Ben Iden Payne - First Professional Work

First Professional Work

While still in school, he started his career as a walk-on actor in 1899 at the F.R. Benson company, a renown touring Shakespeare company (formal name: Mr. and Mrs. R. F. Benson's Shakespearean and Old English Comedy Company. Upon being interviewed by Fred Benson, he was introduced to Mrs. Benson; he was astonished to see she was the actress who played Viola in the traveling production of Twelfth Night he had seen as a child. After a four week trial engagement with Benson, Payne spent a season touring Britain with a much smaller company, Mademoiselle Gratienne. He returned to Benson the next year, but this engagement was cut short when a fire at the Theatre Royal in Newcastle upon Tyne destroyed the company's stock of scenery and costumes. Payne signed on with the touring tropue of Carlyon and Charlton, a "fit-up" company (fit-up meaning they traveled with their own stage proscenium, stage curtains, lighting and scenery, which could be installed in any open hall and did not require a formal theater for performances.). In 1902 he returned to Benson, where he worked both as an actor and an assistant stage manager, his first non-acting theatrical experience. He toured with Benson and several other companies the next several years, performing Shakespeare in Jamaica with the Benson Company, participating in the first production (staged by the Arthur Hare Company) of The Importance of Being Earnest performed after the trial and imprisonment of Oscar Wilde, as well as working with the companies of Mr. and Mrs. A.B. Tapping, Norman V. Norman, Madge McIntosh and the Shakespearean actor Ian Maclarean. During this time period he married the actress Mona Limerick and had a son.