Two days in London meeting actors, a video artist and an aerial choreographer. I love living in Newcastle-under-Lyme, where it’s friendly and leafy and only takes me fifteen minutes to get into work; but occasionally it’s nice to spend a few days in London and move projects on apace at the same time – despite spending hours sitting in traffic!
I’ve been auditioning for the New Vic’s fiftieth anniversary documentary Where Have I Been All My Life and a dramatisation of Thomas Hardy’s Far From the Madding Crowd , which we’re going to create with the same nine actors. Together they make a very exciting prospect. We’re holding meetings at the Drill Hall, where lots of auditions and rehearsals happen, and it’s a joy to bump in to people I’ve been out of touch with, catching up on news and gossip. It’s interesting, too, to see actors encountering Alecky Blythe’s recorded delivery technique. So rare, to have the privilege of introducing people to a whole new theatrical form.
Back at my favourite hotel, where there’s always the gift of an interesting book on the bedside table. What better treat can there be there a good book? Past joys have included the poems of John Wilmot and Pablo Neruda; the plays of Stephen AdlyGuirgis; Milton’s Paradise Lost. Unless the New Vic’s administrator who booked the room tipped them off, surely it’s entirely coincidental that today’s book is….Thomas Hardy’s Far From the Madding Crowd...
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As we progressed through the week the office lights did eventually get turned on, but things remained eerily quiet. At times like this things can go two ways: either disaster strikes, and everyone who’s on holiday has to be called in or nothing happens at all, and the week slowly and uneventfully slips by. At first it looked as though the former would be the case, we lost a bank of lights, had to replace the entire sound desk between shows, found the Jabberwock refusing to travel any direction but backwards and crashed the Jabberwock so that he needed facial reconstruction. Thankfully, things calmed down after that, and I got casting for Where Have I Been All My Life and Far From the Madding Crowd well under way (usually I’m as eager to start it as I am to have my teeth pulled); and worked through a first draft of a future production. All with feet up eating chocolates. It’s a hard life being on duty over Christmas.
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My, what a quiet day.
More than a thousand people made use of the New Vic today, which meant that the customer facing departments – box office, catering, front of house, stage management, technical team, dresser, actors security – were all out in force. But the office staff and those in the craft and production departments all had the Bank Holiday off, so it was a strange experience to walk in from a colourful, noisy front of House to the creepily quiet main office, where no one had even turned the lights on.
Which of course was a great opportunity to get on with shifting as much work as I can normally achieve in a week. Whilst sitting with my feet up, eating chocolates. What could be more perfect?
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Oh, did I mention that I’ve been invited to attend a reception at Buckingham Palace?
I’m not doing a very good job of pretending to be nonchalant about something I’m inordinately delighted by. Which disturbs me somewhat as I’m not a great supporter of the tradition of hereditary monarchy. But an invitation to celebrate the bicentenary of Dickens, a writer whose stance on social justice I admire inordinately, makes me throw caution and principles to the winds in a desire to snoop around Buck House. At least that’s my excuse. Really I just want to tell my mum I met the Queen.
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Into Newcastle town centre for the big Christmas lights switch-on. Signal Radio’s booming roadshow; screaming and pop music from fairground rides; thousands of young people.
Some of them in a shop window: the New Vic’s Senior Youth Theatre, doing an unusual piece of theatre – a slice of detailed, lovingly polished, warmly lit fifties life, kitchen sink and all, but taking place in a shop front behind a plate glass window. It was fascinating to watch something on such a different scale from the rest of the evening’s activity. And especially to see how the many young people passing by reacted, noticing something on the periphery of their vision moving in a place where one normally expects to see stasis; turning to look; being surprised and delighted; staying to watch how the story turned out.
Sometimes finding the thought of joining in irresistible: pressing their faces up to the glass, trying to divert the performers (whose tremendous focus and concentration wavered not a whit). I took particular pleasure in the tiny tots walking past, a hassled parent pulling them along by the hand, oblivious to the little anoraked figure’s amazement as they stared at the extraordinary sight they were passing, as if they’d found themselves in a toy shop after midnight with all the wares coming alive.
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