Some matinees have been cut from the schedule. I’m sad about it as I wanted this show to sell and sell dammit. I want them to make the money they deserve. Production budget is very solid. It looks fantastic. I’m not on production team this year, and there is a tiny bit more separation. Normally I’m building the set and taking out unnecessary tables and counting seats and working things out. I think if Jack and I were still the acting pair we would still be rolling out the empty tables before the show, knowing how much nicer it’d be if we didn’t have empties. But Will is an actor only, and I see and respect that.
I’m not on production. I remember once, at The Arts, two audience members arrived late and ended up sitting in the corner. “We’ve paid the same as them,” they said. “Why have we got a worse view.” Those two people left early. Because of those two out of however many thousands, there’s a stratified pricing plan along the lines of what Punchdrunk did when I finally abandoned hope that Felix would learn integrity. I really don’t like tiered pricing… It does give a level to the show. I can bring it into my audience stuff, and I do. But the practical upshot is that most nights I’m playing to a row of empty tables with shadowy people behind. It doesn’t help that my contact lenses seem to have been siezed in customs.
I’ll play to and with whoever. Tonight we had the owner of The Pembroke Pub in Grouville, having dragged the landlord with him. The owner was dressed as Santa and the landlord an elf. He was pretending to be incognito Santa. It was delightful. He was wonderful craic and has apparently been evangelising the show to his regulars in Grouville, my home parish, on the strength of the Beowulf that Jack and I gave birth to a few years ago and Will did.
There’s definitely a strong audience in Jersey. There’s also a lot of money, so the Amdram scene is developed. I went to see a Durrell show some years ago at The Arts Centre and it was delightful. Tickets were cheap because they have the building and all the artists are doing it for free. You can do that if daddy lives in magical moneyland. Dicky Dodgem has never been voted off the board this year. He buried his money so he wouldn’t have to pay tax, but then forgot where it was so was borrowing from Scrooge to mount search expeditions. As far as the good people of Jersey are concerned, he’s an out and out goodie. In London or York he’s gone by the end of week one. But yeah, people are clearly happy to slog their guts out in exchange for being told how very very good they are at acting as well as divorce law. That doesn’t cut it with me sadly. Show me the money.
The few shows I did at the start of my career in pub theatres where the economics weren’t working: they did me more harm than good. Because people like me now don’t want to see talented actors giving their shit away. It drops the price across the industry. So young actors end up wasting their time doing something for “exposure” where the majority of people who watch them think of them as blacklegs.
This is the issue here. Jersey people are used to Amdram prices. That could not sustain a show like ours, which is actually very reasonably priced for an excellent meal and show. But you have to come to know how professional and together it all is, as it is an unfamiliar offering for the island. And the main paper didn’t run an article for way too long and then finally just rehashed an opinion piece from a smaller paper.
I would have preferred a day off today, as is traditional, and actually, genuinely, this evening’s show after 3 days of 2 show days… that was the reason I kicked off with my agent and insisted on cranking the fee up. I knew how tired I would be. Now some matinees have been cancelled as undersold and I feel bad for production. Jack and Adam have been slogging their guts off for months to get this on. I just get to show up and play. Man, I really wish we could sell out the rest of the run.
AlBarclay 