's nervous breakdown and this scene was also shot. Daniel is masterful behind the camera for getting a precise image and I was grateful to Patrick for his very sensitive directing. 

I used "method acting" to play the homeless girl, a role I believed had to be "felt" and "suffered" rather than acted! I am hoping I did the part convincingly because the students' laudable wish to expose the human degradation which homelessness represents deserves to be done full justice. 

We used the glitzy showbiz world of Theatre Land to contrast against the plight of the waif and show the futility of her dreams. Walking through Soho to suggest what might befall the impoverished girl next, I heard a sex shop owner shouting abuse at the camera crew. The students had in fact acquired permits allowing them to film in each street in London they went to and were therefore legally entitled to film. 

The final day's filming took place on campus using the University's facilities to create an imagined meeting between the stage star and the homeless girl where the two swap bodies. The technical skills involved in creating an eerie "green room" to symbolise the bizarre deranged mind of Lucinda, were first rate.

The film

"Comatose Avenue" is the debut film of these newly trained film-makers and premiered at The Gulbenkian Theatre in Canterbury before it went to film festivals worldwide.