Definitive Review of the Year: 2009

“Nothing.”

I’ve only worked with friends a few times. I’ve worked with plenty of people I’ve got on well with – most, I’m glad to say – but only a few with whom I’d share my private thoughts and feelings. So, if I’ve had any bad news, or have been feeling low for any reason, I’ve kept it to myself, and got on with the job in hand. Work is work, and private life is exactly that.

It’s not only a sense of propriety, though; there’s a sense in which I recognise that blurring these boundaries is pointless. If I’m troubled by something in another part of my life, it’s not going to be remedied by discussing it with people who don’t know the context or who I don’t want to open up to in that way. In which case, walking round in a markedly distracted manner, pointedly not engaging in conversation, and responding in monosyllables would be an indulgence.

I never understand what it’s supposed to achieve, beyond a little, immediate, and cheap attention; that, and creating an atmosphere for everyone in the vicinity, which is unfair, as they don’t know how – and usually aren’t able – to help. And having been one of those bystanders, on more than one occasion, only fuels my own desire not to create that discomfort for others. It’s childish, selfish and silly.

Not that I’ve encountered that recently, you understand. Just saying.

Yes, but what do you actually *do*?

I’m the Company Stage Manager for a show that’s touring the country at the moment. This is my life.

Monday morning: the get-in starts at 9am. I arrive at the theatre around quarter to; say hello, find the dressing room that acts as the company office, and have a quick look at the stage, so we’re ready to start on the dot. We open that evening, so there’s not a lot of time to hang around.

Hmm. Sounds like the introduction to some cheap ITV2 documentary. (Any takers…?)

Pregnant with anticipation...

Everything we tour is in one large articulated lorry. First thing out is the floor – 33 wooden sheets, which we screw to the deck. I use these to determine the position of the lighting bars, and the electrics department (LX) then rig the appropriate lanterns on the bar, according to our lighting plan. Meanwhile, the remaining crew are starting to take the rest of the set from the lorry. We ask for 10 crew from the touring venue: 6 stage and 4 LX. How much nous and how much civility they have really determines what kind of day it’s going to be. I hope for a lot of both, though I expect very little, and most of the time the answer is somewhere between the two extremes.

We’re about an hour and a half in by now, and, as LX are still rigging bars, I’ll send the remaining crew on a tea-break – part of my responsibility is making sure that everyone has the appropriate breaks. At this point, most of the crew will disappear from the theatre, to a local café that makes bacon sandwiches. The café is always at least 5 minutes away, the sandwiches take about 8 minutes to make, which means that the exact point of the 20-minute break elapsing always coincides with the crew just about to take their second bite. I’m therefore obliged, by the fact that I need them onside, to let them finish eating, while treading that fine line between gesturing at my watch like a demented mime artist or giving in and calling an early lunch break.

Once the LX bars are rigged, they’re flown out so we can start building the set. This comprises 15 flats, 4.5m high and various widths, plus several smaller pieces that make up the French window. Oh, and a ratty old chandelier. It all goes up quite easily, really, so then it’s lunch. I like to try and eat with the crew, if possible, to try and maintain contact, but I wouldn’t say these lunches are a hotbed of warm and convivial repartee. At least the homophobic banter that’s acted as a commentary to the morning usually subsides during this hour. Once back, the crew tidy up the backstage areas, put down carpet runners, tidy up cables, that kind of thing, while I’m onstage with the LX team, focusing lanterns. There are 98 lanterns in total, so that all takes a few hours. The lighting states are saved to a disc, so after we’ve focused I run through the states, tweaking as necessary.

By this point, it’s around 5.30pm, and the cast are starting to arrive. They have a walk round the set, and backstage, to acquaint themselves with where everything is, and how the auditorium looks and sounds. This is also the time when they, forgetting or not quite comprehending the fact that I’ve been working continually onstage all day, ask me about tickets or local amenities or whether I can fax their tax return to their accountant.

Finally, at 7.30pm (usually), the show starts. I’ll watch from the front, to make sure it looks OK, and then make any adjustments to the lighting the next afternoon. It also means I can let the cast know how it sounds, and whether they need to project more or pull it back a bit.

Mondays are by far the most demanding day, and if anything goes awry – old lanterns not working, difficult access from the dock to the stage, crew being stupid or inexperienced or both – then I can be working on things right up until the moment we open the house.

Often, on the first night, the ‘Friends of the theatre’ have a post-show event in the dress circle bar, which means a free drink and the experience of opening the door from backstage to a cluster of blank faces, disappointed that you aren’t someone they recognise. Then, the chairman of the Friends gives a speech, praising the cast for their hard work over the last couple of hours. Mind you, the flipside of being ignored is that no one’s waiting with a picture of me in a funny outfit taken 20 years ago to be autographed.

And that’s the show up, then. Rest of the time, I’m the point of contact for everyone who has a question, and for the cast regarding almost everything to do with their working day; this covers anything from liaising between them and the marketing department in the setting up of interviews to letting them know how many people are in for a performance. I’ll fix anything that’s causing a problem or acting up in the show (including fellow cast members, if need be!), and if a bulb’s blown or a tap’s leaking in their dressing room, I’ll get that sorted too. With the exception of day-to-day costume issues, which are overseen by our Wardrobe Mistress, everything comes through me. It can make for long, sometimes frustrating, days, but if you have a good company, who are well behaved and generally happy, helpful and sociable, as I’m thrilled to say is the case at the moment, then it can be quite fun.

And on Saturday, the moment the curtain comes down, we chuck it all in the lorry, ready to start again.

IN SUMMARY: Yeah, well, this is as interesting as I get right now.

A few lines

A tiring week, this week. We were at a theatre that’s been dark for the best part of two years, and I think it’s fair to say that it wasn’t really in the “receive position” for us [Insert Own Joke Here]. Monday (get-in day) was l-o-o-o-o-n-g and difficult. Thrillingly, though, the show’s been playing to full houses, which makes it seem as though there’s some point to it all.

We’re also past the halfway stage of the tour, so a game of “Murder” has been instigated. It’s done the trick of giving everyone a different focus and shaking things up a bit, but also means everyone is looking shifty and paranoid. Mind you, I’ve worked on shows where we didn’t need to fabricate that.

I managed to catch Question Time and was disappointed that Griffin wasn’t subjected to a proper interrogation. There was far too much posturing and hysteria, and, while that might be understandable, it didn’t really serve to expose his inadequacies. A missed opportunity.

Next week is a week off, and I must try and resist the urge to sit in my pants in front of the iPlayer for the entire seven days. Maybe five, give me that.

Where the buffalo roam

This week’s digs are simply somebody’s spare room. I’ve stayed in worse, but after a few weeks of this now I’m itching for my own – by which I mean an anonymous – space. The bed is a single, very springy mattress, but the get-in at the theatre was so tiring that I haven’t noticed that too much. What’s harder to ignore is the wiry pubic hairs, conspicuous on the bathroom floor. That, and the terrible smell of cat-shit focused around the kitchen, which is the reason, I assume, for the superabundance of Glade plug-ins, pumping out a continuous and sickly fug of poison, making the place seem like something from the set of Se7en*.

Oh, and this? On the wall?

Morning!

Mind you, the alternative is this.

Mwah!

There is no place like somebody else’s home.

*That’s 7even. I mean, Seven, even.

What?! Are you crazy?

Right.

Wrong.

Can I have a receipt? – UPDATE!

She’d seemed a cultured woman. She goes to the theatre, there are lots of respectable books in the flat, she listens to Radio 3. But I had to get out of there quickly this morning. Why? Because this was oozing through the entire property. What was? This:

I’m so sorry, but you had only 30 seconds at worst. I had at least half an hour, before I got to the front door, my torn and bloodied hands scrabbling at the handle.

It’s no way to end the week. And not a dream-catcher in sight.

Can I have a receipt?

This week, I’m living with a pensioner. It’s a peculiar state of affairs, as a man in his mid-thirties, to be sharing the home of a woman forty years my senior, who I hadn’t met before this weekend; after all, if I’d wanted to be in a Joe Orton play, I’d have auditioned for one. But that’s the theatre digs list for you.

The whole notion of digs is fraught with competing interests. Speaking as the visitor, you’re looking for the ideal combination of anonymity (the ability to come and go as you please without having to engage in lengthy conversation), private and modern conveniences (a bathroom of your own, say, with working appliances – for me, a shower is purely utilitarian and of limited value as an ornament), and keenly priced (the Equity touring allowance doesn’t stretch to long stays in major hotel chains. Nor short stays in minor ones, come to that).

People put themselves on the digs lists for all sorts of reasons; evidently, the main one is to make some money from a room/flat/outhouse that would otherwise be lying empty. And it’s funny how overriding a concern the filthy lucre can be, as I’ve met plenty of landlords and landladies who like that part of the arrangement but are less keen on the actual ‘having someone else in their property’-bit. Mind you, John Cleese noticed that thirty-five years ago, and made something of it, so it’s hardly a novel observation.

But there are people who do it for other, or, at least, complementary, reasons: I’ve stayed in the granny-flat of a landlady’s late mother, who worked at the local theatre, so being on the digs list was a fitting way of finding a use for a now empty annex; with people who work in other branches of the arts, who use it as a way to meet other interesting, like-minded types; with a hearty Christian, who provided the best breakfast I’ve ever had from guest accommodation, and who saw something of a vocation in putting people up for the night. They all wanted paying, of course, but there wasn’t the usual avaricious glint in their eyes, and they actually exhibited what appeared to be genuine concern about about my comfort.

A typical view from the bed

But it is an odd arrangement. My current landlady has been very good about stating explicitly that I have free reign in the house: that I can use the kitchen to cook whatever I like, that I can sit in the living room or go into the garden, that I can, to all extents and purposes, treat it like my home (this isn’t always a given: once, in digs in Watford, I cooked a meal, washed up and put everything away. The next day, the set of pans I’d used had vanished from the kitchen, replaced by something from Steptoe’s yard). But, it’s not my home, it’s hers, and she’s living in it. Coming in, after the show at night, it would be lovely to make a cup of tea, slouch into the sofa and watch an old, fourth-time-round repeat of Never Mind The Buzzcocks (well, you know what I mean). But as this would mean taking the remote from her hand, switching over from Midsomer Murders and turning the volume down 65 notches, I’m not inclined to.

I bought a loaf at the start of the week to make sandwiches. I put it on the side in the kitchen. Next day, it was in its own plastic box, on a tray, with a knife and plate, all of which was covered by a tea towel. That’s the infuriating thing about digs – you’re never left truly alone. Though I’m sure she thought she was being in some way helpful, it meant that, even in the simple act of taking and replacing the loaf from the box, I no longer had autonomy over the simple act of making a sandwich – she had become part of it. And when you’re already spending the majority of the week in the intense bubble of the company of people you’re touring with, being robbed of your tiny amount of personal time and space – the time in which you make a sandwich and dream your dreams – is exhausting.

IN SUMMARY: £25 a night. £25!

Local Dancing for Local People

Ah, the provincial gay club. I went out in Cheltenham last night, which is not a sentence I expect to write very often. The club sat, of course, at the far end of the high street, distinct and separate from the mainstream clubs and bars; this increasingly-lonely walk to the outskirts is always the first marker of a visit to a small-town deviant venue. Opening the front door, we were gazed at in surprise by the two women on the front desk, who both looked and sounded like the kind of figures you normally see scrabbling in the rubble of a post-apocalyptic wasteland in a dystopian SF film. It was a relief when they accepted our money as a means of admittance, rather than our wristwatches, or water, or meat. Their perplexity at the arrival of three people they’d never seen before was palpable, which is, of course, the other marker.

Once inside, what surprised was that the majority of those there were young lesbians, rather than the more-usual, wall-hugging men of a certain age and level of quiet desperation. What then appalled was that none of them could dance, choosing instead to shuffle morosely at, at best, half speed, while filling as much of the surrounding area as possible. This might have been less noticeable if the woman choosing the music on the laptop near the door (not, certainly not, please note, the DJ) hadn’t been careering inexpertly from S Club 7 to House of Pain to Queen to PJ & Duncan, like somebody who had got up late for their GCSE DJ practical exam, despite not having done even the most rudimentary revision, like, oh, I don’t know… actually listening to any music before. Any music. Ever.

Add to that an odd lanky chap dressed like Mark Curry’s younger brother who was grinding himself up against the back of anyone who’d let him, and someone else who’d stepped straight out of one of those X-Factor scene-setting montages of auditionees, who danced like someone pastiching Weird Al Yankovic’s parody of Michael Jackson, and you have the archetypal touring night out.

I hope that doesn’t sound like a cynical metropolitan sneer. I’m neither a city slicker nor a scene queen, but it always comes as a surprise how small-town so much of this country is, and the gay scene in a typical English town is, inevitably, even more so. Touring often takes you to places that you wouldn’t otherwise visit, and certainly places that you wouldn’t think of going out socially. I grew up in a couple of cities – small cities, but cities nonetheless – and they felt pretty confined at the time. To be touring the country twenty years on and coming across places that have that same rarified, claustrophobic feeling… I suppose there is a kind of ‘there but for the grace of God…’. And maybe that says more about me than the place itself. Nonetheless, I’m happy to be moving on. To Guildford.

IN SUMMARY: Taxi!

Like no business I know

I’m on tour, for the first time in years. This means the varying pleasures of digs or guest houses, not eating enough fruit or veg, and taking a moment to remember what part of the map you should be looking at when watching the weather forecast in the morning.

Staying in small-scale accommodation in this country is where I learnt about life – not in any sexual coming-of-age way, lying in anticipation in a room across the landing from the proprietors’ toned and wayward son or anything remotely similar. No, rather in meeting the kind of people who are prepared to take money from strangers but can evidently barely tolerate having them under their roof.

I’ve stayed in the house of a giant woman who leant casually against the top of the doorframe and DEMANDED that we drink her home-made lemonade, with a retired colonel whose wife was holding a Young Wives meeting when we arrived and whose breakfast room was furnished liberally with royal memorabilia (plates, tankards, place mats, cutlery, tea-cosy, spoon rest…) and with a couple who demanded I move the van from the front drive, to prevent it sinking into it, and who stipulated that I turn the steering wheel as I reversed to avoid scuffing the tarmac. I’ve slept in rooms that were named, disconcertingly, after the owners’ departed adult children (and also a ‘Rumpus Room’), that contained anything from one to five individual single beds, windows you either can’t open or can’t shut, televisions that always omit at least two terrestrial channels, and sheets that hadn’t been cleaned since Vatican II.

Oh, what a beautiful morning.

I’ve gone from being blissfully asleep to violently conscious at the foot of my bed on three occasions due to fire alarms going off in the middle of the night: twice above a pub in Bury, which was only terminated by the landlord going to the room next to mine, kicking the door and shouting “Malcolm! MALCOLM! WAKE UP!!!” continuously for ten minutes, and once in Huddersfield, where I joined the cast of Where The Heart Is on the pavement, all of us in our pyjamas, waiting for the fire engines, which was, I’m sure you’ll understand, an unusual start to the day.

I’ve seen more wickerwork and cheap porcelain than is good for anyone on a regular basis, and eaten more limp toast and grey scrambled egg than I care to remember. Noticing an individual, foil-wrapped portion of butter can still bring me out in a terrible rash.

Right now, I’m staying in a small guest house that advertised wi-fi in every room, but which I find impossible to access, which proves that, while the surface details may change with the times, the underlying failure and disappointment doesn’t.

IN SUMMARY: Travelling through the country is so thrilling.