Rehearsal Spaces List If Panicking/Poor

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This list is not comprehensive. This list is partial because these people replied and were kind and generous to us. This list is in London. This list is made up of places that suit a tiny budget (i.e. every fringe show and will require flexibility and a bit of DIY-ness). After the week I’ve had, I thought this list might be helpful. Please let me know if I’ve missed you or any other spaces you think are great and helpful. I bet there are loads but when I was panicking all the lists were fucking shite.

I would suggest when emailing people: be honest, be kind, be urgent – always ask if they can do it in-kind, particularly so it can count against G4A budgets, if you’re stressed always email people and ask if they know of anywhere else.

LIST OF 11

Jackson’s Lane Highgate  – lots of nice spaces, nice people (REALLY NICE TO US)

Annex Tottenham – nice studio, natural light

NDT – they have a small space in the garden that they are nice about letting people use if you’re nice and good – also, just email them for advice because they are the best people in the world and will help you calm down (I'm sure they'll thank me for that)

The Cockpit – have three studios as far as I can see

Pelier Hall – are a community hall but adequate for rehearsal spaces

Jerwood Space – often booked up, sometimes expensive, but have spaces and are a really helpful person to contact if you’re panicking and can’t find anywhere because they are well nice

St Agnes, Kennington – have a hall at the back of the church that is big and nice, fairly pricey but really nice about offering discounts if you’re good and nice.

Union Theatre – worth an email, they were booked up for us but have spaces

Exchange Theatre – a rehearsal space in a converted flat in London Bridge and they are very friendly and French

Rich Mix – wow these people are nice, send them an email, normally for payment but be nice and you might get lucky and they have a beautiful room

BAC – nice people, often busy, worth a cheeky email

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Summer and Smoke

The show is now a long while over, so I’ll describe a moment.

A father is shot. It is jarring with the rest of the production, it is a character we are not sure we really care about, a character who has only appeared briefly and always holding a stick in one hand – we assume to demarcate him from the other father he plays – and about two thirds of the way through the play, unexpectedly (inexplicably) he is shot. It might serve only to drive forward the drama and you can imagine this in a production less sure of itself where the show would falter, where the actor would reel on the ground and you would wish they had the budget for more blood maybe, or no blood at all, or you would be reminded of that moment in a conversation where someone told you that people who are shot in the stomach generally lose blood very slowly – in another production, this would be a flaw. But inexplicably, here, having been shot, he doesn’t start screaming, he doesn’t bleed, he starts to sing in a piercing countertenor voice that feels like it comes from somewhere else in the actor’s body, like there is another body speaking through him and that body is lighter, more ethereal, more haunting than the body we can now see onstage: the stage is haunted by a voice that is at once of the actor and of the character. He holds his staff, his son comes over, takes it from his hand, and like that he is no longer alive. The gesture is deft, archly theatrical, and deeply disturbing.

I’ve thought about this a lot since seeing Summer and Smoke. I’ve thought about Summer and Smoke a lot, really. Because I often think about seriousness and I often think about why theatre exists and then I think maybe I should pop outside and look at a tree and think about why I’m looking at a tree and then it’s four o’clock and I’m outside looking at a tree again. But this show – the best I’ve seen this year and the best single piece of direction I can remember seeing ever – reminds me of how seriously I think theatre can and should be taken. How much gravity it has and how it clings to those who take it seriously and have the sincerity to allow it to work on them.

I’m not really reviewing here, I’m sort of more reflecting – something I often find a little cloying in other bloggers but, well, I think there is some value in feeling and thinking and I think that this is a very feeling production. It left me fairly breathless and I’m reminded there of lovely Meg Vaughan talking about the way that Suzy Storck hurt more after than in the moment – this show was a succession of moments that really hurt and that hurt during and hurt afterwards. And it persuaded me, after all that, that Tennessee Williams, who I often think of as visceral (and, I have to admit, not normally in a good way – too loose, too hot, and too American) here worked on me in exactly the way I’ve had his work described as effecting other less, I suppose, cynical people. It felt raw and emotional and like it was grasping for something, like it really wanted some sense to come out of – which unifies it with a quality that I love in contemporary work and was something that I never believed I would feel.

I loved it. I’m sad I only saw it once. I really really hope it goes somewhere else, so everyone can experience it.

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A year after starting the blog here, I realised that Blogger is quite an unaccountably shit site and I wanted a prettier one, so I've moving to a Wordpress over here. Please do follow me there.