Podcast Spoken In English

Back Stage at the Playhouse & Kings Theatres
View episode notes on ListenNotes

While the podcast has been removed from all podcasting services, it can be heard via the Living Memory Association YouTube channel.

Jean Bell was interviewed in 2011 about some of her experiences of being a dresser and 'call boy' in the Kings and Playhouse Theatres in Edinburgh in the 1950s and 1980s. Its a wonderful glimpse of a world most of us know nothing about. From helping Hercules the Bear up the stairs at the Playhouse, dealing with a well endowed female dancer, giving theatre calls in French to borrowing elegant white gloves from Zena Dare - a performer who made her stage debut in 1899.

A host of stars make an appearance, some remembered, some long forgotten: Stanley Baxter, Harry Gordon, Molly Urquhart, Bill McCue, Millicent Cooper and Milton Woodward. Oh yes and why was a female called a 'call boy'? Think about it!