I had two reasons for joining the Crucible’s Community Theatre Venture or CCTV for short. I needed the company of my fellow playwrights and I thought it might be a good place to meet women. I couldn’t have been more wrong on the second count. I met women all right but mostly the wrong sort. They were either mad or neurotic and often a combination of the two. For them, Sarah Kane is to the theatre what Sylvia Plath is to literature.
The CCTV is, of course, an offshoot of the famous Crucible Theatre (not to be confused with the Sheffield snooker venue), which is widely regarded as the home of new plays. It funds the CCTV but doesn’t get involved in the day-to-day running. For that, it appoints a director (currently Tom Threadwell), under whom there’s various staff – a youth development officer, an outreach worker (whatever that is), an admin officer, an acting tutor and a writing tutor. Grasping careerists the lot of them. They use the CCTV as a stepping stone to the main house, while discouraging us members from doing likewise. Naturally we ignore them. The ambition of everyone in the writing group is to get a play on at the main house. The ambition of everyone in the acting group is to perform at the main house.
There are perks to being a member of the CCTV. We get discounted tickets to shows at the main house and can drop in there whenever we want. This gives us the opportunity to buttonhole the associate directors and petition them to do our plays, which is about as likely as me winning an Olivier. We persist nevertheless, devoid of scruples or self-respect. Not even the AD himself, Liam Dickson, escapes our attentions. Poor bloke. I do feel sorry for him sometimes. As if he hasn’t got enough on his plate directing a succession of Irish plays, he has to put up with a lot of pesky upstarts desperate to get their work before a paying audience.
For the last two years, I’ve been one of the Crucible’s team of readers, which isn’t quite the Grub Street occupation it might sound. A lot of established playwrights eke out a secondary income in this way. They enter the theatre through the main doors but skulk out via the stage door, head down, with a bag full of manuscripts, looking about furtively as though they’d just bought crack cocaine. I have no such shame. I actually like the job. For a tenner a go, I get to read many of the unsolicited manuscripts that arrive by the dozen each week. It gives me immense pleasure to reject them in the bluntest possible terms. I’ve yet to recommend one for so much as a second reading and not only out of spite for the truth is they’re unutterably bad. The day I lose that job will be a sad day indeed. Piers, the literary manager, gave it to me when I was on my uppers. He trusts my judgement and thinks I can write. If only he were the AD.
I use any pretext to spend time at the main house. I’ve lost count of the number of plays I’ve seen there. I’ve worked the box office, sold programmes, I’ve done ushering – I’ve even had a stint in the laundry. Whenever I’m in the area, I drop in and see Piers. We sit in his cluttered office and talk theatre. I can’t get enough of the old place. It has so much history and tradition. In its cramped corridors and byways are framed pictures of all the great thesps who’ve trodden its boards – Olivier, Gielgud, Richardson – as well as faded posters of hits from its illustrious past. Many of these date back to the sixties, the Crucible’s so-called Golden Age, and feature plays written by a group of writers known back then as the Angry Young Men. This period alone makes it a special theatre but there are other things that set it apart – its location, for one. Being in Chelsea makes it neither West End nor fringe yet somehow it combines the pulling power of the former with the credibility of the latter. No wonder it has so many enemies. But, for every person who hates it – thwarted writers and directors on the whole – there are as many who love it. And there’s yet another group, to which I belong – those who hate it and love it in equal measure.
Towards the CCTV I feel merely indifferent. It’s a drab, pokey little building on the corner of Oxford Gardens and Portobello Road. On Tuesdays, the actors use the ground floor for improv and theatre games. Led by the dynamic Julia (ex-Italia Conti stage school), they blindfold each other and scream a lot. On Fridays, in the basement, among the mops and props, we writers meet to tear each other’s work to shreds. What happens in the building the rest of the week is anyone’s guess. For all I know it doubles as a porn set.
At the end of each term, there are productions given by the actors before an ‘invited audience’ – a motley collection of friends, family and tramps dragged in off the street. The majority of these pieces are devised by the actors themselves but sometimes we writers are asked to submit work on a particular issue. Terrorism crops up a lot, as does homelessness. Whatever the subject matter, the results are wholly amateurish but no one really cares since the primary aim is to get the two groups working together. The ‘members’ own’ project was established along similar lines. The idea is that the members do their own thing, writers and actors working in tandem, free from staff involvement. Not one has got off the ground in all my time there. Whenever there’s an attempt, it fails due to a clash of egos. The policy hasn’t officially been rescinded but is no longer mentioned – except as a joke.
* * *
Three days after I last saw him, I bump into Evan outside the CCTV.
‘Come to show off?’ I ask.
‘You’d do the same.’
‘True.’
I ring the buzzer and Richard comes to the door.
‘All right, guys?’ His jeans are so tight I can see the outline of his cock and balls, a small collection of lumps on one side of his crotch. Offended, I avert my eyes and step past him, closely followed by Evan.
Everyone’s present, smoking and chatting and drinking tea from tannin-stained mugs. They’re sitting around a small Formica table, on grey plastic chairs. A thick haze of smoke hangs oppressively in the room. The walls, distempered and flaking, are a shrine to the glories of the main house. They’re covered with huge posters of some of its biggest hits – The Glass Menagerie, Death and the Maiden, Six Degrees of Separation, Oleanna. The walk-in cupboards are agape, bulging with props and brooms and mops and buckets and goodness knows what else. In one corner there’s a sink and next to that a tiny sideboard with a kettle, a microwave, some chipped mugs, a box of teabags and a half-empty jar of instant coffee. Beside this is a small fridge, on top of which are a box of sugar cubes and a contributions tin.
After the usual greetings, I head straight for the kettle. I discover there’s only one teabag left and I manage to swipe it before Evan gets there. He has to settle for coffee. On discovering that there’s only skimmed milk in the fridge, we both swear. By way of revenge, instead of making a donation to the contributions tin, we pilfer the few coins already in it – about three pence. We go and join the others, giggling at our private joke.
As usual the group’s divided into men and women. On one side of the table sits Fatima, Emily, Jess and April and on the other side Rajeev, Evan and me. Richard has taken up a neutral position between the two camps, his legs curled up on the chair.
Fatima’s the most forthright of the women and, as such, the others look up to her. A graduate of Rose Bruford College, she’s a more than capable writer, has a formidable understanding of theatre and is not afraid to express herself. She’s loud, often confrontational and as stubborn as an oil stain. The skills of a barrister are required to dissuade her from her strongly held views and not one of us has ever bettered her in an argument. Of course we men hate her unreservedly and, on the rare occasions that she fails to show up, we celebrate wildly. Behind her back, we call her all sorts of names but, to her face, we do our best to avoid accusations of sexism. We may, if she’s in a good mood, take the piss out of her hiking boots, which she wears in all weathers, but jokes about her boxer’s nose or pudding-bowl haircut are strictly forbidden.
Of the other women, Emily has the most interesting and original mind and, for my money, she is the best writer in the group. She’s also very pretty, in a boyish sort of way, with close-cropped blonde hair. She’s obsessed with John Lennon and has an irritati
ng habit of inserting his lyrics into her writing. So, in the middle of a particularly gripping piece of dialogue, we might hear ‘I’m just a jealous guy’, quickly followed by ‘the English army had just won the war’. They always make sense contextually but, for me, there’s something too gimmicky about them. We’re all agreed that she needs to drop this affectation if her writing is to have credibility but she claims to be possessed by the spirit of the dead Beatle. There’s just no arguing with that.
There’s not much to say about Jess and April except that they’re talentless and plain. They talk a good play and make valuable contributions during discussions but their own work has all the vitality of amputated limbs. Jess, who bears a disconcerting resemblance to Vanessa Feltz, is a bit of a pseudo intellectual and her work often features academics wrestling with lofty ideas. April tends to draw on subjects closer to home and her writing is a transparent attempt at working through her personal problems. This would be fine if her problems were interesting. Sadly, they aren’t. The stress of the workplace and a desire to take more holidays are not, to my mind, the stuff of good drama.
‘Shall we make a start?’ asks Richard.
The chattering comes to an immediate end and very quickly the table is covered with pages of typed script. With only a two-hour slot, there’s no time to waste. The workshop is the highlight of our week and we’re keen to get on with it. The only person not to stir is Evan. He’s sipping his coffee and looking smug and I suddenly remember why he’s come along. I feel like tipping the coffee down the front of his white T-shirt.
It’s a simple system. Those who didn’t read last week get priority treatment this week. Which means that Rajeev gets to kick off the session. This makes the women squirm for Rajeev’s stuff invariably contains a good deal of lurid sex. Evan and I find his writing tremendously entertaining and we always look forward to what he’ll come up with next. Today, it turns out to be a three-hander. Two of the roles are for women and to read them Rajeev solicits the help of Jess and April. He’d wanted Fatima and Emily, but they’d expressed a desire to listen. The last role he fills himself. Richard, as ever, gets to read the stage directions.
There’s only one scene, set on a tubetrain. It’s late, past midnight, and in the carriage are two women and a man. The women know each other and are sitting together at one end of the carriage; the man’s sitting at the opposite end. He keeps looking at the women and smiling. They make the mistake of smiling back and he goes over and starts chatting away as though they were old friends. The women do their best to ignore him but, not wishing to appear rude, they answer one or two of his questions. In this way, we learn their names and what they do for a living and so on. The man’s called Sid, a fifty-year-old librarian. Despite a good job, a stable marriage and two well-adjusted children, he’s bored with his life and longs for a bit of excitement. Touched by the sadness in his voice, the women want to know what sort of excitement he craves. ‘Sexual excitement,’ he says and, without further ado, he pulls down his trousers and exposes himself.
‘Enough!’ shrieks Fatima. ‘Please – it’s awful.’
‘I agree,’ says Jess.
‘Me too,’ says April.
Evan and I start sniggering.
‘This is censorship!’ cries Rajeev. ‘It’s not fair, Richard.’
‘Well,’ says Emily. ‘I must say I did find it a little…’
‘Pornographic?’ asks Fatima.
‘Televisual,’ Emily concludes.
Rajeev gnashes his teeth as though he’d just been branded. For a playwright, there’s no worse put-down than to have your work described as ‘televisual’.
‘What do you guys think?’ asks Richard.
Evan and I take the fifth, thus saving ourselves from the women’s wrath and leaving Rajeev high and dry. Muttering under his breath, he gathers up his script, stuffs it into his briefcase and then sits with his arms folded defiantly. The look in his eyes says that, before the night’s out, he’ll get even.
The other pieces turn out to be uninspiring. There’s a monologue from Fatima featuring an elderly woman talking about growing up in Cyprus. It fails to convince. Emily attempts to get inside the minds of two idiots savants and ends up looking like an idiot. April gives us two female friends discussing the ill effects of fad diets. It’s entitled ‘Don’t Call Me Fatty’ and elicits belly laughs in all the wrong places. Jess’s piece is an imagined conversation between Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. Inexplicably, she gets Evan to read the part of Sartre in an Irish accent. My own piece, about a man who discovers his lover’s bisexuality, receives the most brutal savaging of the night.
At the end of the session, Richard makes a surprise announcement. The powers that be have decided to showcase our work at the main house. The idea is to do a week of rehearsed readings at the start of the new term. The writers will be assigned professional directors and actors and will be expected to attend rehearsals. Resources dictate that only two full-length plays can be produced. The others will be extended extracts. Plays must be submitted no later than the second session of the new term. A panel of judges will be put together from staff at the main house, ‘the unsung heroes’, as Richard calls them. Their decision will be final.
Without wishing to appear too excited, we begin to fire questions at Richard. Evan waits a while before deciding to bring a little perspective to the proceedings. I’m forced to listen to his story all over again. His false modesty makes me sick to my stomach. When he’s finished, I feel as deflated as a punctured lung. The others make all the right noises – well done and congratulations and so on – but their sentiments lack sincerity. Richard seems especially perturbed and is suddenly keen to get everyone out of the building. He locks up as fast as he can then minces off with barely a goodbye to anyone. The rest of us head off to the old men’s pub round the corner.
The Mason is exactly the type of pub I like, what Evan calls, disparagingly, spit and sawdust. There’s a darts board, a busty barmaid and a friendly dog. The décor hasn’t changed in aeons, nor has the clientele. It’s full of old men, hence its nickname. It serves proper beer, on tap, and has proper bar snacks – peanuts and crisps, instead of potato wedges and sour cream.
After half an hour, I can see that Evan is becoming uncomfortable. He keeps complaining about the pub being dreary, but I know that’s not the real problem. He’s upset because of our refusal to make a fuss over him. Since we arrived, there hasn’t been a single mention of his news. The upcoming showcase is the sole topic of conversation. He makes one or two valiant attempts to join in but no one really wants to talk to him. It’s the price he has to pay for his ‘success’. I feel sorry for him, I really do, but things are going to get a lot worse. At the moment, he only has jealousy to contend with. Soon people will be praying for him to fall flat on his face. At least, I will be.
After the pub, Evan suggests we go on to the Notting Hill Arts Club but I don’t fancy it and head off home. I get in to find three messages on my answering machine. There’s one from Mum reminding me of Dad’s birthday (which is over two months away), one from an agency offering me work as a van driver (even though I can’t drive) and a cryptic one from Ollie, saying he’s got important news.
I’m disappointed Rachel hasn’t called but it’s probably for the best. I know it would be foolish for us to see each other again so soon. It’s too easy for couples who split up to get back together. We’ve all been there. We meet our ex for a chat, one thing leads to another and we end up in bed. We kid ourselves that it’s just sex, that there are no strings, and thus the pattern is established. Inevitably there’s another split and another, each one more miserable than the last, till, one day, we find the courage to say, ‘Enough!’ From the wreckage, we emerge bitter, confused and cynical but, curiously, not without hope of finding Mr or Mrs Right because, deep down, we believe, as we must believe, that there’s some special person waiting for us out there – and so we soldier on, searching, forever searching…
&nbs
p; I could do with a shag tonight but the prospects of my getting one, tonight or in the immediate future, look extremely bleak. When I begin to assess my options, the only face I see belongs to Hana from the Bed Bar. I say it’s her face but, in actual fact, it’s her breasts. I have no doubt I’ll be grappling with them sooner or later but I know I must proceed with extreme caution. Any liaison between us will have to be on the sly. I dread to think of the consequences of my being seen out and about with such a girl, perhaps by Sarah. I begin to hatch a plot in which I drag Hana to my lair under cover of darkness, concealed under my cloak. I spend the next few hours sinking my fangs into her neck then, just before dawn, when she’s good and drained and I have to return to my coffin, I release her. By the looks of her, I reckon she’ll let me abuse her in this way for a few months at least. Then her pride will assert itself and she’ll want nothing more to do with me.
If I’m entirely honest, the proposed readings at the main house are causing me some concern. The work, Richard said, has to be in by the second session of the new term, which gives us roughly twelve weeks. How on earth can I be expected to complete a play in that time? It’s impossible. If I spent the entire summer cooped up indoors I might just about manage a first draft. I’m not sure I can be bothered. The whole thing suddenly seems like a waste of time. It’s not as if it’ll lead to anything. The ‘invited audience’ will be Crucible cronies scraped together at the last minute, the pieces will be shown in the afternoon, there’ll be no publicity, admission will be free and afterwards we writers will be patted on the back and sent on our way. And why do only two full-length plays? What do they mean ‘resources’ dictate? For Christ’s sake, how much does it cost to pay a set of actors to sit on a chair and read? All they’ve done is create competition between us – as if there isn’t enough of that already. And who are these ‘unsung heroes’ we have to impress? Pen-pushers, no doubt. It’ll all end in tears, I’m sure.
Meet Me Under the Westway Page 2
