It's enough to make you weep!

I've spent most of the day scanning production photos to upload to the Maverick web site. It's been strangely moving. Looking back at 13 years of actors, directors and technicians, all working for very little money in the upstairs room of a pub that no one had heard of.
The one picture I find particularly moving is a photograph of the original PALS cast. It's not a set up, but a photo that was taken at the end of an actual show. And the tears are real. Every night, without fail, the cast were crying for real. It was dynamite. In the small upstairs room of the Billesley Pub there was a unique, raw collective outpouring of grief and emotion from every audience. PALS is about 4 kids growing up in Birmingham. I won't give the end of the play away, because it's obvious we've got to do it again. The only time I've experienced that collective power has been at the end of Les Misereables and maybe Blood Brothers by Willy Russell. Good bed fellows for PALS, me thinks!

Kind of makes all the aggro worthwhile, dunnit!

Sob!

Busy Website week

Maverick is about to get a new website. I've found a package I can do myself. Our current website was very kindly produced by a lovely bloke called Brian who was so bowled over by the Maverick Pub Theatre concept, he wanted to help and did our website for free. Or at least not completely free. The usual Maverick fee of a pint and a curry. Very kind of him, although if you look at it now, you'll see it's hopelessly out of date because Bri is no longer in the Midlands and the secret of how we update the friggin' site has dissapeared up the M6 with him. It's not SO crucial for a theatre company to have a website, but I really want to get as much as possible ready for when we hit the road with our small scale tour.

It's very odd really. In spite of my comparative lack of success so far with my Business Plan, I really do think we are going to make an impact on the national theatre scene over the next few years. It's not arrogance, I hope, or blind optimism and I'm not talking about being the next Cameron Macintosh or Bill Kenwright or Peter Hall, but just a belief that the stuff I like will rattle other peoples cages too. And if I can scrape a living out of it, that will be just fine by me. I've a GREAT idea for something about Tony Hancock! Watch this space!

Actually, I lied about Brian making our first website. The very FIRST Maverick website was produced by Justyn, who was 13 when we cast him opposite the talented Paul Henry in A Ghost of A Chance, a play wot I wrote and which won a Guinness Award through the National Theatre. After his acting duties Justyn used to hang around with me and Slater and came in to do various odd jobs during his school holidays. After the Billesley pub production we went to Edinburgh and I became very fond of him. But he wasn't allowed the usual web designers fee of a pint and a curry. I still owe him that. I haven't seen the lovely boy for some years now, but I gather he's doing very well and I shall invite him to our re-launch party. Re-launch party? Yep, but more about that later. It's back to the web-land of HTML for me. And when I finish the new website, it'll be time for my fee...!