All over bar the bar bills

So it's all over - the rehearsals, the publicity, the week of the play spent in town from morning till night and living on peanuts and wine, and the frantic get-ins - the fifteen mad minutes between the last show getting out and our audience moving in, in which the furniture for the set must be whisked from behind a screen and placed on stage, the stage marked out with tape, the video and camera for the media element of our show set up, gaffer tape slapped down on the leads in case the actors or the audience went and broke their necks, and the programmes laid out, all before Front of House called down and demanded clearance and the audience filed in... And falling asleep on the bus and then waking at five in the morning with the thought of all I had to do - emails, phone calls and printing - before I had to jump back on the bus into town and the whole thing started again... and of course, a whole week of grabbing as many as I could of the other amazingly diverse shows.

Two and and half months of solid hard work to realise a play I wrote in days! Can't say it exactly compares with radio where it's all done for you, where the publicity machine is huge, and the audience, without any trouble to the writer, thousands. And our slightly sniffy review from Natalie Anglesey in the Manchester Evening News was a bit disheartening, and it was hard not to see this as contributing to the fact that our houses, which began comparatively large, dropped thereafter.

But there are other ways of course that theatre and radio don't compare: with theatre there's that live adrenalin buzz, and above all, for me, the special ability of theatrical magic to tackle my particular thematic interest: the nature of identity. And on the last night UK Theatre Network dropped in and the next day gave us a really nice review, which, if too late to boost our audiences again, was lovely.

How did it happen?

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Originally uploaded by Tom Wright 1964

First night for The Processing Room last night. Wow. We were so nervous beforehand - so many technical hitches with the equipment for the media element of the show, the music disc going missing at the very last minute and Tracy having to rush home to record another one, the actresses panicking because the rehearsal time had been so truncated and gathering in corners for emergency line runs, me on the book with them and trying to find time to leaflet as well. And me thinking: Bloody live show business, it's just too damn hair-raising, let me get back to the recording studio and the printed book! And then it was time, and an audience of about fifty piled in from nowhere, and suddenly it happened and it was great, and I'm thinking - this is why we do it, because it's actually a kind of magic!

Our next performance is Wednesday (5.30), but I've hardly got a day off today. Better rush in at lunchtime for a bit of leafleting, before which I must gather together a costume and learn my lines for a film rehearsal in Widnes this evening - another script and another world which I have somehow to switch my head to!

A big day for a little writer

What an amazing day I had on Friday. First I met my lovely publisher Jen from Salt. Well, of course I think Jen can do magic because she's publishing my book, but she also arrived from Cambridge miraculously fast through the flooding country and arrived for lunch at Croma bang on time. (It was a different story, though, according to her blog, when she went back later in the evening.) We had a great lunch and Jen had brought me a lovely present - a proof copy of Carys Davies's forthcoming collection of short stories, which is due out at the same time as mine. I met Carys over the internet through our both being published by Salt, and it turned out that we had each spent a part of our childhood in the same tiny corner of South Wales which features in both our books. Magic, or what?

Here's Jen and me in Croma:



Then Jen and I parted for the afternoon - she to meet Forward Prize nominated Salt poet Eleanor Rees, and I to do a spot of leafleting before the tech rehearsal for The Processing Room. I had dressed up for the evening in a frock and heels but then I found myself lugging chairs around and sticking down duct tape so I can't say I ended up looking very glamorous. I can't say either that the tech went without a hitch - for one thing, I'd been so busy with publicity and thus absent from the last couple of rehearsals that I had failed to remind everyone that I had arranged for Tom Wright, the 24:7 photographer to cover the show at the tech, and the costumes hadn't been brought! (But it'll all be all right on the night - honest!)

Then it was off out into the liquid day day again, leaving everyone else to pack up, and down rainswept Cross Street to the Royal Exchange where the award ceremony for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize had already begun. Jen was there, with Eleanor Rees whom I met for the first time. The prize, for a collection by a single author and judged in this its inaugural year by AL Kennedy, was instigated by Ailsa Cox with whom I founded and edited metropolitan short story magazine. Short-listed authors were Neil Gaiman, Jackie Kay, Colm Toibin and two authors we published in metropolitan, Nicholas Royle and Tamar Yellin. Winner was Colm Toibin for Mothers and Sons (Picador). In his heartening winning speech he said that short stories were a much more difficult form than novels and that the notion of them as minor and 'practice' for the 'real' form of novels was seriously mistaken.

After this I had a couple of hours to kill before going to be interviewed on BBC Radio Manchester, so I went up to Cornerhouse to let the effects of two glasses of wine wear off and gather my thoughts for the interview - and who should I meet but Mark who the evening before had interviewed me and Stephanie on Let's Go Global TV.

Then it was quarter to ten and time to turn up at the BBC. What a strange place the BBC is at night - so hushed, not a soul around as I made my way down the winding corridors to Radio Manchester. Through the glass you could see the BBC car park gleaming and black with rain, but the little waiting area was cosy with bright light and a soft sofa and the sound of the current broadcast coming softly through the speakers - like a little oasis in the streaming night. And that's exactly how Phil Woods' programme seems too, an oasis in the night, with his urbane voice and his calm relaxed style, and in no time at all I had forgotten I was on the radio, which of course is how it should be. I was 'Mrs Manchester' for the night, choosing my favourite records (while of course plugging my play), and we ended up with Fats Waller's 'Your Feet's Too Big' which John once bought me because I have such big feet for someone of my not too considerable height.

And then out of the BBC on my big feet and straight onto a 42 bus, and I was stepping through the door by midnight.

Not bad, eh, for a writer - ie one whose typical day is spent in jamas and moving only between the desk and the kettle?

No end to it

Oh dear, the ending of my play! After Mary-Ann expressed doubts about it, I spent half a morning thinking about how to reword it. Last night I took the new version along to rehearsal. I showed it to Tracy. She perused it silently. She looked up. 'You know what? I liked it better the way it was before.'

But Mary-Ann still had real problems with the way it was before. What did it mean? What message would the audience go away with? Wouldn't they go away confused when they need a resolution? Tracy said, 'But I like the ambiguity, that's the whole point for me, and the way it's written now, so explicit, weakens it, there's no impact,' and Stephanie (pictured above at an earlier rehearsal) agreed. Everyone pondered. Mary-Ann tore at her hair. I felt confused and said nothing, and then got all pedantic about the meaning of the play, which didn't help for a moment, and then I got all confused again.

In the end Tracy said to me, 'Well, you're the playwright, I'm just directing it. You have to make the decision.'

Can I make the decision? Can I heck. Help.

Radio refuge

Andrew Edwards of the Manchester radio station ALLFM (96.9) is recording interviews with the theatre companies involved in 24:7, to be put on the 24:7 website, and on Sunday night Rachael (above at rehearsal) and I made our way separately over to Levenshulme to do ours. What a night! So cold! It would be cold for April, leave alone July! And wet, of course. I got a lift over, and after I was dropped, wrapped up in my leather jacket I went up onto Levenshulme station to wait for Rachael who was coming by train. Not a soul in sight, no sign of the train down the line, just wetness and wind and swaying trees, and everything grey - a world forsaken not just by summer. And how I wished I had gloves! But then the signals changed to red and the train came into view, worming its way towards me, and then there was Rachael stepping off the train in her woolly duffel coat and wellies!

ALLFM is situated in a converted three-storey corner terrace house just across the road from the station. Such a contrast inside! Another 24:7-er answered the door to us - I think it was Anthony Trevelyan who wrote Harlequin - since Andrew was in the studio recording someone. Julia Hogan, the author of Each To their Own, was also waiting her turn in the cosily bright back room which still had the air of a living room with a sofa and easy chairs. Not long afterwards, others joined us, including Luke Walker, writer of Mind The Gap. There was an immediate sense of refuge and cameraderie induced by the evening outside, adrenalin for the impending recordings and the fact that our shows opened in precisely one week's time! Julia echoed my feelings by saying that she was exhausted - she was amazed at how much work producing a show was. At the start she had considered directing hers, but was now entirely thankful that she hadn't!

Andrew was lovely, popping out in his bright tee-shirt between recordings to tell us to help ourselves to the water and biscuits and nectarines, and putting everyone at their ease. Then it was mine and Rachael's turn to go into the converted front room which was the studio and talk about The Processing Room. I had prepared a little dialogue, and we took turns at the only mic to read our bits, which Andrew would splice together afterwards. Rachael was brilliant, as I knew she would be: she is the daughter of actors and has been doing radio for all of her life. I haven't been in front of a mic that often, but as I said to Andrew when he said he thought I had, I've been around radio studios for a very long time. Let's just hope it sounds like it!

The publicity is really kicking off: on Thursday I'll appear on Let's Go Global TV's weekly evening programme, and on Friday night I'm on BBC Radio Manchester's Mr and Mrs Manchester (95.1FM/104.6FM)!

Too much to do

Uh-oh. On Thursday night at rehearsal for The Processing Room, we are rehearsing the ending when Mary-Ann (pictured at rehearsal) says, 'Er... sorry to throw a spanner in the works, but...' The ending doesn't make sense for her, and now I have to think about re-working it to make my meaning clearer. And that's on top of working on publicity and rushing off to Widnes today to rehearse for a short film (and learning my lines for it) - not to mention clearing a room in the house for builders! And The Processing Room opens a week on Monday... Help!

Thing is, we writers moan when we're not busy, don't we?

Publicity

Rehearsals for The Processing Room continue apace (that's Rachael on the left, who plays the very strange and wry nurse who drops a bombshell for the three women lost in a hospital). I've been getting on with publicity, and an article about Stephanie (who plays one of the three women) will appear in the Lancashire Evening Post on 20th. Meanwhile, Channel M have put the details about our show up on their website and on Thursday 19th we'll appear on Let's Go Global's weekly TV show (7-9 pm).

We now have a stage manager, Becky Saville, and she came to her first rehearsal on Tuesday evening. It had been warmer in the day and she wore her shorts, and, like me, no socks, and as the temperature plummeted we got pretty frozen sitting watching the others as they kept warm with all their complicated and very funny moves.

Another one tonight - and I'm going to wrap up warm!

Leafleting

I am totally exhausted, my feet are aching and they have blisters: I have just walked several miles around Manchester leafleting for The Processing Room. Well, at least I'm making up for all that time I've spent at the computer and the desk...

Rehearsals

Rehearsals are properly under way now for The Processing Room. Last night we all made it through the sheeting rain and ridiculously dark early evening to the third, and Mary-Ann wore her wellies. I am delighted with the way it's going: Tracy is picking up on the surreal elements of the play with lots of stylised movement which enhances the comedy. It's very complicated, and I don't know how the actors are picking it all up so quickly but they are. Here are some pictures:

And here they are collapsing in giggles when it all went pear-shaped:

A rehearsal, a holiday and a Normblog competition

First rehearsal last night for The Processing Room. I didn't attend, but director Tracy rang me afterwards to say it went swimmingly, and that everyone is upbeat although she's given the actors plenty to think about with lots of movement. Can't wait to be at the next rehearsal next Tuesday when I get back from a long weekend in Paris and I hope some headspace for a new writing commission (more of which later), as well as a rest for my RSI.

Before I go (cringing about my carbon footprint, of course) I want to draw your attention to the short-short story competition being run by blogger Norm.

24:7 Theatre Festival Press Launch

Tuesday evening was Press Launch for the 24:7 Theatre Festival, and all afternoon beforehand there was a rehearsal for the trailers which several of us companies would be presenting to the press. Other companies were acting out their trailers, and the place was swarming with stressed actors, and my director Tracy and I congratulated ourselves that, since our trailer for The Processing Room was a film, we'd avoid such hassle: all we'd have to do was press 'Play'. Hm. Not so simple. The technicians had to rig us up sound, which it seemed was not easy, and we spent most of the afternoon geared up and waiting and so getting as adrenalin- stressed as the rest. But then it happened, and for the first time I saw the film which Tracy has made and I loved it! She's launching it on MySpace soon so I'll be able to link to it.

Then it was time for the launch: pink fizzy wine and hors d'oevres in one of the bar/lounges of the vast Tardis-like complex which exists beyond the narrow doors of Pure in the Printworks, followed by the trailer show, and then back into the bar again. There are reports in The British Theatre Guide and The Manchester Evening News and Tom Wright, the festival photographer, took photos including the one above. I'm on the far left talking to fellow playwright Trevor Suthers (whose Comedy Mouthwash features in this year's festival), both of us in our theatrical gear, me in my funky charity-shop heels and he in his bright-orange blazer. To the right of Trevor and just behind is Processing Room actor Rachael Carnegie, and in the centre at the back Amanda Hennessy, co-director of the festival.

Trials on the way to perfection, we hope...

Well, it wasn't easy turning people down after our auditions for The Processing Room. Not only was the standard so high, but as sometimes happens we had to make choices on other criteria as well: for reasons of plot which I won't divulge here, we had to find actors who fitted together in terms of physical appearance, quality of voice and overall energy - not an easy task, and there were people we were really sorry and very reluctant to pass over, but we did it in the end and have four perfect actors (see post below).

After the actual auditions, Mary-Ann and I, worn out once again, went and collapsed at an outdoor table at the The Old Pint Pot just across from Salford University Adelphi Building, where we'd held the auditions. It's a lovely spot, overlooking the river, and the sun came out and all the gnats were fizzing in the air above it and the ducks were making gleaming slipstreams, and I suddenly relaxed and realized how anxious I had been about getting this company together in time. People management, I'm not used to it nowadays, and though I look forward to it as a change, it's always a shock to be dependent on others and on outside contingencies when you've been so much in control of your world at your desk, the world of words. A glass of wine, that's what we wanted, but only the house wine, which we didn't much like, came in glasses, so guess what, we ordered a bottle. Good job that a truly charming guy on a nearby table overheard our conversation and introduced himself as a teacher of movement, and ended up joining us and helping out with the booze...

Not that that was the end of the panics. Tomorrow is 24:7's Press Launch. We decided to get our flyers ready for the event, and Ian Currie, Production Manager at Salford University (where our director Tracy Gentles teaches), very generously agreed to design them for us. Last Wednesday was the final day for getting the file to the printer, and on Tuesday afternoon Tracy emailed it to me to approve and send on to them.

I rang her quickly: 'Tracy, for some reason, Ian got the wrong logo!'
'No problem, I'll get Ian to change it when I get back to the university.'
Half-five she rings me back. 'Ian's gone home I'm afraid, but don't worry, I'll do it myself.'
An hour later, she rings me again. 'I'm locked out of the computer room, and I can't find anyone who's got a key. I can't do it in the morning because I'm on a plane at 5.00 am.'
'OK, if it's just a matter of dropping the logo in, I can do it.'
I try to load the file into Photoshop. It won't open. The only way I can have a file to send to the printer tomorrow morning will be to rebuild it from scratch.

8.00 on Tuesday evening I sit down at my computer and teach myself to use Photoshop properly for the first time ever. Is this only way to learn software, I wonder? I have sat at the computer for hours in the past unable to fathom how layers work in Photoshop, but on Wednesday evening I had no choice but to find out quick-sharp. Well, I got the file to printer the next morning just in time, but I'd been wound so high I hadn't managed to sleep that night...

Next, the meeting with the technician for all the companies whose plays will be performed in our venue, Pure Blue. Hmm. 'I hate these kinds of things,' the normally equable Tracy tells me. Why? I soon find out. As soon as Mary-Ann and I saw the Blue Room at Pure, the night of the Big Gathering, we knew it was the one for our play: it is draped all around with white voile curtains which, for reasons I won't divulge again, makes it perfect. Well, I walked in with Tracy last Friday and realized straight away what I hadn't noticed before, that one of the walls isn't in fact so draped, but is faced with white slatted boards. And the other companies were agreeing eagerly with the technician that the plays should be done end-on to this wall.


Me: Any chance that we could do them the other way on?
Writer/producer of one of the other companies: No! We chose this room specifically for those slats.
Me: Well, actually, we chose the room specifically for the drapes...

We came to a compromise. We will have to suffer the slatted wall, but the technician will cover it with a different sort of drape.
Tracy to me: See what I mean about hating this kind of thing?

Press Launch tomorrow, and thirteen companies, including us, are presenting trailers of their plays. Tracy has made a film for ours, and I can't wait to see to it...

Our cast is complete

Well, we held our auditions. The overall standard was amazing, and we have ended up with four great actresses for The Processing Room.

Mary-Ann Coburn, who was pre-cast, has worked for major rep and touring companies including The Glasgow Citizens and the Manchester Library Theatre as well as television:
She is joined by Paula Williamson who, since graduating in 2005, has set up her own comedy theatre company Yappo: by Stephanie Ridings who is a founder member of touring theatre company Angel Club and whose TV credits include Coronation Street and Clocking Off:

and by Rachael Carnegie, who graduates this summer from Salford University in Media and Performance: I breathed a great sigh of relief, and once we got them altogether and had a readthrough I knew it was all going to be great!

A director!

We have a director for our 24:7 production of The Processing Room: the fabulous Tracy Gentles who at the stunningly young age of 24 lectures at Salford University and runs her own dynamic theatre company Hooh Hah.

Actor auditions tomorrow...

How to stay sane while producing a play

This morning I slept until 8.30. I am so exhausted! Why do I always forget how tiring, how time-consuming, how nerve-wracking and damn emotionally involving it is producing a play?

On Sunday Mary-Ann and I met in a pub to discuss things - Mary-Ann sweeping in all dressed in sparkly ear-rings and celebratory pinks and purples - and got too excited and ended up drinking too much.

'I'm not drinking any more,' I told her on Tuesday as I arrived at Cornerhouse to talk to potential directors. 'I'm staying clear-headed for this project.' She was there already, waiting for me in more sober but nevertheless glamorous purples and black. Me: I was all black and trousered, in a shirt and carrying my biggest brief case, but in spite of it all, feeling like a fraud. 'Oh, it's odd doing this,' Mary-Ann said, echoing my feelings. 'I'm so used to being on the other side of the table!'

The day wore on. With each interview we had coffee, between two of them we had lunch, and then we had coffee again. By 4.30 we were done, coffeed-out, our makeup faded, our clothes crumpled, papers out of order, and totally gob-smacked by the talent and commitment we had encountered. And exhausted. 'Oh, god,' said Mary-Ann, rising with her purse in her hand. 'Let's have a glass of wine!'

And that was that all over again.

All in the image

OK, so I kind of glossed over my hair-raising experience of getting an image for The Processing Room. Well, I'd decided what image I wanted - Dave Slack had warned us that we needed to be thinking about it - but I still had a mad panicked rush to achieve it in the end. Last weekend I went to London, and got back late on Monday to a packet from 24:7 which must have arrived on the Saturday, and the news that we had one week to submit our festival image! This meant that in fact I had 4 days to get the photo taken and - without training - successfully manipulate it on the computer before getting it to them in time! And I was due out all day Tuesday, and Mary-Ann was coming over Wednesday to help me go through actors' and directors' CVs, and meanwhile the correspondence from both was still coming through and had to be dealt with.

Tuesday night. John and I have waited for dark, and then there I am dressed up in some semblance of a nurse's uniform (and freezing bloody cold, since the boiler's bust and the weather's like February), trailing round the house with John behind me holding a camera, trying to find a doorway he can stand far enough back from to get enough black space around it. We choose his study, which is at the end of the landing. We want a silhouette, so we've set up a light behind me.

'Further back, John.'

He almost steps back in the dark, before realising the stairwell is right behind him.

I look at his efforts. He doesn't know what's in my head, of course, and I haven't managed to explain, so we have to start again. By the time we finish, he's very fed up and I'm frozen to the door frame.

Next day, with Mary-Ann, I take a look at them properly. They're hopeless. Too dark - there wasn't enough light behind me after all - and all John's study junk behind me is far too distracting, and most unethereal... We'll have to wait for dark once more and clear the room and adjust the lighting and do it all over again...

Thursday I'm at my computer working on the chosen shot. It's OK, I can do it, but I'm so slow, it's taking all day, and there's so little time left... And then Ben, my website designer and saviour, comes through on Messenger and takes over, whisking different colour versions of the image back to me over and over, and helps me to choose.

And guess, what, I did it: emailed the image off a day early and had a hard copy printed just in time! I'd have had a celebratory glass of wine if I hadn't already ended up with a migraine...

Production takes it out of you

The last few days have been crammed with activity - no time for blogging - around the 24:7 production of The Processing Room. I've been working on the image, which meant a photoshoot, and then my laboured and untutored efforts on Photoshop, and finally an SOS email to artist Ben White, who designed my website, and who now shamed me by flashing up double-quick various colour versions for me to choose from. In the end we chose ethereal blue - I'm calling the play 'an unearthly comedy' - in spite of my life-long belief that only red or yellow leaflets get picked up. (When we come to design the leaflet, we'll probably add some touches of red.)

And yesterday Mary-Ann Coburn, who is taking one of the parts, came over, and we studied the huge pile of actors' CVs I've been sent, and negotiated by email with interested directors. After which we were ravenous and stuffed ourselves with salad and smoked mackerel and cheese and cake!

Call this a writing career?

Swamped

And now my inbox is swamped with the emailed CVs of actresses who didn't get to see me on Monday night!

Overwhelmed

Last night was the 24:7 Theatre Festival gathering, when interested writers, directors and actors get the chance to make contact to work together on this years' projects. Well, yeah, the kind of contact sardines get in a tin... I have never seen such a vast crowd! We had to wait in a snaking queue to be processed at the door and given our designation tags (actor, writer, director etc), but long before I got to the door the tags had run out. And once inside, a seething mass! Mostly actors, of course, but also mostly young, and there are only two young parts in my play, and very few old enough for the other part I have to fill. And, just my luck, very few directors who were not already committed to plays... Or at least, that's how it seemed: maybe there were scores squashed away in the crowds and impossible to see... Oh and, then organiser Dave Slack suggested we writers get up one at at time on this huge very high podium and address that packed crowd and say what parts we had to fill... Well, I've addressed plenty of audiences, but there was nothing quite like it before: quite stomach-crunching, I'm telling you. And then scores of pretty, intent and articulate young actresses squirmed their way between the bodies to hand me their CVs, and I have such a pile of them I honestly don't know where to start...

Getting lucky

I am so thrilled! Last night, as I was slumped on the sofa and nodding off (the effects of two glasses of wine in the pub earlier), the phone rang and I jumped wide awake: actor Mary-Ann Coburn (left), to whom I sent a copy of The Processing Room a few days ago, has read it and would like to take part! Well, wow: Mary-Ann is a fantastic and versatile actress! Just remains to decide which part she should play, as there are three she could do! Oh, and also to find three more actors, a director and a stage manager... And of course I have to keep my fingers crossed that someone else taking part in 24:7 doesn't come along and make Mary-Ann a better offer, with, say, a juicier part...