Wrestling with the Devil

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.