How to commit Theatrical Suicide with Dylan Thomas - Part One.

I love this image we are using for Under Milk Wood.  It has a wistful quality to it and that is how I feel about some of our writers - especially Dylan Thomas, who was taken from us so tragically early. I also love Wales, and this image kind of sums up my schoolboy holidays in out-of-season seaside towns. This bench has seen a lot, you can just tell.  And it quietly waits for the next joyful - or maybe melancholy - experience. 

But enough wooden bench and more Milk Wood.  He was a smart cooky, was our Dylan, and like most successful people he was also VERY focused.  I think it's fair to say he was single minded and loved the notion of the drunken poet. Perhaps more than was the reality, but that is for another time.  The current excitement is preparing for our Under Milk Wood. We have less than a month.

It might sound trite, but I really feel privileged that I am able to present this incredible play for voices in the very pub where Dylan met his wife, on the anniversary of the day, sixty years ago, that he left us. That was why I wanted to do it at this time and at this place.  I want to feel closer to Dylan Thomas and this just feels like a cool thing to do. Spiritual almost. 

BUT there is a big problem doing this play at this place.  And like most things it comes down to money! I've managed to secure the rights, which is great, but that costs.  Then there are the three unshakeable elements of any theatrical production. Size of Cast and Cost of Production, Ticket Price and Size of Venue and Length of Run.

I won't bore you with the figures, but there is a reason most plays above a pub have only a small cast. The biggest play I have written has four people in it!  And then you want to run if for as long as possible to give yourself a chance of making back the money. And keep ticket prices as high as possible.  

I pondered on this over a pint, sitting in the Wheatsheaf after one of our weekly pub crawls.  Actors Suzi and Kate were doing great work. But the fact is that the even the National Theatre only do Under Milk Wood occasionally, because it has a MASSIVE cast. By pint two I was feeling a bit depressed. We'd never make it work unless we charged hundreds of pounds a ticket. Then by pint three I had the answer. We'd all do it for nothing!  And read the play as it was written, without any fancy sets or movement.  Just read it as Dylan intended.  Build it and they will come! So I booked the dates, got the licence and hunted around for a script.

So far we have 25 tickets sold, no actors or director and less than a month to go. I've been in touch with some fairly well known artists, mind. But we have less than a month to go. The casting call goes out tomorrow. It should have been today, but the casting company got back to me and said "How much are you paying?  Nothing? Well.... okay...!" 

Watch this space. More later in the week. When there will be less than less than a month to go!

Any Maverick ideas?

A mad moment in the pub?

I'm looking for hard evidence to support my assumption that Maverick's productions in pubs and community spaces will attract new audiences to theatre.

This assumption is actually borne out by our work at the Billesley Pub in Birmingham during the 1990's and at Birmingham Library Theatre during the early 2000's. We have evidence to show that Maverick attracted non-theatre goers through our programme of contemporary classics, ticket-pricing and a robust marketing strategy aimed squarely at the council estates surrounding our venue. Basic market research in the form of printed questionnaires left on seats in the pub showed our audience to be generally non-theatre goers who were younger, more female and less well-off when compared to national statistics for regular theatre attenders.

I want to return to that model and roll the concept out nationally. A touring circuit that will address my belief that there are substantial proportions of the population who do not feel theatre is for them. My experience, both personal and professional, is that if the proposition is right, a new, more inclusive audience can be developed. The benefits are huge, not just for the new attenders, but to whole communities, other theatres, professional practitioners and society in general.

Unlike the work of the legendary Joan Litttlewood with her Theatre Workshop at Stratford East, this will be a touring project. It is very ambitious.

And it is obviously going to cost money and will be an almighty struggle, so I need to build the best possible case to present to funding bodies and commercial organisations whose help will be crucial to realise the project.

So, have you any comments, ideas, references or research that might help me? Perhaps you were one of our new theatre attenders? Or are there reasons why you perhaps have a problem with going to the theatre? How important is 'the event'?

Any contributions, good, bad, long, short or indifferent will be very welcome and annonymous. Did you perhaps attend any Maverick shows in Birmingham or on tour?

I hope to make a case for the Arts Council to award a small grant to allow the research to move forward and I shall contact you for permission if I would like to  use your comments. Please email me at mavericktheatre.co.uk or comment below.

Thanks very much for your help.  Here we go again... maybe!

And if you are looking for information about the new HOLLYOAKS actress auditions, I'll put details here tomorrow. Ta.

Playing with the Big Boys

New experiences continue unabated, not least of which is the fact I've been able - had no choice really - to get over the claustrophobia I developed some years ago on the London Underground. And I also find I'm really quite enjoying this University lark. Don't get me wrong, the pay is rubbish. Well non existent. Actually of course you have to pay fees. (I can't BELIEVE there's virtually no financial help for an MA. Age discrimination I think. Or maybe academic discrimination. Most Masters have done a 'normal' degree. Not me mate. I think I'm a special case. Well, special. Maybe just a 'case'. Whatever. Get back to it...!)

It occurs to me that one of the big gripes I had about my beloved Birmingham is that there were no networks. There are maybe four theatre producers in Brum that I can think of. And the chances of us ever getting together socially were virtually impossible. And we all have different agendas and methods of working. Plus most of the original 'Mavericks' have moved on, mainly to London. My main, regular chums in Birmingham have long since been bored by my theatre talk and it is not doing them a disservice when I say most of them have absolutely no ideas about the standard or concept of theatrical production anyway, so nights down the pub tended to fairly uninspiring for me and probably very boring for them.

So its only just occurred to me that three days a week I am not only listened to when I talk about theatre production, but listen to lectures about it and hang out with people who are equally if not more into it than I am. Bliss! I have a new bunch of chums who rave about theatre in different disciplines and I am regularly meeting/talking to theatre obsessives, mainly West End, but not exclusively. It can't last. This is almost fun. Imagine. Me, at my age, admitting that. They won't believe it down me local in Brum...

Goodbye, Michael Palin. I'll miss you. Perhaps.

You can now comment directly on this blog. I diddled a digit and wangled a widget and it now means you don't have to sign up or anything to leave a comment on this space. Democracy Rocks. As long as I say so!

My plan to conquer the theatrical world suffered a small hiccup this week. On Wednesday the phone rings. It's the printer in Birmingham. "Nick, those Henry V - Lion of England touring brochures we sent urgently to London last Friday for distribution by the tour booker. They've come back to Brum. They're sitting in front of me now. The courier couldn't find the address". Welcome to the World Of Theatrical Production. It got sorted, of course, but aggro always seems to follow productions.

And talking of dramas, I heard the first half of a new play on Wednesday. Stephen Jackson is a writer who I got to know from putting on plays at the Billesley Pub in Brum. Stephen attended the marvelous playwriting M.A. established by David Edgar at Birmingham University and got to know me at the Billesley over a cheeky beer or two. (By the way, one of the top New Writing theatres in London once described Stephen as "one of the top twenty playwrites in the U.K." So obviously, that's why he's never had a play commercially produced. Cursed, you see.) His style didn't suit what I was trying to achieve at the Billesley at that time, but he's a brilliant writer and he once knocked up a new children's Christmas play for us in ten days for a one off performance at the N.E.C. I hope to incorporate that play about a rather bossy but loveable little girl, Margy, into the Maverick canon one day. He's also had success with a children's book, called 'Mirrorworld'. It's very clever and not only did Steve write it, he also illustrated it. So Stephen has this new play. He brings it round to my tip... sorry, house... and reads the first half. A bit overlong, but very enjoyable with some marvelous comic situations. I won't say too much here, in case Stephen kills me for blowing his plot. We then go for a pint and a smoke at the Hare & Hounds. Neither of us actually smokes any more, but the nicotine fog is so severe at the H&H I reckon I inhaled a packet of ten. Roll on the smoking ban in July! In the pub, Stephen stops choking for long enough to make the comment, "So that's the SECOND play you've read in your house then." Second? Oh yes, of course. The first play, coincidentally, was Henry V - Lion of England! I only knew one actor then, so I got him round to read my script out loud. On that instance we pushed the furniture back and started to block some action as well. Robert Stanson, the actors name. A good lad. The first time I met him was at a party and he nearly threw up on me and so for ever more was known as Rob Vomit! He played Henry in Edinburgh to great acclaim. I think he's given up acting now and probably vomiting, to pursue his other great passion, motorbikes. Last I heard he was doing something with Triumph, lucky sod!

I also, rather sadly, said goodbye to my best friend Michael Palin this week. I finished his diaries and left him, poised on the cusp of the 1980's reflecting on whether he'd had his creative peak. I shall miss him and his wife, Helen and his children and all his friends, Python and non-Python. I've even stopped hating him for being so successful now, so familiar have we become over the years 1970 - 79. I suspect a sequel, but I already miss my daily fix of Palin. So I shall do what any other jilted person would do in these circumstances. If M. Palin can no longer satisfy me, I shall rebound. I already have my lustful eye on another Best Friend. He seduced me with a cheeky little book title - Will and Me. I was further titillated by the temptation of owning a signed copy from last summer's Edinburgh Book Festival, the tease. His name is Dominic Dromgool. Coincidentally, he's also recently replaced Mark Rylance as the new Artistic Director of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in London. And I'm sure he'll welcome me with open... er... pages. Palin? Palin who.