summer’s end

I didn’t really want to, as I was exhausted, but decided for old times’ sake and to show support that I should make the trip down to Guildford yesterday for the closing day of my old company’s production of A Winter’s Tale. It was surreal sitting in the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre holding the programme, thinking back to November when all this madness really kicked off for me and I was bright-eyed, fresh out of university, ringing up venues to ask if they would take some leaflets for audition publicity – going through all those gruelling months with over a thousand kids – and finally witnessing the result of it all, on a stage.

I sat beside a woman from Woking who was avidly into theatre, having seen almost everything in London on and off the West End for years and years. She’d seen Judi Dench play Desiree Armfeldt in A Little Night Music, sat on the Olivier Awards’ Theatre Committee, been in about eight amateur opera and theatre groups as a teenager – chatting with her, I felt humbled, and I felt the weight of a massive tradition on my shoulders, one I was only beginning to scratch the surface of. You can work in this industry for ages and still not understand the first thing about it till you get to grips with just how much history lies behind the institution of English theatre.

The production was truly amazing. I knew the company did incredible work, but I had somehow never imagined that it would be like this, that all the paperwork and photographs and adding up audition scores would translate into this. It was especially piquant for me having just seen The Bridge Project’s version of The Winter’s Tale, and this musical interpretation, gently re-imagined as what was ultimately a celebration of youth, rebirth and hope in a Soviet State/Mediterranean setting, more than held its own. This is an even more staggeringly tremendous fact when you take into account the fact that all the young people involved were amateurs, many without formal training (as I remember all too well from aforementioned paperwork), and that they had done all this with just three weeks of rehearsal.

Sometimes the sheer slog of the grunt work gets to me. But I was genuinely a little teary-eyed by the end of yesterday’s performance, partly because the statue scene was done so well and heartbreakingly that it rivalled even that of The Bridge Project, and partly because the enormous sense of having had a hand in this, of having helped make it happen, hit me once again. As the lights came on in the house, the lady from Woking turned to me and said, “I thoroughly enjoyed that. I was very impressed indeed, there are some very promising young voices on that stage.” I told her how glad I was, that I’d make sure to convey her remarks to my colleagues, and she said to please do that. She then wished me well in my career and told me how happy she was for me that I’d managed to find a job – her daughter’s in showbiz as well, so she knows it’s tough.

I wished her a safe journey back home, we smiled as we parted, and I headed back to Guildford station to hop the next train back to Waterloo. I’ve rarely felt more glowy satisfaction from a day of doing nothing.