IF IT'S Tuesday it must be Darlington. David Callister and Michael Kirk at least know the town, even if the name of the play is more difficult to remember as the summer repertory season at the Civic Theatre stages four productions in as many weeks with the two actors appearing in two of the plays.

Touring productions to Swansea, Jersey and rehearsing an autumn tour of the farce Run For Your Wife add to the complications. I find Kirk at Darlington Arts Centre poring over the script of Dangerous Obsession, a three-handed thriller in which the well-heeled Home Counties lifestyle of couple Mark and Sally Driscoll is shattered by the arrival of the mysterious John Barrett.

"He has a heck of a lot of words. Everyone has a lot to say but my character tells the story, he's the stranger who arrives and upsets matters," says Kirk, explaining why he's spending the lunchtime rehearsal break from Alan Ayckbourn's comedy Table Manners learning lines for the other play.

This week, while appearing on stage at night he'll be rehearsing the next during the day. Callister - who, like Kirk, appeared in last year's Ian Dickens Productions rep season at the Civic - plays Norman in Table Manners, the second in Ayckbourn's The Norman Conquests trilogy. "We did the first one, Round And Round The Garden, last year and I think the idea is to do the third next year," explains Callister.

"I played the same character Norman last year and also did Table Manners in Crewe. We rehearsed in Jersey, where I was in another play, but with a totally different cast to the one at Darlington. They play differently so they'll react differently to what I did before. It keeps you on your toes. With a rep season like this you basically spend your time rehearsing. I've the luxury of not being in the first production of Rebecca. After that, I'll be performing one and rehearsing another. You have to be far more focused. There comes a time when you have to put down your script and just get on with the other play."

Having just one week's rehearsal is a throwback to the old British theatre rep system where actors learnt as they went along. "You have to rely on your instinct," says Callister. "If you indulge the actors they become too self-indulgent. I just go with my instinct and see what happens. With a short rehearsal period you have to immediately bond with your fellow actors because you have to trust each other. There's no time for egos.

"It would be nice to have the luxury of two or three weeks rehearsal but I wouldn't know what to do with the nine weeks rehearsals some companies have."

Kirk's had that experience in a revival of Lionel Bart's musical Oliver! at the London Palladium, spending a year with the production, covering for Jonathan Pryce's Fagin. "We had eight weeks rehearsal, and spent two weeks tech-ing one scene from ten in the morning until twelve at night for two weeks," he says.

"They changed the children in Fagin's gang every eight weeks and there were two sets of them so I spent all the time rehearsing those children. I wanted the money and Oliver! came at the right time. I did two years in Me And My Girl too but musicals are a dead end job because that's all you do and people come to see you as a musical person."

Both are what you'd call jobbing actors. Not famous or stars but regular, working actors. "It's my job to be an actor. That's what I do," says Kirk. "You get on and get down. I regard acting as a job and take what I am offered."

He began performing as a child at Derby Playhouse in his home town. His first ambition was to be a set designer but did some acting and, at someone's suggestion, auditioned for a play. He got the part and found himself in London, which he had never even visited before.

Callister, who's been in the business 25 years, wanted to be a film-maker when he was a schoolboy. "I've always had an ear for mimicry, always taking the mickey out of teachers. In Norwich, my home town, I went to an amateur theatre which had professional standards and then to drama school. I hated going to London because I'm a country boy.

"We enjoy acting and at least we're in a job we enjoy even if you have no money, no social life, no car, no house. If you want those, you'd better become a banker."

In a profession notorious for unemployment, with three-quarters or more of all actors out of work at any one time, both feel lucky to know what they're doing for the rest of the year. "It hardly ever happens," says Kirk, who joins Robert Powell and Lisa Goddard in a tour of the thriller Murder By Misadventure before going into pantomime. "The good thing is that over the year you get to know more people and they remember you when casting. Someone you worked for five years ago can suddenly phone up with a job."

As Callister points out: "All it takes for your life to change is a telephone call. After Darlington, I'm doing a tour of Run For Your Wife. It's good to know what you're going to do, but it doesn't happen often."

"I work regularly for Ian Dickens. I was lucky, his assistant director saw me in a fringe show in London, the English translation of a boring Polish play, and cast me in a 13 week rep season in the Isle of Man. I was the lead in nine of them. He took a huge chance. I learnt more in those 13 weeks than in three years of classical training school. We had such a laugh. But it's a huge strain, not just on the actors but the crew having to put up different sets each week. The curtain would come down on Saturday and the second the tabs were down, they were taking down the set. They'd work all night and on Sunday there'd be a new set."

Table Manners, which also stars Mary Tamm from Brookside and Kim Hartman from 'Allo 'Allo, is at Darlington Civic Theatre until Saturday. Dangerous Obsession, also featuring ex-EastEnders star Sophie Lawrence, runs from June 26-30. Educating Rita, with David Griffin from Keeping Up Appearances and Hi-De-Hi, is from July 3-7. Tickets and information: (01325) 486555.