End of term

End of Term

There’s been a real end of term feeling this week.

Wednesday saw the last of the CPS role play programmes. Conducted in a deserted office building overlooking the Thames it really felt very end of term indeed. Rows of deserted desks with deserted work stations and printers, monitors and scanners just left lying around. I’m hoping in this age of new Government frugality that they are all going to find new homes in a new building rather than just be left there and thrown out, but things looked pretty desolate in there.

Friday evening saw a picnic in Green Park with Richard’s team from work and what a pleasant evening it was. While resisting the temptation to join in heavy duty frisbee throwing session, I lounged in a deck chair feasting myself on the very best that £60 of Marks and Spencer food vouchers could buy. I’m always so thrilled by Central Park in our time in New York, and yet we have fabulous parks here in London. the big parks more than match the majesty of Central Park, and yet I’m always surprised by them.Perhaps we just don’t use them enough. Despite having to hand back the deck chairs at 8.15pm, just an hour or so after we had paid for them, we sat in the park until nearly 10pm having a really relaxing evening.The younger brigade went on to pubs and clubs, but for me it was home to a really deep nights sleep.

The park was good practice for the next three weeks. There’s always very little work around in August which means I can give my time to a cause I love and not feel too guilty about what I am not earning. I am just about to embark on a project with the National Youth Theatre entitled “S’Warm”. This will open one night at Battersea Power Station, spend three days swarming round the city of London and end with two performances on a Sunday afternoon in Canada Square in Docklands. It will have a full cast of nearly 1000 and is based on the belief that when the bees die, we have just four years left on the planet. It is enormous in its vision and is part of the strategy being pursued by the National Youth Theatre to produce large scale stadium type events in preparation for a possible involvement in 2012 and whatever might happen then.

An event of this size is always just a major logistics exercise before the creative stuff starts and so this week, the five section directors - of which I am one, the author and director and all the support staff met in Battersea Park in a tent which will be our base. Next to it five large marquees were being erected to provide each of the directors with a rehearsal space. It was a humbling experience and I think excited as we undoubtedly are, it made all of us a little nervous, not least at the lack of toilet facilities. One honey wagon with four cubicles and over 500 people on site. Stay tuned for further news next week when these facilities may have to be reviewed.

As I write this on a Sunday afternoon, over 600 young people from all over the country are heading to London ready to start rehearsals at 10.00am tomorrow for what undoubtedly will be one of the most significant project most of them have ever been involved in.

It was on a Sunday morning 36 years ago that I headed to London to begin my first season with the NYT. Getting off a train there was just time to dash to my Finsbury Park hostel and dump my bag, and head over to the gym of a school in Chalk Farm where all the new members were corralled. We were told the dangers of sex, drugs, and rock and roll, welcomed by the unique Michael Croft and then all 80 or so of us were made to do our audition speech in front of all the season directors and the rest of the new members so that we could be cast overnight and put into a company the next morning .It was a daunting experience. I think there were seven “Richard II’s” before I eventually stood up. In front of an audience that included fellow new members Tim Spall, Kate Buffery, Alex Jennings and many others who have since made a mark in the acting world, I trembled my way through “What must the king do now” in an elocuted Doncaster twang. Something about it must have worked. I was not pushed into the chorus of the big show but given twelve lines in a studio production. By the end of the week I had made life long friends, twisted my ankle, been to casualty, got drunk and changed my life.

I’m sure “S’warm will be theatrically breathtaking - in its size if nothing else, but what makes the youth theatre worthwhile is the life experience it provides for young people from all over the country, from all social mixes, and from all levels of ability. Yes it’s frustrating as a director to have more than three people with no sense of rhythm in your group, but for them it’s three weeks of a life time.

So as I pack my lunch and drive myself to Battersea tomorrow bemoaning the lack of latrines, I shall take a deep breath and remember that for those about to launch into it, tomorrow could be the first day of the rest of their life.