The Early Years 
Fight Biography

With Bert Bracewell, Olympic fencing coach and former Society of Fight Directors member I couldn't have had a better training in theatrical combat. Bert had been trained way back by Bob Anderson, a name to be conjured with in fight circles (Mask of Zorro, Star Wars trilogy, The Princess Bride, etc. etc. etc.), and had gone on himself to direct countless theatrical fights and even a Taggart, which several years down the line I was to become fight arranger for myself.. Come third year at QMC every week brought a new weapon style, and opportunities to progress on the British Academy Of Fencing syllabus for which Bert was a master at arms. 

Whilst still in third year Bert, who must have had great faith in me, had passed a fight arranging contract to me on a show Clive Perry was directing at Pitlochry Festival Theatre. The show was A Chorus Of Disapproval, by Alan Ayckbourne. They were looking for a big fight involving women cat fighting and men trying to break it up. It was in the style of a western bar room brawl, so I used basic theatrical fist fight skills to put the thing together. At the start of the run the fight received a round of applause, but by the time I came back to do some maintenance on it some two months later, it was shortened and laugh less. These things happen on long runs, with actors cutting corners and boredom creeping in. All in all the production was fun and I think that they all did a marvelous job. Pitlochry certainly puts on some of the best theatre in Scotland, but it's out in the wilds and plays to a mainly captured tourist audience. The tourists don't know how lucky they are!

Again before leaving QM and while working on The Hostage by Brendan Behan, I was asked to put another fight together. The full cast was involved, in a similar bar room brawl feel to the Pitlochry show. With eighteen cast members, all of whom had had the same training as me, this could have been awkward, but it just came together and again received great laughs from the audience. Whilst working on the Laurel and Hardy act with Mike Davey we had spent long hours studying the Laurel and Hardy routines and I incorporated visual gags in the Hostage on top of the basic fight.  This was to be one of the only times in my career when I would work with  a full cast of actors that had a full  understanding of theatrical combat. 

Since leaving QMC I've directed fights for another 67 productions to date, ranging from theatre, to event to film and television, and it would be foolhardy to attempt to cover each one. Some shows stand out from the crowd however, for reasons plain or more obscure. I worked on various shows over the next year. Raising the Standard for the Arches, John Paul Jones for SYT, and for Ocean Wave, Twelfth Night again for SYT, the Laurel and Hardy routines for Face To Face, Dogg's Hamlet, Beauty and the Beast etc etc. etc. In 1996 I did a show for Fablevision called Swords and Stones, a large scale community event which needed a battle. This event was to be a precursor for several later events I was to ACTION DIRECT for Fablevision, and served as a basis for the largest event I have directed fights for to date, The Battle Of Stirling Bridge, which told the Braveheart story on a massive scale at Stirling Castle.

It was at Fablevision that I started finding myself in the position of not just directing fights or of designing, but of putting together and directing the entire production. Fablevision were big on parades. As a community theatre arts company they were always involved in large scale community events and parades were the big thing in the late nineties, only recently falling out of favour. In both 98 and 99 I directed enormous lantern and back-pack puppet action which took place along the route of parades in Lochgilphead in Argyll in the manner of Welfare State. These were lavish affairs and truly awe inspiring. I also directed and devised true street theatre for them in Glasgow with Graham, but as the years moved past, there was a marked change in the events. As the budgets grew smaller and smaller and smaller, which is no great problem on it's own, the expectations of the people at Fablevision and of their funders remained the same and I couldn't meet their demands. In 2001 I did my final project for them and walked away only pausing to ask Equity to intervene and force Fablevision to come up with the wages which my staff and I were due. I'm a firm believer in walking away from a job if you're being mistreated and have never looked back. 

The Battle Of Stirling Bridge was a three month contract. In the first six weeks Graham and I were co-designing the piece whilst we rounded up potential actors from the Stirling community, and made props prepped the show etc.. The show was directed by Andy Arnold from the Arches. As the show loomed and at the six week point I moved from being part time directing the fights to full time. We had 38 actors involved in the battle fights which I was directing with almost one hundred separate fights taking place. I  trained them all and blocked the fights etc. which was a tremendous opportunity for me to advance as a fight director. With the engagement of two assistant fight directors, I found myself with the lofty title of fight master and we performed the show on the castle esplanade to approximately 1500 people per performance. It was cold at night but the whole scene was quite amazing. Being a community event, I found myself filling in for actor's that didn't show, or who dropped away, as did my assistant FD Jim Fleming. Andy, who has never understood that fighting with swords is DANGEROUS found some guy who "had his own sword", and tried to force him on us to do the main fight about three days before the show went up. I declined the kind offer and explained to the gentleman that it was a bad idea, but I think Andy just though I was being difficult. I am still very happy with my fights in that show, but overall I thought that it was let down by poor acoustics and the structure of the performance. I have since found that a Scottish stunt society have claimed that they directed the fights for this event. Oh deary me, the world is just full of nutters, and they continue to get away with it...

Moving forward a bit past Les Liaisons Dangerouses for Coatbridge College which was a very difficult fight as a key moment for the main character is within the fight itself, Cyrano De Bergerac for SYT which Bert had directed me in at college, Hamlet, Great Expectations, The Pirates of Penzance etc. etc. to The Lovers for The BBC, it takes me into the last few years and the move into TV and film. During the Battle Of Stuirling Bridge I had re-directed sword fights for the camera from the show. They were specifically put together as variations of the fights we had already rehearsed for news crews from all over the world as promotion for the actual event and even today I see them on documentaries on television about Wallace etc. I'm not ecstatic about this, but as we put it together for the news it I suppose became public domain.

So as with many other aspects of my life I sort of slipped onto television by accident. I never saw The Lovers but as it was BBC, it somehow gave me more credibility. My first main film job was on KCD's Devil's Tattoo which was released as Ghost Rig. It went straight to video it appears but I've heard that it's pretty good and that the fights are quite horrible and work well. This is good because I didn't overly enjoy doing the film. We worked hard to make it come together but the director (Julian Keane) was also the writer and one of the producers (with Bill Dale) so was really nervous about all aspects of the production and rather than let me take care of the fight safety elements kept interfering. Indeed I tried to walk away from the film before even starting as I felt I was getting overruled and my advice ignored, but he came back to me and we got over this and things went ahead really without a hitch. As always the crew were nice and I saw old friends and colleagues there. David Murray from SYT was acting in it and Rory McCann from the Book Group was also there. I'd directed him in a big shoot 'em up for a short film that was never aired but that Rory has seen and wants to forget, the year before. An armourer friend Perry Costello was supplying the effects and guns. 

It was following this with a Macbeth tour of Scottish castles in the interim that I started on Taggart. If you've made it this far you'll be well aware of how mental my life is when everything happens at once, and that was the case for Taggart. I had stopped directing for Fablevision when Mary McCluskey came to me and asked me if I'd direct Tall Tales and Small Wonders by Gerry Mulgrew at the Citz for the SYT summer festival. Keen on this because of my heavy involvement with SYT in the past I immediately said yes, and of course it had to clash with my very first Taggart. But the Taggart office were accommodating and arranged for me only to be called when required. Two days in with very simple fights each day, I found that I was getting called seven hours before required and that it was affecting the SYT show. I walked off the Taggart, handing the reigns to Ramond Short. He covered a day on this Taggart but was not used the whole day. Bizarrely Taggart came back to me and asked me to direct a fight in the next episode ( I got the feeling that they liked the fact that I'd dug my heels in over the call times and that I'd not just left them in the lurch but organised Ramond for cover), and again on the two Taggart's following this in the same season. The fights on Taggart are never too complicated so although my association with the name is good for the reputation, it is never too much pressure and the cast and crew are friendly and welcoming on each occasion I'm asked back.

Just to follow up on the direction job with SYT: The show was very well received and Mary was very happy with the production on which I'd been paired with Julie Austin (Cinderella) as choreographer and another old SYT colleague as musical director (Keith Munroe). This was a restart in the direction business, which by reputation alone got me another directing job with Inter-Act in Stirling. A great show about sexual health but really a teenage soap opera with loads of gossip and sexual tension. Brilliant fun with a great cast. Subsequently Mary has asked me to direct for her on the next three summer Festivals on the shows Merlin - The Wild Boy (at the RSAMD), on which I also directed the fights and designed, The Cheviot The Stag and the Black Black oil (a tour), and this year Waking Shadows, a devised piece about ghosts and dreams again at the Citz. I have recently been contacted by Kenny Miller  and asked to assist him on this years Christmas show, in the Citz Scrooge slot. It'll be hard work but I'm keen to work again with Kenny and in a building which I know well. It's a result for me as I was going to ask if he needed some assistance anyway. When working on TV jobs doing fights I usually have loads of time off and was willing to spend some of that free time in the Citizens' just helping out. To be paid for it is obviously a a better arrangement.

So back to the fights. The Taggart's kept going with another season in 2002 in which I directed many fights, but not all. My old colleague Jim Fleming had to cover a day I seem to remember. More SYT shows such as Through The Looking Glass (Fantastic show) and Romeo and Juliet (another nice one), also The Duchess Of Malfi at Dundee Rep with Dominic Hill directing (now joint artistic director there), Macbeth at Cumbernauld, Romeo and Juliet at Coatbridge, Room For The Night (Incidental Pictures), Damnn'd Jacobite Bitches (Citizens) and Witchcraze for Blast Films. Witchcraze was famous for being the first BBC programme ever to use a very bad sweary word indeed. I'm sure it made it in there by accident as a lot of it was improvised. I was pleased with the fights as they were done so quickly. Suddenly I was on set and they were worried about losing light and I blocked fights just ahead of the camera set ups which were rapid and handheld, and somehow in all the speed and panic we produced a really excellent scene which had various locations and fight actions involved. All these years doing fist fight workshops (I've done over a hundred now) mean that I can put together good safe fights that I know will work, in a very short space of time. I worked with the 1st AD again recently on the new BBC soap opera River City. My, how people get around. I was directing a sequence with Sally Howitt (a great laugh) who'd been with me on Scrooge, and I'd called in Mark Melville (also from Scrooge) to assist with another part of the same scene. 

So I'm going to finish this veritable tome by talking a bit about 16 Years Of Alcohol, an as yet unreleased film directed by Richard Jobson and starring Kevin McKidd. This is not the last thing I've worked on, indeed it was nearly a year ago now, but it had a quality to it that was admirable. Kevin, fresh off a plane from New York where he'd been promoting Dog Soldiers (Such a good film) was late for the first rehearsal arriving two hours into a three hour session so we scheduled another as more time was required and used the additional time to really work out a great fight. What was good about Sixteen Years was the rehearsals and Richard Jobson's great vision. He saw the fights as being at the same time both beautiful and full of violence, and he had an eye for a shot that tended to make every thing look like it was operatic or the way I saw it, like a record cover. With great actors come great fights and Kevin and Stuart Bligh who were playing kind of the hero and anti-hero roles were just great. Time curbed our vision a little as this was not a huge budget epic but the shots we were getting, even the rehearsal footage will hopefully prove the eventual release of the film a success. I only wish we'd been able to (as planned) take the main fight sequence in a single steady cam shot, but this proved just too much and out with our time constraints. I think 16 Years will shake up the film scene a bit when released and am keen on seeing the finished article. i met Kevin earlier this year and he's see the rough cut... It's gonna be good by all accounts.

So this is it. I'm up to date and have spent most of July 2003 sitting in front of a PC and updating this site. I'll be directing waking Shadows come the 7th July, soon after that I'll hopefully have a Taggart or two, I've a stand by for a Pakistani movie in September, an advisory job on a Citz show in August and after the Christmas show at the Citz who knows? 

One thing's for sure, it can't be any more difficult than what I've already been through.

Keep an eye on the Diary Pages for regular updates.
I was born David Carter in Bellshill, Scotland on the 16th of February 1972, the son of John (a plumber) and Eva Carter (a housewife). Brought up at first in Drumpellier, Coatbridge;  the family moved to a farmhouse near Baillieston whilst I was still a young boy.

With three elder brothers (Tom, Robin and John) I followed in their footsteps and went to school at Langloan Primary in Coatbridge. I was the youngest in my class, most students being five years old when they first started, and me being only four. The farm was the ideal place to run around and cause havoc, play soldiers, build tree houses and the like. Built on a hill, wintertime meant a proliferation of sledging and snowball fights. Although there was no livestock we always had several household cats and guard dogs to keep us company. Holidays were always in St Andrews in Fife where the we had a (and still have a newer one) caravan. The long summer holidays were generally spent running about and cycling, fighting with brothers and making model airplanes, tanks etc. Staring out the caravan windows at the rain washing the glass and listening to the deafening roar of it lashing the tin roof was also a big part of the holiday.

Secondary school was Coatbridge High School, where my favourite studies included technical and artistic classes. Drama was not in the syllabus and I veered toward a career in design, with high marks in artistic subjects and average marks elsewhere. I  "grew into" school only really beginning to enjoy it and engage in subjects like Maths in 5th  and 6th year, as I began to enjoy the company of my peers. Many good memories of this period, and many people I went to school with that I'd still like to call my friends. John Gladstone where are you now?

In sixth year at school the English teacher Mrs McCormack was organising the school show, GUYS AND DOLLS and when they had trouble filling some of the smaller parts I put myself forward to perform. A big step for me at that stage of my life. I saw it as an opportunity to spend more time outwith hours with my friends and as good excuse for covering up my pale skin for which I was constantly slagged off by fellow classmates. I was a classic Scottish shade of white verging on the blue and only reflected sunlight, blinding passers by. I played Joey Biltmore in the show and although I was pretty appalling I seemed to make the audience laugh and the teacher was very kind to me and encouraging, so at the time I thought I was marvelous. 

On leaving Coatbridge High I went to the Central College Of Commerce in Glasgow and studied an HNC in Spatial design. This was a good fun period as well and my classmates and I had a great time, and learned a few things as well. Generally I'd describe myself as uncool at that time so it was good to be surrounded by people that had genuine flare and style. My interests shifted from obsessions in role-playing and war gaming( My brother Robin had got me into this by accident), to cutting edge comedy a.k.a. Vic Reeves, Victor and Barry etc. (I'd always been the class clown anyway) and decent music, floundering as it was the early nineties in the area of dance... Aceeeed! Oh dear. Soon I found the Pixies and the Wonder Stuff however and with the new found wealth of a grant I invested in a lot of SKA, Madness and Specials lp's that I could never afford when I was younger. Little did I know at that time when buying punkish Skidz singles that I'd one day work with the lead singer as director on the feature film 16 years Of Alcohol.

Also during this period I entered the world of amateur musicals. Oh yes. It was a great time. I went to Airdrie and Coatbridge Amateur Operatic Society and we did THE PAJAMA GAME (a really great show) and a review. The review was a bit of a mismatch, but really great fun and the director (whom I felt was a bit too directory!!!? at the time - what did I know?) actually was the nearest I'd come to a professional, and is certainly in large part responsible for waking me up and showing me the real possibilities of theatre. At the same time I was involved in Annie Get Your Gun with another company. This was to be my last true, amateur production. I miss the amateur shows and the misbehaving that went on in the cast etc. When you train professionally its so easy to lose the fun of it all. But I'd found something better... In Scottish Youth Theatre.

Now everything that I'd done academically up to this point was leading toward a career in design, so acting was still for the fun of it if you see what I mean. It was other peoples unerring faith in my acting abilities that caused me to rethink things. My first show with SYT was directed by Robin Peoples at the Old Athenaeum in Buchanan Street, Glasgow. (I tell a lie, John Haswell directed me over the first two weeks in Tam O'Shanter - Great fun, I was terrible). Robin was directing the first part of Nicholas Nickleby, a 7 hour epic formerly done by the National or the RSC or some such. He had broken the play into three and three casts were handling it. I seem to remember that there were 115 students that year, so you can imagine the scale. I was cast as the evil uncle Ralph, and went about it as best I could. What Robin saw in me was possibilities. Little did he know that I was, although incredibly committed, way out of my league, having never said more than six words on stage before. This combined with torment from the wings from a particularly saucy female member of the cast meant disaster was always close at hand. On the first night I reacted to the audience and basically changed my character into a nervous high pitched affair which was more akin to a comic character than a villain. That same night I forgot a line - a cardinal sin - my only saving grace being that others thought the line was dropped by Geraldine Macaleese (Now assistant director at the MacRobert). 

This first year at SYT was a massive leap in my learning curve. It gave me generally more courage and more of an appetite for theatre, and the friends I was to make there are still my friends today. It was also my first experience in stage combat. In a three hour workshop led by Ramond Short we covered the basics of fist fights. Although I found it cool at the time, I never considered that I'd be in Ramond's place just a few years down the line. Significantly that year I met another good friend and colleague, Graham Hunter who was to become my mentor in the world of design for the theatre.

It was up to this point that I'd been working solely toward a career in design, so it was natural for me to begin working with Graham on various shows, at first as an unpaid assistant and ASM at SYT (The Grave Of Every Hope, Medea etc.) and subsequently as an assistant designer on paid jobs at the Arches, RSAMD, BBC etc. Whilst still taking part in Scottish Youth Theatre shows as an actor on summer festival in 92' and as an assistant director in 93'  Graham and I created designs with real class and beautiful finish on budgets lower than you could possibly imagine, getting great reviews all round but never really progressing on the monetary front. Eventually over the years we started co-designing and were in house at the Arches. See my Design CV for full details. We would advise on design, and work for reduced design rates in return for an office space and occasional favours for our own productions. We started our own company Face To Face with friends from SYT's staff because we began to tire of creating great shows for other people. My time at the Arches and designing with Graham ran until about 97 or 98, during which time I met another mentor, Scottish Youth Theatre's artistic director Mary McCluskey, and secured a place at Queen Margaret College and trained for three years on their highly regarded acting course in Edinburgh, graduating in 1995..

Mary had taken over from Robin Peoples at SYT in 1992 and although initially only working with her in a design and stage manager capacity she is always open to possibilities and cast me as Orsino in a workshop performance of Twelfth Night. Mary still holds workshop weeks in preparation for larger productions. Not only are they a great resource for Mary, they are also a wonderful and demanding experience for the young people involved. Over the years I have designed and/or directed fights for Mary at SYT (Macbeth, The Wizard Of Oz, Twelfth Night Etc.) and in more recent years have directed/ designed summer festival shows (Tall Tales, Merlin, The Wild Boy, The Cheviot, The Stag and The Black, Black Oil). 

Whilst staying involved with SYT over the summers I began my training at QMC in 1993. The course was led by Pitlochry Festival Theatre's Clive Perry, whom Richard Burton famously described as a "horrible little man", but I liked him, and Lynn Bains, an American acting and voice coach more akin to Anne Maurice (The House Doctor) than I'd care to mention. Year one was hard work, the main aim it seemed being to make you forget everything you thought you ever knew about acting. The greatest drawback being that we were not allowed to perform until the third term. My fellow classmates were all in the same boat however so we did our best and slogged away as best we could. During this term I met my third great mentor Bert Bracewell, at that time Olympic Fencing Coach for the last 24years. Fencing and stage combat in first year was no easy business with only one hour a week and if you didn't get it the first time Bert would help you to catch up at a later date. Our first show Alice in Wondeland, was directed by lecturer Andy Mackie, who at that time regularly took on the 1st year students third term show. In Alice In Wonderland, we toured schools with a big parachute and acted the goat. I played seven characters including a tunnel (who's gravelly voice was based on Bert's), a tree, a lobster and a canary (this time based on the head of Stage Management John Stone). 

Just a few words on my fellow classmates, all of whom were good people and without exception talented at what they did. Today only a slim few are actually still working as actors, which says a lot about the proliferation of acting colleges in relation to the available work. I really can't believe that the likes of Mike Davey, a highly talented comedian have had so little success.

In the interim period before second year went with SYT to Belgium with Medea (a great show), as stage manager/ assistant designer in place of Stuart Dunn, another friend now working at the Citz. Due to a ferry strike I arrived back a day late for college missing the audition for our first show Men Should Weep, and they will do if they're forced to sit through it! A period Kitchen Sink drama in which I was cast as removal man 2. So inspired was I by this part that by the time it got to my scene in the blocking - some 4 weeks on, I couldn't remember my three lines much to the hilarity of Ian Cowell amongst others. I'm going to see Ian at The Tron today, and will chide him on this. The show directed by Robin Wilson was good fun to perform, if only because I had so little responsibility. John Deehan, Paul Melon and myself had some laugh at the opening. The ball we were playing with went through the imaginary actor's fourth wall at one stage making us at the same time panicked and full of uncontrollable laughter. Also that year I performed in, I think  The Bottle and the Beret, a devised piece of great strangeness, The Country Wife (nightmare with the lines on this one, real nightmare and a seat of your pants performance which was well received) and of note played the Caretaker in Comedians with Kevin McKidd, who I was later to work with in 16 Years. if you haven't seen Kevin's feature film Dog Soldiers, you're missing out by the way. It was in second year that work with Bert Bracewell really began to click and I got more and more into fencing and theatrical combat. 

In third year we started to have fun at college. Terms were more production based and we were getting cast in plays we could not only enjoy, but also experiment with. With Mary Barnes, directed by Lynn, The Hostage, also directed by Lynn and the panto Scrooge directed by Clive Perry I was finding roles that not only stretched my performance skills but in which I could find a definite feel for the reactions of an audience. In stage combat in third year we could specialize in fight direction, and spend as much as one and half days a week on it if we could find the time and/ or energy. The big drawback at QMC was energy. We spent so long in college and had so many classes and always two or more evenings a week in class that I certainly felt a great tiredness almost every day. That said, with a showcase to perform we made it to the end of our  three years and finished with a bang. I was in three scenes in the showcase. I fought Cyrano (aka Richard Conlon) in the play of the same name, directed by Clive Perry, fight directed by Bert Bracewell, I played Alec in Sailmaker, a part I would later go on to perform in with Face To Face and played Stan in Laurel and Hardy, in name directed by John Ramage, (politics) but actually put together by our movement coach Christine Rafaelli. Opposite to my Stan was my good friend Mike Davey. we had been performing as Stan and Ollie in cabaret's etc. and continued to do so on several occasions after this. The showcase left me with no agent, but with an engagement in TAGGART and another for a BBC comedy, Bad Boys. 

Here endeth The Early Years...

Professional Biography

On graduating from the Queen Margaret College Acting Course in 1995, my classmates and I found ourselves suddenly freelance actors at the mercy of the Scottish theatre and television scene. Due to the way the Actor's Equity membership works I also found myself with a change of name.

The new me was Carter Ferguson, using  my mothers maiden name as my surname. This took a bit of getting used to but it was only the first hurdle of my unusual professional life. I luckily had picked up the part of a Coastguard Officer on an episode of Taggart (which starred Billy Boyd of Lord Of The Rings fame) and another smaller role on the BBC's new comedy show Bad Boys, from my performance in the showcase. I was one of the lucky ones as many of my classmates did not have any results from the showcase at all. I fell on my feet in other ways as well, and although  agent less at the top of my career was given a position on SYT's summer festival as a design/ fight arranger for both John Paul Jones and Twelfth Night. Only one teacher at college had hit home the necessity to have other skills and that was Bert Bracewell. Although finishing an acting course, I turned down a stage acting job (at a later date finding out it was for the part of an "unconscious soldier - good call!) and proceeded to work within days on the Scottish Youth Theatre summer festival. Hollywood would have to wait, I needed cash to live off of and to buy actor essentials such as stamps, paper and photographs...

It is after this early period that my life begins to get pretty complicated but I'll try and make some sense of it. From 1995 till today I've freelanced as an actor, fight director, stage manager, director, workshop leader and designer, never straying far from the profession but being more diverse than is healthy in this day in age. Perhaps a bit of a jack of all trades but always professional and demanding of myself in what I was working on at the time. 

All actor's have a "bar job", or fill in job. They temp, they work front of house, they of course work in a bar. I was lucky at least in that my bar job was always creative and engaging. I had my design qualifications to fall back on, and often did. Over the years my fight credentials have come to the fore and basically replaced my design work as my filler job, acting always having been my great passion. 

I'll cover the period between 1995 and 2003 in three different sections. Firstly design, then acting then fight arranging, with a small section on directing to break it all up. How's about that?

So as previously mentioned I stepped from a three year professional acting course into two design jobs for SYT. What was I thinking? I was thinking that it was good to get out of college and I'll see where life takes me, and frankly that I'd have to play it safe in the meantime. It was the right choice.

Up to this point I'd mainly acted as an assistant designer on Scottish youth theatre shows, and some productions with Graham at the Arches in Glasgow and the Brunton, in Edinburgh. I'd designed productions for an amateur company in Coatbridge and the Monklands Youth Theatre, also based in Coatbridge, where just prior to getting into college at QM I'd played Fagin to wonderful acclaim (oh the fame, it's gone to my head, but it was nice to hear my friends mum say that it's the only piece of theatre she'd ever considered going to see for a second night, and kind words are few and far between in this business, so let me have it...) in the Lionel Bart Musical Oliver! So with the summer festival shows I was getting more experience in design with a fair whack of responsibility to go with it. Following the Summer Festival with an Arches outdoor event, and a Fablevision show both of which involved elements of fight direction) myself and Graham now enjoying working as a team, as things were working well moved onto a docu-drama for the Discovery Channel. The Lost Treasure Of Charles I.

Somehow Graham swung me a job on this, as he has done on other occasions and for which I am eternally grateful, but on this one, perhaps by default, I found myself Wardrobe Master as well as being design assistant when available. This was a good experience with me in the bizarre position of casting all extras as they walked through the door. On one occasion an older gentleman dropped his daughter off and came in to see what it was all about. He had a great face and I immediately cast him as the sea captain, a not unimportant lesser character. He looked kind of surprised and tried to do a runner but, he was too late and didn't make the door. The power was great (oooh the power!) and I have to say the sea captain was as well. I can't remember what his daughter played... Of note on this one was that Simon Sharkey, artistic director of Cumbernauld theatre was cast as Charles the first and did a fantastic job. (He was later to cast me in Cinderella as Buttons/ Handsome prince) Neither myself nor Graham ever saw the finished piece but I believe Graham is still in touch with Dominic the designer, who was a great laugh.

Graham and I continued to work together over the next few years. He was a founder of the Arches Theatre Company with Andy Arnold way back when and really enjoyed working in the space and creating wonderful sets. Later we were to co-design on some fantastic shows such as The Devils, Cock-a-doodle-dandy and Caligari and Andy would eventually ask me to design shows and events such as Cafe Locorella, The Dumb Waiter etc. but as the Arches developed more and more into the clubbing scene which had originally been started to help fund the theatre element of the venue, it soon overwhelmed other elements and with the loss of our office space both myself and Graham left the building perhaps never to return. For the time we were there however and more so for Graham we produced wonderful designs on little or no budget which I'm happy to say are still talked about. The Arches continues, revamped and rejuvenated with lottery funding but somehow with part of the buildings old feel and wonderful decaying atmosphere lost forever. 

Other notable productions from the same period included La Finta Giardinaire which Graham designed for the RSAMD, Onions Make You Cry, a co-design for Cumbernauld Theatre, prop design and construction for The Jolly Beggars for Wildcat, The Festival of Light for Fablevision (a wonderful outdoor event/ fire festival in a time when Fablevision actually had budgets and weren't trying to do it on the fly as they eventually did). Andy Arnold also asked me to design a show called The Kitchen for the RSAMD. This was a really good show and the set was big and functional. I wish I'd photographed it but perhaps I'll one day track down some pics.

In latter years Graham has moved more and more into television and film. I filled the gap he left in Scottish theatre for a time by designing SYT shows, and working here and there but with the advance of my status as a fight director eventually had to leave it aside and I only design now when asked to. I don't advertise as a designer but enjoy design and am always up for a design job if I can make the time. 

It wouldn't be fair to leave the design part of this brief? or long history without mentioning Bahrain and the Royal family. Finlay McLay, also mentored by Graham, before my time, had always been a good laugh and one of the few reliable and talented design people in Scotland that have a real quality of finish to their work, pulled us in to travel with him and a few choice others (including lighting designer Ross Gerry, several artists and a carpenter) to work on the design for a Royal wedding in the middle east. this was the first of several visits to Bahrain during which time we worked hard and on occasion lived very well designing, creating, and advising for the Royal Family. The environment in Bahrain is of course hot, but everything moves much slower and even simple things can become very complicated there. Of the five or so months which I have spent there over the years I will say very little, suffice to say that it was at times difficult, rewarding and always an experience. Our last job there was with just Graham, Fin and myself and although very difficult and at times aggravating, I couldn't have spent my time there with nicer people. Fin's cousin Loraine lives and works in Bahrain so there was always a friend to keep an eye on us all, and make sure we all behaved.

So what was the actor part of me thinking whilst all that was going on? Well, I had been waiting and taking what pleasure I could from the good acting jobs that were coming up. And I have to say I've had a reasonably fair share. After the BBC job and the Taggart which turned out very well for me even though rooked on payment (£300 total) and very ill (was it nerves?) on the days of shooting, I had a definite lull. Not one to sit around however I took steps to rectify this lack of acting work.

With my own company Face to Face  (mentioned above), we decided to do a wonderful play by Alan Spence called Sailmaker as our first production. I'd performed it in the showcase at college and was keen to do the full production. Graham and I needed to do a show of some sort for no money as the Scottish Arts Council will not consider you for  funding if you've not put on a show before. Although we'd been involved with over a hundred separate shows between us we had to do this under the Face to Face banner and with Mary McCluskey directing, the production went well for me and at least elevated my profile as an actor. I played Alec, a boy who had grown up after his mother had died. His father a former sail maker did his best but failed to live up to his sons expectations. The play is a sentimental look at their lives with some very touching moments and a definite feel good factor. 

For almost two years I worked without an agent to represent me, but there had been one agent which I'd not contacted for some reason (who knows why?) and her name was Ruth Tarko. It occurred to me to send a letter and she took me on. With her assistant Arlene working very much with me, my acting career took a definite notch up. I got several parts in a BBC docudrama called Scotland at War, a WW2 schools programme. I was cast in Complicity as the small role of the armed Police Officer. (I was making my mark as a policeman on various TV shows, but this was not really acting and certainly not demanding.) I enjoyed my short time on the film, working with Johnny Lee Miller and a hero of mine, Brian Cox. Opportunities were always on the horizon when represented by Ruth and Arlene, and before I knew it I was in Shepperton Studios working with Gina McKee, James Purefoy and Helena Bonham Carter. This was another great experience and I found the rest of the cast friendly, approachable and able. The film was being produced by Rocket Productions, Elton John's new company. It was called Women talking Dirty and although not a box office smash, is certainly watchable and quite fun. My character had no lines but was in a main scene so I am very happy to have held my own in a scene full of stars.

It was in this same time that I worked again with Simon Sharkey, this time as an actor in Cinderella. This show was very hard work. An eight show contract but with up to, I seem to remember, 15 shows a week. It was a short rehearsal period which even once the show was up meant that elements kept changing, usually for the better, but at the cost of some element of your character. The bane of my life on this was a duet I had to sing with Julie Austin (Braveheart). Now I can hold a tune but this duet was complicated and frankly with a my confidence shot from several all too short rehearsals of the song I was not happy. We somehow made it to the end of the run again with a good degree of acclaim, but tired out completely. This show was a tremendous learning experience and I am very grateful to Simon for giving me the opportunity to work on what was not only a great piece of entertainment, but at the end of the day a critically acclaimed piece as well.

So in amongst all this, with things going well with the Tarko Agency I was engaged as a lead role in a terrible horror movie called 3D Halloween. Now frankly the less said about that film the better, but to put you in the picture... I was paid... It was a co production of German money and Australian production staff... It was six weeks shooting... It was for the German television market and was aimed at children or for family viewing... It was a dreadful experience with lovely crew and cast... and the director was a complete numpty. I have one copy of the film, which I keep locked away, and if ever it was seen in Scotland my acting career would be at an end. Now I  think I must move on. 

With shooting coming to a close I was unavailable for Murder Rooms, a Sherlock Holmes TV movie, but lucky enough to pick up a role in Filumena at Perth rep. That was as far as my luck ran however as with a short telephone call I was to find out that Ruth Tarko had retired and I was once again agent-less.

Like a cat with nine lives I landed on my feet once more and with an invite to Pat Lovett to see me in Filumena I found myself represented by PLA, of Edinburgh. 

I've performed in only a few things of note since my that time. I hold out for an improvement in my professional acting opportunities but with the Scottish film industry in the state that it is and television productions few and far between I am just not getting the opportunities that I once did. And if you canny get an audition you canny get the part.

Although I've actually had a good ten or more engagements since the Tarko era, I'll only mention a few. In Rosie's Patch opposite Denis Lawson (Star Wars) I was an unconscious suspect who woke up to deliver a single gag line. Although I only had a small part this TV has apparently become a bit of a cult classic. ( It aslo starred John Comerford - A great guy - who had played my Uncle in Sailmaker.) The second part of note was in a one man show based on Edgar Allan Poe's The Black Cat and was directed and designed by my old friend Graham Hunter. This was a Face To Face show which actually succeeded in getting funding from the Arts Council. The papers reviewed me as a "compelling narrator" and the show as a "kind of Jackanory meets Wes Craven". The second part of the show was another Poe classic starring Karina Neeson and Andrew Dallmeyer, but the reviewers were less generous about it, even though I thought it was great fun and very different. This was to be the one and only time that Face To Face were to receive support from the arts council and I'm sure they only gave us the cash (about £3000-) to shut us up. It didn't work. We applied for another four or more shows at later dates but couldn't raise another penny from them. The thing about the one man show was that I'd sworn I'd never do one. I'd seen Giles Havergal at the Citz in a one man show called Judgment on a first date with a long term girlfriend way back in 1993. The show was fantastic and disturbing and great and boy Giles was good... but the thought of it scared the hell out of me. I did the Black Cat though and was very happy to have a achieved such a frightening thing with success.

This brings me on quite nicely to Scrooge at the Citizens, in which I was to play several smaller character comedy parts and find myself in the position of having to understudy Giles Havergal in the lead role. Above all other jobs this has been the highlight of my career so far. Directed by Kenny Miller (a director/ designer with tremendous vision and a uniqueness about his work that always surprises and delights) and with an absolutely fantastic cast and crew, also featuring students from the RSAMD who were hilarious and professional and tremendous assets to the production, Scrooge received critical acclaim like no other show I've been involved with and gave Giles a platform in which he could wave goodbye to the Citz in style. Giles Havergal is retiring this year and Scrooge was just one of the many jewels in the crown of his  illustrious career there. Adding to all this, Scrooge has won this years Critics award for best show in Scotland. A title shared with the Tron's Shining Souls.

Although playing the comic roles (Fezziwig, Fat Businessman, Old Joe) on every performance my main drive was the understudy role, on which I spent every evening with Abbie Wallace the AD, working over that days blocking/ rehearsal and desperately trying to live up to Giles' performance whilst at the same time trying to make it my own. I cannot  over estimate my excitement at being at the Citz (whilst still at Coatbridge High School my friends and I would travel in and watch great classics such as Mrs. Warren's Profession, Travels With My Aunt etc. there) and when I eventually found myself covering for Giles on a scheduled understudy performance it brought back great memories and made every disappointment so far on the acting front worth while. All those stock policemen I played on telly were banished for on one performance at least I was the lead on a Citizens production surrounded by a supportive cast, and playing to a full house. Fantastic.