Currently on a six-month tour with Hull Truck is Jacqueline Naylor
She plays a retired widow, based on John Godber's own mum, in the Godber classic Our House.
Jacqueline is based in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire.
When she was based in London, after training at Mountview, she spent so much time travelling to Yorkshire TV studios in Leeds,
that she though it best to settle back home

Does being on tour restrict your opportunities for further work?
No, it means you're working for six months and you don't have to worry.
It's a sort of moving showcase.
I'm working in a cracking piece of theatre in lovely venues all over the country.
My agent is getting casting directors to come to various places.
If you go to an audition and they ask what you've been doing, there's nothing worse than having to say, I haven't been doing anything.

________________________________________________

"I'm working in a cracking piece of theatre
 in lovely venues all over the country."
________________________________________________


Do you get home often?
Yes, we try to get home most weekends.
Most places we can get back to on Saturday night.
Someone elects to do the driving and we get dropped off at various points.
I've been getting taxis back from various places on the M62 or the M1.
We might get back at 2 o'clock on Sunday morning, but it means that you wake up in your own bed and we have Mondays off, but not always.

Our House is set in West Yorkshire. Does it travel well?
People recognise themselves in the story wherever we go.
In Poole we did an after-show talk and a young woman on one table said: "It's my parents and my aunty!"
Everyone on the table recognised themselves or a relative.
That's the skill of John's writing.
He writes very good, real people.

You're playing a pensioner - that must have taken a lot of make-up!
She's 71 and I'm 47.
Actually, I was ID's in Marks & Spencer in Poole.
Someone took my red wine off me and said, "Are you over 18?"
I said, "Plus 30, now give it me back!"
That was a source of great amusement to the rest of the cast.

Is it essential that the cast get on?
It certainly helps.
I've been on tours where they haven't, but this is a really fabulous team.
We all went to Chester Zoo last week when we were in Crewe.
We had a team trip!

How do you escape the pressures of acting?
I'm a gardener.
It's the perfect antidote to acting.
You can get away from the phone.
We've got a third of an acre so there's lots to play in.
I like the woodland when the bluebells are coming out.


Interviewed by Kevin Berry