Tunbridge Wells: Week 3

Tunbridge Wells

Sunny Tunny:

Ah. Tunbridge Wells. Its been a while. In fact, I was trying to remember whether it was 2009 or 2010 when I last was last there.
That's the odd thing about touring. Some venues you can remember exactly, from the names of all the crew down to what dressing room you had. I spent about 4 years touring pretty much solidly from 2007 to 2011, with the odd break for Panto or a weekly rep season, so some venues on this tour I have been to several times before. I think that I'm going to go with 2010 being the last time I was there with 2008 being the first.
Tunbridge Wells itself is a great town for me. As mentioned before, it's commutable from Eastbourne and so I get to sleep in my own bed (actually, my own bed is currently a futon in my lounge but that's a story for a later date) and I had some company for the commute this time. GMoss was also staying in Eastbourne (and that is another story that I'll come to later in this blog). It's a nice town with a good shopping centre and plenty of pubs and restaurants to keep members of the company who are staying there busy.

Challenge Anneka:

So, hands up who remembers that show? I used to love it ( I remember it being quite similar to another show that had some Blue Peter bloke in it…….!) and so I do actually quite like it when a theatre venue is a bit of a challenge. The Assembly Hall, Tunbridge Wells is big. Very big. It's a bit like a hall with moveable seats rather than a traditional theatre and the auditorium seems to go back for miles:

Assembly Hall Auditorium with me sound checking and GMoss doing something.
Remember the tallescope, it will come up again in future weeks and THERE WILL BE A TEST……
(Picture taken by Simon Lloyd - don't want him moaning about not getting a credit…..)

As it's not a traditional venue, certain adjustments have to be made to the set and the lighting and sound. At the very back of the auditorium, for example, there is no speaker coverage at all, so it may sound fantastic from down the front, but we have to make sure that we sound check from the back as well to make sure that any audience there can get the same experience. 

Another example is the masking (basically making sure that the audience can't see anything other than what it intended on the set - we don't want them seeing all of the cast doing quick changes, or lighting equipment, etc). Roger and GMoss will spend time making sure that every area is covered so no one sees anything they shouldn't. Focusing the front of house lights as well is a challenge in itself. In a traditional theatre, most of the front of house lighting would be  accessible from either the auditorium, by being hung of the front of the dress circles, or from going into the roof, but as you can see from the above picture, that because the auditorium goes straight back with no levels above each other, the lights have to be focused in a particular way. This means getting the tallescope (which auto-correct keeps trying to change to telescope), which is usually just used to focus the on stage lights, into the auditorium from backstage.

But it's not just us backstagers who are affected by challenges in a venue. The cast all had to make adjustments too and they were delighted to find……that the door stoppers were back! Yes, we were on another raked stage, so after the ease of Cheltenham and not having to contend with the stopper, they then had to factor it back into scene changes. Now, on the face of it, this might seem like a small thing and it is really, when you consider the mammoth quick changes some of them have to do, but so many of the scene changes are timed to sound or music cues that it does mean the cast have to change the speed of which they're doing things or start slightly earlier to make sure that they still get it all done on time. 

Holiday?:

During the week we had something very unusual on a tour. A day off. 

Normally on weekly touring, you will run from either the Monday or the Tuesday until the Saturday with two matinees. So, in the world of touring, you quite often don't get a full day off if you open on a Monday as the Sunday is a travel day. This is probably harder for GMoss and Roger as they usually finish around 1- 1:30am on a Saturday night and then have to travel to the next venue on a Sunday ready to start at 8am on the Monday. Sinead and I usually finish around 11:30pm on a Saturday and arrive around 11-12 on the Monday so we do get a bit more time. However, this week there was another show booked in on the Thursday so we had an unexpected day off! We had a mini get-out to do on the Wednesday, to make sure that the incoming company had enough dressing rooms and space on stage, but after that we were free until 6pm on the Friday! (Note to Producers everywhere - this was really, REALLY good!!!)

Signed Performance:

Tunbridge Wells also saw us having our first signed performance. Please excuse me as I go off on a slight tangent about how important this work is to theatre audiences. Audio description (where partially sighted or blind patrons listen to description of the action through headsets) and signed performances are something that are not offered in every venue anymore. This is mainly due to budget cuts, plain and simple. I don't think I need to go on about the whys and hows these shows are important, it should be pretty obvious. When I worked in weekly rep, we used to have audio described performances every week, done by volunteers who would watch a show, then rehearse during another and then do the actual description towards the end of the week. That would be three days that would be given up out of their own time to offer this service. This was then stopped due to council budget cuts. This means that for a lot of shows, particularly the farces where there is almost constant action, our blind and partially sighted patrons couldn't experience the full show and things would make less sense to them. This is why it's so good to be able to offer audio described, signed or captioned (where there are screens with the dialogue on)shows wherever possible. The great thing with Birdsong is, that because it is so sound based with the explosions and gunfire, we can really get the auditorium vibrating with the effects which run alongside what the signer is doing in order to make everyone's experience as full as possible. Emma, our signer in Tunbridge Wells, did a fantastic job during the Tuesday show, and took a bow along with the cast. 

I didn't expect to give my mini rant about funding cuts, so I apologise and will move on to lighter things.

Entertainment:

Because of Tunbridge's location to London, a fair few of the company were commuting and so it wasn't our most social week but we did manage to get a few jars in at the local pub which is part of a well known chain whose name rhymes with Heather Loons. I mention it as it is actually in the old opera house and so you can enjoy your drink either in the stalls, the orchestra pit or on the stage. When I first went there in 2008, I thought it was the most depressing thing in the world, but I have to admit that I have completely come round to it now. Operas and shows are still staged there occasionally and actually it's much better that it is used in this capacity that shut down completely. So, nice one Heather Loons. 

On the Friday and Saturday nights I had a house guest in the form of GMoss, which was nice and we had a bit of a jam session on the Friday night with me on (drunken) piano and him on (drunken) guitar. Suffice to say that no music contracts were being offered the next day…….

Now, I know that all theatre companies are meant to be a hot-bed of drunken debauchery and sexual intrigue with us transporting well known celebrities at high speed on the motorway (well, that's what car insurance companies seem to think anyway) and you are probably terribly disappointed that I haven't told you about any of this yet. All I have to say to that is, be patient. It will come, my friends (probably) and I promise to divulge all (probably not) to you in good time……...

A special mention does have to go to the Assembly Halls press and marketing team. They really were excellent during the week and they kept twitter buzzing with news of the show and reviews, so thank you guys!