Little Wing cast, Joseph Vaughan, Paul White and Jed Shardlow ©StephanePagnier
“What’s the worst that can happen?” She sometimes naively thought. “ A box office flop? Negative reviews? One of the actors bailing on me at the last minute? Two actors?!!” Eh hang on a minute, how about a global pandemic with terrible economic and human consequences? I am talking about Covid-Armageddon, YES!
For all of us, this Hollywood type scenario did happen in March 2020. Whether you were a carpenter, a bookseller, a physiotherapist or a first time producer like myself, your world and livelihood came to a complete standstill at the end of last winter and it has been a rough ride!
I am not one to wallow in the poor victim’s corner. Well not anymore! I go there for a bit, but then the rarefied and negative air suffocates me, so I bounce back. It’s called resilience and I have become a champion at resilience over the years.
At the Lion and Unicorn Theatre in London, I played Wallis alongside Annette Kellow in my play Dear Wallis
Bouncing back for me, in this Covid-19 climate, meant doing absolutely nothing. Nothing much could be done anyway! So I slept a lot, ate well, exercised a bit and I started posting some of my favourite pictures on Instagram (One had to stay connected in a way or another and this little hobby of mine has been and probably still is part of my healing process).
At the start of this lockdown journey, I was physically and mentally exhausted. Because of this coronavirus impending doom of course, but also because as a first time producer nearly everything I had undergone in the previous months was a brand new experience and therefore hard! The opening line of one of my favourite books* reads “All beginnings are difficult.” I can vouch for that.
Well, I wasn’t a complete rookie either! I am a playwright and that qualifies as theatre experience, right? I was once a performer myself. I have worked as a stage manager in Paris and London. I have directed two short films and worked on other people’s short films and I have produced and directed two bespoke and sophisticated readings of one of my play with 11 actors playing 15 different characters. But this! I mean my play Little Wing on stage for two whole weeks at the Jack Studio Theatre in London in April 2020… that was a change of gear, another level altogether!
So producing a theatre show for the first time goes a bit like this:
- Buying the right insurance for the show…. Hard!
- Casting the right actors for the parts (even though I had done that before)… Hard!
- Creating the publicity for the show…. Hard!
- Getting the rights for the music… Super hard! (more on this in a future post)
- Organizing three weeks of rehearsal… Hard!
And I could go on and on.
11 talented actors in my play 430 King's Road, An Urban Odyssey
So what did I learn from my unfortunately aborted project? A lot! An awful lot!
- I have learned that I can do it. I am more than capable, and even if I am not a spring chicken anymore, I have the personal resources and the stamina to make it happen.
- A good communication and relationship with the theatre is key. And I have been very fortunate to work with Kate Bannister and Karl Swinyard from the Jack Studio Theatre on this one.
- Don’t do things too early or too late. Again here, one of the keys is timing. On this project, I probably did my casting too early which is not great for the actors, and same goes for marketing and publicity. I have lost part of My Theatre Mates campaign (our online PR service) and I have to redo my flyers.
- Come prepared but not too prepared. Well as far as the second part of this statement goes, I will always be useless as I am a hopeless perfectionist and as a director I am more influenced by rigorously precise artists like Robert Wilson or Harold Pinter, if you see what I mean. (Dear actors who will work with me in the future, you’ve been warned!)
- Above all, enjoy every moments! We undoubtedly know by now that anything and everything can happen, so each moment is uber precious.
It's a wrap! Last day shooting my short film Irish Violet ©RaphaelleKriegel
When I think about our new production dates in January 2021 at the Jack, I am very grateful and excited as this is a second chance for Little Wing and for us and in terms of experience and learning, nothing tops actual performances in front of an audience. But I am also a bit apprehensive of course. Will it really happen? Will I be able to work with the same team? An all new set of questions and apprehensions are already playing in my head. But If the worst did happen a few months ago, then there is now room for the very best. What do you think?
*The Chosen by Chaim Potok
Next post is called Alan B, I love you. That will be the one where I will make a complete fool of myself by exposing my semi-irrational love for Alan Bennett, the man, the writer and the playwright. I cried when I watched the last BBC documentary about him (Oh Yes!)
Comments