Bitesize
Yeah a little later than promised, but here is Sophie's wonderful, powerful and fiery blog post. Part of the humungous blog, a couple of months ago now, which reflected on YMMV as a whole, we wanted to repost it. The wording definitely deserves to stand alone. After this blast from the past, I have scrawled a quick update in these very strange times.
Sophie's Reflections of You, Me and My Voice 2019
Once Upon a Tour….
Every show has its memories, quotable moments, laughs, tears and stress. The 2019 Tour of You, Me and My Voice was no different. I have quite the flair for the dramatic and I love a story, so my reflections of the tour come in an almost fairy-tale like miniseries of stories. With my humorous, witty, comedic and humble viewpoint. Without further ado, I present to you Once Upon a Tour. Enjoy.
The Technicians Tale
You never think about the way humans behave until it is so in your face. One of the most incredible parts of the You, Me and My Voice tour 2019 has been the behaviour of humans. This sounds odd, I know, but the people we have met have given me enough material to write a one man show highlighting how some humans are still struggling to come to grasps with the open world we live in. I am simply talking about the minority of people, overall the audiences were fantastic. So, let me explain…
Being a technician on tour with a small touring cohort is vastly different to being the technician at a venue or a technician with a world tour. Suddenly you go from being a part of a crew and playing your role within the wider tech team, to being the tech team in its entirety. Add being a female technician into this mix and I can tell you either: chivalry isn’t dead or the notion of man saving woman is still very much engraved into the human mind set.
An experience I need to note with this tour was: how humans would interfere with my set up of lights and equipment, would question my ability to use the equipment, would move my lights and focus them where they wanted, touch my stuff and of course (my favourite) call me love or darlin’. It was never due to a lack of my misunderstanding of equipment or asking for their assistance but me thinks it was more to do with my gender. I could go on and on with points, reasonings and evidence to why I know it was about my gender, rather than my ability, but I’m not here for a rant about patriarchy and the past gazillion years of it. Moving on. Quickly.
The Children, The Caretaker and The Water Bowl
Two experiences that stuck with me, both happened during our time at Plymouth School of Creative Arts. A promising venue that was, to say the least, challenging from the get-go but like all stories it has a happy ending so bare with me here.
We had the “pleasure” of being guided around the building by a member of staff, whom we shall call Pedro for this story. Pedro was our chaperone who met us from the car park, helped us in with our gear and then when we were asked to move our vehicles completely stunned us all. “So what are you going to do with your chappy here then? Is he alright to be left alone?”. A quote. A quote I will never forget, an epic uttering of nonsense directed towards Steve, Jen and myself about Hugh as he lent on Hugh’s chair. He didn’t ask Hugh, it was almost like Hugh wasn’t there. Short of blowing a fuse and giving it the big ‘Do you know who this is?!’ speech I settled with a reply that was equally an epic uttering of nonsense: “He’ll be alright, we will leave a bowl of water out for him.” Yes I know, hilarious, witty and slightly childish but my joke was missed on Pedro. Shame, we could have made a comedy duo act that would challenge Ant and Dec. Enough of Pedro and his ways and onto the happily ever after moment.
So this moment happened after show 1 of 2 at the Plymouth School of Creative Arts which was a show to the students. It was a tough show, battling audience participation that wasn’t asked for and pretty much shouting against 60 talking children. We were all so relieved when the show ended, looking at each other like we had just battled through a storm. Left kind of crest fallen and annoyed which all changed when one of the students came up to Hugh and said: ‘Mad respect for that man’. It was worth it, we had made a difference to at least one person which made it all okay. An amazing rollercoaster of emotions which I will never forget.
All’s Well That Ends Well
It is amazing that when you are planning a tour, on paper venues can look amazing and be the ‘perfect’ venue for your show. When you perform within some of those spaces, what is on paper is left on paper. In one instance we had a show in Exeter, in one of the studio rooms on the first level of a very popular Exeter venue. No problem Hugh there’s a lift. Ideal. Sorted. Bags packed, cars ready to go. Email arrives half an hour before we are due to arrive at the venue:
“Dear Hugh,
Just had a thought, the lift is broken to the stage. I don’t know why I didn’t think of this sooner….”
The email every disabled artist wants to hear on the first tour date. Not to panic Hugh, the engineer is on the way…we just don’t know when he will get there. So Hugh was left with a situation, cancel the show or go and hope it gets fixed. I think it’s time within the story to introduce a hero, that is exactly what the story needed, and we got. Introducing the silent performer, the understudy that never got their moment: Emmanuel. This was Hugh’s manual wheelchair because, Undivided Attention were not about to give up on our first date. Emmanuel was packed in the car on standby to play the vital part of Hugh’s chair in the event of the lift not working. Long story short Emanuel didn’t get its chance to shine on stage as the lift was fixed but my god, it’s one of the best understudies I have ever met.
The Magic Circle
In all my stories there’s a missing element, the players of the tour and how their existence within the world of the show had an influence on me. So my final story is more my internalised experience (can you tell I did a degree in performance?) something that no other person had the actual pleasure of having. When you work with other creatives one of two things will happen:
You will clash in a horrendous, over dramatic way
Magic happens
Fortunately for me, the magic happened with this show. We worked like a well-oiled machine, providing elements that not one of us could replace for the other. Steve was my counter-clown for lack of a better term. A talented musician who, time after time got audiences mystified with his instruments and abilities. Inspiring a new generation to become the rock stars and Elton John’s of the future. A talent I am insanely jealous of but a talent that brought magic to the show.
Jen, the silent creative genius. She is incredibly modest, but someone must toot her horn. Without her hard work with the set and determination to learn lines and everything else she does in between (honestly how she does it I will never know!) the show would not have had the sparkle of magic Jen brought to each show. Erin was the director, teacher, mentor, kicker of arses. This was the first time I have worked with Erin as my director as a performer, and it was awesome. No other words can describe it apart from awesome. When we were on shows without her, there was a missing part and a loss that was felt through the team. Erin had an incredible talent to take us from being tired and meh performers to inspiring us and giving us the magic formula to be the best performer we could be.
Now onto the main man, our chappy (sorry Hugh I couldn’t resist). Hugh brought us together and made his university project into a South West Touring Show. No mean feat. Hugh watched us from our highs to our lows and supported us as a fellow cast member and as the project lead, every step of the way. Oh and he performed on stage every time, with complete honesty. This is Hugh’s life, those are Hugh’s stories and memories. For the hour you are with us, you as the audience are seeing a snippet of Hugh’s life which is unapologetically brave and open about himself. Hugh did it with ease, again I am in awe of how, because I found one of the most challenging things in my performing career was the ability to be me on stage in this show. As an actor I am trained to play someone else, to put on a character. I struggled to embody me in this show because I am not trained in that way, far too much vulnerability on show for my comfortability. That magic that Hugh brings ties the show together. Without all the cast and crew of the show, the show would not have been half as successful.
And they all lived happily ever after….
#YMMV2020
It's amazing reading that again! It feels at least three life times ago. Since that last curtain call bow and the celebrations, we have been busily collecting all your feedback (1000 thank yous for all the comments and shared experience you gave us) and submitting evaluation forms. After that process we have been scratching our heads over applications and bursary proposals. Unfortunately we haven't received and funding to do practical creative work yet, but we have received extremely useful and needed pot of money to work closely with the brilliant Nat Palin! The funds, the Great Place Scheme Professional Development Bursary awarded Torbay Culture, have helped us strategically plan our next steps, cement our ideas and evolve our trajectory... and of course applied for more funding opportunities!
Life has changed dramatically for everyone. We were hoping now to come out of 'hibernation' (period of fundraising and planning) and get creative but the lockdown and our health has to obviously come first. That doesn't mean that we, as artists, will stop making... on the contrary: culture and community have never been so important, we Just need to think a little differently on how we respond to the world we are in... watch this virtual space!