So, here we are: Chris is sharing my dressing room. We have never actually been in a show together and here we are sharing a dressing room, MY dressinig room! We giggle and muck around and enjoy having each other there. He and Bartelt are two of the most important men in my life. There aren't very many important men in my life, sadly, and I am so happy to have them here together. Bartelt takes a terrible photo of Chris and asks what it is worth to Chris for him not to put it on Facebook. Chris delves into his pocket and pulls out the change: "Four quid." Bartelt crosses the room and takes it. Chris was joking; Bartelt is not. They don't know each other at all well, but excellently Bartelt is not my boyfriend: I am not about to start explaining him to Chris – that would be a life's work, anyway.
Chris and I met when I moved from an horrendous living situation at Birmingham University to a better one at the beginning of the January term of our first year. He was in the hall of residence and, although I don't remember seeing him for the first time, both of us remember the first couple of occasions that we spoke properly. One was walking from our Hall on the way to watch some outdoor Shakespeare (the kind of work I really want to get at the moment, must focus on it: not to self). We were carrying various things for a picnic and, as we walked down the hill, we talked about how we wanted to write. Chris has gone on to do exactly that and I... well, that's a whole other book. Yes I have written a show the script of which will be stored at the British Library in perpetuity by virtue of it having been performed professionally, so that's something. But Chris makes his living from writing. Different lives, different journeys and all that, but I can't help thinking that.... well, one of us is successful and the other one is me.
The other memory I have is when I walked into the Midlands Arts Centre and a group of these new friends I'd made were sitting student-wise, gagglish on the floor in their flowery waistcoats and purple berrets (maybe that's just Chris) and I was upon them, banging on, luckily entertaining enough to get away with it. I was funny, but Chris and I were disagreeing about one political issue or another, and it went on, and still goes on even now.
It is flattering that after nearly 400 years of being single, people still ask me, in amazement, why I am single. Often I want to reply, “More troublingly, how on earth are you in a relationship?” but I try not to. And often my friends and family will tell me that it's because I'm very scary for men. Oh, yawn! I actually think that's hocum, I'm not scary, I'm just forthright and take no prisoners. I have not been brought up to believe that the opinion of a man is worth 1.267 of the opinion of a woman, a pie-eyed standpoint, in my opinion, but one which seems to prevail to this day, though secretly. It is the proportion which dare not speak its name. By even mentioning it I am ruling myself out of male attention right there, but these days I have finally understood that I have nothing to lose: despite my legendary arse nd a rack which seems to grow proportionally more than my extending girth and my propensity to wear clothes which are basically too tight for me, there is something about me which is deeply undesirable to men. I never did have anything to lose, of course, unapproachable as I always have been, but I have largely given up trying to seduce men at all these days – it's pointless.
Back at university, though, I'd not yet worked this out. I thought there was some formula I might learn to become sexually attractive and worth, well, buying a drink for, basically. Growing up with no father and a brother who couldn't stand me it does not take Mr Freud to work out that finding male friends who actually liked my company was terribly important.
And this Chris character was well up for a good debate; I could savage his argument and he still appeared to seek out my company. What is more, in answer to the question from When Harry Met Sally, this was without either of us every fancying the other. A true friendship between a man and a woman.
Very soon I am out and into the bar. They have sold about 250 tickets, not enough as far as I'm concerned, but not a disaster. There are people from so many parts of my life, family, friends I've not seen for 20 years... and my mother and brother. I knew Mum would come, but I wondered about Charlie. I am so pleased he's here, yet I feel guilty that I am doing this. This is my story, but it is very close to his story and I hope, well, so much, but I hope no one forgets him as I do my show, as my mother is seen as the primary griever, as Roger – who stands out like a tall Congolese man at a theatre in Bury St Edmunds – is hugged and introduced to various people, I want the bar to know that Charles and Kate were so close.... so close there was no one who could come between them.
The audience go in. I pop to the loo, look in the mirror: what am I doing? Again, I am taken by the audacity of this. I feel as if I have no right to speak, but the tickets have been sold and the only way to get through this is to do the performance – I have the rest of my life to regret it.
I get on stage through one of the boxes by the stage. The couple in there are not known to me. At the end they'll be the first people I speak to, she'll tell me how it was a birthday present for him, I'll say that’s an interesting gift, and they'll agree that it was a great gift, they'll say they didn't know much about the show, that they were surprised to realised that Kate really was my sister and she really was murdered.
As I step onto the stage, the audience starts to see me, the lights start to go down in the auditorium and there is a clap here and there, quickly, it becomes applause. This only ever happens at the beginning of shows where lots of people know me. It is a strange sensation: it feels like it is saying, whatever happens now, Rebecca, we respect your attempt. But I do not want it to be an attempt; I want it to be interesting, well-performed, thought-provoking art. I love to be supported, but I want to make my mother and brother, my so-nearly-present-I-wish-I-could-sense-him-father proud; I want it to be a show which would drive my sister wild with jealousy.
The stage lights come up, I look into the auditorium, somehow bigger with the glare of the lights, a darkness which I suspect spreads out beyond the horizon. I am home.
Tuesday 20 September 2011
Thursday 15 September 2011
Celebrititis and all that
And here we are, Chris and me, in the Theatre Royal, Bury St Edmunds - we were last here together in our early twenties to see a show. Now we are the show. And I am hoping and praying I’m not about to dent his fantastic career by being crap tonight. He looks at me with such love that I can’t even mention my fear, and being associated with me, however poor I am, will not make any difference to his career, I remind myself vigorously. To quote a production by the inestimable Scene & Heard Theatre Company, "I've got to stop thinking I'm all that,"... but I mind what he thinks.
Bartelt, being human, falls in love on the spot with the theatre. We both take endless photos, one of which is of Bartelt and is rather good, even though I do say so myself. Another one is of the auditorium, and it is now the background on my desktop, which I feel is exactly right: the theatre is a remarkable part of my background. I expect it to be one of the last things I see as my mind flashes before me when I am hit by a truck (I am far too impatient when it comes to crossing the road) or stabbed (I believe in challenging difficult behaviour when and where I see it). It'll be interesting to know whether it is the far more familiar view from the stalls or the extraordinary view from the stage, which I never really thought I would attain as a professional actor.
We do a little bit of a warm up/rehearsal, but the acoustic is great and we're well into the tour, so it's quick. Our dressing room has natural light and a shower and everything. It's so civilised. Yes, I can only see this place through rose-tinted spectacles. I love every cranny.
Chris and I discuss the second half of the show, which we have met a few weeks before to thrash out. He took me to a nice restaurant. I, of course, had bags upon bags. I think my average amount of Bags With Me At Any Given Time must be 2.3, but that day I was between dates on the tour and so I'm sure I had more than that. We were sat next to a grandmother, daughter and granddaughter. A lovely thing, you'd've thought, all to have lunch together, but nothing was quite right and they didn't seem to be having any fun. At all. We were. When they finally left, Chris pointed out a Bently which was driving away. Apparently it had been waiting there for quite a while and they had all got into it. Obviously money really can't buy happiness... but at least a chauffeur dives you and your misery around.
They were very distracting – I have a real failing for other people's misery – and we had been, desperately, to stay on the matter at hand, a task that has become so hard for us in our old age that virtually the first thing we do when we sit down together is get out a paper napkin to make notes on, so we create a crazy spider diagram of where we ought to have gone conversationally, and hope we have enough time to cover it. We always run out of time.
I am grateful that our friendship has not turned to the dust of silence over the years, but has rejuvenated itself. Luck, luck, luck, and the fact that I'm very delightful and understanding that the demands are many when you are very successful, like Chris, with a wife and children to whom you are devoted. He does not have the diagonally-sleeping freedom of moi, he is tied to sundry things he loves. Am I jealous? Yes. Do I begrudge him it all? No. Is that in part because I can tell him I'm jealous and he gets it? Yes. Ours is a close friendship of nearly 20 years which proves that a deal of honesty, like that top-quality emulstion wall paint the expense of which you simply cannot justify, goes further than you'd think.
And in our dressing room we run through the format of the second half. Entertainingly enough he is going to be interviewing me. For the record, when I asked him to do it to help ensure we had decent numbers in Bury St Edmunds he said yes immediately. We agreed very easily on the format, but still, it's... surreal and somewhat absurd.
Well, I suppose it's only absurd because of contemporary Britain's celebretitis. The obsession with celebrity is nothing new – what were the royals in the sixteenth century, putting aside their direct line to god, other than very famous, rich, powerful types. The differences today are that many celebrities aren't that rich and the amount of media which we purchase and/or consume is biiiiiiig. People who like standup, who watch The Thick Of It, panel games, Skins, they may well be familiar with Chris, but the many I know, the young man I met (He looked 14 then, looks like a rather haggered 18-year-old now) was interesting to me because he was interested in politics, the arts, he made me laugh etc etc. None of that has changed. His politics have changed to a certain extent, as I'm sure mine have, but not that change we are meant to experience as we approach 40: we're not... Tories... yet. But he is interesting to me because of his mind, and sometimes because of his long, pointy shoes, but I understand that's a fashion thing. He is interesting to me as a father, a husband, a good friend of our other good friends, he is a brother, a son, he has an eclectic taste in music and the kind of encyclopaedic memory I refer to, I fear offensively, as an autistic boy-brain (I should point out that I envy him his memory in a way I cannot even put down on paper, so that name is not meant as any kind of a denigration. In fact, the asperger's and autistic friends I have send me wild with their ability to name actors/directors/cinematographers from films, kinds of nerine, types of red wine, political events, capital cities, etc).
By this stage we have both had interesting stuff happen to us, but I don't think either of us would want to have to say who has had the more interesting life. I suspect mine has been rather more off-the-scale for death, depression and bad times than has his; in fact, who am I trying to kid? I know this is the case. He has an ability to cope which I simply do not possess and, as he has pointed out to me, I have been obsessed with loss the whole time he has known me – it might be argued that I deal with heartbreak even worse than I deal with actual concrete definitive death. Chris has worked very hard, learning to treat the imposters of success and failure just the same. He has become a father, he's had the troubles we all have. But what is curious to us is that he is more interesting to people because he is famous. He's also funny - mostly - about lighter things than I seem to manage. But it is his mere well-knownness is the thing which may tempt people to this show tonight.
And yet, the lesson Bartelt and I have learnt is that there are as many fascinating stories as there are people; it doesn't matter whether they are famous. We have been told so many extraordinary things by people we will probably never even see again, it has nothing to do with money or fame, whether you consider yourself a orator or not: you have a story; it is compelling.
I'm sorry – I seem to have digressed. You can blame that on Chris.
Bartelt, being human, falls in love on the spot with the theatre. We both take endless photos, one of which is of Bartelt and is rather good, even though I do say so myself. Another one is of the auditorium, and it is now the background on my desktop, which I feel is exactly right: the theatre is a remarkable part of my background. I expect it to be one of the last things I see as my mind flashes before me when I am hit by a truck (I am far too impatient when it comes to crossing the road) or stabbed (I believe in challenging difficult behaviour when and where I see it). It'll be interesting to know whether it is the far more familiar view from the stalls or the extraordinary view from the stage, which I never really thought I would attain as a professional actor.
We do a little bit of a warm up/rehearsal, but the acoustic is great and we're well into the tour, so it's quick. Our dressing room has natural light and a shower and everything. It's so civilised. Yes, I can only see this place through rose-tinted spectacles. I love every cranny.
Chris and I discuss the second half of the show, which we have met a few weeks before to thrash out. He took me to a nice restaurant. I, of course, had bags upon bags. I think my average amount of Bags With Me At Any Given Time must be 2.3, but that day I was between dates on the tour and so I'm sure I had more than that. We were sat next to a grandmother, daughter and granddaughter. A lovely thing, you'd've thought, all to have lunch together, but nothing was quite right and they didn't seem to be having any fun. At all. We were. When they finally left, Chris pointed out a Bently which was driving away. Apparently it had been waiting there for quite a while and they had all got into it. Obviously money really can't buy happiness... but at least a chauffeur dives you and your misery around.
They were very distracting – I have a real failing for other people's misery – and we had been, desperately, to stay on the matter at hand, a task that has become so hard for us in our old age that virtually the first thing we do when we sit down together is get out a paper napkin to make notes on, so we create a crazy spider diagram of where we ought to have gone conversationally, and hope we have enough time to cover it. We always run out of time.
I am grateful that our friendship has not turned to the dust of silence over the years, but has rejuvenated itself. Luck, luck, luck, and the fact that I'm very delightful and understanding that the demands are many when you are very successful, like Chris, with a wife and children to whom you are devoted. He does not have the diagonally-sleeping freedom of moi, he is tied to sundry things he loves. Am I jealous? Yes. Do I begrudge him it all? No. Is that in part because I can tell him I'm jealous and he gets it? Yes. Ours is a close friendship of nearly 20 years which proves that a deal of honesty, like that top-quality emulstion wall paint the expense of which you simply cannot justify, goes further than you'd think.
And in our dressing room we run through the format of the second half. Entertainingly enough he is going to be interviewing me. For the record, when I asked him to do it to help ensure we had decent numbers in Bury St Edmunds he said yes immediately. We agreed very easily on the format, but still, it's... surreal and somewhat absurd.
Well, I suppose it's only absurd because of contemporary Britain's celebretitis. The obsession with celebrity is nothing new – what were the royals in the sixteenth century, putting aside their direct line to god, other than very famous, rich, powerful types. The differences today are that many celebrities aren't that rich and the amount of media which we purchase and/or consume is biiiiiiig. People who like standup, who watch The Thick Of It, panel games, Skins, they may well be familiar with Chris, but the many I know, the young man I met (He looked 14 then, looks like a rather haggered 18-year-old now) was interesting to me because he was interested in politics, the arts, he made me laugh etc etc. None of that has changed. His politics have changed to a certain extent, as I'm sure mine have, but not that change we are meant to experience as we approach 40: we're not... Tories... yet. But he is interesting to me because of his mind, and sometimes because of his long, pointy shoes, but I understand that's a fashion thing. He is interesting to me as a father, a husband, a good friend of our other good friends, he is a brother, a son, he has an eclectic taste in music and the kind of encyclopaedic memory I refer to, I fear offensively, as an autistic boy-brain (I should point out that I envy him his memory in a way I cannot even put down on paper, so that name is not meant as any kind of a denigration. In fact, the asperger's and autistic friends I have send me wild with their ability to name actors/directors/cinematographers from films, kinds of nerine, types of red wine, political events, capital cities, etc).
By this stage we have both had interesting stuff happen to us, but I don't think either of us would want to have to say who has had the more interesting life. I suspect mine has been rather more off-the-scale for death, depression and bad times than has his; in fact, who am I trying to kid? I know this is the case. He has an ability to cope which I simply do not possess and, as he has pointed out to me, I have been obsessed with loss the whole time he has known me – it might be argued that I deal with heartbreak even worse than I deal with actual concrete definitive death. Chris has worked very hard, learning to treat the imposters of success and failure just the same. He has become a father, he's had the troubles we all have. But what is curious to us is that he is more interesting to people because he is famous. He's also funny - mostly - about lighter things than I seem to manage. But it is his mere well-knownness is the thing which may tempt people to this show tonight.
And yet, the lesson Bartelt and I have learnt is that there are as many fascinating stories as there are people; it doesn't matter whether they are famous. We have been told so many extraordinary things by people we will probably never even see again, it has nothing to do with money or fame, whether you consider yourself a orator or not: you have a story; it is compelling.
I'm sorry – I seem to have digressed. You can blame that on Chris.
Sunday 11 September 2011
That gem of a Georgian playhouse
It had been back in September that I went to see my friend Alys in a show at the Theatre Royal Bury St Edmunds. We had all gone to the pub afterwards and I'd met Abi, her director. We knew some people in common, had been at the same venue at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe as students about 678 years ago, we talked a lot. Luckily for me, Alys had told Abi lots about the show and when I said I really wanted to bring it to the Theatre Royal Bury St Edmunds, Abi suggested I send some stuff, and send it fast. They had nearly confirmed the spring season and there wasn't much space left, but she would see what she could do. I'd sent the information off to her and it turned out that they had one date left, which they offered us: 30 April 2011.
Mum took all three of us as children to the theatre, to concerts. I think I probably got to see far more theatre than many of my friends because Mum wanted someone to go with and as soon as any of us showed willing for one adult activity (not Adult activity) or another, we would be taken along. And I lived in a small village near Bury St Edmunds, which meant that my local theatre was Bury St Edmunds Theatre Royal, a 350-seater, proscenium arch gem of a Georgian playhouse. Anyone who's ever performed there longs to go back: it has an intimacy which is rare, which must stem from the traditional layout combined with its utter miniaturity.
As a child I saw Cheek By Jowl, the Oxford Playhouse and endless other wonderful theatre companies, over and over again doing their extraordinary, ground-breaking things. From the back of the Gods, so just over arm's-reach, I saw Stephane Grappelli, and from the box next to the stage, my 12th birthday party allowed us to see The Flying Pickets: my first gig! I was as wild then as I am now: sometimes I like to go without shoes and sometimes I take sugar in my coffee, sometimes I don't. Seriously wild.
Of course, it didn't occur to me that this was not normal fare, that not every small town in England didn't have its own intimate, brilliant theatre. I knew it wasn't easy financially – by the 80s, the theatre was owned by the National Trust and so was not the commercial enterprise that many theatres have to be, and I also knew that the theatre had been saved from being a barrel store for the Greene King Brewery in the 60s. I knew this because Stanley Vincent, my father's uncle, had been a key member of the committee to do this. But I had no idea just how lucky we were and in Stephen, the artistic director, who programmed in a wonderful way, seemingly specifically for me.
And so, here we are, 30 April 2011. I walk onto the stage for the first time since performing here with my school friends. I am swept away with excitement, and this is just the tech, where Bartelt talks to the technical team and I swan around, singing to warm up my voice, pacing the stage, taking photos. Tonight this will be my stage… it’s surreal. I wonder whether I am really up to this task: all these people, so many of whom I’ve known all my life, who knew my sister, friends of my parents: not just my mother, my father as well. The terrible spectre of who on earth I’m thinking I am returns… it’s been a while, but it’s back now. Bartelt’s here, he’s confident, the team are lovely, the theatre have taken the punt: Abi and Colin have been so supportive... I am about to let them all down, spectacularly. And Chris, my best mate from university, who's coming to do the second half of the evening with me just out of the kindness of his heart, I’m about to let him down too.
We've done lots of aftershow talks with this show, formal ones, as well as an informal one after every single show. The plan is a chat with the two of us, him asking me questions. He rocks up halfway through the tech, we hug, he greets Bartelt, the technical team. He’s in one of his characteristically flowery shirts. In the end I have nothing to lose, no reputation, but this chap is a bit famous and I could be about to let him down enormously.
It doesn’t compare to him giving us a quote for the Edinburgh show, though, for sheer, vertiginous worry: he gave it to us before he’d seen the show, and it was 16 August when he saw it, a good two weeks in. I remember so clearly, him leaving the theatre, walking towards me, saying that was alright,
“Was it?”
“Yes.” Awkward, relieved laughter on both parts. We embrace, and stand back from each other. Chris knew Kate, we’d all got very drunk on ouzo together with Gav over a game of contract whist, he and I had ended up sliding down the stairs quite a long way, giggling, on our way to bring in my sister's asthma medication from the car, too drunk to do ourselves any harm, that kind of thing.
“The first ten minutes were strange, because it was you but not you, it was your story, but not you telling it… then I got used to it. I…” he breaks down in tears and I hug him hard.
He’s much taller than me, so, as he folds to hug me, I see a woman standing behind him, holding pen and paper for his autograph. Edinburgh is odd.
And here we are, in the Theatre Royal Bury St Edmunds, were last here together in our early twenties to see a show. Now we are the show. And I am hoping and praying I’m not about to dent his fantastic career by being crap tonight. He looks at me with such love that I can’t even mention my fear, and being associated with me, however poor I am, will not make any difference to his career, I remind myself vigorously. To quote a production by the inestimable Scene & Heard Theatre Company where children write the plays and adults produce and perform them: “I've got to stop thinking I'm all that.”… But I mind what he thinks. Oh, dammit, I'm getting nervous.
Mum took all three of us as children to the theatre, to concerts. I think I probably got to see far more theatre than many of my friends because Mum wanted someone to go with and as soon as any of us showed willing for one adult activity (not Adult activity) or another, we would be taken along. And I lived in a small village near Bury St Edmunds, which meant that my local theatre was Bury St Edmunds Theatre Royal, a 350-seater, proscenium arch gem of a Georgian playhouse. Anyone who's ever performed there longs to go back: it has an intimacy which is rare, which must stem from the traditional layout combined with its utter miniaturity.
As a child I saw Cheek By Jowl, the Oxford Playhouse and endless other wonderful theatre companies, over and over again doing their extraordinary, ground-breaking things. From the back of the Gods, so just over arm's-reach, I saw Stephane Grappelli, and from the box next to the stage, my 12th birthday party allowed us to see The Flying Pickets: my first gig! I was as wild then as I am now: sometimes I like to go without shoes and sometimes I take sugar in my coffee, sometimes I don't. Seriously wild.
Of course, it didn't occur to me that this was not normal fare, that not every small town in England didn't have its own intimate, brilliant theatre. I knew it wasn't easy financially – by the 80s, the theatre was owned by the National Trust and so was not the commercial enterprise that many theatres have to be, and I also knew that the theatre had been saved from being a barrel store for the Greene King Brewery in the 60s. I knew this because Stanley Vincent, my father's uncle, had been a key member of the committee to do this. But I had no idea just how lucky we were and in Stephen, the artistic director, who programmed in a wonderful way, seemingly specifically for me.
And so, here we are, 30 April 2011. I walk onto the stage for the first time since performing here with my school friends. I am swept away with excitement, and this is just the tech, where Bartelt talks to the technical team and I swan around, singing to warm up my voice, pacing the stage, taking photos. Tonight this will be my stage… it’s surreal. I wonder whether I am really up to this task: all these people, so many of whom I’ve known all my life, who knew my sister, friends of my parents: not just my mother, my father as well. The terrible spectre of who on earth I’m thinking I am returns… it’s been a while, but it’s back now. Bartelt’s here, he’s confident, the team are lovely, the theatre have taken the punt: Abi and Colin have been so supportive... I am about to let them all down, spectacularly. And Chris, my best mate from university, who's coming to do the second half of the evening with me just out of the kindness of his heart, I’m about to let him down too.
We've done lots of aftershow talks with this show, formal ones, as well as an informal one after every single show. The plan is a chat with the two of us, him asking me questions. He rocks up halfway through the tech, we hug, he greets Bartelt, the technical team. He’s in one of his characteristically flowery shirts. In the end I have nothing to lose, no reputation, but this chap is a bit famous and I could be about to let him down enormously.
It doesn’t compare to him giving us a quote for the Edinburgh show, though, for sheer, vertiginous worry: he gave it to us before he’d seen the show, and it was 16 August when he saw it, a good two weeks in. I remember so clearly, him leaving the theatre, walking towards me, saying that was alright,
“Was it?”
“Yes.” Awkward, relieved laughter on both parts. We embrace, and stand back from each other. Chris knew Kate, we’d all got very drunk on ouzo together with Gav over a game of contract whist, he and I had ended up sliding down the stairs quite a long way, giggling, on our way to bring in my sister's asthma medication from the car, too drunk to do ourselves any harm, that kind of thing.
“The first ten minutes were strange, because it was you but not you, it was your story, but not you telling it… then I got used to it. I…” he breaks down in tears and I hug him hard.
He’s much taller than me, so, as he folds to hug me, I see a woman standing behind him, holding pen and paper for his autograph. Edinburgh is odd.
And here we are, in the Theatre Royal Bury St Edmunds, were last here together in our early twenties to see a show. Now we are the show. And I am hoping and praying I’m not about to dent his fantastic career by being crap tonight. He looks at me with such love that I can’t even mention my fear, and being associated with me, however poor I am, will not make any difference to his career, I remind myself vigorously. To quote a production by the inestimable Scene & Heard Theatre Company where children write the plays and adults produce and perform them: “I've got to stop thinking I'm all that.”… But I mind what he thinks. Oh, dammit, I'm getting nervous.
Tuesday 6 September 2011
Lovely men in uniform, dancing
We are up and in front of the telly for the 9am start. Mother does not want to miss any of the coverage: she loves ceremony and we are all excited about... not being at work. We even have Christmas Day breakfast: bucks fizz, scrambled egg with smoked salmon, croissants, by 10.30 I'm pretty pissed. I've not had that much to drink, but, well, it is 10.30am. By this stage Bartelt is up too. He is also celebrating having finished his antibiotics. He has been on them, on-and-off, all year... that's nearly four months. He thinks the whole thing started with some kind of insect bite back in Hawaii in December. It would seem that his leg – maybe the bone – has been infected. His leg gets red, swollen, painful. He's been on various antibiotics and we are hoping that this time they have worked. Because of his cow heart valve he has to be really careful with infections; because of all the immuno-suppressants he is on for his arthritis he has to be really careful with infections; because, unbeknown to anyone, has has a Syndrome, he has to be careful with infections. I appreciate my health so much more since I've spent time with this bellicose-crystal-vase of a man.
The four of us are installed in front of the TV, around the breakfastpicnic. Actually, I am only here under sufferance. When I suggested we spend the day with mum and her sister Zee, mother had serious doubts: she has many memories of my laughing long and hard at royal ceremonies she very much enjoys and sees the point of. This spoils them for her, she says, telling me to shut up as she laughs at my stinging and pithy insights.
There are crowds of people and lines of police – this wedding happens a few months before the riots of August 2011 which will hit London and spread across the country, the military in the dress uniforms, horses, flags: all that stuff.
My father was one of the last people to do national service. There were lots of things he loved about it: skiing being one highlight, but Mum says he really loved the marching because it was almost like dancing, and he loved to dance. Mum is always reminded of Dad by this kind of ceremonial spectacular. She may be 71 – just – and so it's a pensioner reminiscing about her now-dead husband. But for me, for Zee, for anyone who knew him, he was 41 and she 38 when he died: young people. She was younger than I am now. I feel... helpless, as I always have, when she talks about him. Yes, it's fun to reminisce, but he is not here and he would have loved it.
I was too small to have been of any help to my mother, to anyone – least of all, I'm sure various therapists would agree – to my self. Losing a primary carer between the ages of five and seven is a bad thing, according to the specialists in child development: you are old enough to understand that someone is dead (as much as any of us can 'understand' death, and that ain't much) but your ego is not well enough developed for you to deal with it (whatever 'deal with it' might mean). I know that. I know the theory, but it is painful, still so painful, more than 30 years on not to be able to magic my father out of thin air for Mum, not for my own sake, but for my hers. I'm not a selfless person, but on this one matter I feel, if I could only get him back for one of us, it would be for my mother.
But we are very lucky, because we have Zee and Bartelt here. I am plugged into Twitter, watching my Republican mates and followees snipe and laugh at the whole thing, but I am in a room with Mum, who's loving it, Zee, who is a wedding-dress maker for a living, and so is looking forward to seeing the dress, and Bartelt, from Germany, that famous federal republic... but who seems to be turning into a royalist before our very eyes...
He asks lots of questions and we all answer about history, about the way our government works, what the uniforms mean, who the celebrity and less-well-known royals are, the marriages, divorces, the famous people coming in and out, our constitution, Oliver Cromwell, Charleses I and II and all that.
And, at some point before lunchtime, when we're into the second bottle of fizzy, he declares himself a royalist and he and mother exchange excited and secret glances. I think it's because he likes the men in uniforms, but he insists it's because he likes the choreography, precision and the way the car stops at exactly the right time and the right spot to the inch outside the cathedral. Well, I suppose he is German, like our royal family, I point out.
Thursday 1 September 2011
Boy but some people HATE this show
We arrive rather early at the Drill Hall, and so we have a coffee and I surf the net for information about Ehlors-Danlos. Bartelt has to endure me exclaiming every so often at something I have read: he does not want to read this himself but he does want to know. In the end, in order not to put too much stress on his cow valve, I tell him there is nothing bad, it's just I can't believe that all his many symptoms fall under one title. The thing which really brings it home to me is that people with type one EDS - and Bartelt is a classic type one – is that they are incapable of regulating their temperature. I think, but for once do not say, that this syndrome should really be called Princess-Pea syndrome.
They are most lovely at Lincoln and it's an extra-special day for them as they are opening their new studio space upstairs. It's a great little room and very flexible. We have the honour of being the first show in. Yet again we have a great technician whom Bartelt adores and whom I go off slightly when he starts barking with Bartelt. It's one thing to have my lizard barking, but to have someone I've just met so enchanted by the lizard that he joins in is quite another matter.
Before the show there are speeches – including one from me, for goodness sake. I'm sure I'm wonderfully eloquent and informative and I'm sure Simon – the Artistic Director – is wondering why on earth he asked me to say anything at all, as I go on and on and on.... I just LOVE and audience. And an audience with wine and nibbles in their hands, generosity in the souls (they are here for the new space, for the Lincoln Drill Hall, for the lovely staff, for art) and the opportunity to talk about the importance of spaces like this for the development of interesting, important work, well, I think they're going to have to hunt me down and catch me in a net to shut me up.
2011 has been an interesting year for The Arts in England. Due to the cuts to the Arts Council's funding their decision not to salami slice all the budgets they hand out, but to cut funding entirely to some – often long-standing – organisations has, by and large, been applauded. The effects have been, and will continue to be, enormous for many artists, organisations and communities. And I get the chance to talk today about how important are small spaces, like this new one at the Lincoln Drill Hall, for developing work.
Creative artists do not spring, fully-formed from their bedrooms. Work is involved. Sometimes it is, indeed, work you can develop in your own bedroom, but this is not usually the case for theatre. And our show is exactly the kind of work for which there is a thirst, these taboo matters are important and move people, on occasion slightly ease some isolation and grief. But this show will never be a huge West End hit: enormous producers will not flock to us wanting to tour it internationally because they can see they money they can make from it. We were lucky enough, it being a one-woman show and ours being a collaboration whose nature means we can live on very little. Also, Martin's company, Obviam Est, had a track-record in Switzerland which meant he was successful when applying for funding there. Although our company, Vital Digression, is new, the story itself and the way it has been made is so unusual that we have secured some UK funding, but we have put our own money and acres of our own time into this, fitting in the money-earning parts of our lives around it, neglecting friends, other parts of our career, our housplants. And why? Oh, I ask that very often. It's not because we think we will make our million with this, but because it is a story we feel passionately about, because it needs to be told, and because so many people who see the show ask us to continue. But other shows have more people working on them, a need to hire a piano, a glitter ball or a pantechnicon to get from A to B, and then on to C, D, E through to at least T. Just because our show is cheaper it doesn't mean it is more important than another show.
If public funding stops for the arts then innovative, edgy, speculative projects will not get made. I have no particular objection to X-Factor or We Will Rock You, but I do not want to find myself in a country where these are the only kinds of drama we produce or where we never hear from the brightest and best talent because there is no way they can afford to make art. It might be different if we were a struggling developing nation, but we are not. We have several kinds of pesto in the supermarkets and consider a fridge and a TV to be essential. Just because there is no way of quanitifying how much the economy benefits from the arts, which spread across the length and breadth of the country, people learning their craft from the ground up, does not mean we do not benefit, that the economy does not benefit. It's one of our last manufacturing industries; everyone says we don't make anything anymore. Yes we do! We make art and we're one of the foremost nations in the world for this commodity.
Oh dear, I have digressed. I didn't say all that at Lincoln, but I said a few things to that effect. Then some audience came up and joined some of the invited guests for the show.
When it comes to performing the show I have had to steal myself, so often, against the idea that everyone is utterly hating it – and me – and wanting to leave, wishing they'd not wasted the money and time on listening me go on and on and on. As I have performed it more and more I have grown in confidence, it's not that I no longer think people are hating it, but I have decided to remind myself that they have chosen to come to the show and I cannot control whether they like it or not. They have chosen to come. But tonight there are two women in the front row and I swear they are hating it. I have been wrong before, very wrong, but I am not tonight. They stay behind afterwards to write exhaustive explanations of why they hated it so much.
Strangely, this is fine. We ask people for their feedback. These two women really hate the fact it is about me, not Kate, and that I smile and laugh. They seem to think that Kate was a saint (have I mentioned, she was not? Must remember to blog about her lack of saintliness) and that my feelings are inappropriate. But we read these later.
For now, after the show, we sit with very old family friends and Michael, a doctor with whom I do communications skills training. Linda, the old family friend, has brought her husband and two grown-up children. Linda knew my dad, Linda used to babysit for us: she remembers Kate as a small thing, way back before I was even around I should think, and this is an emotional show for her. We all sit together laughing and talking. It is great to see them all.
Absurdly we are driving back to my mother's place, after the show, so that we can watch the royal wedding with my mother and aunt. I am no royalist, and Bartelt, well, he's German. But it's a long bank holiday weekend and the food will be good. As we drive into the night, we reflect on this bizarre day: Martin has a syndrome, I have made a speech and two people hate the show. I'm sure there have been others before them, but what they say is very interesting to us. But we'll focus on it more another day, when we've stopped looking at each other and laughing and got used to Bartelt being able to say that his strange, contrary behaviour in any given situation is due to his syndrome.
They are most lovely at Lincoln and it's an extra-special day for them as they are opening their new studio space upstairs. It's a great little room and very flexible. We have the honour of being the first show in. Yet again we have a great technician whom Bartelt adores and whom I go off slightly when he starts barking with Bartelt. It's one thing to have my lizard barking, but to have someone I've just met so enchanted by the lizard that he joins in is quite another matter.
Before the show there are speeches – including one from me, for goodness sake. I'm sure I'm wonderfully eloquent and informative and I'm sure Simon – the Artistic Director – is wondering why on earth he asked me to say anything at all, as I go on and on and on.... I just LOVE and audience. And an audience with wine and nibbles in their hands, generosity in the souls (they are here for the new space, for the Lincoln Drill Hall, for the lovely staff, for art) and the opportunity to talk about the importance of spaces like this for the development of interesting, important work, well, I think they're going to have to hunt me down and catch me in a net to shut me up.
2011 has been an interesting year for The Arts in England. Due to the cuts to the Arts Council's funding their decision not to salami slice all the budgets they hand out, but to cut funding entirely to some – often long-standing – organisations has, by and large, been applauded. The effects have been, and will continue to be, enormous for many artists, organisations and communities. And I get the chance to talk today about how important are small spaces, like this new one at the Lincoln Drill Hall, for developing work.
Creative artists do not spring, fully-formed from their bedrooms. Work is involved. Sometimes it is, indeed, work you can develop in your own bedroom, but this is not usually the case for theatre. And our show is exactly the kind of work for which there is a thirst, these taboo matters are important and move people, on occasion slightly ease some isolation and grief. But this show will never be a huge West End hit: enormous producers will not flock to us wanting to tour it internationally because they can see they money they can make from it. We were lucky enough, it being a one-woman show and ours being a collaboration whose nature means we can live on very little. Also, Martin's company, Obviam Est, had a track-record in Switzerland which meant he was successful when applying for funding there. Although our company, Vital Digression, is new, the story itself and the way it has been made is so unusual that we have secured some UK funding, but we have put our own money and acres of our own time into this, fitting in the money-earning parts of our lives around it, neglecting friends, other parts of our career, our housplants. And why? Oh, I ask that very often. It's not because we think we will make our million with this, but because it is a story we feel passionately about, because it needs to be told, and because so many people who see the show ask us to continue. But other shows have more people working on them, a need to hire a piano, a glitter ball or a pantechnicon to get from A to B, and then on to C, D, E through to at least T. Just because our show is cheaper it doesn't mean it is more important than another show.
If public funding stops for the arts then innovative, edgy, speculative projects will not get made. I have no particular objection to X-Factor or We Will Rock You, but I do not want to find myself in a country where these are the only kinds of drama we produce or where we never hear from the brightest and best talent because there is no way they can afford to make art. It might be different if we were a struggling developing nation, but we are not. We have several kinds of pesto in the supermarkets and consider a fridge and a TV to be essential. Just because there is no way of quanitifying how much the economy benefits from the arts, which spread across the length and breadth of the country, people learning their craft from the ground up, does not mean we do not benefit, that the economy does not benefit. It's one of our last manufacturing industries; everyone says we don't make anything anymore. Yes we do! We make art and we're one of the foremost nations in the world for this commodity.
Oh dear, I have digressed. I didn't say all that at Lincoln, but I said a few things to that effect. Then some audience came up and joined some of the invited guests for the show.
When it comes to performing the show I have had to steal myself, so often, against the idea that everyone is utterly hating it – and me – and wanting to leave, wishing they'd not wasted the money and time on listening me go on and on and on. As I have performed it more and more I have grown in confidence, it's not that I no longer think people are hating it, but I have decided to remind myself that they have chosen to come to the show and I cannot control whether they like it or not. They have chosen to come. But tonight there are two women in the front row and I swear they are hating it. I have been wrong before, very wrong, but I am not tonight. They stay behind afterwards to write exhaustive explanations of why they hated it so much.
Strangely, this is fine. We ask people for their feedback. These two women really hate the fact it is about me, not Kate, and that I smile and laugh. They seem to think that Kate was a saint (have I mentioned, she was not? Must remember to blog about her lack of saintliness) and that my feelings are inappropriate. But we read these later.
For now, after the show, we sit with very old family friends and Michael, a doctor with whom I do communications skills training. Linda, the old family friend, has brought her husband and two grown-up children. Linda knew my dad, Linda used to babysit for us: she remembers Kate as a small thing, way back before I was even around I should think, and this is an emotional show for her. We all sit together laughing and talking. It is great to see them all.
Absurdly we are driving back to my mother's place, after the show, so that we can watch the royal wedding with my mother and aunt. I am no royalist, and Bartelt, well, he's German. But it's a long bank holiday weekend and the food will be good. As we drive into the night, we reflect on this bizarre day: Martin has a syndrome, I have made a speech and two people hate the show. I'm sure there have been others before them, but what they say is very interesting to us. But we'll focus on it more another day, when we've stopped looking at each other and laughing and got used to Bartelt being able to say that his strange, contrary behaviour in any given situation is due to his syndrome.
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