A week has gone by since the final performance of Everything’s Rosie's second show of the year, ‘Blackbird’. This has, without a doubt, been the hardest project to that I’ve had to work on as the subject matter of the play was intense to say the least. That's not to say that I haven’t had a good time working on it, a new play is always incredibly exciting, just that I have picked up some new lessons. Well, I suppose that is inevitable. No one ever really stops learning, do they? Or if they have then something has gone terribly, terribly wrong.
And with that thought, I make my oath: I, Cassie Osbourne, will never make these mistakes again. I will make new mistakes. More interesting mistakes.
1. Excel sheets are super helpful, especially when you have over two hundred and fifty people auditioning for the same part
Despite my CV saying that I am competent at using excel, I have never had an office job, so I haven’t really used a spreadsheet since I did my ICT Functional Skills foundation GCSE when I was fifteen (and honestly the fact that I somehow managed to pass that course still baffles me). I mean, I use a spreadsheet to track the books that I’ve read, and it comes up with fun graphs and charts for me to look at and compare (yes, I am a nerd) but that doesn’t really count as it was made by someone else who shared it with their followers. Yes ladies, gentlemen and all those in-between, I am completely incompetent when it comes to using technology. This didn’t really matter when I only had about fifty self-tapes to keep track of for a part but, for some reason, auditions for the part of Una completely exploded! By the time self-tapes closed, I had had two hundred and seventy-four applicants, and I don’t mind telling you that that number got rather on top of me. Luckily, I have a Kyle from world corporate who, after seeing my ‘system’ and hissing like a cat being thoroughly doused with water, fixed it and streamlined it for me to make the whole process far easier. I have to admit that I don’t think that I remember much from what he showed me all these months later so if anyone knows any good systems, worksheets or training that I can use to help me learn how to office independently then please for the love of all that is holy, let me know!
2. If you’re dealing with a well respected play, be ready to have to send a lot of emails and do A LOT of waiting
‘Blackbird’ was the first play where I got the rights through the agent rather than through Nick Hern (if you want to read more about that discovery, I believe I talked about it in my things I learned from Thick as Thieves blog). I have to say that it was all very exciting....and by exciting I mean being on the edge of my seat all the time and constantly checking my emails to see if something I had asked for or sent had been approved. This was the first time (that I’m aware of anyway) that I as a director and the company had to be approved by the playwright to put on the play – reviews of previous work were given and the company website looked at. The poster art and program had to be approved. The cast had to be approved by the playwright – this was the one that I found hardest as up until this point I had been able to let people know my decision as soon as I had made one. For this project, there was a whole week of me just having to sit on my decision with crossed fingers, legs and toes while David Harrower looked over my choices. What this did was prove to me that while I can be very patient (you have to be in this industry), I find waiting really, really stressful. I massively hate it! Having said all of that, the people that I was in touch with were absolutely fantastic and very understanding about my constant need to know what was going on.
3. If your set is made up of large amounts of rubbish, find somewhere to store it that is not your bedroom
Picture this, you’re a twenty-something year old woman living in London. You don’t have a ‘real’ job that makes any kind of sustainable money for you to be able to afford your own place so you still live with your parents in the attic which has, very kindly, been converted into a lovely living space for you. Normally when you’re putting on a play, you store your props and set pieces in your attic bedroom space which has never really been a problem before. Sure, sometimes the amount of suitcases that you have to navigate your way around may seem excessive but it’s only for a few weeks so what does it matter? It’s not really inconveniencing anyone else so it’s fine. Now imagine that your set isn’t built up around suitcases, it’s built up around litter. Really quite ridiculous amounts of litter. Amounts of litter so large that it is constantly being referred to by the characters and the playwright to the point where the script calls for an overflowing bin. That litter doesn’t come out of nowhere, it has to be collected. For health and safety reasons, it can’t just be any old litter collected off the street or from neighbours. No, you have to hoard every packet, every takeaway box, every bag from the start of the rehearsal process until get in. It’s only five weeks so it doesn’t feel so bad, it’s actually kind of funny...until you hit around week three. The annoying thing is, my bedroom window looks across to the garage we have at the end of the garden, and not once did it occur to me to just put everything in there. Oh well. The litter monster is gone and I have my room back now.
4. When you’re doing a play with intimate moments, make sure that everyone is crystal clear about expectations and boundaries
This is going to be a proper blog of its own next week but if you didn’t see the play, there’s a moment when the two characters kiss and prepare to have sex before one of them (rightly) stops it. I’ve never directed anything like this before so this was always going to be new territory and I do honestly think I did quite well, but there was definitely a strong learning curve.
5. Even if you think you’ll be fine, it’s best not to book a therapy appointment on the same day as a rehearsal for a super intense play
So, I’m fairly open about the fact that I have a few mental health problems (unrelated to the subject of the play) and that I have an appointment with a therapist once a month. I can honestly recommend that people seek therapy if they need to chat, and this hasn’t been a problem with rehearsals for plays before. This is mostly because rehearsals aren’t every day and I have always managed to book an appointment on a day when I don’t also have a rehearsal. However, for the final week of rehearsals before we moved into South London Theatre, we did have a rehearsal every week day, something I’ve never done before (mostly of financial reasons) however since this was the shortest rehearsal period the company has ever done (actually seemed pretty well the perfect length), I thought that an extra rehearsal in the final week would be a good idea. I was also due to have an appointment with my therapist and I thought that things had been going so well that I would probably be fine to have both on the same day. However, after my session I felt completely drained and couldn’t really shake off that feeling before the rehearsal. While nothing bad happened and everything ran as normal, it definitely wasn’t as productive of a rehearsal as it could have been. I just wasn’t in the right headspace.
6. A dryer doesn’t magically dry things, you have to factor in that time
This may seem super obvious, but I grew up in a household without a dryer and when I did have one in my second year of uni, it didn’t really work so using it wasn’t a thing that I did. ‘Blackbird’ gets to be quite messy towards the end when a character gets tomato puree thrown at him after/during a fight. The actual tomato on the shirt wasn’t a problem at all – we had three shirts that were on a cycle of being used, being vanished and sun-bleached, hanging on the rail ready to use and being used again. The difficulty was when tomato got on a jacket and pair of trousers that we only have one of. Again, the initial washing was fine but the drying always took longer than I expected (possibly because multiple things were in a once). We were never in any real danger; the shows could be slightly delayed, or alternatives could be found but suffice to say that I wouldn’t hire me to launder people’s clothes in a hurry.
7. Having a streamlined point of sale is the BEST (and I’m in love with my new work tablet)
Again, not a huge amount to say about this one as Kyle will be writing a blog about all your PoS options (I was there when it happened but it was show week so I wasn’t really present). What it basically boils down to is that we switched from using my phone as our PoS to a tablet and everything just ran a lot smoother. It also meant that I got my phone back for the last two nights so my backstage, pre-show pacing now counted towards my daily steps.
And that’s that! The comprehensive list of things that I have learnt. Nothing overly dramatic but hopefully informative and entertaining for you to read. Have a fantastic rest of your day and now I’m off to do something that will be revealed soon...
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