Birmingham: Week 6
Back to the old ways:
You'll be relieved to know that I didn't really like the day by day format of last week's blog. It made it very long (even longer than usual!) and almost a week on it's difficult to remember exactly what you did on a day to day basis. So, I am reverting to the old format. Which is quite apt really as that's a bit like what going to Birmingham was like for me.
I know Birmingham very well. I sort of lived there for a time (well, as much as you can live anywhere really when you're touring constantly), but I didn't know Birmingham Rep before this week. I know some of the other theatres, The Alexandra(very well), The Hippodrome and even The Old Rep a little. All these theatres are down near New Street Station in what I liked to call Theatre Land. Birmingham has/had a lot of theatres, some have been demolished, others are still in use. If you go to http://www.arthurlloyd.co.uk/Birmingham.htm (an excellent theatrical history site) you can see exactly how many and what has happened to them.
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| Birmingham Rep |
The Rep is on the slightly more fashionable Broad Street (home to a wealth of bars and clubs, it gets pretty manic at the weekend) and in 2013 celebrated its 100th year - although the building isn't that old. The Rep company was originally down at what is now The Old Rep and moved to the Broad Street building in the 70s (sorry - I'm giving you a bit of a history lesson here…..) which was closed for 2 years between 2011 and 2013 for massive refurbishment and development. No one in the company had seen the new layout yet and so it was a new one for everyone this week.
And there was another old face to greet me there. My good friend Chris, who I spent 3 very happy years doing panto with, is on the lighting team there and we realised that it had been over 4 years since we'd last seen each other. I was so glad to see him, not least because he came to meet me at stage door and guided me around the maze of the huge backstage area. Everything is white and clean and modern and we were all given special individual swipe cards to get around which also worked for our dressing rooms. Unsurprisingly, Alastair promptly lost his.
The Space, The Space, The Space!!!!!!
Now, Durham backstage is far from tiny. It's a good size and we had more than enough room to get around, but Birmingham Rep is vast. Like Plymouth and Nottingham where we toured to last year we were left with a great deal of room both upstage and in the wings. It was mooted that perhaps we could set up a nine square (remember that from rehearsals?) court upstage, but I soon put a stop to that. Later on in the blog you'll see a bit of a video that I took which shows you exactly the space we had. The auditorium is big too.
And very different to what our company has been used to so far. It goes straight back and is curved so it fans out around the stage a bit and there are no different levels like in other theatres we've been to. The main auditorium seats 824 and The Door studio seats 140.
Scary Parents:
Now, despite being in Week 6 of the tour,we hadn't had a national press night yet. Again, that does exactly what it says on the tin; it's a night where all the national papers are invited to come and review a show. Ours was to be in Birmingham as it is a good location for the reviewers to get to and our producers were also going to be throwing a party for us all afterwards. It also meant that 'The Scary Parents' would be coming. By scary parents, I mean that some of the creatives and producers would be coming to watch the show (and attend the party) and makes sure that Roger, myself, GMoss and Sinead all maintain the standard of their work while the show is away on tour. Actually there isn't anything really that scary about Sebastian, Rachel, Jon, Anne-Marie, Jack, Dom, Alex and Charlotte (except maybe that they are all scarily talented - sucking up, I know, I know!), but let's just say that it's not always the actors that can get a little nervous on an opening night. But, it all went fabulously well and soon we were taxi-ing off to a lovely bar by the BT Tower (the closest I've ever actually been to it, despite having spent so much time in Birmingham) where we were suitably re-hydrated with bottles of prosecco and beer.
Glad Rags:
The other great thing about press nights (apart from free beer and nibbles) is that everyone gets a little bit dressed up. This time there seemed to be a bit of an obsession about shoes - and not just from the girls. The boys had scrubbed up pretty well, GMoss was wearing his legendary jacket he bought in Dublin last year (the one that saw him surrounded by 3 Spanish beauties for a couple of hours one night), Simon was doing a nice line in smart/casual with a tie and trainer look and George was showing off his new very lean figure in a smart suit. For some reason, we started to have a bit of a 'who has the best shoes' competition which took up a portion of the evening along with a fair bit of film in the camera...
Old Faces:
There was another familiar face there on Tuesday night in Birmingham. Liam McCormick, who played Arthur Shaw on last year's tour was with us for the week as he and Alastair were to be running education workshops (more about those in a bit). Liam was particularly pleased to see that the tradition of Shaw making stage management tea in the interval was being upheld by Simon (we have them soooo well trained on Birdsong!). And then on Thursday, Tim Speechley (our 2013 CSM) and Charlie G Hawkins (2013 Tipper/Gregoire) came to watch the matinee (Tim made some notes for Alastair……) and joined some of us for dinner afterwards.
A Good Education:
As mentioned above, Alastair and Liam were running education workshops throughout the week and I've asked Alastair to write us a short explanation of what happens and why we do them:
As part of the production we have been awarded a small sum of money from The Arts Council to run an education programme at certain venues offering workshops to schools for reduced prices. They are run by former cast member (Liam The Goose) and sometimes even director Alastair- Birmingham was the first of the venues supporting the workshops and so Liam returned to the fold and ran no less than 5 workshops during the week. Mainly working with 15-18 year olds who have seen or about to see the show he explores all manner of things from the process of adapting, to exploring memories to staging memories and everything in between. Liam and Alastair delivered about 25 sessions during the last tour and so were very excited to be reunited. Although Alastair did forget his CRB check form and ID for the Friday workshop and only managed to get in by showing the receptionist a Birdsong flyer with his face on it. Liam was very pleased that one of the schools provided him with a bottle of wine on Saturday and also sent us their prize winning review of the show which incorporated some the things discussed in the workshop:
I've mentioned this before, but theatre is a very small world sometimes. I've already said in this blog that my old friend Chris was working at The Rep, but here's another example of just how small it can seem: In every venue we have at least two in-house staff working on the show. One operating the lighting board and one doing the flys, both cued by me. Sometimes we have a separate duty stage manager, but other times the duty stage manager will be the flyman as well. During the course of a week these people can change depending the theatre's staff rotation or we can have the same people all week. In Birmingham we had the same two people all week. Liam (a different one to the one spoken about above!) who operated the lights and Laurel, who was duty stage and flywoman. Liam used to be at York Theatre Royal where we were going the next week and Zanna who I know there was his replacement when he left and came to Birmingham. Zanna used to be at Tunbridge Wells where we were a few weeks ago. Laurel also works at The Lyceum in Crewe, where I spent a very happy panto season in 2006 (before she worked there) and her boyfriend is an old mate of mine from that panto. Also, mid-week we found familiar faces in the studio show. One actor had worked for Alastair on 'Our Country's Good' and another had worked on 'The Crucible' with James. Strange how things work out sometimes……
But soon it was time to leave and start thinking about York and what might be in store for us there when we would celebrate our 50th performance on this 2014 tour. It was time to sign their memories book and also the wall in the green room where I left a little Birdsong reminder.
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| Alastair shows us how big the auditorium is |
Scary Parents:
Now, despite being in Week 6 of the tour,we hadn't had a national press night yet. Again, that does exactly what it says on the tin; it's a night where all the national papers are invited to come and review a show. Ours was to be in Birmingham as it is a good location for the reviewers to get to and our producers were also going to be throwing a party for us all afterwards. It also meant that 'The Scary Parents' would be coming. By scary parents, I mean that some of the creatives and producers would be coming to watch the show (and attend the party) and makes sure that Roger, myself, GMoss and Sinead all maintain the standard of their work while the show is away on tour. Actually there isn't anything really that scary about Sebastian, Rachel, Jon, Anne-Marie, Jack, Dom, Alex and Charlotte (except maybe that they are all scarily talented - sucking up, I know, I know!), but let's just say that it's not always the actors that can get a little nervous on an opening night. But, it all went fabulously well and soon we were taxi-ing off to a lovely bar by the BT Tower (the closest I've ever actually been to it, despite having spent so much time in Birmingham) where we were suitably re-hydrated with bottles of prosecco and beer.
Glad Rags:
The other great thing about press nights (apart from free beer and nibbles) is that everyone gets a little bit dressed up. This time there seemed to be a bit of an obsession about shoes - and not just from the girls. The boys had scrubbed up pretty well, GMoss was wearing his legendary jacket he bought in Dublin last year (the one that saw him surrounded by 3 Spanish beauties for a couple of hours one night), Simon was doing a nice line in smart/casual with a tie and trainer look and George was showing off his new very lean figure in a smart suit. For some reason, we started to have a bit of a 'who has the best shoes' competition which took up a portion of the evening along with a fair bit of film in the camera...
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| James is not really interested in how much Simon's shoes cost….. |
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| But joins in eventually |
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| Left to Right: Lizzie, Rachel, Charlotte, Sinead (below Charlotte), Me and GMoss |
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| Shoe competition |
Old Faces:
There was another familiar face there on Tuesday night in Birmingham. Liam McCormick, who played Arthur Shaw on last year's tour was with us for the week as he and Alastair were to be running education workshops (more about those in a bit). Liam was particularly pleased to see that the tradition of Shaw making stage management tea in the interval was being upheld by Simon (we have them soooo well trained on Birdsong!). And then on Thursday, Tim Speechley (our 2013 CSM) and Charlie G Hawkins (2013 Tipper/Gregoire) came to watch the matinee (Tim made some notes for Alastair……) and joined some of us for dinner afterwards.
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| Arthur Shaws old and new: Liam McCormick and Simon Lloyd |
A Good Education:
As mentioned above, Alastair and Liam were running education workshops throughout the week and I've asked Alastair to write us a short explanation of what happens and why we do them:
As part of the production we have been awarded a small sum of money from The Arts Council to run an education programme at certain venues offering workshops to schools for reduced prices. They are run by former cast member (Liam The Goose) and sometimes even director Alastair- Birmingham was the first of the venues supporting the workshops and so Liam returned to the fold and ran no less than 5 workshops during the week. Mainly working with 15-18 year olds who have seen or about to see the show he explores all manner of things from the process of adapting, to exploring memories to staging memories and everything in between. Liam and Alastair delivered about 25 sessions during the last tour and so were very excited to be reunited. Although Alastair did forget his CRB check form and ID for the Friday workshop and only managed to get in by showing the receptionist a Birdsong flyer with his face on it. Liam was very pleased that one of the schools provided him with a bottle of wine on Saturday and also sent us their prize winning review of the show which incorporated some the things discussed in the workshop:
‘Birdsong’ at The Birmingham Repertory Theatre –
Commemorating the centenary of the First World War
On Saturday 22nd March, 29 pupils from Year 10 and 11 had a wonderful opportunity to see Sebastian Faulks’ novel ‘Birdsong’ at The Rep Theatre in Birmingham. This was a wonderful opportunity for pupils to be part of the human emotions experienced by ordinary people who served to save our country for four long years.
Below is a reflective commentary of the play, written by a Year 11 pupil:
Watching ‘Birdsong’ live on stage was an exhilarating experience in itself which left many scenes engraved in my mind. However, the one scene which I believe will never be eradicated from my memory was the scene in which the soldiers were writing letters to their loved ones. “Dear mum… Dear Annie… Dear Margaret… Dear Isabelle…” Those were the words which began every letter and each name was a personal connection that each soldier had in a world where no war existed. A world called home. Listening to the men impart the words of their hearts onto a piece of paper just minutes before they fought in the Battle of the Somme, gave me a sudden realisation. Behind every soldier who held a gun close to his chest, there was a man who had given up his family, given up a chance to be with the one he loved and for what? To salvage the lives of those who belonged to their country. Only at that moment was I thrown into a moment of self-assessment and asked myself: would I give up a life where I would never see my sister’s smile again? Would I give up my life to never feel my parents’ love again? With each question only one answer resonated throughout my mind. No. I would never have the strength let alone the bravery to give up all the things I held close to my heart in order to save millions of lives. At that moment, those men were on the precipice of death, yet their bravery and strong will enable them to gamble their lives. Just for the sake of others.
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| Liam at a workshop |
Poignant lines from the novel:
“Some crime against nature is about to be committed. I feel it in my veins. These men and boys are grocers and clerks, gardeners and fathers - fathers of small children. A country cannot bear to lose them.” - Birdsong
“His own men, those who would attack in the morning, knelt on the earth, faces hidden behind one hand, in an agonizing tunnel of their own, a darkness where there was no time but where they tried to look on death.” - Birdsong
It's A Small World:
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| Birmingham's Canals |
Bye, bye Birmingham:
It had been a pretty hectic, tiring, emotional and eventful few days already and the rest of the week flew by in a haze of understudy line runs, socialising, a post-show discussion and an excellent review in 'The Times'. It was Selma's birthday on Friday and she had two celebration nights, one on Thursday at Malmaison and another on the Friday, also at Malmaison….. I had a much needed catch-up with my friend, Chris and a nice lunch with staunch rep supporter, Josie (who still makes the fortnightly trip for 3 months in the summer from Stourbridge to Sidmouth in Devon to see every single weekly rep play in the summer season there).
But soon it was time to leave and start thinking about York and what might be in store for us there when we would celebrate our 50th performance on this 2014 tour. It was time to sign their memories book and also the wall in the green room where I left a little Birdsong reminder.  |
| Memories Wall |
But, before I leave Birmingham completely, I will add this backstage tour video I took on the Saturday. I have to apologise as I can be pretty useless sometimes when it comes to my new (I actually got it in July but still can't work it out) iPhone and I didn't realise until halfway through that I had my finger over the microphone button…..(Yes, yes. I know. And I have to put the sound in on Birdsong too…..) but I hope you find it vaguely interesting. You do at least get to meet GMoss, Laurel and Liam and listen to my (muted) dulcet tones……
A massive thank you to all of those at Birmingham Rep who made the week so fantastic. The lovely people on stage door who took care of us all week, the quick and efficient stage crew (particularly to Liam, Laurel and Dan, their sound guy who I had a laugh with on the get-in) and the friendly FOH staff. Also, big thanks to our producers for the press night party. Will be seeing you soon, in Worthing!
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