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An amazing repertoire

Angela Kelly
24/ 1/2008

AS DIRECTOR of drama troupe Feelgood Theatre, Caroline Clegg has plenty to smile about, finds Angela Kelly ...

WHEN Caroline Clegg won the coveted Horniman Award at the Manchester Evening News Theatre Awards in December, cheers must have gone up in a startling variety of places.

After all, Caroline is not only the innovative founder and director of Feelgood Theatre but a champion of repertory theatre – in fact, of any theatre that pleases people – and a favourite with northern families and West End luminaries alike.

The award named after the remarkable female founder of Manchester rep, Miss Annie Horniman, really could not have gone to a better person.

All this is a far cry from the little girl on a farm in Elton, Bury, whose sights were firmly fixed on the bright lights of the theatre. "I wanted to act since I was four years old," recounts Caroline, now 46.

Dancing lessons were the natural progression for such theatrical pretensions in the Sixties, and the local Lupino School of Dancing honed that energetic enthusiasm.

Caroline’s family left Bury for the Lake District and, at 17, she moved to London to continue her theatrical education at the renowned Italia Conti School.

To gain her vital Equity card she took a job as a cabaret dancer on a six-month stint in Turkey – "very educational!" – before returning to London and the chorus of West End productions like Singing in the Rain and 42nd Street.

In between acting roles, she spent a summer as a Pontin’s Bluecoat in Chichester, organising entertainment. "I loved it!," she enthuses – the experience of keeping so many punters happy is bound to have proven useful later.

Back in London, when the Fringe was taking theatre in a variety of directions, Caroline, by now concentrating on her acting, decided to stage her own production – in a pub.

"I hate being idle," she says.

As fate would have it, her next acting job took her back North, to Blackburn and a role as a teacher in Gotcha! This led to offers of work in Manchester – by then with a vibrant theatre scene and a large, supportive number of jobbing actors.

She was invited to teach at the Royal Northern College of Music, in the opera department, offering an introduction to another new and interesting area.

"I turned up with my ghetto blaster and rock music and there was Puccini playing next door – it was wonderful!," she recalls.

At the same time, Caroline was setting up her own theatre company, and in 1994, Feelgood was born. "I just wanted to make theatre for everyone," she says. She started out in style, staging a wonderful production of Our Girls at Barton Aerodrome in which the cast, including Caroline, flew in on a World War II bomber!

Ever since, Feelgood’s imaginative use of unorthodox locations has surprised and delighted theatre goers.

For the past eight years, Feelgood has put on open-air productions at Heaton Park, with vampires swinging through the trees in Dracula and realistic sword-fights and magic in Arthur.

Dunham Massey became Sherwood Forest when Robin Hood and Little John emerged through foliage. "But that’s what theatre is really all about," she states. "It’s all about getting involved, being there.

"It’s that ‘what if?’ feeling that sparks the imagination."

Certainly, the parents who drag their youngsters from their computers to this more accessible fantasy world are grateful.

Caroline is still involved at Royal Northern College of Music, planning, in her exuberant way to revive a production of opera House of the Dead – in Sicily. "Yes," she laughs, "I’ve got to learn a bit of Sicilian. Then we’re doing it in Czech, so I guess I’ll have to learn that as well."

Other projects involve working with actors with special needs and staging Macbeth with a troupe from Zimbabwe.

That ‘can do’ approach is all-embracing. You get the feeling that, if Miss Horniman is watching down, she is very proud of Caroline Clegg.