|
Playing a Wall doesn’t sound the most exciting role for an actor…not much room for expression, one would have thought.
But it’s turned out to be quite the opposite for Stevie Smallwood. .jpg "white (07).jpg")
He’s currently touring the UK with Shakespeare 4 Kidz playing workman Snout the tinker in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. As all fans of the show know, Snout has to dress up and look rather ridiculous as Wall in the play-within-a-play Pyramus and Thisbe, holding up his fingers to form the “chink” through which the lovers maintain their courtship.
Stevie, 35 and a regular with the company, has previously appeared in five of the six S4K titles: as Demetrius in The Dream, Horatio in Hamlet, Antonio in The Tempest, Friar Lawrence in Romeo and Juliet and Malcolm in Macbeth.
Hardly surprisingly he’s having a ball playing Snout and loves it when the kids in the audience bellow “Bring on the Wall.”
“Snout is a great character to play, but also a challenge,” says Stevie.
“The Mechanicals have very physical comedy, which is more like the roles I played before I started working with S4K. The only difference with this is that there are six of us in our little group and so timing and co-ordination are even more important.
 “Snout only has a few lines and very little is written about him, so when I was creating the character the world was my oyster, which at times made it hard as there was almost too much choice.
“Although Snout doesn't have much to say, he definitely gets stuck in! I've made Snout a very boisterous, bouncy character who gets excited about the littlest of things.
“In A Midsummer Night's Dream everyone changes in the woods and comes out a different person. Snout comes out a little more grown up... he moves from acting like a bouncy six year old to being a mardy teenager.
“I love it when Snout plays the Wall in the workmen's Pyramus and Thisbe. He is a bit star-struck with the royals and can't stop staring at them which, of course, gets him into trouble and he can't quite understand why his chink-in-the-wall makes people angry.”
Stevie loves touring. Born and raised in Birmingham (he went to St James C of E and Light Hall, Solihull Sixth Form College and Birmingham School of Speech and Drama), he now lives in London’s Kentish Town but enjoys seeing the different parts of the country that S4K takes him to.
 “Touring with S4K is like having a second family. The producers (Julian and Carolyn Chenery) are very good at putting a company together that works like clockwork and gets on with each other.
“I've made so many good friends from the different companies in the five years I've been working for S4K. Everyone mucks in and works hard to create top notch shows that all ages can enjoy. Everyone has such pride in S4K. No-one else does what we do in the way that we do it.
“Audiences have been great on the tour so far. Both schools and family audiences have come away buzzing from the show. Obviously Puck and Bottom are favourites but it always makes me really happy when I hear things like "The Wall Rocks!" coming from the audience. I don't remember a year when we've had so many standing ovations. It makes us all very proud.”
See Wonder Wall Stevie on tour: check the list of venue dates on this site.
For more about Stevie visit his website www.steviesmallwood.moonfruit.com
|
