hello there my name is kate fleetwood and i'm currently playing cruella deville in a new musical
adaptation of 101 dalmatians at the regents park open air theatre and this is show circle
my favorite part of 101 dalmatians is um we have an animated car that pulls apart at a
certain point and it's hilarious it i think it's fun to watch and it's really good fun to perform
most challenging part of the show by far is the heat at the moment we're doing 101 dalmatians
which means there's a lot of fake fur but uh i'm dressed a lot in fur and leather and lots
and lots of different wigs that sort of grow exponentially larger through the evening but
um we do get through it we do have little heat stops occasionally which is a new thing because
normally we'll have a rain stop so it's a new thing a new version of iconic villain is always
a bit challenging and so the truth of it i tended not to uh look at the original for a very very
long time until i was sort of sitting in the pocket of our adaptation and i can have a quick
skirt back to the history books as it were and uh just see whether there are any little things like
a cherry pick the real challenge is to get the audience sort of on the side with it because i
play her as a contemporary figure i have to really really work hard at sort of getting the audience
to to come on board and once i feel that they've taken the bait as it were then then i can sort of
relax a bit but i it's a big responsibility when you're doing a new adaptation is to make sure that
you don't feel safe and secure in your hands it's a little bit nerve-wracking every show i feel
like a little bit of nerves at the first couple of scenes but yeah just got to do it's my job
so performing in an open-air theater as compared to performing an indoor theater is has all sorts
of different challenges and rewards as well i think sometimes the audience doesn't and doesn't
know that we can see them just as clearly as that they can see us plays were always meant to be um
direct address to an audience i mean that's the greeks and you know the tutors you know
they're talking to an audience there's a conversation between the performers and
and the audience and so it's really lovely to be able to see the audience i love it
as a performer it's a gift actually and then of course the best part of the region's park open air
theater is that you share the experience with the audience the night falling over the production you
start in you know dwindling daylight and by the second half it's pitch black and you follow that
through together as a sort of a shared experience it's really magical and i'd really recommend it
my favorite vocal warm-up goes like this
trinidad and the big mississippi on the town honolulu and the lake titicaca the
popular caterpillar isn't in canada rather than mexico mexico canada malaga tibet tibet yokohama
i was very very lucky to have grown up near stratford-upon-avon we used to get free tickets
when i was a kid um because we knew the fireman at the royal shakespeare company and he wasn't
that interested so he would give my dad a ticket so my mom and dad would take me to the world
shakespeare company so when i think about the kind of performance that used to inspire me i i started
very young watching shakespeare and going to the theater and i i always say to people it's never
too early to take your children to the theater so i watch derek jacoby playing production of much to
do about nothing with um shinee cusack juliette stevenson fiona shaw uh judy dench um you name
it i saw them and so i had these they were they were my pinups you know i wanted to be juliette
and i thought they were just the most glamorous most amazing
i if i think about musicals that i'd like to be and i'd really like to be
taught and i'd like to play
the advice i give to young actors
is to look from where you've come from and don't look where you want to be because it's
a bit overwhelming that i want to be this just just take a little step at a time and have bite
size ambitions and then you feel like you're achieving things so i'd still just take little
chunks little chunks little chunks and also another piece of advice i would give people
is that sometimes you might not get the job that you go for you might be the last stand
to the last two which happens countless times to me and you don't get it you think oh that could
have been the one but you know it's got me to that place but you never know that that might that may
not have happened to you that way you may you may not have been very good in that role you might
have had a bad time in that bill you might have it might have caused problems at home being away
for that long um whatever if it's not meant for you i think you'll get what's meant for you so i
always often say to young actors let other people live their lives wish them well and you just get
you