As any actor will tell you – you should never work with animals or children on stage or film set. Why? Quite simply they will upstage you! The fascination of animals or children seems to be a draw-card few can resist.
On Louisa’ s Walk today our actor Chris Hamley had a double dose of being upstaged. Chris was working with me and we had a lovely group of nine on the show. The weather was kind and the Autumn colours so vibrant at this lovely time of year. We were walking back up to the top of the Cascade Gardens when we stopped at the flood mitigation device so that Chris’s character William could explain the origin of the Cascade Brewery and the reason why the area, known as the Cascades, is so named. Suddenly I spotted the platypus! We haven’t seen him for 2 years and I was so excited. The pond is full at the moment as we have had a lot of rain and that’s when he seems to play around, when he’s got plenty of depth. Poor Chris was trying to explain the origins of the Cascades and the Hobart Rivulet but all we could do was watch the playtpus as he dived and rippled. He manfully ploughed on but I am not sure how much the audience absorbed!
As if that wasn’t enough, and we had shared several jokes about not performing with children or animals, we reached the end where William explains how he came to work at the Cascade Brewery, a family group was passing by. A dear little girl of around three detached herself from their group and came over to join us. She kept handing me fallen leaves until I had a lovely “bouquet” of leaves. All eyes were on her and very few were listening to poor Chris. Upstaged again Hamley – ah – an actors’ lot!
Louisa Holds Her Bouquet of Leaves.
