A pub theatre. I kinda love a pub theatre. Rarely if ever are the actors being paid though. Exploitation abounds. “It’ll be good experience,” says Victor as he puts his hand on your arse. “Industry people will come,” says Norbert who will have someone he knows come to celebrate his play about a man very like him who just happens to be irresistible to all women. “You’ll deepen your craft,” says Nick just before he starts shitting his ego into your face for months and months in the freezing cold with no money just so he can work out some ancient trauma about Brecht and hate you in the process. “The director is connected,” says Grognak, who knows they’ll never work with you again because they don’t want to be associated with “free” actors.
So yeah, I’ve got a friend with actors they know who want audience for a show in a pub theatre. Poor fuckers. I’m game. “What’s the show?”
It’s Jacobean.
Oh lord.
There are some things you start to notice after a while. Gestural things, inflection things, things that actors do when they aren’t sure what they mean. Lack of target, downflection. Holding two stale scones out to the side. Slapping your own side with both hands at the same time. Little meaningless steps back and forth. Pronoun abuse, self pointing like nobody knows who you mean when you say “I”. Many more. I saw them all tonight. All and more.
Not my first rodeo though. “I have a car coming for me at 4am. Ridiculously early start to the shoot and I really need to drill my lines before bed so I might not make the second half. Said that before the start to someone who knows the actors.
LIES.
They blacked the lights out after Act One and everyone had their coats half on before we realised there would be at least one more blackout before the interval. These are five act plays and usually there’s no cutting when it’s a showcase, so everyone gets a crack. Ugh.
Some of them will still be actors in twenty years. Maybe two, hopefully. That’s not bitchy, that’s just a realistic view of the attrition rate in this game.
I went with an old collaborator, and we both worked at that level back in the day. We both had hope and determination, we both wanted to learn by doing, we both did. Nobody comes out fully formed. I take my hat off to them for throwing it out, learning all that stuff, making sense of it. Likely there wasn’t time or money for the people tonight to really understand why they were saying all that stuff. They can do that in retrospect if they’re still here in twenty years, and if they aren’t they can think “I did that better” when they watch a good production and hearken back to those heady youthful hopeful days, looking through a glass darkly. My God I murdered some Shakespeare when I was at Reading…
Verse though. Christ, you really help us listen if you know where you are in the verse. You don’t have to be a robot about it, but a vague fucking clue would be throwing us a bone. This was mangle mangle one two three.
Still, I’m happy I saw half of it. No programme though, as far as I could tell. Even if I wanted to employ one of those people I’d have to work to find them.
Still, I’m a bad human. I waved a random piece of paper at the box office lady and walked past her with confidence, instead of buying a ticket. That sixteen quid I didn’t spend would have been almost two quid per actor. Bad bad bad. But … I’m glad I didn’t pay. If I had to pay for everything I watched I wouldn’t eat. These guys probably can’t eat right now and I’m not helping, but… the rollercoaster has to start somewhere. Most of them will fly off the sides. One or two, like me, will still somehow be on the ride, clinging desperately to the others like them, squealing “More! More!” as if it has been fun all this time. The ones that fell off will be looking on from their great big houses made of money, holding hands with the kids, rolling their eyes at us. “They’ll never learn.”
Or did we get it right? Who fucking knows. There’s nothing to hold onto in the rollercoaster so we just have to hold onto each other as best we can and hope. Wheeeeeeeeeee!!!!
AlBarclay 