Meet Me Under the Westway

by Stephen Thompson

  * * *

  The Swiss is deserted save for a lone barman with a thick neck and tattooed arms who, upon seeing us, brightens like a man about to be rescued from quicksand. Penny goes off to buy the drinks, leaving me in the company of Clare, our pretty casting director. We find a seat and make chit-chat while we wait for Penny to get back. I ask her how she became a casting director and she says it’s too boring a story to inflict on me. I say, ‘Thanks for being so honest. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s a boring story.’ She doesn’t see the funny side and bristles as though insulted. Just then Penny returns with our drinks and rescues the situation.

  Once we’re settled, Penny, immediately and in a very businesslike manner, starts talking about which actors she would like to consider for which roles. She goes into great detail explaining why she would like to audition them, highlighting their qualities and describing, with near-perfect recall, performances she saw them give in such and such a play at such and such a theatre in such and such a year. She addresses most of her comments to Clare, which is fine by me since I have no idea who these actors are and nor have I seen any of the performances to which Penny seems so keen to draw our attention. She makes me realise how little I know about modern theatre and about the personalities currently causing a splash therein. This hasn’t always been so. I used to go out of my way to keep up with the latest happenings but I lost interest when I became too bitter and jealous to hear about the successes of others. I turned my back on it all, content to exist on the fringes of the main action where at least I could pretend to be a playwright. I’ve got some serious catching up to do.

  Penny finishes and Clare takes over. She agrees whole-heartedly with the names Penny mentioned and therefore has nothing to add. That’s it. That’s her contribution.

  Penny turns to me and says, ‘And what about you, Jem? Got any suggestions?’

  ‘To be honest, I’m not really familiar with any actors.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she says, genuine reassurance in her voice. ‘That’s why we have auditions.’

  ‘We’ll get what we need,’ says Clare, ‘I’m sure of it.’

  After that Penny fills me in on what will happen next. The actors will now be sent copies of the script and allowed a few days to read it. Each script will go out with covering letters giving details of the audition – date, time, place, contact name – plus which roles the actors are being considered for. After that, it’s just a question of sitting in a room and choosing the best ones.

  ‘If we pull our fingers out,’ says Penny, ‘I see no reason why we can’t have the play cast by the end of the month.’

  ‘I agree,’ says Clare.

  I’m not so sure. ‘That gives us two weeks. Are you certain we can manage it?’

  ‘Time is of the essence,’ says Penny. ‘I like to get the casting done as quickly as possible. I’m not saying we should rush it but the sooner we get the actors in, the more time we’ll have for rehearsals.’

  Clare and I have nothing further to add and so Penny’s is the last word on the matter. It hasn’t escaped my notice how often she has the final say. She’s definitely in charge.

  * * *

  The first thing I notice on entering the rehearsal room is that it reeks of varnish and glue. Penny had requested that I be there half an hour before the first audition, saying it would give us a chance to go over any last-minute details. There are fifteen actors to see, five for each part, with staggered appointments scheduled to last twenty minutes each. Penny gives me a batch of CVs with attached photos and suggests I take a few minutes to familiarise myself with the actors.

  At a glance, I can see that several of them are very experienced, with a high level of training, and I begin to worry that the play might not be sophisticated enough for actors of their calibre. I mouth something to this effect and Penny tells me not to get into the habit of talking the play down. ‘It’s bad luck,’ she says and, for the second time, I find myself questioning her sanity.

  When the first actor walks in, the whole situation suddenly strikes me as unreal. I still can’t believe this is all happening to me. Here I am sitting in a room with a top theatre director about to hold auditions with a group of professional actors for a play I wrote in my pokey flat just a few months ago and for which I had no real ambitions beyond a decent reception at a low-key rehearsed reading. Unreal.

  The actor is about six feet tall, early thirties, with shaggy hair, a wiry frame and a relaxed, nonchalant manner. He strides in oozing confidence and self-possession and I’m immediately impressed by him. He seems perfect for his part but I sense that Penny has decided to reserve judgement until she’s heard him read. Before that, she asks him a series of preliminary questions. Where did he grow up? Did he enjoy his childhood? What would he say his politics were? If he could be anything in the world, what would he choose to be and why? Is he comfortable with the size of his manhood? That sort of thing. At first I can’t see the relevance of all these questions but then I realise it’s Penny’s way of getting the actor to talk – not only to loosen him up but also as a means of assessing whether he has any substance to him. It’s a very crude tactic and I can see that the actor feels a bit demeaned by it but, trouper that he is, he answers each question with candour and even humour. Sadly, he lets himself down in the audition proper. He reads – he doesn’t emote – and Penny is forced to cut him short.

  ‘Thanks for that. We’ll be in touch in a few days. Could you send in the next person on your way out? Much obliged.’

  The actor smiles weakly and slinks from the room like a wounded dog. I picture him walking down the street, shaking his head and wondering why he continues to expose himself to the pain of such ritual rejection.

  The second actor makes a very peculiar entrance indeed. He walks into the room slightly crouched, his chin tucked into his shoulder, as though he were battling a gale force wind. Odder still is the way he stands, sideways on, almost in profile. At first, I’m convinced he’s hiding something – a scar perhaps or a missing ear – but I soon discover it’s nothing more than an idiosyncrasy, of which he probably has no conscious awareness. Penny asks him a few questions then gets him to read. He begins well enough but then, for some reason, becomes nervous. This makes him read too quickly, which causes him to run out of breath, which causes him to stumble over his lines, which causes him to stop halfway through a fairly long and difficult monologue that Penny had chosen as the audition piece precisely because she knew it would be testing.

  The actor apologises and Penny says, ‘That’s OK. It happens. Take a few deep breaths and start again.’

  It’s no use. He simply cannot master his nerves and Penny dismisses him without further ado. He leaves the room the way he entered it, crouched, chin tucked into his shoulder, braced against his imaginary wind.

  The next actor – short, fat, bespectacled, sporting a beatnik goatee – turns out to be a vast improvement on the first two. His character is meant to be droll, deadpan, and, within a few lines, it becomes clear that he has it down pat. He must have rehearsed a fair bit for, although he has the script to hand, he very rarely consults it.

  He, too, is cut short by Penny. ‘Well done. That was excellent. Thanks for coming in. Expect to hear from us soon,’ which is as good as saying, ‘The part is yours.’ without actually saying it.

  After he’s gone, Penny turns to me and says, ‘Different class.’ She then reminds me, a tad gloatingly, that he was one of those she raved about at our last meeting. I ask her about the others and she says none had been available.

  ‘So we’re left with the dross, is that it?’

  ‘I wouldn’t go that far but it may take us a bit longer to find the right people.’

  ‘How much longer?’

  ‘Let’s get through this lot first. Who knows? We may get lucky.’

  And we do. We end up with one more definite and three possibles battling it out for the final role. To these Penny sends out recalls and, two days later, she and I
reconvene in the varnish-and-glue-smelling rehearsal room to run the rule over them once again. It’s a tough call, with hardly anything to choose between the three, and, in the end, we go for the one we consider to be the least self-conscious.

  Penny schedules eight weeks of rehearsals and says she would like me to attend the first and last week. When I ask her why those, she says that the first week is to reassure me that the play is moving in the right direction and the last is for me to check whether it has deviated significantly from its original course. She says I needn’t concern myself with the two weeks in the middle for that’s when all the boring, repetitive stuff happens. Fair enough, I think, and then I talk to Evan and he makes me look at it differently. He says the real reason Penny will want me gone after the first week is because, by then, she’ll be sick of the sight of me and she’ll only call me in for the last week because, by that stage, she’ll have stamped her authority on the play enough not to care about all the objections I’m bound to have. Is he just being cynical? Or is Penny really being dishonest? The truth, I suspect, lies somewhere between the two.

  18

  Day one of rehearsals. Penny wants to begin with a few warm-up exercises and, horror of horrors, wants me to take part. I demur, saying I’m a writer not an athlete but she and the actors badger me and badger me till eventually, reluctantly, I agree to join in. For the next ten minutes or so, I find myself jumping up and down and touching my toes and kicking my legs and swinging my arms and rotating my neck and arching my back and generally torturing my body. After that, it’s voice exercises. There’s a lot of oooing and aaaing and a fair amount of eeeing. There’s even a bit of yodelling, which Penny describes as ‘excellent for voice strengthening’.

  Next it’s ‘trust’ games. For someone who has difficulty trusting himself, this is my least enjoyable part of the morning. I have to fall backwards and hope I’ll be caught before I split my head open on the parquet floor, leap from a great height into a bed of weedy-looking arms, then don a blindfold and allow myself to be voice-directed around the room. Soon after this and much to my relief, we arrange ourselves around a table with our scripts and get down to more serious business.

  One by one, Penny gets the actors to say what they think of the play and what, if anything, appeals to them about their roles. All three are of the opinion that the play is up there with the best they’ve read by a first timer. I want to say immediately that I’m no novice but then I remember a piece of advice Evan gave me vis-à-vis rehearsal etiquette. ‘Don’t say a word till you’re asked to.’ When discussing their roles, each actor reveals himself to be fluent in theatre-speak. There are endless references to ‘journeys’ and ‘arcs’ and ‘motivation’ and ‘inner lives’ and ‘back stories’ and ‘audience identification’ and ‘audience sympathy’ and ‘intertextuality’ and all sorts of other jargon – none of which impresses me much. The talk is too general – a lot of it about other people’s plays – and I’m left none the wiser as to whether they understand the characters I’ve created. But perhaps I’m being too harsh. Perhaps I should cut them a bit of slack. It is, after all, only the first day.

  After listening carefully to what the actors have to say, Penny broadens the discussion to include a critique of the play’s narrative. ‘I’d like us to concentrate more on the story within the story.’ – meaning she wants the actors to interpret the play not just superficially but subtextually and thematically. Richard used to do the same thing with us at the CCTV. After a particular piece had been read out, he’d always ask the same two questions – ‘What’s it about?’ and ‘What’s it really about?’ It became something of a running joke in the group – largely because he would apply the same principle to even the simplest tale.

  I remember once Rajeev brought in and read out a newspaper article about a man who ended up in hospital suffering from chronic obesity because he lived on a daily diet of cakes and chocolate. It was intended as light relief but, the moment Rajeev finished reading it, Richard asked, ‘What’s it’s about? And what’s it really about?’

  Rajeev thought for a second then said, ‘Well, in one sense, it’s about a fat bastard who needs to vary his diet. And, in another, it’s about a fat bastard who needs to vary his diet.’

  We fell about laughing, as we did on plenty of other similar occasions, but, behind the mirth, we knew what Richard was trying to teach us – namely, that no story is ever as straightforward as it might first appear. He used to say that, for them to succeed, our plays had to operate on many different levels. He was forever talking about layers and texture and constantly advising us to make good use of symbols and metaphors as a means of enriching our stories and elevating them from the merely prosaic. Our work must communicate, he used to say, it must say something about the human experience – preferably something new but, if not, it should at the very least be passionate and honest. The trick, he told us, was to achieve all this without giving the appearance of trying too hard. He’d warn us about the difficulty of such a feat then try to show us how to go about it. He said that, if we dedicated ourselves to our writing and practised it often and for long periods, we might, one day, produce something to make the whole world sit up and take notice. Only now, with the benefit of hindsight, am I able to appreciate the influence he’s had on me.

  The discussion between the actors becomes fairly heated. They’re not exactly arguing but I detect a degree of combustible energy behind their every remark. A difference of opinion has arisen as to what the play’s really about, with two of the actors siding against one. Penny lets them argue it out, taking notes and casting nervous glances in my direction as though she expects me to butt in at any moment and put the actors straight. She needn’t worry. It’s not their opinions I care about – it’s hers. The actors can say what they like as often as they’d like, as I’m sure they will throughout the rehearsals, but, in the final analysis, their job is to act the parts in the way dictated to them by Penny. So long as she and I share a single vision – and I believe we do – then the play, as I originally conceived it, should, in theory, be the one that ends up on the stage. All else is immaterial. Secure in that knowledge, I’m actually enjoying listening to the actors. To hear such forthright views being expressed about my work is perhaps the single most edifying experience I’ve ever had – so much so that, when Penny calls time for lunch, I feel a jolt of disappointment as forceful as if I’d been slapped in the face.

  After lunch, it’s back around the table for the play’s first proper read-through. Penny wants the actors to get a feel for the language and she advises me to keep an ear out for, and to note down, anything I believe isn’t working. ‘I’ll do the same,’ she says, ‘and, at the end, we’ll swap notes. It’ll be interesting to see how they compare.’

  The read-through produces good news and bad news. The good news is that it takes about an hour and forty-five minutes, which means that the full production should run to two hours easily. This is a relief because, as any writer will tell you, cutting a piece is one thing, lengthening it is quite another. The bad news is that the play is full of stilted dialogue – at least that’s what I think. That there are no similar observations in Penny’s notes leads me to conclude that I’m being over-critical but, for a second there, I was panicked into thinking that the play needed a complete overhaul.

  Penny’s concerns are all about what she calls ‘the narrative thread’. Time and again, she notes how it becomes obscured, often behind the subplots, and she questions whether one of these couldn’t be done away with. At the end of the session, when the actors have left, she and I stay behind to discuss this in more detail. Using all her powers of persuasion, she convinces me that this is the one area where she feels changes are needed.

  That night, I spend hours fiddling around on my PC, becoming so immersed in what I’m doing that I lose all track of time. It’s almost dawn when I finally climb into bed. I sleep soundly, mostly out of tiredness but also from the satisfaction of having begun what looks
like being a very tricky piece of revision.

  The following morning before the session kicks off, Penny and I have a brief chat about the changes I’ve made and about those I intend to make. She’s pleased that I’ve already begun but advises me to work judiciously. ‘We agree that the script needs changing. What we mustn’t do is alter it beyond recognition.’ What’s this ‘we’? I’m the one who has to do the work. Besides, I’m not sure what she means. Is she warning me against being too ruthless? If so, then she doesn’t understand a writer’s instinct, which is essentially protective, nurturing. Yes, I can be ruthless with my work when it warrants it but usually, as in this case, it doesn’t. It’s not that I don’t appreciate Penny’s concern. I believe it’s well intended – a sign that she has a genuine affection for the play – but, if there’s one thing I hate, it’s being told how to write.

  The day begins with another warm-up routine – slightly less vigorous than yesterday but still enough to leave me panting. This is followed by more voice exercises but not, mercifully, by any more games.

  Penny begins the session with a recap of yesterday’s work, detailing what she thought had been achieved, which is a whole lot more than I’d realised. I can’t say I’ve warmed to her yet and I probably never will but with, each passing day, she impresses me more and more with her skill and expertise. She definitely knows her stuff. And I’m not the only one who thinks so. The actors do too. I can tell by the way they hang on her every word, eager to learn and be instructed, which is surprising for two reasons – first she’s a woman and second she’s younger than all of them. I’m glad she established her authority from the word go otherwise they – we – might have tried to gang up on her. To become embroiled in gender politics is the last thing we need. We’ve enough on our plate without adding that to the mix.

  Today, instead of reading the script in one go, Penny wants to do it in sections – or beats, as she calls them. ‘This allows us to study the action almost moment by moment, which should lead to a clearer sense of how the conflict is being built up, which in turn should lead to a better understanding of how the whole thing is resolved.’ She indicates where she feels the natural breaks occur, the actors mark their scripts accordingly and they’re off. And that’s when it suddenly hits me. This, essentially, will be the format for the next four weeks – exhaustive script analysis. It’s not yet eleven o’clock and already I want to go home. I begin to question whether I have it in me to sit through any more readings, long or short, and, by lunchtime, I have my answer. I take Penny to one side and ask her if it’s all right for me to skip the afternoon session.