stella41b
Posts: 4258
Joined: 10/16/2007
From: SW London (UK)
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Today I'm rediscovering just how much I hate petty, small-minded, spiteful people.
For the first time in my life I am working to fold a production - 'Switch' which was due to open on Tuesday. We're talking about a play which is 40 minutes long and is made up of 14 pages of text with three characters.
We started work on this production on March 1st this year. One of the actresses, who received her role and two copies of the text last March, still has not prepared 40-50% of the play. Matters came to a head yesterday in rehearsal. The actress in question has 25 years stage and screen experience and has apparently worked at some point with Antonio Banderas. It got so bad that yesterday the other actors were refusing to work with her, I almost exploded with fury, and I have picked up one humdinger of a bad mood which lasts right through till today. Twice last night I almost disbanded the theatre and walked away.
She calls me this morning, getting me out of bed, and harangues me for ruining her evening yesterday. I ask her point blank why hasn't she prepared the play as I wanted. 'You had a double cast,' she explained (two actors cast for one role),' and you didn't guarantee me that I would have all the chances to perform what I wanted, and so I was never sure whether it was worth my time to prepare my role in the play.' I couldn't stay silent, I told her at this point not to come back to the theatre, not to come to any rehearsal, and that I don't want to see her again.
She has now taken to haranguing me and the other members of the cast with phone calls, text messages and e-mails.
So far I've managed to cancel all five pre-arranged performances in the UK, I'm now cancelling the opening performance, all the three from six dates for an Eastern European tour shortly before Christmas. I've also scrapped an application for next year's Orlando International Fringe Festival, pulled out of the Pamplona Festival in Spain, and have to start again. It also has put the kibosh on the premiere of the play at The London Alternative Market.
I've also had to cancel funding from a local authority and have lost a sponsorship deal with an energy company due to not being able to open by the beginning of November.
Within the space of a night six months of work, creativity and such has been lost.
This is not an isolated incident, but has been happening throughout the six month course of the production and over the last 18 months of the theatre. This is my first production working in London for some years, and I'm disappointed and a little depressed by what I'm coming across - which appears to be actors and actresses who just cannot act, who are unreliable, and even unpredictable. However I prefer to see it as challenging rather than disappointing. Let us not forget that this isn't am dram, but a proper professional fringe theatre company, which means that once we have an established repertoire the actors will be paid and will all be employed. I'm waiting to direct anything up to nine plays.
I also hold my hand up here, and accept some of the responsibility. I've been too soft, too understanding, and each and every time have been taken for a mug. Basta - no more.
I've therefore decided to modify my style of directing and in the theatre I am going back to being domme. I'm not giving up, but I'm not giving any more chances.
I'm royally pissed off right now, but I'm not giving up, there will be a theatre, there will be plays and there will be 'Switch'. Not sure when, not sure with whom, but it will be on my terms and my conditions. This will be a BDSM fringe theatre, a professional touring company Kinky actors welcome.
Sorry no song parody, and yes I know it's my 'whine' so maybe someone else can come up with the cheese? I'm not really on form today and just want to disappear into a black hole.
But I will be back
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