From Normal to Santa...in Two Years via Demented Doorman!

How To Be a Successful Santa...Via a Demented Doorman

Two years ago I was sitting at home, coming to terms with retirement from a lifetime of trying to persuade people to do what I wanted them to do (well, apart from my mother and dad, who were always trying to persuade me to do what they wanted me to do!

I had reached a point where I was treading water and wondering where the business was going and then...
StoryTelling Corner came along and set me on the path to a weird and wonderful journey, through acting, to the ultimate  Christmas role as Santa.

StoryTelling Corner was one year old when I saw an advert for extras to appear at The Loft Theatre in Leamington Spa. I'd faced a live audience for most of my life so this would be no big thing, right?

Wrong!

At the first call, not enough people turned up and so we were all told we would have roles in the play. Six weeks of rehearsals brought us to the opening night of a six-night run-up to Halloween 2018. The reviewer Nick Le Mesurier sums it up best with this piece:

Down in the cellars, something stirs. A door slams, a scream is heard, a shadow passes – but there’s no-one there. Theatres are amongst the most haunted places on earth: all those ghosts of characters drifting on and off stage, those actors long gone, whose performances resonate down the years, those strange atmospheres. And then there are the patrons, those people hidden in the wings, who have invested in the strange resurrections of words and scenes whose origins are forgotten but which live on in the imagination. The very atmosphere of a theatre reeks of things that have passed.

So it is in Lurking at The Loft, The Loft Theatre’s latest show, which takes us on a tour of places hidden from most of us mere mortals; the shadowy basement rooms haunted by strange beings, some more dead than alive, where the magic is made. In small groups, we are taken through a maze of corridors where the unwary guest might find him or herself lost. We hear of the terrible deaths at the hands of the man dubbed The Leamington Lurker, whose macabre fancies bestowed the town’s finest theatre with props and costumes. Our guides are men and women driven mad by who knows what horrors? Zombies lurk in the corridors, there’s a woman with a noose for a necklace, and our reward for our courage is a macabre feast served up by ghouls with a taste for flesh.

Elizabeth Morris’s recreation of Halloween thrills is clever piece of chicanery delivered promenade style that delves deep into the very fabric of the theatre. Drawing on some of the younger members of The Loft’s crew, it is perhaps more intriguing than genuinely terrifying, though I wouldn’t recommend it to small children or those of an especially nervous disposition. It leaves a nice frisson of fear, rather more palpable than most of the plastic tat that is sold to acknowledge our day of the dead, the more real for being performed live – or dead.


My roles included the theatre's demented  'carpenter' who had been driven by hatred of the public to provide human meat for the dinner table (for the price of a theatre ticket-value for money?)

The role of the carpenter was scripted. But the role of the Doorman was not.

This role was totally ad-lib. A role where I connected with the audience before they even reached the box office. The role was to make the audience aware that this wasn't going to be a 'normal' theatre visit.

Being Sants.
Just as the roles in the play needed to be powerful and believable the training I received and gave through my business that nothing can prepare you for a live performance like:

1. Preparation: 6 weeks of rehearsal at least two hours a night over three nights.
2. Practice: Living the part. Being the part as often as is possible (I was often found practising my 'carpenter's speech on the bus and walking along the street.)
3. Posture: Each role we play requires that we take the posture most likely to make the biggest impact on our audience.
4. Perform: The audience needs to invest in your role whether it is the villain or Santa. The need to give the right body-signals is always the key to authenticity (even when you are acting).

The opportunity to explore how far I could take ad-lib, after a decade of teaching nervous clients how to prepare and practice their presentations was too good to pass up and, thankfully, the whole week was a great success with nearly four hundred members of the public seeing our performances over the run.

So, where does Santa come in?

This year, I was contacted by Libby Morris, the Director of 'Lurker In The Loft, contacted me with the opportunity to be Santa (I was going to say 'play' Santa but it's more than that.)

The role calls for me to spend between 4 and 7 minutes with a family, who have paid good money for their children to experience the wonder of seeing Santa. And, that is what it is still. The wonder in the children's eyes, sometimes the curiosity, sometimes the awkwardness and occasionally the downright fear of coming anywhere near the man in the red suit and white beard.

But always, there is the expectation of an experience the children will remember. Always, there is the expectation that the children will believe, for one more year at least, that Santa is alive.



The skills I picked up from over thirty years in networking and providing courses for business owners to improve their confidence in front of a live audience came to great use.

Happy Christmas to everyone wherever you are...

Santa Claus

P.S. If  you, or your company would like a visit from a 'demented' doorman. a 'manic' carpenter or a 'magnificent' Santa Click Here...

Ernie Boxall.
Storyteller.
Actor.
Founder of:  http://bit.ly/2SF8spa