Pen's Nest

{Take the 100 Things challenge!}

It's amazing how a rehearsal can affect my mood.

I don't know what was going wrong on Thursday evening, but it was like wading through treacle. We did manage to set the two numbers I had planned to set, but it seemed to be incredibly hard to get going. It wasn't helped by the fact that my props person turned up having not received my email (sent nearly a month ago) listing the props we'd be needing. Awkward.

Yet this Sunday, and last Sunday, the rehearsals went very well.

Last week, we managed to get the entire finale for Mikado, Act 1, set and sorted. That's about fourteen minutes of music, which is a hell of a lot. I didn't want the chorus bobbing up and down like mad things, but on the other hand, they can't stand there like lemons at the back of the stage, and there are interesting shapes to be achieved, and actual tension to be developed. And they managed it all in just two and a half hours. Awesome.

We had another really good rehearsal this morning - props and scenery people came up to me for approval on several items, and for more details of other things. Then we got into things, and again, it went very well. Not only did we set the last two numbers involving the chorus, *and* repeat the numbers from Thursday with no problems, but we also managed to go through the Act 1 Finale again, including one time where they ended up singing the final section unaccompanied, and doing it gratifyingly well.

I've decided I rather like doing the setting without the MD present. I explain stuff to the cast, maybe walk it through, then we play a CD and they do the moves and sing along. I think that perhaps without the pressure of having to sing it *right* when they're suffering from setting-IQ-loss, and with the added advantage of an accompaniment which includes the words, it does make it easier to get the feet going properly.

It certainly makes me feel better when I get the positive input of seeing the chorus do what I want them to do, without having to cope with the MD's lack of interest in some of what is going on.

There isn't enough time… but I do so want this show to be over.

I have a major gripe with The Archers⁽¹⁾.

Every year they put on a show—a panto⁽²⁾, or a variety show—but they always do it on a professional schedule. The scriptwriters seem to think a bunch of amateurs who don't even have an organisation dedicated to producing theatre can actually put on a competent panto in three weeks. (I assume one of them, once upon a time, asked one of the actors who was sneaking off to play Buttons⁽³⁾ in Milton Keynes how long they'd have to write him out for, and that's what he told them.) Personally, I don't believe it. Even if the farmers, in winter, are willing to spend their days in the village hall slapping their thighs⁽⁴⁾ and learning to walk in heels⁽⁵⁾ (which I doubt), the people who work in offices, hotels, shops etc can't possibly do so. Add in the fact that amateurs are probably less competent at acting, less practised at learning lines (and, optionally, music) and less able to understand what the director is trying to get them to do, than their professional equivalents, and putting together a show in a few haphazard evenings here and there just is Not Going To Happen.

Also, I bet the village hall just isn't available for rehearsals. Village halls are incredibly busy places, what with the regular exercise classes, the flower club, the WI, the bird-watching society once a month, the salsa group, the railway enthusiasts, the yoga sessions, and somebody's 21st every other Friday night. If you don't have a regular slot booked, you're screwed. Especially in the run-up to Christmas.

So what they need, in Ambridge⁽⁶⁾, is an actual theatre group, who meet regularly and organise shows in advance. It's possible that now, in 2012, they do have such a group—I finally lost interest during the great Grundy tribulations of 2005⁽⁷⁾, so I don't know. But up until then, it was always "Let's put on a show in a barn!" Except for not actually putting the show on in the barn: although there are plenty of barns around Ambridge, they always seem to be full. Probably full of silage, whatever that is.

In The Archers, they never seem to have any trouble choosing a script for their panto. What's more, they never seem to pay for it, which definitely ain't right. (There are about a thousand scripts available for any given panto, but they all cost *something*. Ideally, someone will read a bunch of them and pick the one most likely to work… not in Ambridge, though.) It's even possible that someone locally writes the script, in the week between deciding to put on the show in the barn and assembling the perfect cast from the local yokels. Ahahahaha.

No. Just, no.

We have a pantomime on our performance schedule for December this year. The directors have been looking at scripts for months. The auditions will be in July. It's true that the rehearsals won't get started at full power until after our big musical (early October), but there will be a light rehearsal schedule before then, and everyone will be expected to know their lines beforehand. Seven, maybe eight weeks, is not very much time to get a panto together, even with three rehearsals a week—not a full-size panto with adult chorus. It's more plausible with a small-scale, principals-only deal, but even then—amateurs can only rehearse in the evenings and at weekends, for the very good reason that most of them have day jobs. No-one on The Archers' scriptwriting team seems to be aware of this.

And don't forget to consider the scenery, props and costumes. A pantomime usually has a very complicated set, with lots of different scenes and at least one 'gag' involving specialist scenery. For example, in our fairly recent Cinderella we had a scene in a 'beauty parlour', during which one of the Ugly Sisters had her legs wound into a knot, and the other one was boiled. In Aladdin, one of the principals was put through a mangle and came out flat. We're lucky to have a really brilliant bunch of set constructors, plus an amazingly talented scenic artist, but they have to have the time to get this stuff made!

One more thing: there isn't usually a lot of attention paid to, well, paying for this stuff. An ad hoc theatre group isn't going to have the funds to pay for rehearsal space, buy or rent scenery, hire costumes, buy or rent scripts etc etc etc. Many of these things have to be done in advance of selling those tickets… The productions in Ambridge miraculously attract packed houses every year, even though there are but three dozen people living in the village (although to be fair, it may for all we know be additionally populated by any number of nameless mutes)—thus, nobody is bankrupted by putting up the cash in advance. But I wish we knew their secret.

Frankly, it's high time somebody on the scriptwriting staff had a look at how amateur theatre groups actually work, and realised that Ambridge's annual panto really is put on in Fairyland.


⁽¹⁾ For the 90% of you who are baffled by this reference, The Archers is a very long-running radio soap set in a farming community, with a 15-minute episode on Radio 4 every evening, Sunday-Friday.

⁽²⁾ Panto, or pantomime: interactive theatre of a traditional kind, in which the audience knows its script whether the actors do or not.

⁽³⁾ Buttons: Cinderella's hapless sidekick, a doofus who is hopelessly in love with her and spends a lot of time telling the audience how wonderful she is.

⁽⁴⁾ The women, or 'Principal Boys', who traditionally wear abbreviated tunics, fishnets and boots.

⁽⁵⁾ The men, or 'Dames', who cross-dress with varying degrees of glamour in the interests of comedy.

⁽⁶⁾ The imaginary village at the heart of the show, set nebulously somewhere in the Midlands-ish farming country.

⁽⁷⁾ Trust me, you don't want to know.

The audition is not the only thing that gets you the part.

You have to do it (usually). You have to get up there and throw yourself into this thing you haven't really rehearsed and hope that in the mind-blanking heat of the moment you actually produce what you meant to produce and don't forget your words or whatever.

But the thing is, you can do a good audition and still not get the part.

Sometimes, you don't get it because, while you did a good audition, someone else did a great one. It's… just tough.

Sometimes, you don't get it because although you did a good audition, you don't look right for the part. Perhaps it comes down to physicality, like height—you're too tall to fit against the leading man, or your counterpart is skinny and you are broad, or… anyway.That's harsh, but there's nothing you can do.

More broadly, the directing team are casting a whole ensemble, who have to fit together, and if you don't work in combination with the others... tough.

Sometimes you don't get it because the directing team have seen you in other stuff and don't believe you're up to it, even if you do produce the goods at the audition.

Sometimes someone else has vowed not to do the show unless they get a part, and you've expressed a willingness to be in the chorus.

Sometimes they've worked with you before and vowed never to do so again. Bed, made, lie.

And there are probably others I've forgotten for the moment.


So there are lots of ways you can not get a part, and many of them don't involve not deserving it.

Conversely, you can actually do a bad audition and *still* get the part because… the director's worked with you before and knows you can produce the goods, or everybody else did a bad audition and you're the least of the possible evils, or nobody else wanted the part and it's not important enough to go to enormous lengths to fill, or you look perfect and they think they can work with you, or the directing team have seen you on stage elsewhere and believe you can do better than your audition.

In the way of amateur groups, people will make their own stories about why they did not get The Part, or why someone else got it instead of their favoured candidate. I've known people who simply weren't good enough actors to be cast express the firm belief that the director always picks her favourites. I've seen plenty of people audition for a part that they simply cannot be cast in because they're so wrong for it. I've known the audition panel to just get it wrong*. I've known people to be cast because they do a great audition, who then develop no further and are rubbish in the actual part.

It's a hideous process, but it's necessary, and there are so many reasons, good and bad, why a good audition might not get you the part.

Yeah. I didn't get the part.




* Long ago, but unforgettably, I auditioned for Adelaide Adams in Calamity Jane, a role which seemed to me to require a 25-year-old alto with big tits. I did a good audition, I know I did, but would not have been surprised or aggrieved to lose out to the prettier alto with bigger tits (who got very nervous at auditions).

They cast a 60-year-old soprano. Who was lovely, but—really?