The Fan (And The Shit That Hit It)

I remember the moment my heart broke vividly. I had just sat down to poop.

It was a week before the show. Matt had just called me to tell me that we'd lost our actor playing Snow and that I would have to step in. This meant learning the lines in less than 5 days, fitting around work and going to rehearsals in too. Karma had come to bite me in the ass, I'd been saying that after The Sisters Grimm I wanted to get back into acting. Matt said well, here's your chance. Lesson 1: Be careful what you wish for.

We had also partly lost our venue. We originally planned to perform promenade in the wonderful foyer space of the Cornerstone building and had discussed this with the venue manager, had it in writing over email but...it never went into the final contract. The technician who read our tech rider finally let us know. It was a university space, therefore there would be an art exhibition that meant we would not be able to perform promenade and had to move everything into the theatre. In a week.

I had fucked up. I had read and signed the contract but not had the production head to question it - assuming that as it had been discussed, that it was set in stone.

Lesson 2: Always get a pessimist to read your contract.

And because I had fucked up, my good friend and director of the piece Zara was mad at me - and rightly so. She had taken on A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Epstein Theatre on the same week as our show and was so unbelievably stressed. For her to find out that she would have to basically re-block a whole act two weeks before the show would have made me want to kill me, too.

So anyway, there I was. Pooping. And I could not, at that moment (literally), hold everything in for any longer. I had poured my time, effort, heart and soul into this project for 6 months and it simply wasn't showing. I'd been there from the beginning and seen it blossom and grow into something really wonderful, only to have it almost fall apart in the last week. So I just sobbed and pooped and sobbed. It was pathetic.

Our director Zara warned me at the beginning of all this, that during our first production as a theatre company - "Your heart will break." And I thought - here it is. Here's that moment. My heart had shattered on my bathroom floor in the least romantic way possible. I didn't even know where to start picking it up.

But there is one thing about us theatrey types. We don't half know how to continue on.

And that's exactly what we did. The following week was simply all systems go - we were all barely sleeping, barely eating, doing 17+ hour days. Anyone who dared utter the words "I'm busy." was met with a bitter "We're all busy." I don't think many of us remember much about that week except that there was not much sleep and lots and lots of paper.

And it was all going alright. Matt and I were surprisingly calm. It was probably sleep deprivation. But Matt was well and truly production managing the show, getting shit done and giving us real, practical plans that we could realistically execute. Everything was going to be fine.

And then show day hit.

There we were, bright eyed and bushy-tailed (but looking more like the end of Watership Down rather than the beginning) at 11am, ready for a line run in prep for our get in at 12. We had a strict schedule to stick to (it was colour coded and everything) and we expected everything to run as smoothly as a get in can.

But one of our cast members didn't show up.

Now, there was a completely legitimate reason and nobody in the company would have thought otherwise. The cast member had been continuously dedicated, talented and had come to every rehearsal. Unfortunately we couldn't find out this reason until the following morning.

Meanwhile the cast and crew went through what felt like the 7 stages of grief.

"What do you mean, we can't get hold of him?"

"He'll defo come the dress rehearsal... he wouldn't miss the dress rehearsal."

"Oh Shit"

"Was it something we said?"

"Oh my god... this is actually happening."

"How are we going to do this?"

"We can definitely, 100% do this."

Lesson 3: Always. Have. An understudy.

Zara went into Hero mode. By this I mean that she was on the phone to various people collecting potential substitutes - particular kudos to the entire cast of A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Epstein who all offered immediately to help. (A huge thank you again to Simon Rowe who came to read in for us straight from his morning show!)

But by this time all hell had quite literally broken loose. Our set which we had booked and secured only days before was nowhere to be found. Turns out, it was student assessment day at the university and bits and bobs were hidden about in inaccessible rooms. Costume needed to be ironed and returned as the designers had been up all night making stuff so the dress run didn't start until 4:30pm. Inbetween insane running around collecting set between assessments Simon was being blocked into his scenes as best he could now took priority with hours to spare (another huge thank you to Kim for being his guide). We never had chance to dress run the first act, and it showed. Matt might as well have set his beautiful schedule on fire and chucked it out the window. Which was a shame because it really was very pretty, it had colours and everyone had their own section.

Regardless of all of this, the show must go on. And it did. I don't know how but it happened and to cap it off, we played to a sold out audience. I will always admire the fact that not a single person suggested cancelling the show as a serious possibility - we had all worked too hard for too long to let that happen. Everyone worked their asses off for this show and pulled it off with fantastic performances against all odds. I'll take this opportunity again to thank you all.

It was a huge project - too big for our first try, too big for me on my own, and I think that Matt only realised this when he came in for the three months. His job was basically damage control which isn't a fun job to walk in to. I was essentially the baby that had got a hold of the big creative chocolate cake.

Lesson 4: The Ying needs the Yang to help stop the Ying making a big mess of the metaphorical kitchen.

When we began this project it just got bigger and bigger until we had well and truly bitten off more than we could chew or even fit into our mouths.

Lesson 5: Dreamers create the heart and soul of the company but don't let them run it for 6 months. You'll come back in like that gif of Donald Glover and the pizza. You know the one I mean.

To all of those who didn't enjoy the show or hated working with us- we screwed up, and we're sorry. We ask you all to think of the first time you did something that really mattered to you and perhaps it didn't go as well as originally planned. We know we can create better theatre, more cohesive theatre, better prepared theatre, and we will. Some of it was lack of experience and hindsight, some of it was necessary mistakes we have to learn from, and some of it was well and truly out of our control. But we know (we have a survey and everything), and we will have the correct plans and rules in place next time to avoid anything like this going so wrong again. We always knew that starting a new company was going to be tough as hell and we will be learning and growing for years to come.

Lesson 5: Above all, acknowledge your mistakes and learn from them.

After all, the show must go on.

If you have something you want us to know, please take 5 minutes to fill out our anonymous survey. We are using it to learn as much as we can from this project.

Also keep an eye out for Matt's reflective post about The Sisters Grimm and brace yourself for some exciting posts documenting our process for On The Verge Festival with Hope Street Ltd.

October 18th - 22nd 2017.

#SistersGrimm #theatre #liverpooltheatrecompany #reflections