bell rings and the nervous, icy atmosphere of earlier melts away as the room is filled with noisy conversation and splutters of laughter, culminating in chaos when, in true Laurel and Hardy style, one of the benches tips, depositing two speed daters onto the floor.
Exercise over, Portia waits for everyone to settle down. The only sound is heavy breathing.
‘Breath control, projection, and body language – essential tools whether you’re addressing an audience of theatregoers or clients,’ she purrs in her resonant, velvety Joanna Lumley-esque voice, beckoning everyone to stand up. Placing her palm just below her breastbone, she continues, ‘Take a deep intake of breath, fill your lungs with air, like a balloon. Now, pushing the diaphragm in and out, I want you to pant like a dog.’
Pant like a dog? Oookay. Well, if I can successfully portray a plastic bag blowing in the wind, then a panting dog impression should be a breeze.
‘No, no, no!’ Portia says, gliding over to my side, her dangly earrings tinkling like wind chimes. ‘I don’t want to see any movement here.’ She firmly taps my shoulders. ‘It must all come from down here,’ she continues, as she prods my diaphragm.
‘Now try again. Fill those lungs … that’s it, and let out short, sharp breaths. I want my hand to feel that diaphragm bouncing. There, you see, you’ve got it!’
I’m chuffed I’ve got it, but all the same, I can’t help feeling I sound like a cross between a chat-line hostess and a woman in labour.
‘This strengthens the diaphragm, loosens the facial muscles, allows more air into your lungs, helps your voice to develop, and improves your posture,’ says Portia, as if reading my mind.
‘The next exercise is a good warm-up before an audition or performance. It’s called The Wet Dog Shake. Okay, everyone, let’s imagine you’ve just come bounding out of the sea, and now you’re going to shake yourselves dry,’ she says, as she drops to her knees, her long, tapered fingers splayed out in front of her on the grimy floorboards. ‘Let’s start from the top with the nose (she starts wiggling her nose), now the head, tongue, the shoulders (she shimmies her shoulders), legs … come on … bark if you wish … go for it … release your inner dog!’
James, Mr Respectable-Bank-Manager by day, catches my eye, and we exchange an incredulous look. Sally, the mousey, bespectacled, hitherto rather timid accountant has hurled herself into the exercise with rather more gay abandon than is necessary, tongue hanging out of the corner of her mouth, resembling not so much a shaking dog, as someone having stuck a wet hand in the toaster.
‘Come on, you can do better than that!’ pants Portia. ‘Instead of huddling together like a pair of sniggering school kids – James, Emily – follow Sally’s lead. Let yourselves go! What are you afraid of? Making fools of yourselves? If you want to be actors, you have to learn to let go of your inhibitions. I want to see those tails wagging. I want to feel that sea spray flying off your coat. Wag that tail. Shake, shake, shake yourselves nice and dry. Wag, wag, wag. Come on …!’
A few nervous titters echo around the room, but then slowly, tentatively, like lemmings, we all follow Portia’s lead, and our class becomes less Glee, and more Geriatric Gym.
‘See, that’s not so bad, is it? Now roll onto your backs and kick those legs high in the air!’ she cries, her pewter bangles clinking like rigging against a sail mast.
As the Evening Standard’s Most Promising Newcomer of 1980 (I googled her), Portia Howard obviously knows her stuff, but is this what real actors do? I can’t quite picture Dames Judi or Helen kicking their legs high in the air and panting like a dog before a performance.
‘This is ridiculous,’ blurts out Poppy, whose every sentence ends with a question mark. ‘Basically, I don’t hold with all this horseshit.’
Her strained, cut-glass tones echo around the room as we all stare at her bug-eyed, legs suspended in mid-air.
Rising to her feet and smoothing her skinny jeans, she continues, ‘Release your inner dog? What has all this pretentious rubbish got to do with being an actor? I don’t believe for one moment that Keira Knightley has ever had to crawl around a filthy floor on all fours, pretending to be a dog, so I don’t see why I should.’
‘Good point, Poppy,’ says Portia calmly. ‘Keira has probably never done The Dog Shake, and you certainly don’t have to if you don’t wish. But exercises like this teach you to be more fluid in your movement, to release blockages in energy, so that you can express emotion through your body – as well as build up the stamina to cope with eight shows a week, without …’
‘Yah, but I’m basically not interested in theatre. I plan to go straight into TV and films. I don’t know about the rest of you,’ she says, scanning the class, perky nose in the air, ‘but I want to learn about camera technique, about close-ups and continuity, and … giving the director exactly what he wants …’
‘Whoa, whoa, whoa,’ says Portia, holding up her hands. ‘My class isn’t about showing you a shortcut to fame and fortune – if I knew that, do you think I’d be here now?’ she says with a half-laugh.
‘Obviously not,’ Poppy fires back. ‘But I have no intention of ending up a fifty-something has-been, teaching drama in a damp and dreary basement for the rest of my life.’
Catching her breath and her composure, Portia replies with a little, enigmatic smile, ‘Good for you. But what this “fifty-something has-been” can teach you is how to bring truthfulness and honesty to your storytelling. I can arm you with the right tools to survive in this dog-eat-dog, heart-breaking, wonderful business; talent alone is not enough. You need humility, patience, harmony …’
With an unabashed toss of her bouncy, shampoo-commercial hair, Poppy Hope-Wyckhill collects her D&G tote bag, places her jacket carefully around her shoulders, and struts out of the grubby basement on her patent wedge boots, in search of celebrity and riches elsewhere.
‘So if there are any more of you who are here just because you want to see your faces on the big screen or the cover of Hello! and are not willing to commit to hard work, sacrifice, and to embracing new challenges, then this is not the place for you,’ says Portia, directing her words at each and every one of us in turn. ‘Don’t be afraid to speak up.’
The clock ticks loudly, a distant underground train rumbles below, feet pound the floor above, as the muffled strains of some big musical number vibrate through the cracked ceiling.
According to Wikipedia, Portia has worked at The Royal Shakespeare Theatre, The National, and even been in a Merchant Ivory film. So why is she here? Is it the case that after a certain age the parts dry up? What hope is there then for me? I’m a bit ashamed to even think this, but is there an element of truth in Poppy’s outburst?
But there’s too much at stake now to even contemplate giving up, so I must put my trust in Portia and the great Stanislavski’s theory, that to be a successful actor you sometimes have to make an eejit of yourself.
‘Okay, we have just ten minutes left,’ says Portia, rummaging in her well-worn, Mary-Poppins bag and producing a small coloured ball. ‘Let’s see how many of those names you can remember. As you throw the ball, say the name of the person you’re throwing it to and if you’re right, the person catching the ball has to reveal to the group a secret about themselves – the deeper, the darker, the better. Aaand, Emily!’
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