Directing

It was 2011. I’d studied acting quite a bit by this point - two years in The Questors Student Group and externally - and I was getting quite opinionated about what “good” looked like, both in terms of acting and in terms of overall production values. At this point, I was watching probably 50 to 80 shows a year whilst working hard on my IT career, so if a show didn’t grab me then I could get quite grumpy about it.

At one point I pulled myself aside and said simply: you have a choice, either you do better or stop being so grumpy about other people’s hard work. So when the opportunity came up to train as a director and be given a showcase (a one-act show in our Studio), I was all over it.

I remember going out and buying a “director’s cardigan”, which was simply an oversized piece of knitwear that stopped a little above my knees and was loose enough that, in times of crisis, could be pulled around me like a hug. With clothes like this in my wardrobe, I was clearly ready to direct.

Several workshops later, I was allowed a showcase and was given a one-act play from a Canadian playwright, George F Walker, called Suburban Motel - one of a set of six plays all set in the same motel room. Honestly, I got lucky - I got the short, punchy one full of strong one-liners and was remarkably speech-free ..... until the very end.

Here we find all bar one of the main characters lying dead, scattered around the motel room lit only with the headlights of a car coming in through the door (and a little dry ice - why not - let’s imagine it’s exhaust fumes). Our final living character, being hunted by the owners of the aforementioned car, is hiding in the bathroom (offstage) and closes the play with a two-page monologue, thinking he’s “got away with it” until the very end when he sees the would-be killers through the bathroom window and realises his fate is upon him. Gunshot. Fade to black. Curtain call music.

I’d had some positive feedback about my acting; and I genuinely think I was reasonable in the right part, but honestly there are plenty of better actors out there. The reception I got for the shows I’d directed was of a wholly different order.

Since that day, I’ve acted in only two productions in fifteen years and honestly I have little desire to act again. I have (including Suburban Motel) directed 11 productions in total, and I’ve been fortunate to have worked with some amazing people. In the photo above, Quinn (the soldier) just clawed his way up through the floor of our Playhouse stage 90 minutes into our production of Albion. He arrives for a slow dance to Royal Blood with the woman to whom he used to be married. The thing is, we know he was killed in a war zone 18 months earlier, which is why his uniform is battered and half his face covered in a wet, bloodied wound. Obviously. This is a Mike Bartlett stage direction I loved because it was bonkers and yet also made absolute sense. I found out the Almeida hadn’t done it as written because of the nature of their floors. It had been done there professionally twice and a few times at other amateur companies who couldn’t do it. We did, and I believe we were the very first. It was my favourite bit of the play to watch every night because Quinn came up through a “solid” flower bed some of the audience had been sitting literally one foot away from for 90 minutes by this point. The gasps, the exclaims - people jumping - were wonderful! I never saw anyone actually spill their drink, which was disappointing. But we got close......

11 down - some more to come..... I just need to borrow an orchestra for the next one I have in mind, so if anyone knows of one in West London going spare, do let me know! Here is the list: