Ondine Court
Chris Victory:
A Lifetime in the Theatre
by Jolene Gomez
With his first role in a play called Albert’s Bridge in the Gibraltar Drama Festival, Chris Victory’s career in theatre began. “After many years treading the boards at Ince’s Hall, I took an adjudicator’s advice and decided to come to the UK to study theatre, and I have not looked back since,” Chris says. Chris was offered an audition at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) but the date clashed with the impending birth of his first daughter. Chris asked RADA to reschedule, but he was summarily told they had far too many applicants to worry about him not turning up. “So I decided to become a designer, packed my bags, and embarked on a degree course in Theatre Design at Wimbledon School of Art, which at the time was world renowned as the best school for budding designers,” Chris explains. He graduated with First Class Honours, and a rather naïve expectation that he would end up designing in the West End within a year. His work as an assistant was an eye opener for him. “The glamour of the industry was very soon replaced by the reality that it was all blood, sweat and tears for little money and a lot of sacrifice.” Within the industry, Chris says he struggled to find a form, a niche, a genre which had been undiscovered within the world of stage design. He didn’t want to turn out safe, but plainly
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staid sets, which although were perfectly acceptable, he found hardly challenging and definitely not what he wanted to pursue. “My first year in the industry was spent, as all new designers find, assisting Charlie Edwards, probably the country’s most prolific and famous opera designer. I worked long hours, at first making models and billions of technical drawings. As Charlie’s work piled up I found myself designing the shows he could not realistically finish. I worked for the New Israeli Opera, Opera North, English Touring Opera,
“
The glamour of the industry was very soon replaced by the reality that it was all blood, sweat and tears for little money and a lot of sacrifice
”
the Royal Danish Opera and the Fujiwara Opera to name but a few,” Chris explains. But the assistant’s life was not easy. The hours were very long, the pay was very poor and the recognition was nonexistent. So Chris decided to venture out on his own, where it soon became clear that the world of design had
Chris Victory
GIBRALTAR MAGAZINE • MAY 2011