New End Theater
Before I could justifiably be taken any further abroad, I had to consolidate my position in England.
There is a large hospital in the north of London called New End. . . In a small side street running downhill beside this building stands a tiny theater . .the New End Theater.
At the New End I was not to give lunchtime performances and my agent decided that in an eight o'clock show, audiences must be given more. I saw the logic of this decision. . . As a way of extending the show to fill a whole evening, my agent hit on the idea of having me tell the audience just before the interval that it would be given pieces of paper on which it could write questions. These, in the second half of the evening I would endeavor to answer. The program was now divided into two more or less equal parts and lasted in all about two-and-a-quarter hours. This scheme worked like magic. . . The anonymity of the written word made everybody bolder - even me. . .Even on a bad night when only two or three slips of paper were handed to me after the interval, audiences realized from the answers that I gave that whatever the question I would take it seriously and treat it with sympathy.
This device of the written questions was not only useful to anyone in the theater who wished to communicate with me, it also helped me to make a long overdue connection with the world.
Not long after I had left the New End Theater, it was sold. In an interview with the press its owner stated that my two weeks there were the only time she had ever made money.
There is a large hospital in the north of London called New End. . . In a small side street running downhill beside this building stands a tiny theater . .the New End Theater.
At the New End I was not to give lunchtime performances and my agent decided that in an eight o'clock show, audiences must be given more. I saw the logic of this decision. . . As a way of extending the show to fill a whole evening, my agent hit on the idea of having me tell the audience just before the interval that it would be given pieces of paper on which it could write questions. These, in the second half of the evening I would endeavor to answer. The program was now divided into two more or less equal parts and lasted in all about two-and-a-quarter hours. This scheme worked like magic. . . The anonymity of the written word made everybody bolder - even me. . .Even on a bad night when only two or three slips of paper were handed to me after the interval, audiences realized from the answers that I gave that whatever the question I would take it seriously and treat it with sympathy.
This device of the written questions was not only useful to anyone in the theater who wished to communicate with me, it also helped me to make a long overdue connection with the world.
Not long after I had left the New End Theater, it was sold. In an interview with the press its owner stated that my two weeks there were the only time she had ever made money.