Way back in the heady pre-pandemic days of 2019, I was basking in the satisfaction of another sell-out run of Behind Bars: Ghosts of the Lock-Up. A site-specific production by writers’ collective BOLDtext (of which I’m a member), it had already had a successful run the year before, and had returned, this time with me taking the director’s reins from Jo Gleave.
In the audience during one performance was the then curator of Soho House. No, not the members’ club London, but the meeting place of the far more influential Lunar Society, in Handsworth, Birmingham. We were invited to put on a similar show, bringing to life ‘lunar-ticks’ like 18th Century industrialist Matthew Boulton and doctor-philosopher Erasmus Darwin. The show would lead the audience through the very rooms where so much of the modern world had first been imagined and invented.
Good idea, right? COVID-19 clearly didn’t agree. Planned for early summer 2020, it quickly became clear that the show as envisaged wouldn’t be possible. To make matters more complicated, with many museum staff sadly being laid-off, the curator of Soho House vanished. The staff that remained were (understandably) more concerned with how to get their venues back open safely, than dealing with the frivolous problems of how to put on a play.
The Arts Council had a different view, however. We’d already been awarded funding, and as things began to open up, ACE (also, understandably) wanted long-postponed productions to get up and running again. This was a considerable problem with Soho House remaining closed (at the time of writing it still is). Instead of leading the audience around the building, we reimagined the play as a garden party, taking place in the grounds, picnic and all. The audience would be able to sit in socially-distanced bubbles and we’d be able to get the show on the road.
Fantastic idea, right? This time it wasn’t just COVID that didn’t agree; the weather had something to say as well. If we’d known it was going to be an outdoor production, we might have budgeted for a marquee or some sort of awning. Sadly, we didn’t have that luxury. By now it was summer 2021, and the heavens frequently opened – particularly when any of our actors attempted to say their lines. For all but two performances, the show was forced into the museum’s cafe/educational space. Surely, things couldn’t get any worse? You guessed it. Halfway through two of the four actors got pinged and had to self-isolate.
Two years of planning, and every effort made to adapt the show to the circumstances, and it ended up with the producer (Julia Wright) and director (Janet Steel) reading their lines next to the hatch to the kitchen!
Despite everything though, the show did go on. Our saving graces were the tenacious determination of the company (including Katy Stephens, Simran Kular, and Adaya Henry) and the understanding of our very generous audience. Even my play about non-conformist minister and inventor of fizzy water, Joseph Priestley, went off without a hitch, despite my efforts to overcomplicate it with a live experiment involving chalk and acid. For once the overused office adage seems apt: you don’t have to be a lunatic to work here, but it helps!
Tim Stimpson 