As anyone who has met me, seen my facebook wall or follows me on twitter will know, I have written a play. A while ago now actually, a year ago, but I'm still going on about it. Sorry about that. It's a hazard of knowing someone trying to make their way in a profession like the theatre I'm afraid, we never really switch off, we yak on and on about what we're up to all the time in the hopes that we might wear you down to the point that you agree to actually come and see our shows. And from there we hope that you might actually like watching our shows and will, in turn, begin the yakety yakking to your friends. That, I think, is the basis of creating an audience for your work. Or it's something like that.
Anyway, the play started as a bunch of interviews and slowly -very slowly, about two years slowly- became a 50 minute one-man play with no clear plan regarding what to do with it once I'd written it. Then an opening came up at the Edinburgh Fringe last year and, after a seven week whirlwind of rewriting, casting, rehearsals, set building etc., it debuted at the Fringe for a month. And it did pretty well. Obviously not everyone saw it, and not everyone who saw it liked it but it did well enough for us to have the newspapers say it, I and the actor all had promise and to build up a little gang of people interested to see us develop it and who sent us emails, tweets and facebook messages to prove it. We got invited to do the show in Dublin this year, so we did that. Then we popped on over to the Brighton Fringe which was a tremendous highlight of the adventure so far.
But then I sort of stopped. I wasn't really sure what to do next. That's pretty unimpressive seeing as how I have an MA in Creative Producing for Theatre, but maybe that sort of mindset doesn't fly when you're looking at your own work. When you've done a show for a year and it hasn't made proper money or been offered a run at a real life theatre is it time to put it to sleep and pick up a new show? Or is that quitters' talk? Have I just completed all the preparation and workshopping of a play and am now at the appropriate point to give it a leg up to something bigger? How do you know if something's good enough?
While I was mulling over these sort of chipper thoughts I got a reply to an email I sent a while ago, when I was mailing organisations that I thought might fancy seeing the show or publicising it to their followers, and the email invited us to put on a one-off performance of the play in London as a fundraiser for their organisation. Excitingly, the show would be at London's Central School of Speech & Drama and they would take care of all the theatre hire, tech costs and FOH shennanigans in return for the play and a brief Q&A afterwards.
If you haven't tried to tout a play around theatres and to attract audiences, fighting the likely rejections, whilst maintaining your belief that it's a good piece of entertainment that is worthy of your potential audiences' time and money then you won't perhaps understand the little thrill you get when someone approaches you and says, "Hey, that sounds great. Do you want to come and do a show for us?" But for someone not quite sure where to go next it was a beautifully timed opportunity and a sign that the show quite possibly has quite a bit of life in it.
So, as I climb back into my producery promotery shoes I'd like to invite you to come and see Rachael's Cafe at Central School of Speech and Drama Embassy Theatre at 7pm (Bar open from 6pm) on Wednesday 26th September 2012 as a fundraiser for arts based charity Gendered Intelligence. Another happy turn-up for the books is that tickets are selling well so please do snap yours up now: http://www.wegottickets.com/
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