Priors Marston

You may not know this, but I have a thing about Colin Firth.  It started when the television adaptation of Pride and Prejudice was broadcast a few years ago.  No, actually, it wasn't the swimming in the lake scene that got me going.  It was the look that passed between Mr Darcy and Elizabeth Bennett as she played the piano in the drawing room one evening after dinner. A long, lingering look of tentative love.  I paused the programme and took a photograph.  It seemed the most natural thing to do, but everyone laughs when I tell them.

Last night I performed to an audience in a Warwickshire drawing room.  To my regret Colin Firth was not in the audience, not that I was expecting him to be there.  Anyway, he is mentioned in the script which, I reckon, is about as close to my screen idol as I'm ever going to get. 

I thoroughly enjoyed my parlour performance and noted the difference between that and the village hall venues I often visit.   

First there is the green room.  In village halls these vary considerably from kitchen cupboards, hallways, council chambers, toddler group rooms, schoolrooms, staffrooms to ladies loos.  I have learned not to be fussy.  Or I had until last night, when I was afforded a suite:  double bed, magazines, full length mirror,  bath, unguents, wet room, the works.

Then there's the theatre space itself.  You tend to know what you're going to get in a village hall.  Mostly they are the same:  empty spaces that work for birthdays, discos, brownies, yoga, slimmers world meetings and my show.  Last night I was in a  grand and comfortable converted barn with books, soft furnishings and a perfectly sized and fitted stage for a show about family life. 

I could get to like this.. and everyone has a stage in their home, don't they? 

But you have to be careful when performing in someone's home.  Things can happen:  the phone or doorbell can ring.  The cat can wander in.  The dog can bark.  Or, as last night, the dog can come in.  

We are enjoined never to perform with children or animals, and I wasn't planning to.  But during the first scene I heard the padding of paws on the stairs leading to the room and knew that for a moment or two I wasn't the main attraction.  I had no idea at all what was going to happen next.  I knew I could trust the owners to do all in their power to remove the dog, but I didn't know the dog that well. How obedient was she?  How interested in what was happening on stage?  Would the cocoa pops (a prop) prove an irresistible lure?  Auto-pilot kicked in as all these thoughts flooded my mind.  Happily the dog was as well-trained as I could have hoped and I regained my audience's attention as she returned to lie in front of the Aga. 

I'll do it again though ... a parlour performance. And I quite like the excitement of the unexpected .. disconcerting though it can be.  The last time I did it a hen came in through the window.  Not such a well trained hen, either.  But that's another story.




 

Alrewas and Bulkington

I don't think I've mentioned this yet.  In January I became a new columnist for Warwickshire Life Magazine.  I have just submitted a piece for publication later this year.  One paragraph states boldly: "I am not normally superstitious."  Well, scrub that because now I am. 

My trip to Weston on Trent this time last week was joyous.  Ditto my visit to Alrewas on Friday.  These two audiences have set the bar so high in terms of appreciation, I feel that I am doomed to disappointment henceforth.

The day after Weston on Trent my car suffered a blow out on the M40.  Bit of a pain, but noone got hurt and I considered myself lucky that it hadn't happened en route to Weston.  With a carful of sound and lighting equipment, props and costumes, it would have been a pain to unload all of that beside the road and then change a wheel in the dark.  Impossible actually. Lucky me that it happened the next day.

Alrewas was a dream night.  I love the place and everyone in it.  Such was my joy as I left that with a carefree gesture I threw my hatstand into the boot and it snapped in half.  Once again I counted myself lucky that this hadn't just before the show. The hatstand is a crucial prop.  I'd have been in trouble if it had broken just before a performance.

The following day I set off to Bulkington, rather uneasy in the knowledge that incidences of bad luck often happen in threes.  As I left the house my handmirror fell out of my bag and smashed on the floor.  This was a nuisance in itself.  So, phew, the three things had happened.   Bit of a pain to have to go and get another mirror.  Bit worrying that a broken mirror often portends seven years' bad luck.  But, I reasoned to myself, there's not much else that can go wrong now.  Noone can actually sabotage the show itself because that's in my head.  As long as I'm not decapitated, it'll be OK.  

So Toby (young techie) and I arrived in Bulkington and were delighted to discover that the venue had its own inbuilt sound and lighting system. Things were definitely starting to go my way.  This saved us the bother of having to lug our own PA system and lights inside and spend a couple of hours setting them up.  We'd be able to leave my equipment in the car and drink tea and eat biscuits instead. 

I did the show.  It went fine and then I idled a while away in conversation with two lovely members of the audience, knowing that there wasn't a long get-out (a technical term for getting out).  Eventually I got out to the car.  Odd thing.  It was unlocked.  I never leave the car unlocked - especially when there's a thousand quid's worth of sound and lighting equipment in there waiting to be taken home.  Only that was it - there wasn't -  a thousand quid's worth of equipment in the car any more.  Some vile and loathsome person had broken into the car and nicked it during the show.  Oh hateful, mean and dishonest creature!  You have upset me.  You won't be reading this, I know, but if you were I would want you to know that I thoroughly dislike you.   But, ha ha, I can have a bit of a laugh because you didn't take the actual lights - too heavy for you were they?  Quite what you are going to do with everything you need in order to make lights work (cables, dimmers, faders, connectors etc etc) but no lights, I don't know.  Not really my problem is it?  I'm after you though.  I know you're right handed because you took my right glove (little hands a bit cold, were they?) and I know you'd been in the mud (all over the car).  It's only a matter of time.  Keep looking over your shoulder.   

But I do feel a little jinxed now.  Within the course of one week the car, a prop, a mirror and now all my technical equipment have been sabotaged by bad luck.  The script is the only thing that hasn't yet been targetted because that is in my head. I wish it were somewhere less important.  Either a beheading or total memory loss is surely imminent. 

Weston on Trent

Nice to be back on the road after a couple of months off.  Nice to catch up with senior techie Dik again… there is nothing more comforting when pervaded by an unmistakeable smell of burning than being supported by a veteran technician with 38 year’s experience behind him who knows, even without looking, that it is nothing to do with us.

Food is an important aspect of touring.  My own one concession to superstitious practices is to ensure that I eat and drink exactly the same thing before each performance: two ham and mustard rolls and a pepsi max – leaving room for handfuls of chocolate balls (Mars, Nestles or Cadbury’s it doesn’t matter which) in the dark, so I can’t see how many I’m eating, during the drive home.  Sometimes I succumb to a biscuit or cake if offered one at the venue.  They vary in levels of interest and appeal.  Pink wafers have never been my favourites, and variety packs leave me cold.  Home made is unfailingly good.   The puddings in Bishops Itchington were to die for, I recall.    But  last night the bar was set higher than ever before thanks to someone in Weston on Trent.    At the kitchen servery was laid out a promising array of tins and foil wrapped home made cakes and biscuits.   Any one of them would have done the job but the courgette and lime cake was too intriguing to resist.  Dik’s resistence failed him first and he took a tentative nibble  “You can taste the courgette.”  He announced, and then finished his piece in two mouthfuls.  I saved my own till later and then wished that Dik had left his.

I sometimes think that Ruth Rich, the heroine of my one-act plays, lives a more interesting albeit  troublesome life than my own.  Not today though. 

I awoke to discover that I had received 15 emails.  That’s more than usual.  They revealed that my email account had been hacked into and that, unwittingly I had sent  a link to a Canadian Viagra site to all my addressees.  These include staff and pupils of both children’s schools, a large number of business contacts, the ladies and gentlemen of the choir I sing with and several eminent members of the judiciary – many of whom had concluded that this was a bona fide new venture of mine and sent witty emails to tell me so.  That’s not counting the one from the person who took it personally and seemed pretty pissed off.

It took a bit of time to set this straight and so I left late with my mother to visit my niece.    Half way down the M40 a tyre blew.  I was all for changing the wheel but mum said I mustn’t  because it was dangerous so instead for 45 minutes we stood shivering to death (also dangerous in my view) beside the road singing hymns we both knew until an overly kind breakdown man confirmed that I clearly look older than I feel by wrapping me in a tinfoil blanket while he put everything right, and departed with the news that I’d probably need two new tyres not one because the rear one was bald.  

Then the phone rang and it was someone in my village telling me that they had found my filofax lying in the road and I could pick it up whenever I liked.  How the hell did it get there? 

Got to niece – with just enough time to spare for a quick lunch followed by an hour of new child seat for car assembly.  No finger nails left, and precious little temper.

Got home to discover the hoover in pieces all over the sitting room floor and Gina the cleaner looking fraught.  Then spent the evening trying to upload a new anti-virus system and deleting copious old and doubtless invaluable files from the computer.

Will shortly go to bed – content in at least one respect:  Sometimes, very occasionally, my own true life is even more stressful than that of my alter ego. Eat your heart out, Ruth Rich, and leave the courgette and lime cake for me.   

Pleasance, Waterfall and Waingroves

I was rather excited about performing in London.  It has buzz and cudos and I was very proud in my anticipation of stepping onto a London stage.  Also, I feel amongst friends at The Pleasance.  They looked after me very well in Edinburgh and I was happy to be renewing our acquaintance.    In terms of preparation I felt I had done rather well.  However, it was only on the morning of the show that I read that the theatre space was at the top of two external and two internal flights of stairs.  The Double Booked props comprise most of the internal furniture of a small family saloon car, together with the contents of an average-sized kitchen.  All I could do as I sweated my way up and down those stairs with table, chairs, bookshelves and car seats was laugh.  The show was fun and the audience was appreciative - if small.   Lots of forces were keeping people away:  half term, Hallowe'en, the clocks going back, and of course, X Factor and Strictly.  For a London debut, this was rather quiet ... but a precious memory nonetheless.

So, on to Waterfall (where there isn't one), where, to start with, it was even quieter.  Parked atop a Staffordshire moorland outside the converted Victorian school building which was to be my venue I did wonder where the evening's audience could possibly appear from.  There didn't appear to be any houses close by .. or even people.  A couple of dog walkers bent their heads into the wind and hurried past. They were the only evidence of humanity on top of the moorland for about twenty minutes as Toby and I waited for the key.  But .. two hours later the building was full of people out to have a good time.  Fuller even than the organisers had expected and they had to keep coming in to the dressing room to fetch more chairs.  Community is everything in places such as this.  The hall was warm and friendly and boasted a brand new kitchen, which I was shown with pride. 

The next day we went to Waingroves.  This is a very different place - semi urban in feel, the community centre and surrounding buildings gave the impression of having been (still being in fact)  at the centre of a hard working community.  I don't know, I'd have to check, but I bet there was once a mine nearby.   I was shown the brand new kitchen.  This being the third brand new kitchen I had been shown in the past four venues I tried not to be blase.  In fact, I think it's absolutely fantastic that these meeting places are so well supported that they need and can provide bigger  better facilities for the men, women and children of the neighbourhood who want to gather there.   

Live theatre is all about tales of the unexpected.  In Waterfall the fairy lights played their usual trick on not coming on.  So I put in a line "... and the lights didn't work - as usual."  And then they came on, which made me feel stupid.   In Waingroves the malteser packet exploded and I watched a malteser roll off the table onto the floor.  So .. I picked it up, didn't know what to do with it next, and ate it.  And there was a laugh and a ripple of applause.  Toby the techie says I should do it every time, but really, I'm not that keen to build eating off the floor into the show.  Not even for the sake of an easy laugh.  Or am I?    I must do something about the ending of the show though ... gives me something to work on, which will be fun.  

So, that's it for 2010.  No more performances till January 2011.  But a mountain to climb with another script to learn...    If you read this, do let me know.   Otherwise it's a bit like shouting into the wind.

Old Meeting Yard, Bedworth

I fear I am in danger of becoming boring on the subject of how I continue to be overwhelmed by the strength of community spirit in English rural neighbourhoods.

This week I performed in Bedworth, a town in north Warwickshire which developed in the  coal mining era of the late 19^th and 20^th centuries.  Communities thrived around their meeting places in those days and the town boasts the Old Meeting Yard, a huge Victorian building which high ceilings, thick walls and an acoustic to die for.     Often community centres of such age and scale are too big for modern uses and it struck me as a building which could so easily have become a dinosaur, but Bedworth has spirit and that spirit has not only kept the building alive, but provided the need and, more to the point, money for its facilities to be improved and updated.  And so a brand new kitchen and toilet facilities have been built.  Accordingly, it was felt that the appropriate entertainment for the night was my play “Ten Days … that shook the Kitchen!” and an audience of nearly 70 gathered to sit at long tables to watch the show and then enjoy supper cooked in the  new kitchen.

Standing in the wings minutes before curtain up there was a noise to my left and a latecomer walked in from the cold and told me he’d convinced himself that the play started half an hour later than advertised.  As this was happening, Linda the organiser was introducing me.  As she finished her introduction, he walked towards the door through which I was about to make my entrance.    The audience burst into a welcoming round of applause, and he entered – never to be late again, I fancy.

After the show a lady came up to me and accused me of stalking her.  This could have been awkward.   Stalkers and actors have been known to go together .. but isn’t it the actor who is supposed to be the one who is stalked, I wondered?  The lady explained that there were at least five coincidences between the storyline of the play and her life: school life, the ages of her children being the same as that of the children in the play, their weekly activities being identical, the African snails her children brought home from school – one of which bore the same name as one of the children in the play.  By this time even I was beginning to feel spooked.  Reassured though  because Ten Days .. that shook the Kitchen! is now three years old.  I know we’re not talking longevity on the scale of The Mousetrap, but nevertheless it was comforting to be told that the play is as relevant today as it was when I first wrote it.  

Shottery and Foxt

Getting a little behind here .. this blog is supposed to be a catalogue of all my performances.  There are two to catch up with.

First the Girls’Grammar School at Shottery.  Toby and I revelled in the luxury of only having had to travel about seven miles.  We strolled in, chatted to friends who were organising the event and started to set up in a leisurely fashion.  At this point things started to go a little wrong.  One of the lights wouldn’t work, one of the electric sockets jammed and we took far too long deciding which route the cable would take along the floor from the lights to the control desk.  Before we knew where we were, we were in a rush and feeling a little fraught.   It all got done and I retreated backstage to sit in the girls’ changing room whilst the audience stoked up on food and drink.  At which point it occurred to me that I hadn’t checked the set but couldn’t go back onstage because the audience had assembled.  I tried to find Toby whilst remaining invisible.  Not easy.  Hoarse whispers from the girls’ changing room through the gap in the door didn’t work because he’d gone elsewhere.  But it was OK.  He reappeared in plenty of time, surreptitiously took a photo of the set with his i-phone and my mind was set at rest.

That was Double Booked last week.  This week we did Family Matters in Foxt.  Foxt is about as far away as it is sensible to travel in one night.  It felt like going on a motoring holiday.  But Foxt is worth every mile.  Everyone is so friendly and generous in their reaction to the show.  I still haven’t worked out where the villagers of Foxt actually live though.   I’ve been there twice and so far only noticed a pub, a church and the village hall.  There must be some houses, but I’ve yet to see them.  It’s mostly fields. 

Early on in Family Matters someone in the company has to make a loud farting noise.  I used to do it myself, but I’ve reworked the start of the play and that doesn’t work any more.  A couple of weeks ago when Toby II did the teching he seized the farting job with enthusiasm.  Three nights in a row he blew high pitched, Catherine wheel type whizzers across the audiences in Rolleston, Wellesbourne and Holloway – to universal hilarity.  He said he’d learned them from a boy named Hetherington in his primary school who had had a vast repertoire.  Toby the First took over the job this week, and it would not be unfair to say that he was less than keen – which is a triple negative way of saying he really wasn’t up for it.  But, fair do’s,  he gave it his best shot.  My mega-brained, aspiring choral scholar blew a gentle and polite raspberry right on cue in Foxt.  It sounded utterly authentic, but a little quiet, and I wasn’t sure the audience members at the other end of the room had heard it, so I said the word too, and got the laugh.  Only later did it occur to me that my saying of the word rendered Toby’s doing the sound effect redundant, which might have meant that the people sitting nearest to him didn’t realise that the noise he made was all part of the show.   Next time, we’ll re-think.     

Bridge House Theatre

This was a night to remember.   One of those occasions when everything seemed to go right.  Ticket sales were good and the theatre space was pure luxury.   Not only onstage.   I had grown fondly accustomed to my Edinburgh venue and still have no complaints but the basket of fruit, biscuits, tea, coffee and china cups in the Bridge House Theatre dressing room was a vast improvement upon the empty cans of Red Bull from the late night comedy shows which littered the underground dressing room I'd used during the Festival.  That and the fact that the loo worked... and all the lights.

I spent the fifteen minutes before the start sitting upstairs listening to the audience assemble.  As the time meandered by I imagined myself catching my foot and falling down the stairs and onto the stage.  The thought became an obsession, so I entered rather gingerly, I think.  Must have looked amazing though because the audience applauded.  I told Bill when I got home.  "Well it was a literary festival."  He said knowingly, as if he would.  That's the convention at literary festivals apparently.  Nothing to do with how brilliantly I'd come down the stairs at all. 

I had been most excited about the after show discussion .... intrigued to know what might be asked.  There were a few friends in the audience and some my children's schoolfriends' parents.  Second question:  are any of the characters based on anyone you know?   Oh, the temptation!   "Yes, actually.  The character called Timmy's Mum .. the supercilious cow who never returns favours and always looks down at you.  Well, you know so and so?  What do you think?  And the drop dead gorgeous teacher character?  Do you remember Mr .... from the Junior School.   Left a few years ago?  Knowing look.   Only it wouldn't have been true.  Not entirely.