Josie on her North East leap into the unknown
Help an improv star find the plot... any plot!
Think of Josie Lawrence and you’ll think of improvisation - ‘impro’ or ‘improv’ for short.
What a nightmare for most of us, finding ourselves on stage with no prepared lines to utter.
But Josie’s brilliant at it. Appearing on TV in nine series of Whose Line Is It Anyway? (1988-98) made her a household name.
And as a stalwart of The Comedy Store Players, 40 in October, she has held her nerve since the beginning, delighting audiences at London venue The Comedy Store and on the road.
But this month in Newcastle she’ll be testing herself further in response to an invitation from Jack McNamara at Live Theatre.
“I worked with Jack a few years ago at the Coronet Theatre in London. I loved working with him,” she says.
“Then he became artistic director at Live Theatre, which I’ve never visited. He offered me a play last year that I couldn’t do but he kept saying, ‘You’ve got to come and see this gem of a place’.
“He said, ‘We’ve got a few dates. Do you want to come and do something?’
“Well, one thing I’ve never done is a one-woman show so I said, ‘Why don’t I just stand on stage for about an hour and 10 minutes and see what happens?’
“He said, ‘Can you do that?’ I said, ‘Yes’.
“It’s my birthday on Friday and I’m getting nearer to 70 than 60 so I thought I might as well do something that scares me a little bit.”
Josie, in fact, turned 66 on June 6, as endearingly open about her age as she is fearless on stage.
In Newcastle, then, she will try out her solo mystery show, What Next? – so called because it’ll be concocted on the spot in response to audience suggestions.
Musician Steve Edis will improvise at the piano and a lighting technician will be on red alert to summon snap changes in atmosphere.
On stage will be two chairs… and Josie.
Cool about what might ensue, she says: “I’ve never been a stand-up comedian and that’s not what this is about.
“This is actually a play but it just happens to be one that hasn’t been written yet.
“It’s completely and utterly a first for me which is why I’ve chosen to do it in Newcastle – because I trust Jack implicitly. I love the work he does and what he’s told me about the theatre.
“If it works then it’s in my pocket if another venue asks me to do something.”
It sounds as if Josie’s often reminding people she’s never been a stand-up comedian. Her association with The Comedy Store might give some that impression.
She can, of course, be an absolute scream, that quick brain (tested on BBC Radio 4 show Just a Minute) ticking away behind expressive features and under a mane of hair.
But look at her CV and you’ll see plenty of serious stuff to balance the comedy.
That play she did with Jack McNamara was Love Lies Bleeding, by American writer Don DeLillo, in which she played the ex-wife of an artist who is in a persistent vegetative state.
In another tough role she played a criminal psychologist in Bryony Lavery’s play Frozen which tells of a bereaved mother and the paedophile who murdered her daughter.
She says she “literally fell” into improvisation, staying late after appearing in a play in London to watch a performance by Jim Sweeney and Steve Steen.
“They had a fish bowl and people were putting suggestions in. They would pick one out and improvise it.
“I joined in and found it was something I enjoyed and could do. I then joined The Comedy Store Players, who performed on Sundays, and to me it was a wonderful sideline.”
One night TV producers saw the show, invited participants to audition and from that came the pilot for Whose Line Is It Anyway?
Suddenly Josie found herself becoming famous in a way she hadn’t foreseen.
But the irony, she says, is that each series took only a couple of weekends to shoot, allowing ample opportunity for more time-consuming though less widely appreciated roles at the National Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company, in the West End and elsewhere.
It was the RSC that brought her to Newcastle in 1996, a box office draw as tempestuous Kate in The Taming of the Shrew at the Theatre Royal and as housemaid Dunyasha in Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard at Newcastle Playhouse (now Northern Stage).
Much in demand, she went from show to show and began the millennium in the musical The King and I at the London Palladium.
There was abundant screen work, too, notably leading roles in 1991 film Enchanted April and, on TV, the cricketing sitcom Outside Edge which ran for three series.
Asked about the seed of her improv skills, she says: “The only thing I can think of is that I was very big on imaginary friends as a child and right through school was always making up plays and getting people involved.
“I come from a working class family (in the West Midlands) that wasn’t theatrical at all. But from the day I could speak, everyone said, ‘Oh, she’s going to be an actress’, and it’s all I ever wanted to do.”
At Dartington College of Arts, in Devon, where she studied for a theatre degree, improv was a teaching mechanism. “I just saw it as a means to an end for my acting work,” she recalls
But she was introduced to the duo Nichols and May, a short-lived American improv sensation in the early 1960s.
Elaine May she regards as one of her theatre heroines, along with Beryl Reid and Glenda Jackson.
Josie was thrilled to meet the latter backstage after one of her acclaimed performances as Shakespeare’s Lear in 2016 – and she has duly paid homage by founding an all-female improv group called The Glenda J Collective and naming her cat Glenda Jackson.
Newcastle can lay claim to a small part in her improv success, thanks to a Pam Gems musical called Pasionaria, about a Spanish Civil War heroine, which premiered at Newcastle Playhouse in 1985 during the miners’ strike.
“That was with Denise Black and Kate McKenzie, with Paul Sand doing the music, and it was my introduction to the comedy circuit.
“We found our voices harmonised really well so Paul started writing songs for us and we became known as Denise Black and the Kray Sisters. We’ve remained friends ever since.”
Nowadays, says Josie, she keeps busy “in my kind of way. I love what I do. I bob along very, very happily.”
And to the suggestion that surely she’ll have some notion of her improv play’s trajectory, she retorts: “Good God, no. If you go on stage with an idea in your head then you’re flummoxed really.
“A lot of people say it must be scary but I suppose if you’ve an improviser’s mind… I mean, over the years I’ve learned to calm myself.
“If you make a mistake or can’t think of what to do next, as long as you’re not embarrassed about it and consider it part of the process, then the audience accepts it.
“If you’ve got a plot already, then what you’re doing is a lie and I never want that.”
And as for the fear factor…
“I’m actually quite a private and at times anxious person. When it comes to travelling and organising things, I catastrophise, thinking what if this or that happens.
“My friends laugh and say it’s ironic that someone can get nervous about catching a plane when in a couple of weeks they’re going on stage not knowing what they’ll be doing.”
To help Josie plot her instant play, you can get a ticket for one of the two performances – on June 20 and 21 at 7.30pm – from the Live Theatre website, or call the box office on (0191) 232 1232.
ALSO… at 3pm on June 21 at Live Theatre, by special arrangement between Newcastle-based improv school Boho Arts and Josie Lawrence, Josie will share improv insights in conversation with Bev Fox, CEO and artistic director of Boho Arts and member of improv group The Suggestibles. It’s an exclusive event and tickets can only be bought via the Boho Arts website.