edward gray
How Mr Gray ended up in the arts is obscured by time… and lies. At 9 he announced his desire to play trumpet and was duly sent to chop firewood… his brassy dreams dying in a sandy Australian wasteland. He can still use an axe, his whole family can, but they don’t write. No writers. No trumpeters. Plenty of axes.
The peripatetic Edward/Eddy/Ted/Teddy/Rupert discovered theatre via politics and protest. But his foolish troupe was banned for being rude and raucous. A little dangerous even. He decided to become a clown… but watch the short film, Clown Delivery by Mandy Lalley and see how the dream crumbled.
The oily illywhacker found his way into the theatre arts course of a Master and studied under the brilliant Gunduz Kalic . Masterful fortune shone on the boy-bear… until it didn’t. The conclusion was he was not an actor either, so he moved into production… and then, with the pushing of Prof. Kalic himself, wrote and produced a play. He could write… or at least tell a story.
The reality of creative life in Australia for a working class grub meant Teddy had to work or starve. So, being enamoured of eating, he worked in all manner of projects while the writing receded. His creativity filtered through all he did, and made the little bear a better manager. His thought processes were wider and wilder than anyone else’s and he became successful… very successful. Until he wasn’t. It seems nobody wants a clown at the controls.
Back and forward between Australia and England he sallied. He started to write again. Noodling words into shape…. then our bear moved to Liverpool and everything changed.
He has been learning to write for the last few years and is still working it out, bit by bit. Stubbornly, defiantly… finding his way. But he can… it seems… write… tell a story… and lie… can Edward/Eddy/Ted/Teddy/Rupert… the bear liar.
Why so many names; why Rupert? A liar needs a rack of names… and a theme. Bears it was… but don’t call him Paddington! Rupert was his preferred bear as a young sandgroper growing up in the scrubby dirt. A vision of another world. So he took him as a pen name. Bloodied red jumper, a chequered life and trousers, scarf to the wind. And then abandoned him… sort of anyway.
The sally cat
A thoroughly mysterious cool-cat who only wants to be known via the productions of the said cat who sallies! Onward cried the jazzy cat. This fur coat clad, erratic sally cat is tenaciously at the controls, dismissing all attempts to rein in the wild sallies into the unknown. To fail is nowt but the origin of success, this hep-cat is known to purr. A fence is only there to provide an elevated view, so claimed the cat.