Yesterday, January 12th, I ventured into new theatrical territory with a fifty minute talk about my life in the theatre. This was for the Club Encore Over 50s group at Nottingham Playhouse. I was invited by Allie Spencer and in the talk (reading) I spoke about my early schooldays theatre experiences, learning to entertain in the Scouts, Gang Shows, amateur theatre experience in Derby and coming Nottingham aged thirty-five in 1988 to study for a BA (hons) in the Creative Arts.

There were over thirty in the mainly female audience and as I had written the eighteen page document with quite a lot of humour I was delighted to get plenty of laughs as well as great interest in the content.

The parts in my talk that referred to my arty University years studying performance and the visual arts were well received as were the most recent aspects of my work in the theatre – the reviewing, writing for Sardines Magazine and the development of this website and subsequent promotion of theatre in our region.

 

There were opportunities for questions afterwards both prior to the break and I was happy to chat to people in the coffee break too. One lady was interested in booking me for another event.

Allie Spencer: Thank you Phil for being a most excellent first speaker in our 2016 calendar of events for Club Encore. Your talk was very interesting, funny and tremendously inspiring. You are a very talented speaker and writer.