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Hi everyone, and welcome back to Global Village.欢迎回来《小酒馆大世界》.

In today's episode，we have a new guest speaker. Welcome to the studio, Oliver.

Hello, thank you for having me here.

So Oliver is from the UK, right?

Yeah, yeah. I'm from the UK.

Okay，and could you tell us a little bit about yourself？So you're right now in China. What are you doing right now？

Yes，so right now I am in Shandong, and I'm an English teacher at a training school in Shandong. I've been here for 4 years now. I arrived in 2017，so I've been here for 4 years, yeah.

Good, good. The reason we invited Oliver to the studio is because he's got something very interesting to share, and we've never talked about this before. Oliver has been involved in amateur theatre or amateur theatre groups for how many years? over 10 years?

Yes，it started when I was 9 years old with my first show, and I kept that for 10 years; and then there was a little break for university; and then I went back for another 3 years. So in total it's been about 13 or 14 year.

So can we call you a theater enthusiast？

You could do, yes. It's definitely something I always seem to go back to. Yeah，it's a very good pastime of mine. It's one of my favorite pastimes.

And I guess you wouldn't mind talking about it in the show.

Of course not，I'd be happy to talk about it.

OK, so first things first, talking about drama and performing is it a very common pastime in the UK.

It's quite common in the UK, yes, there are lots of amateur theatre groups in the cities or the towns or the villages. I come from a small village and we had two or three of these amateur theatre groups. So it’s quite a common pastime for lots of different people.

Basically people's general attitude，if they see you in like costume getting ready for your show，they're not going to be in shock or anything，right？

No，they're not going to be very surprised if they see people wearing some unusual clothes or anything, not in my village anyway，there was lots of people who did that.

OK, sounds like a happy jolly village.

Another thing that I would like to ask is because I'm also very interested in theatre, and in the UK you always hear things like people are saying classically trained actors.

What does that actually mean？

Classically trained actor is someone who has... they've studied it at university or at... especially in London，there are several big schools dedicated to acting.

They study different ways of acting, different methods. There's one school I think which is dedicated only to Shakespeare. They learn Shakespeare's plays and they focus on his works there; and that is what a classically trained actor is. It means they have they've learned properly.

It's not something they've done as an amateur becoming... getting a job in a movie or something, they've gone to school, they've learned it and they are trained like that.

It's interesting that you mentioned movies，you know we have actors in TV, film, and theatre, and in some cultures, in some countries，there is a 鄙视链. There is highbrow, lowbrow theatre; they sort of look down on TV actors, they think that's not proper acting. You also mentioned proper. Is there such a thing in the UK with the highbrow and lowbrow？

There is a highbrow and lowbrow attitude，but I feel it's not towards the actors，it's more towards the audience，the people who watch the shows. The lowbrow，as you say，would be more towards the film and the TV side, whereas the highbrow would be theatre, people who go to the theater often tend to see TV and film as more of a low brow at home sort of thing.

Whereas the theatre is something magical and different and special for them. That's the way I have seen it. I know some people would disagree.

And you personally?

I don't mind，I like all three of them personally. I think they're all great.

OK, good. And then you were saying that in your village they were like two or three theater groups，but what about in schools, universities？I heard that there are also drama clubs，performance groups, right？

Yes. Most schools and certainly nearly all universities will have different drama societies or performance groups，things like that. My school we had a drama society, and they did shows and plays. We also had a choir for singing if you want to only sing; and a band for instruments and lots of different ways to perform. And my university was the same, modern societies for modern shows or Shakespeare societies too.

But are these purely like hobby societies or were they actually for school credit like if I were involved in a drama society and I did performances, would I get school credit for it.

For universities, most people use it as a pastime or a hobby, so they wouldn't really get any school credit for it unless they were studying drama, in which case it might contribute my attitude there to the university degree.

But certainly for high school, secondary school in the UK, you could have drama as a qualification of something that you get from working hard at school. It could be a subject, a lesson.

In the UK, you can choose your lessons when you reach 14 years old. You can choose what lessons you want to continue. So some of them you might drop such as I dropped geography because I was never good and I didn't like geography

Same here.

So I said goodbye to geography. But I kept my drama subjects, and I continued with my drama all the way through until I was 16. In that case, I will have and I do have a qualification in drama.

That sounds fantastic. So I can drop one of the academic subjects that I don't like. And then I can indulge in acting.

Yes, if you want to see it like that, yes definitely, that's what I did any way, PE and geography I said goodbye to.

And I guess then you can get school credit for that, you can officially choose that. Then parents generally wouldn't have too bad an attitude towards it. They wouldn't say oh, stop wasting your time on acting, go back to your math or your whatever.

There is still the worry from parents, certainly my parents, that you can't focus on acting because it's not safe. My parents they would say it's not safe because maybe I will get a job, maybe I won't, who knows, it's acting，nobody is sure whereas if I have good maths and good English and good science，then anything can happen. That's what my parents used to tell me anyway. So I did drama，I did acting but I also did history and I did extra science lessons, and ...

The more traditionally academic.

The traditional roots as well. My parents made me balance the two.

Yeah. I guess it's same in China.

And then back to the villagers' towns，I would imagine, according to what you're saying，most of the villages or towns or cities，they would have their own amateur societies，drama societies, right？

Yes, yeah. Most of the cities will, and actually have quite a few. The villages have some as well. I say my village had about three different societies. The one I joined first was the Youth theatre society.

The Youth theatre

That's when I started when I was 9 years old，my grandma took me to see one of their shows, I thought this would be very good. So I bothered my parents until they helped me...

You just got bitten by the theater bug.

I did, I went to see it and it looked fantastic and fun.

So 9-year-old me decided he wanted to be an actor. So I bothered my parents until they helped me find somebody too so I could join.

That's fantastic, but talking about joining, how do you join? do you have to go through audition试镜，do you have to do that, or is it just I have enthusiasm please allow me in.

For the Youth theater that I joined because it's a small village with not too many people. You could audition if you wanted to get one of the lead roles，the big parts sort of to be the celebrity of the show，sort of thing;

or you could just turn up and they would give you something little to do in the background, and that's how I started. When I was 9, I just turned up and said hello, and they gave me something to do. That was not difficult for a 9-year-old to do, so...

Good, and they rehearse，do they actually do regular public performances then？

Most societies they do a few different performances through the year. Most of them will be quite small，maybe just a little show to try and raise some money, or something like that，maybe something like a small show. But once a year we have a big performance，it's a well-known musical or something which is maybe very famous in London at the time something like that.

We'll get that show and we will perform that show. It's normally in October, November time, around about now，we would be really preparing to have this big show for anyone to come to they buy a ticket and go.

Yeah，usually how big was the turnout?

Uh, the biggest I think the biggest show the audience was made more than 200 people I would say. If I remember it was more than 200 and we had five performances. So maybe more than 1,000 people saw that show. It's not massive，it's not the same scale as London or Broadway or anything，but certainly for a small group of kids，it's quite a lot of people.

I would imagine. And then these were just people from your village，right？

Family of people involved，obviously they came，but the tickets would be sold to anybody. They would advertise the show on the radio or in newspapers，places like that and then people would buy a ticket and come to watch us.

Yeah, and sounds also like a community gathering, community experience.

It was, yes, certainly the smaller shows. They were definitely more community based, the bigger shows we had people traveling a long way to see us because they like the show or they like the society the group，but the smaller shows was definitely more community based. It was made for people who live nearby who maybe they wanted to see something entertaining for not much money.

So we had a little show.

I mean I could sort of imagine that is like my kid is in the show. So definitely I'm proud of my kid, I'm going around telling people you gotta see this, they're pretty good.

Exactly, have lots of it happened. We had lots of people turning up on the second or third performance saying oh, my friend said that this show is really good, have you got any more tickets, things like that. So they didn't even book a ticket. They just heard about it and turned up.

That's good.

It's very nice，very good to hear.

You've shared a lot of these experiences，your own personal experience，but I haven't even asked you what type of theater，what type of play? was it serious play? Shakespeare or what was it?

I have never done a Shakespeare that was a little bit too serious for my society，although lots of the people in it with me they did want to do some Shakespeare.

But most of my Youth theatre and the society afterwards it was focused on musical theatre.

Wow. I love musicals. I really love musicals.

Very good, me too. It's fantastic. It's really good experience to do .

And it's really jolly. It's really fun，entertaining，but I imagine it's very difficult because acting, like serious play, you act，but musical you have to dance，you have to sing，you have to coordinate.

There's a lot more to it than just a normal acting play. The same challenges are there you have the acting, you have to show who you are and make the audience understand you;

But then suddenly your dancing and singing，which is a very strange thing to swap into, personally, I am a really bad dancer. The dancing that was other people. I did the acting，I did the singing，but there was no dancing from me. It was something I'd never managed to do well enough with.

So did you just go to the director and say I'm good at singing，good at acting. Can you just give me a non-dancing part？

Oh, I didn't need to go to the director，they knew already, they could see straight away，they knew singing OK; acting，yes; dancing may be not, may be not dancing，they knew.