A Life in Three Acts

Bette Bourne, Mark Ravenhill

• Publisher: Methuen Drama
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781408133439
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Drama
• Index: Literature

With honesty, humour and occasional anger, performer Bette Bourne tells the playwright Mark Ravenhill about his brave and flamboyant life. Crafted from transcripts of a series of long, private conversations, actor Bette Bourne reminisces and replays scenes from his life from a postwar childhood, a stint as a classical actor in the late 60s, to living in a drag commune in Notting Hill and being an active member of the Gay Liberation Front. Bette then talks about his touring with the New York based Hot Peaches cabaret group and founding his own cabaret troop, Bloolips, which redefined the term gay theatre by creating their very own unique celebration of dramatic and colourful homosexuality.

The piece, in three parts, marks a different series of events in Bette's life to reveal both a portrait of a pioneering, radical individual and a historical document of the struggles and achievements of gay liberation.

Act One

Mark Hello, I’m Mark Ravenhill. I’m a playwright. In the past few weeks, I’ve been talking to the performer Bette Bourne about his life. We’ve divided our conversation into three parts. A life in three acts. Tonight is part one. We’d like to read you edited transcripts of our conversations. Ladies, gentlemen and all others – Bette Bourne.

Bette I was in a group. Madame Behenna and her Dancing Children.

I was four and they dressed me up – this was in the wartime when all the soldiers were away and all the wives came, they were the audience and I was put in a miniature air force suit and I was pushing a big pram on to the stage but the pram was like much taller than me and there was this little girl and I sang.

I was very very tiny but I had a very big voice so it was hilarious people were just wetting themselves laughing. My mother was saying ‘That’s my son up there!’, her bosom swelling of course.

My mother was a real live wire. She was married to this man who was disappointed, bitter, a man who’d been through this hideous war. You see none of us were ever bombed, there were bombs around, there was danger but my mother never experienced it like that. If she was afraid, she would never let us be afraid. She said, ‘Quick, the bombs, get under the bed!’ And we’d all get under this big double bed that they slept in and the plaster and bricks would all fall on the bed. Even if the roof came in we were sensibly protected by this iron bedstead. And she was very animal like that, very much looking after her kids. She was a very wonderful mother. A wonderful mother. Later on it was more difficult of course, especially when I was out in public. She didn’t like any of that at all, she couldn’t bear it. She wanted me to have children and carry on the name. She was a real breeder and she still is at ninety-one, she’s still wondering when I’m gonna get married and I’m nearly seventy – it’s fucking mad! Completely potty. But, see we had a wonderful time.

My dad was in the navy during the war and had a ghastly time and he was very angry all the time I seem to remember. He was a very bright man who ran away from home to the navy and then escaped from the navy and then went back into the navy when the war started and they put him on the minesweepers on the Atlantic which was really, I mean imagine, terrifying, terrifying . . . every minute of the day you expected to be blown up. He came out of the navy practically with white hair. The shock of it.

When we were children you see, my mother would buy all these gifts and that would make my dad very angry but at Christmas time we had to go in and thank him for the gifts and then we’d have the opening all the presents and going in to thank him then he’d say

Dad ‘Alright, you boys, off to the park, out you go!’

Bette He didn’t want us in the house at all. He wasn’t really interested in children, much to his surprise and chagrin I imagine. But he er . . . no . . . no . . . you were constantly afraid of him and if I did anything really bad my mother would say I’m going to tell Daddy and then she’d tell him and I’d get a very serious warning or he’d give me a good belting. He didn’t belt me often but when he did I was thrashed with a cane, a big cane and the cane ended up completely shattered at one point and then he could be very cruel but it wasn’t often, but when it was it was like a huge thunderstorm it was terrifying. And I was terrified of him for most of my life until I got my frock on!

Mark So that was . . .

Bette That was much later.

Mark One of the first things I was thinking of asking you next was, we are all of us given some basic messages about life from our parents: things that are right, things that are wrong, things that we should be scared of, and I was going to say to you what do you think the basic messages about life that you got from your mother and father were?

Bette An enormous cheerfulness from my mother, an enormous feeling that life was great and there were lots of exciting things. And she was one of the people who helped by getting me into drama school. You want to be an actor? OK let’s deal with that. He said to me

Dad ‘You want to be an actor? You tell me about being a fucking actor when you’re at the Old Vic earning £35 a week!’

Bette Well I got to the Old Vic and I was making a lot more than £35 a week and I invited him to the show. And he wouldn’t come. He met me in a cafe nearby and he wouldn’t come. And we talked about this before and he wouldn’t come. I mean he was afraid of the whole middle-class thing of the Old Vic. That was what he was really afraid of but he would not pick up that ticket off the table and say thanks, well done. My fucking doctor from where I lived in Green Lanes came with his wife and afterwards he said, ‘I saw you at the Old Vic last night, jolly good, jolly good. You did it!’ And he made me feel you did it. It was enormous achievement for me, coming from fucking Hackney with everyone saying ‘Nah not for you. You get a job in the post office delivering telegrams, delivering letters.’ That’s what a lot of the lads did. I actually got my father, my father was actually a great help at getting me into the printing trade at the beginning.

It’s very emotional stuff isn’t it?

Mark Yes. But why do you make your mum and your dad . . . do you want tissues?

Bette No it was just suddenly . . . (Upset.)

Mark Do you want some bog roll? No it is very emotional. But you make your mum and your dad sound so different? Why were they together?

Bette Sense of humour. A great sense of humour and they were both very good-looking, very beautiful young people. He was an extremely handsome young man, he looked like Rory Calhoun or something, an English version. And my mother looked like this absolute beauty. She had this wonderfully pure look almost angelic. And they were both sex mad which was a great link. They had lots of sex.

Mark And when did you become aware of that?

Bette She told me later . . . Aware of that?

Mark I mean how soon is a kid aware of their parents having sex?

Bette I mean you’d hear them laughing on a Sunday morning, and him lying in bed tickling her, them shrieking and screaming and then you’d hear the sounds of passion and then you know. I mean that was the day off when they really enjoyed each other. He had horrible jobs like house painting and decorating and selling tea and selling ice creams at Wembly Stadium, shitty jobs he had.

I got to the secondary modern. But they did teach strange things like typing at my school and metalwork. It was what they called a commercial school. Upton House in Hackney. But I was producing even then. At school. I was producing. First thing I did was Mr and Mrs Scrooge. I was eleven and the boy who played Mrs Scrooge was built like a tank, a huge, gorgeous guy. Blond, big blue eyes. And he came on in drag and of course the kids went mad because he was really butch guy, Hugh Wakefield I remember his name was, and then I started laughing, completely broke up but him coming on was just hilarious because he was very cheerful with big sort of sunrise eyes you know? And he had this terrible old wig and he looked like a war worker, a lady war worker, and he’d borrowed one of those double pinnies from his mum that go right round . . . (Laughing.)

Mark And was that the first time that you’d come into contact with somebody in drag like that, the power they could have on an audience?

Bette He came in like this . . . he was so pleased with himself. Well they just went mad. And he was a sweet guy, a sweet guy, he was having fun. He was just in the fun of it.

So we did that and then we did Julius Caesar at the Round Chapel, you know it’s now a rock gig in Hackney, just off Mare Street. We just did from the beginning of the play until Act Three, after the stabbing. The stabbing was the end of the show.

I played Julius Caesar, you know I wanted the title role. I just knew that Julius Caesar was the boss.

This tall Jewish lad played Casca, and he said, ‘Speak hands for me!’ Bang and I was stabbed. The whole school cheered, cheered because this snotty little queen had got her comeuppance. So there were two plays going on, if you see what I mean. (Laugh.) Loved it. Had a wonderful time. That was directed by one of the masters. He was called Dicky Windle.

Mark And were you aware by then of sex, sexuality?

Bette Oh I was going in the toilets with the lads, with the pretty ones. You see the scripture class was the picking-up place all the queens picked each other up at the scripture class and you’d have a little J Arthur and that would be that. Lovely. (Laugh.)

Mark So that started when, when you went to the secondary school?

Bette Yeah. It was the beginning . . .

Mark And was there any religious stuff to all this? It wasn’t Catholic?

Bette No, we had Bible classes but they were usually a big relaxation. Nobody took it seriously. Half the lads were Jewish anyway and weren’t interested. And they weren’t religious Jews you see they were East End commercial Jews

Mark So going off to the loos and the J Arthurs, was that pretty guilt-free, fun?

Bette Yes except one time, I was twelve or thirteen and Horace Steele said I’ll meet you at the Scout Hall at lunchtime. He had the keys – he was a patrol leader. In the lunch hour. So I went down there. I was pretty excited you know. He was a nice lad. I opened the door and she’s there in stockings and suspenders and his mum’s bra. He must have nicked his mum’s drag, taken it ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Act One
• Act Two
• Act Three