October 14, 2011
I’ve passed my cold on to Pete, so we sniffle and shuffle
around the apartment, eat a late breakfast and, inevitably, trawl the internet
for reviews. Thom Dibdin of the Stage
weighs in, another positive voice to add into the mix:
"A telling piece which
bodes well for Clerke and Gillard’s latest venture after the demise of
Benchtours, and makes great use of Edinburgh Festival Fringe favourites, Clancy
Productions."
Dibdin’s an old friend from festivals past and we caught up after the show, me careful not to ask him what he
thought, him careful not to tip his hand.
I’ve always had an
honest and easy relationship with critics both here and at home, something many
of my colleagues find suspicious if not downright perverse. Maybe it’s from having journalists in the
family, but I’ve always found them a hard-working, harried, underpaid lot,
always up against a deadline. I've only felt well and truly screwed a couple of times over the last twenty years; everyone wants to read a rave every time, but then again everyone wants a standing ovation every night, everyone wants to burn the place down. All you can do is try to do your job and accept that the critic is going to try and do hers.
Another line-through around the kitchen table, still trying
to find that ease and mastery that allow good performances to blaze into great
ones. Nancy and Catherine are both
working like champions and I know I’ve given them a Herculean task with this
script. How do you judge without being
judgmental? How do you ask an audience
to stare into the abyss and coax a laugh out of them at the same time? But they’re two pros and they’re both game
for it and the show is getting stronger every night.
We meet at the theater at four for a production meeting to
go over the next stage of the tour. The
next week is all one-offs, loading in each morning, packing it up and driving
home every night.
It’s this part of it, the physical work of theater that I
love the most, the gang of people that gather every night and actually do something. It’s the thing that separates it from almost
all of the other arts and a tour magnifies this truth and makes it
manifest. We all have our jobs,
unloading, setting up, performing, breaking down, loading up the van again and
then Tim or Camilla will drive us all back home.
Dinner around the corner and then back to the theater where
I set up the camera to get a tape of the show tonight. Free from the draconian Actors Equity
Association Code we labor under in New York, we can tape as many performances
as we want, put clips up on YouTube and market the show in true 21st
century fashion. Also, we’ll have
something to show promoters and producers interested in booking us down the
line. If they can’t see it, they won’t
buy it and that’s a hard and fast rule.
Friends are in tonight, Kath Mainland, director of the
Edinburgh Festival Fringe and her man Ray along with the Gridiron crew. Gridiron is a brilliant local company,
heavily awarded from many festivals past and we’ve grown close over the years
in the Bedouin way, meeting up every few years in different cities, instant
communion, sharing the same stories about different catastrophes, outrages and
the occasional rare triumph on the long, strange road of alternative art/show
biz.
And it’s a great show for our friends and the others
gathered, our strongest show yet I think, though Pete prefers Stirling. I see his point, Stirling was a funhouse ride
with no sense of what was going to happen next, tonight’s show is more
controlled with less of the danger and thrill that the real possibility of
falling off a cliff sparks in a performer’s eyes, but still, the response is
the strongest and most consistent throughout the night and I’m glad I’ve got it
down on tape.
Ben from Gridiron buys us all too much wine in the bar
afterwards and we will blame him in the morning for being a bad companion and
spoiling our good intentions of an early night.
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