Celebrating the past in the present...

The one and only Sam MG...

As a man who identifies as a Socialist, I’ve always been very sympathetic to miners and their plights over the last 30/40 years. Whilst I could, and almost always do, spew anti-Thatcher rhetoric for hours on end, I’ve decided that the sanctity of this blog would instead profit from what Black Company actually did at the Miners Memorial Service on October 8^th, and nothing to do with how privatizing and ultimately ending Britain’s main and highly profitable export industries means that growth won’t ever go above 2.5% in my lifetime!

Since (I believe) April, Black Company have been devising, writing, rehearsing and performing ‘Remember the Oaks’, an original piece dedicated to those who were involved in the tragedy at the Oaks Colliery in Barnsley, the worst mining disaster to have ever taken place on English soil, and the second worst on British land after the horrors of the Senghenydd Colliery Disaster in Wales. The piece focused on the families of those affected by the disaster, and how as time passes on – in its unstoppable fashion – it’s important to never forget your history and to never take anything for granted. Money generated from our performances were donated to those campaigning for a statue to commemorate the disaster; a beautiful statue, waiting to be cast in bronze, of a mother and her child rushing to the disaster only moments after it has happened. After a couple of very impressive performances at The Lamproom Theatre in Barnsley and at the HQ of the National Union of Mineworkers, we were asked to do a final (well, is anything ever final?) performance at the Miners Memorial Service at Wakefield Cathedral.

We spent weeks trimming the performance down, taking it from an hour long story to a shorter piece of information about disasters in the Yorkshire area; mainly The Oaks and Lofthouse. Lines were spread equally and power put into all of them, everyone in the Cathedral united in the singular cause of memory for what all of those workers did for us, for their families, for themselves.

Having never performed in a Cathedral before myself, having to adapt to the space – as opposed to that of a theatre – was a welcome challenge. We spent around an hour making changes before the Service, and ultimately is was a task that bettered me as a performer for it. They’re always spacious and echo’s ring around, so projection was something I made a mental note to focus on throughout the piece. It’s fun seeing what an unusual performance space can teach you as an actor.

Performing in dedication of the Miners has been something I’ve revelled in. Not only do they deserve everything we can do, but they deserve us to put everything into it as well; something Black Company did with unrivalled will.

But, as Remember the Oaks taught us, time continues to move in its own man-made and surreal fashion, and merely 4 days after, we began to devise our Christmas show; The Snow Princess.

Now, of course I could explain The Snow Princess to you in its entirety, detailing the physical pieces we created on Thursday night and their metaphorical, symbolic and abstract meanings; but of course, why would I deny you the pleasure of doing that yourself on the 7^th and 8^th of December, only at the Phoenix Theatre in Castleford?

On a final note, National Theatre Connections has begun to come back into my life this week. Not that you care, but I couldn’t make the auditions next Saturday, and so instead auditioned on Friday night. Last year, Connections was an experience that taught me the most as an actor that I have ever learnt over the duration of a show. With a cast of some of my best friends I enjoyed the process an insurmountable sum; and I cannot wait to get back into it this year.

Whilst this year’s play – Three ­– takes on a radically different tone to Eclipse, would I be able to call myself an actor if I couldn’t say this was something I didn’t welcome into my art?

So I realise this blog has talked about mainly everything and anything, but if I could leave it on any note, it would be this; acting is an unmatchable art form, pay money to see us perform, and Thatcher was the devil.

Sam Mandi-Ghomi