In just over a week we’re opening a show and the tickets aren’t on sale yet. They need proof of the PLI insurance that we get through our union but the person we need to speak to at Equity is on annual leave, probably so she can dodge all the inquiries that must come at this time of year. This whole business of putting on a show is swamped in red tape. We’re almost there though. I still resent losing my budget to better guttering on the outside of my block. It makes everything matter a whole lot more when you’ve got something to lose though. It’s both galvanising and restricting.
Today I parked a van in Borough and then tried out a load of random furniture in various configurations inside it. There’s no designer and we can’t buy anything, but thankfully we have generous friends and random stuff we can borrow for a month or so. We are gradually throwing things together. The two of us who are making it are getting stressed with each other. We work very well together, and have made delightful things on a shoestring, but there are still so many unknowns on this one. We are going in cycles where one of us is okay with that and the other one is freaking out with the “what if” crap. The major one at the moment is “What if nobody buys a ticket,” which seems likely with 0 time of ticket sales online or anywhere else, 0 marketing and 0 social media. We are gonna have to be the word-of-mouth show of the century. Or I’m going to have to be outside huxtering.
It’s going to be fun once we’ve got the groundwork finished, but this is the stage in the process where the endless possibilities become concrete realities that are different to how we imagined them, and because it’s just the two of us there’s nobody we can proxy blame to when the dream changes shape. It’s like when you watch the movie of your favourite book and that whining prettyboy has no correlation with the great hero in your mind.
In the early stages of creation ANYTHING is possible, and nothing is off limits, but the problem is that reality is never quite like ImaginationLand, and there’s always going to be some degree of compromise, dictated by things like budget, gravity and the fact that magic is hard. The next few days we have to go from blue sky thinking to the realities of a load of bits of wood and fabric inside a big dark cold metal monster on wheels. We have to think about how we will move it on site every night before six when I’m in rehearsal until six in the centre of town. Fun things like that. It’ll all make sense somehow. Probably.
I’m off to bed. Got to move the van in the morning as I still haven’t sorted out parking. Also there’s the spectre of tax return looming over me. Much to be done. No time to do it. Thank God I’m not drinking.
AlBarclay 