Musicals & Cabaret
As you will no doubt read in my anecdotal captions to the photographs in this particular section of my book, when photographing Cabaret and The Musical theatre, life was never dull, and I had many ‘experiences’ with cabaret artists who are sometimes, notorious ‘Drama queens’.
My quest, when requesting a picture session with artists like Eartha Kitt, Joan Heal and in particular, Marlene Dietrich, it was that, ‘I was compiling a book of my work in the theatre’ this ploy usually worked and the artists concerned were, in most cases, sufficiently egoistic to realise, that good publicity photographs were essential to their stock-in-trade and they co-operated willingly and accordingly, in some cases, even became my friend!
During my sojourn of 25 years at PACT I was privileged to photograph many, many musicals, which were immensely satisfying to shoot and the ‘photo–calls’ were very easy-going, because most of the various casts, with the exception of the Principals, were drawn from the Pact Ballet and Opera companies and were therefore, all well known to me, Once again I was just ‘part of the furniture’- and very creative furniture it was too,- I was able to blend-in with the cast. This enabled me to get super pictures, mostly without them even realising it.
This happy situation was also the case with the orchestra and because of my passion for music I often spent hours with my camera, sitting–in with the musicians during their rehearsals, completely mesmerised by all that amazing music and usually getting wonderfully ‘candid’ un-posed pictures, by again, just being, an everyday, ‘Part-of-the-furniture.’
