On Penny-Pinching, Theatre-Thieves, and Stealing an Experience: the Starving Artist’s Guide to London Theatre

How does a man (or a woman) define him (or her)self?  By ideal?  By opinion?  By action?  By gender?  I found myself struggling with this topic not long ago over too many foreign beers in a hostelry somewhere too North of the River, when a female companion abruptly got up from the table, confided ”I hate everything you stand for”, and swept from the pub without explanation.  I was dumbstruck, dear reader; I’ve never considered myself as standing for anything aside from urination.

So it was that this sentiment set me thinking; just what do I stand for?  And why does she hate it?  Do others?  Should I?

Well, I searched my skull for clues (a man has to stand for something more than pissing, or he’s just a boy that can go to jail and get divorced).  I dropped in and out of depressions; I took solace in wine, rum, women, song; I pored over past Masters and wept bitterly and generally had a great Existential tempest of a time, until finally it struck me square in the jaw.

If there’s one thing I have spent my life happily sacrificing stability, dignity and likeability for, if there’s one thing I can be accused of putting before my silly little self, if there’s one thing I could indeed be termed as standing, as it were, for… then it’s that mad bitch Theatre.  Laughing, crying, backstage, bowing, spotlights, applause… all that wonderful, rolling dizziness.  Yes, says I, that’s me.  That’s what I stand for.

Rather enjoying the indulgence of this particular train of thought, I allowed myself to stay on til the next stop and alighted at this conclusion.  What I stand for is Theatre, is Art.  Now, considering my newfound stance (thought I), surely what I love should be encouraged for all?  That Theatre and any Art should be free for those that can’t afford it?  Now the realist in me says this shan’t be on the cards anytime soon, and if there’s one hard rule I’ve come across it’s that we too often end up with Nothing for Something, but perhaps (thought I) my stance can stand tall and allow me to share the few tips I’ve gleaned along the way on how the humble, beleaguered and stoney-broke disciple of the Roscian Arts might minimize this inevitability.

At the lowest end of the scale, we have the stalwart approach of the impoverished Drama School Student; sneaking in at the  interval.  As long as there’s a seat free (a discreet stairway will do in a pinch), and you’re familiar with the play (works well for the classics) then this is generally fairly foolproof.  No ticket stubs are checked at intervals, and if you don’t mind missing the beginning (or simply can’t afford not to) this is an excellent compromise for productions of the old boot plays you know so well that you’ve worn into comfort.

Theatre is, of course, an intrinsically experiential art form; there is no product, only a response.  This in mind, the whole affair’s far better on a full stomach with a beer between your legs.  Hip-Flasks are excellent things, and coat pockets and bags are rarely checked in the way they are at cinemas; I remember seeing a comic play based on the downfall of the Chinese Empire that was vastly improved by a packed lunch, a plastic cup, one bottle of Sainsbury’s Basic Gin and another of Diet Lemon Flavoured Tonic Water, all secreted inside of a tote bag in the darkness of the Gods.  Even impoverished teetotallers can bring along a few teabags or some sachets of instant coffee and ask freely for a pot of hot water at the bar.  Interval drinks are frightfully easy to steal if you’re quick; they’re usually preordered and sat waiting with little AA meeting name tags as you come out of the auditorium to head for the toilet – take whatever grabs your fancy and head outside for a few minutes.  By the time you return the drink’s rightful owner will have complained to the bar, beverage will have been replaced, and no more worry wasted on it.  Coffee shops are incredibly easy places to steal sandwiches from, and one should feel no guilt at depriving Starbucks of £3.55.

When it comes to great theatre, one must get rid of the notion that price in any way reflects quality.  Theatre’s are like prostitutes in this regard; the greatest thing I ever saw cost me £15 , the worst £150.  Do not be distracted by bright lights, big venues, big stars or the West End stage (or the Broadway one, for that matter) – unless big budget, big audience, small brained tits n’ teeth musicals are what you’re in search of the West End is not the best place to look; proportionally speaking it has far shoddier fare than the rest of London, is vastly overpriced, horribly self-satisfied and bloated in it’s complacency and it’s irrelevance.  When looking for art, for life-changing, redefining theatre, the West End is by no means your best bet.

Quite a few theatres (the National’s Entry Pass Scheme , the Theatre Royal Haymarket Masterclass and the RSC £5 Ticket Initiative - to name three from the top of my head, I’m sure there are more) offer young membership schemes that are free to sign up to and offer complementary ticketing and massive discounts; some, like the Old Vic, don’t even require membership, just proof of age on purchase; they also all tend to be rather liberal with the I.D. requirements when signing up, and so as long as you can vaguely pass for a mature 25 year old then that fake card you got off the internet (here, in fact) will do just fine.

Once you get out of the West End (I myself lean more towards the South Bank), you realize that actually tickets are often not that expensive.  Even without special schemes you can get seats (and bloody gooduns) at the National, the Southwark Playhouse, the Young Vic and many others for a crisp, homely tenner, with standing tickets costing far less – the most expensive seats are usually the most comfortable, not necessarily the best for experiencing the play.  At the Globe standing tickets in the Groundling’s Pit cost only £5 (almost as much as a pint at the bar), and provide a significantly and inarguably superior position to any of the more expensive and more comfortable seating options on offer there.

Remember, even if the cheap seats aren’t the ones you want, having paid for them and gained entry it’s often a fairly straightforward task to transfer yourself to dearer fare, and if you’re willing to wait for the interval then you’ve already had ample chance to take note of any empty seats in the exclusive areas that could get away with a good filling (I once spent £5 on a seat on the fourth floor balcony farthest from the stage, and instead watched from a £500 royal box from which I could see the sweat soiling the greasepaint).  Chutzpah is important; be bold.

The absolute pinnacle of the Theatre Thief’s endeavours is, of course, the Press Night.  These are the performances, usually a week or two after an unofficial opening, when all the reviewers and critics are invited and wined and dined and sucked - it’s in the theatre’s best interests to be impressively full for these, so incredibly cheap and often free tickets are usually on offer (for the chap who knows where to look).  What makes these nights in particular so attractive is that, once the applause dies down, the civilian punters leave, and our penny-pinching playgoer loiters in the lobby, the foyer or the bar (looking perfectly entitled, of course), around him he finds unfolding the most splendid folderol of free wine, copious canapes and schycophantic schmoozing that is, and always has been, the heart and the balls of any press night worth it’s salt.  Eat free food, drink free drink, talk to the eager actors and crew; I promise you no one will question your presence.

Press Nights aren’t the only performances that a theatre will look to “fill the gaps” in; a number offer last minute (and not so last minute) deals to give a show a promising preview period, or impress important attendees – you can keep abreast of these with websites like the Theatre Ninjas, by “friending” theatres and companies on Facebook, “following” them on Twitter, and by obtaining membership of… a certain Private Members club, the name of which I dare not utter, but which any eager audience member ought be able to track down with a concerted effort and a little sly sleuthing.

The most effective method (so often the case) is the most obvious.  Befriend and woo the people who work there.  Chat with the Marketing Managers, drink with the actors, sleep with the director and stroke the producers ego – all will have some length of string to pull, and most a collection of complementary tickets to lavish on friends and family.  Go to pubs in North London with them, share foreign beers with them, get offended when they leave and hate everything you stand for.

And there, I think, we have it.

I hope this ethically ambiguous diatribe has been of some use to some of you.  If nothing else, it means that the next time a willowy Antipodean scorns that which I’m accused of defining myself by I’ll have an inkling of what she might mean, and the fortitude to stare right back and reply, proudly, that at least I stand for something.  It might be little more than a self-justified system of fraudulence, theft and chicanery, but dammit, at least I stand for something.

Or not.

As an addendum to that anecdote, it transpires that she was actually just annoyed because, having discovered her boyfriend was born out of wedlock, I took innordinate pleasure in describing him accurately and repeatedly with the colloquialism.

There’s a chance I was being a bit of a Bastard.

Hope you enjoyed the blog.

On Duelling, End-Stopping, and Enjoying the Victors’ Spoils

I’ll never forget the first time I fought a duel.

I’d been choreographing the fights for an all-male production of Romeo and Juliet; in most young, male casts one finds at least one example of the sort of a chap who resents being told what to do with a sword, and this rather gimmicky interpretation of R & J was no exception.

In this instance Mercutio was the bugger (conversely Tybalt was a delight), and tension had been building from Day One (I’d had to devote the entire introductory training session to his awkward hip alignment and he’d taken the mess as a rather vague and protracted slight on his too-precious masculinity). Just about feasable, I suppose, but in truth he seemed like the sort who could take just about anything as a slight to his too-precious masculinity, and probably has.

The strange air between us reached what I thought was a head sometime around our fifth session, when, having failed yet again to parry in two and bind in pronation (those hips threw him off something rotten), he hurled the foil away (narrowly missing the costume mistress) in an unaligned rage, and railed at me for developing such an ill-conceived and uneasy fight.

I was younger then, and less used to such attacks (not to mention less used to putting up with them). His argument seemed to centre on a specific phrase of the action, one which he termed “just stupid” (a biting critique, to be sure) and “why wouldn’t I just hit him?” In a weary fit of unprofessionalism I offered to show him why he wouldn’t just hit him, and all grin and posture he gladly took me up on it; after a couple of lurches (hips all over the shop) he swung, and with a quick void and a slip he’d fallen on his belly with a blade at his throat. The rest of the cast amused, I let him up and we continued with the session whilst Mercutio seethed in obedient silence.

Inexperienced as I was, I assumed this would be the end of it.

This was not the end of it.

A week went by, and it seemed that all was well; he’d kept quieter in rehearsals, was far more focused on the work, and was even close to reaching satisfactory hip alignment (close). My role in the production, though initially merely Fight Director, had since swelled to incorporate the titles of Movement and Voice Coach, and after a particularly physically gruelling session we had found ourselves running an informal and impromptu monologue workshop over drinks at the bar (the performance was being held in a room above a pub, and the frustrated luvvie of a landlord had rather nicely granted us certain “after-hours privileges”).

After a nice rigorous bout with Romeo (camp as they come), Juliet (a stout Welshman with the hairiest arms I’d ever seen), Tybalt (the most stunning posture I’ve encountered) and their parents (younger than all their children, but far fatter and one was balding). Next up came Mercutio with his Queen Mab (a soliliquy I was especially familiar with, having spent the previous few years milking it dry as a stock audition piece). As one would expect he was a mess, his mind as unaligned as his hip sockets. I was tactful, and charming, and subtle, and so on… but he was drunk. The breaking point was a matter of enjambment (his fear of the text and consequent obsession with running scared through the lines was forcing him to take breathe erratically, absolutely ruining the flow and killing the momentum of the thing). All it took was a sniff of rum and an exercise in sentence structure for his masculinity issues to rear their square-jawed, scowling little skin-heads. I believe it went something like this:

Myself: Just for now, why don’t you try imagining-

Mercutio: I’ve fucking had it with you!

throws empty glass at wall, leaps to feet, chair falls to floor.

Myself: I-

Mercutio: You think you’re so fucking special, lets see you do a proper fight!

Myself: -

Mercutio: Fuck you!

Myself: We-

Mercutio: Fuck you!

After this chess-game of wit had layed out it’s course, he checkmated with a crack about my scansion, and before I knew it we were on the roof of a pub, surrounded by baying actors and a sunrise; blunted rapiers in our hands, booze in our bellies, and blood on our minds.

I’d like now to describe to you an epic battle; a ballet of combat; a blend of Zorro, of Zenda, of all three Musketeers… blades flashing in the morning light…

Unfortunately I can’t. Instead we stood still and swaying for far too long, a little lost. Eventually Mercutio remembered what was happening and charged with a roar – sword whipping and whirling around and around – great, murderous, windmill arcs coming closer and closer, faster and faster – evil in his eye, hate in his heart, my skin in his sights – He charged and he charged; I took a small last minute step to the left, he charged and he charged; I turned and I stepped, he charged and he charged, and he fell off the roof.

He landed in some bushes, and aside from a broken rib was fine. Not quite “finish rehearsals and perform for a month” fine, but at the very least he was ”lie in bed for a while and as long as he’s sensible be in fine enough fettle to grace the Edinburgh fringe with his skills come August” fine. So what to do? The play began in a week, we were far from anywhere worth advertising for auditions, and the part wasn’t really one we could muddle through without. The Director took the only option left to him and employed an Actor friend of his that was already well acquainted with the production, who already had the soliliquy down pat, and who wouldn’t need to be tought any new choreography.

The local rag called my Mercutio “a polished gem in a burnished, tinny ring; his death gives you grief not just for the character, but for the hour without him still to go”, and a fat photographer with a large nose and small eyes offered me a good wage to pose for some truly terrible pictures. The production overall may have been an utter embarrassment, but my performance was unanimously praised (big fish love small ponds). Indeed, it was my work in that play that won me my agent (so not a complete success by any means).

The Actor-Formerly-Known-As-Mercutio got his revenge just over a year later, during an all day Commedia Dell’Arte workshop at a disused farmhouse in Stratford upon Avon (though that’s another blog post altogether). It wasn’t the last duel I fought, nor was it the most exciting, nor was it the most worthwhile. It wasn’t the most spectacular, it wasn’t the most dangerous, and it certainly wasn’t the most sensible.

It was, I think, the quickest. Once we’d made sure the loser wasn’t dead or close to it, we dragged him back into the pub, poured beer down his throat and our own, and cackled away as Romeo French-kissed Tybalt in the corner.

As fights go, I’d say that was a fine way to finish one.

On Sophocles, Wine-Cellars, and the Importance of Good Posture: Lessons to Learn Vicariously

Prejudice is a peculiar quirk in a rational mind. Just last week, for instance, I was wending my way down the Charing Cross Road (for my monthly browse amongst the cut-price hardbacks), when an odious little scrag-end of a man around the five foot mark caused me to cross the road in disgust. It wasn’t specifically his height that threw me, of course, but rather what (or, indeed, who) his height reminded me of. It was not the signifier which offended, but the thing it signified. I don’t, as a rule, tend to trust short men at the best of times (and neither do most short men, in my experience), but even the most ardent of hobbit-fanciers could not fail to be put on edge by the specimen at the root of my bigotry. For the purposes of this anecdote we’ll call him Jack Kingsley, but he knows who he is, damn his eyes, and I hope he feels suitably ashamed.

Some twelve, sixteen or twenty months past I’d become rather obsessed with site specific theatre (I think my regrettably minor involvement in this had had something to do with it) and, after the usual amount of blagging and bartering, had persuaded a company’s-worth of actors to join me in producing Sophocles’ Theban Plays with this practise in mind (incest, patricide, fate, banishment and blindness; the standard Grecian arsenal). I was still honing my specific approach to text, storytelling and interpretation at the time, but this show went a long way towards developing it, and so with five extra performers, live music and a wonderful, cavernous old wine cellar for a space (beneath a here-non-specified, then-non-functioning restaurant) we were ready to get to work.

Now old Stumpy Jack was the minimal cove I’d arranged the venue through; the sort of a man who manages to be too thin and too fat simultaneously, and who manages it in all the wrong places to boot. No chin, a lazy eye, and nowt but the remnants of a hairline. The tip of his skull reached my solar plexus, and he walked shambolically with a stoop (hideous posture). He was a nasty piece of work who constantly wrung his hands during conversation and referred to everyone as his “dear, dear friend” with vile, Jacobean sycophantism. I should have known he’d be trouble, but I was weak; blinded by our fully-immersive-post-Brechtian-Commedia-Dell’Arte-inspired-raucously-music-hall-reinterpretation of the Oedipus trilogy. At that point I’d have believed anything.

The other actors and I were working for nothing, as well as taking on the various roles of admin, stage management, costume, set, props and PR (standard practise in such projects). We’d roped in a prodigiously talented and horribly heroine-addicted technician to help us with lighting and audio cues, and alongside this I directed, adapted and designed, casting myself as Creon and Tyresias (the ancient, blind, hermaphroditic oracle and interpreter of birdsong). The rest of our cast consisted of a great, feisty redhead called Shirley, an embarrassingly aryan Adam and Eve (who I think are now cohabiting a cottage in Cornwall), a stunning mixed race girl whose name rhymed with Nissan, and a greasy, talentless chap who didn’t make much of an impression on me (I think I’d cut or shared out the vast majority of his part by the time we reached opening night). Together the six of us swapped roles, told stories, cut sections, moved scenes, drank heavily, and generally went about the business of hammering out a performance or three.

I remember losing a lot of money to Nissan one night over a bet that had something to do with dark, Demerara rum, then winning it back a few pints later through a kind of sweaty, topless wrestling contest. It was a wonderful and rigorous rehearsal process, and all those involved gave everything they could (except for the greasy one). I think that Adam and Eve first consummated their relationship after a particularly intense evening of theatrical exercise, having decided it would be an appropriate, maybe even a necessary, experience for their character development “I mean, really it would be unprofessional not to, you know?”. All well and good, but I don’t think Eve’s husband appreciated the thoroughness of their approach.

The first sign of trouble (beyond mere aesthetic and infidelity) came about a week before we opened, the day before our first dress rehearsal. I’d been out getting atrociously cheap Chinese food for lunch, and had returned to the space to find raised voices, red faces and a rather wonderfully statuesque Shirley half out of costume and gesticulating wildly, her flame-red mane pointing in all directions, saturated with the tension of the room. From what I could gather she’d caught Wee Jack Kingsley with his hand in her bag and given him a firm right hook for his troubles; he was bleeding from a swollen nose (though not as heavily as he seemed to think) and claiming he’d only been returning some tissues or something that had fallen out of her precious little market stall knock-off handbag, and why shouldn’t he call the police on the bitch that’s what I’d like to know, that’s assault that is.

I smoothed things over for the good of the production, and we all moved on.

This was a mistake.

Not too long after that came the technical rehearsal. These things are a chore at the best of times, but a necessary and important one. Ours was scheduled for the day before opening night, and as our technical dogsbody had had to drop out (some rehab or overdose affair, I think; I hadn’t been able to decipher much of the answer phone message he’d left me) at fairly short notice, rather than postpone the production Little Jack assured us that he knew just the man, that we’d love him, he’s a dear, dear friend, perfect fit, perfect fit.

We arrived for the technical rehearsal to find that Tiny J’s mechanical buddy simply couldn’t make it today, but he’ll be fine for the actual show, so old Shortshanks Kingsley was going to take his place for the tech and fill him in tomorrow. There was discontent. There were reservations. I smoothed them over.

This too was a mistake.

Opening night. We’d decided not to run through the thing again during the day – we’d rehearsed as much as was healthy and any more work would have been counterproductive. We arrived at the venue for six, let ourselves in, started a warm-up. Six thirty rolled about and there was no sign of Shortarse Jack or his technician; we were worried, but determined, and came up with a vague plan of how exactly we’d work around their absence if we had to. We were fine with it. Better than fine: it was exciting! Spontaneous, raw, nerve-wracking, unpredictable – just as theatre should be! We came up with many more such platitudes in an effort to calm our nerves.

Seven. Audience was arriving. Seven fifteen. The house was filling. Seven thirty. We should be starting. Seven forty five. With neither hide nor receded hair of our esteemed colleagues in evidence we decided enough was enough, and with a whispered “once more unto the breach dear friends” we started. On came the chorus with lit candles taped to their instruments, setting the scene with a rich red glow. A drum beat started up; the eerie accompaniment of pan pipes, chanting. We were off. As the Chorus paced and played and played and paced in that wonderful space something spectacular began to happen; somewhere between the nerves and the candlelight and the heat and the sweat an atmosphere was created, and the audience responded and the play had begun, and as that otherwordly, alluring music began to peak I entered as Tyresias, the blind seer. I dragged myself forward, step by painful step. I craned myself towards the audience, feeling their fates. The music grew louder and louder, Tyresias got closer and closer, he reached out his hand, his lip trembling, he raised his staff, the music hit crescendo… and with an almighty crash I brought my stick to the floor and the Chorus stopped, and the audience held it’s breath, and I wrapped them in their silence, and I held them in my palm. Tyresias stared through them with unseeing eyes. Paused. I took a breath.

I started to speak.

At which point the fluorescent strip lighting burst on and in barged an angry pair of skin-headed Metropolitan Police bellowing into radios, here to break up the “illegal rave”. It rather killed the mood.

Initially of course the audience thought the police a part of it, and though I tried to incorporate and improvise around them this soon became unworkable and only served to vex the uniforms all the more. In the panic and confusion that ensued, I eventually discovered that neither the police nor the owner of the premises had heard of us or our Gnomish Jack, and it took quite some persuading before they believed that anyone else had either. As far as they were concerned we had simply broken in of our own accord for “some kind of Satanist/student/drug thing”. To this day I have no idea what Weasely Jack’s motivation was; he’d received no money, and got nothing out of us but begrudging and occasional company.

The venture was in no way a waste, however. Adam and Eve are still happily researching their characters together in a cottage in the South-West, the experience and experiments in performance helped hone me and my approach immeasurably, and we even managed to squeeze out a full performance once or twice (eventually). On top of this, I learned a pair of valuable lessons which I have steadfastly lived my life by ever since. Firstly, when a perfectly proportioned, flame-haired Amazon woman has beaten a man soundly about the face, one should always step back and allow events to follow their natural course without interference. Secondly (and far more importantly), there are no signs of shadiness, cowardice, or general paucity of character in a man more surefire than height and posture. Never trust a short man who stoops, and always get a deal put in writing.

Oh yes, and if you ever get the chance to wrestle topless with a mixed race woman in a bar for money, go to it with gusto. I sincerely mean that.

Macbeth, Daytime Drinking and Fighting in the Street: an Escapist and Cautionary Tale

In this bleak and dreary British Winter I’m reminded with an ache of the clemency we took for granted back in those care-free Summer months; those beautiful days where heat (and a natural inclination towards idling) make productivity impossible, and you find yourself sitting outside a pub at midday with a Pimms in front of you and a freshly emptied glass next to that. 

It was one of these balmy, boozy afternoons in Cambridge when my story began; I was the lead in a production of Macbeth and had been indulging in daytime drinking with a fellow cast member for some hours.  Cambridge  is not an especially large place, and coinciding with our run was a rival (and somewhat more “experimental”) Macbeth (the venue of which I shan’t shame by repeating here) which had been confusing the punters and stealing our audience.  Drink being what it is, and actors what they are, we decided to take in the matinee. 

Readers, it was awful.  I mean awful.  We’ve all heard tales of the infamous O’Toole Macbeth from the 80′s, and I cannot conceive that it even approached the Cambridge production for sheer dross and garishness.  Lady M’s damned spot speech was performed as a striptease; each scene was bookended by pop music; it was set on a council estate in the future.  With swords.

It was abysmal.

This in mind, just as Macbeth was tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrowing, my friend and I had a hit of inspiration; hopping onstage from the stalls we took a moment to steady ourselves (Pimms creeps up on you), silenced the confused Macbeth with an emphatic gesture, then launched into the rest of the scene.  The other actors joined in bemused (after a some initial awkwardness, it must be said), and the act ended with a standing ovation, a confused cast, and security guards; afterwards we bought steaks and thought nothing more of it.

Next thing I knew it was a month later, the run was over, and I was auditioning for Edmund the Bastard in a first folio production of King Lear.  I did what I do, shook hands and returned to the lobby.  There in front of me, face like a Shaolin monk taking strikes to the groin, sat Macbeth.

It being the routine, and him being next, I nodded that he could go in.  He stared at me.  I stared back.  After a moment or two of this I decided it might be prudent not to push the matter and bolted for the door.  I made it a good few feet  down the street before everything went a touch upside down and I was on the pavement, Macbeth atop of me and screaming “bastard” repeatedly, like a Buddhist chant.

SO yes, we grappled and we rolled and we rucked in the gutter, passers-by remaining remarkably interested in their shoes.  I don’t know whether you’ve much experience in high-temperature submission wrestling, but it being the height of Summer, and neither one of us dressed for the task at hand, before long the grappling was closer to spooning and more marital than martial, and we reached a mutual decision to stop before things got weird.

 Two hours later we were in a pub, Macbeth regaling me with tales of the show’s horrendous director, assuring me my interlude had been one of the highlights of their miserable run.  Four hours later things were a little blurry and five hours later we were in a small fringe theatre, watching the most abysmal production of Macbeth.  Twenty minutes after that we were forcing our way onstage, and twenty minutes after that being escorted out to applause.

The rest of the evening appears to missing, and I haven’t met Macbeth again, but I like to think that someday soon he’ll be auditioning for King Lear, return to the lobby and bump into his Macbeth; he’ll find himself wrestling in the street, then laughing drunkenly, and the whole glorious cycle will continue from fringe Macbeth to fringe Macbeth, until eventually it all gets halted by some self important Drama School graduate without a sense of humour.  

It’s hard to take oneself seriously when hugging a man in a gutter in the middle of July.  We would all do well to remember it.

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