Hot on the heels of the first heatwave, a second blistering
warm front engulfed Bristol over the weekend and my cats and kittens gathered
in the living room to meow and mewl their displeasure. I sympathised with the little fellows, but I
am not a God (I don’t think) and I have no control over global atmospheric
pressure systems. I patiently explained
this to the grumpy felines, using diagrams, flip charts, and a squeaky toy
mouse, and then I tried to leave to get on with my day. But the militant cat contingent had sneakily
locked the door (or it had got stuck again – I’m open to all explanations) and
I was stuck in there for hours, watching the tennis and printing off copies of
the script. The script is 136
pages. I needed to print at least five
copies. It was a fierce battle between me
and my Little Epic Theatre needs and my temperamental, aging HP Photosmart
All-in-One Printer. That was Saturday. I
emerged on Sunday morning covered in cat scratches and ink, and with roughly
700 sheets of ripped and crumpled paper, printed on at all angles and colours
with random bits of text from the script.
I have no idea who won the tennis.
 |
| My state-of-the-art printer. |
A few weeks earlier Naomi and I had posted on Theatre
Bristol a call out for actors to come along to the read through. Well, first we had bulk emailed just about
every actor we know, but just about every single one of them said they were
busy rehearsing for their shows at the Edinburgh Fringe, which is nice for them
but a bit inconsiderate for us. Fine, we
wrote back, we’ll make do without you.
Fine, they replied, you do that.
We will, we responded. Good, they
said. Fine, we said. Okay then, they said. I think they just wanted to have the last
word. A few excellent actors were
available and they came along and they were much much much much much better
than the selfish actors who selfishly couldn’t make it for selfish reasons. We have a Byzantine complicated arrangement
with the Cross Hands pub in Fishponds to use their rather amazing upstairs room
for readthroughs and rehearsals (and our debut performances) but we found out
on the Friday that we couldn’t use the room until an hour later than we’d told
everybody to assemble because the room was being used by amateur wrestlers
and/or Satanists. Hey, everybody’s got
to have a hobby. I fired off a quick
email to let everyone know the time change because I’m so on top of things and
I have now finally mastered using the email app on my Windows phone… which is surely
one for the plus column on the “Is Vince a Living Deity?” list. Unfortunately, half the people didn’t receive
the email because I’m rubbish at this kind of thing, and they got there an hour
early and they sat in the baking sun, cursing my name. I think some of them may have wandered
upstairs to watch the Satanist wrestling match.
I think some of them may have actually joined in.
Two young people were in the room when I finally got there,
looking rugged and intelligent, struggling to carry 700 sheets of crumpled
script and a variety box of biscuits.
These young actors had been there since 2pm, and they had responded to
the Theatre Bristol advert that we’d completely forgotten about. Oops. The actors are named Owen and Sam and
they are terrific. Owen found that he
didn’t have page four of the script (I’ve just looked, and he definitely needed
page four, which is one of the best pages of the script), and that he could
barely read the printing on many of the other pages. Sorry, Owen.
Sam and Owen left after reading Scene Three, which they assured us was
no judgement on the play. They appeared
out of nowhere and then they left suddenly, like brilliant comets blazing
through the dark skies. I like to imagine they do this often, turning up out of
the blue at random script reads across the lands. Phantom actors who haunt hot rooms. Perhaps they had been conjured up by the
wrestling Satanists.
The script read went well, with lots of laughter. We were lucky to have a talented group of
actors including Jasmine, Pameli, Dan (invaluable as always), Janet and Yvette
who had popped in from Canada. We timed
the read through - It came in at two hours twenty-six minutes. That’s longer than The Godfather. And I can’t sit through The Godfather in one go without needing spaghetti. We need to cut, said a worried looking
Naomi. Yeah, I said, but let’s give that
job to a director who can look at the material dispassionately – we’re too
close to it. Every single director in
the room loudly and firmly disagreed with me, saying that was a terrible idea –
we have to cut the script by at least twenty-six minutes, and then give it to a
director. Everybody stared at me. I’ll get my coat, I said, and left. I fancied some spaghetti.
