New Adventures |

The last show has been done and The Lord of the Flies project has come to an end…at least for now. There are hopes that it may be able to be taken to another area of the UK and be done again, but if that were to happen at all it wouldn’t be any time soon.

Starting on Monday we began the technical rehearsal for the show on stage. This was always going to be the most difficult and nail biting part of the project. The stage crew only had two days to light the show and plot where all the cues needed to go in the score, as well as all of us getting used to the space and seeing how it differed from rehearsals. The difficulty with rehearsals like these is that there is only a certain speed they can progress at which is restricted by the time it takes to program all the lighting. I’m not sure how it all works myself, but sometimes to be able to do just a ten second section you would have to go back two or three minutes to be able to get the sequence of events leading up to it to happen properly. All of this takes up a huge amount of time, and we didn’t have that much of it.

The boys were all very excited the first time they stepped onto the stage. For a lot of them it was the first time they had even been inside a theatre and some of them even confessed that they were a bit scared by it all suddenly seeing all the seats out in the audience and realising all those people were going to be watching them. We had more requests than usual to go through steps and sequences as they started to doubt whether or not they knew it well enough. They weren’t alone in this. You would usually find most of us older guys going through some part of the show in our spare time, the most common part being the walking phrases at the beginning of the show. Looking back I am quite stunned that the kids managed to be able to do all of those walking phrases so well, they were constantly changing directions with counts that were bordering on hallucinogenic.

And so first Monday went by, then Tuesday.... and we still hadn’t finished the first technical rehearsal of the show! On Wednesday morning the eight of us older guys went in early to finish plotting through the rest of it so that they could finish setting all the lights. When it came to doing the dress rehearsal later that day, none of the others had done the last third of the show on stage or with lights. I remember standing next to Dominic on the ramp waiting to go on and just saying, “This is insane.” At one point during the dress rehearsal one of the boys came up to me and asked when we were going to do the next rehearsal before the show that evening. When I told him that this was all we were going to get he didn’t believe me and thought that I had misunderstood his question. When he eventually understood that this was the final rehearsal we had, he just chuckled to himself slightly before wandering off. The good thing about them never having had any experience in theatre before was that they didn’t have any idea of what to expect. They took everything with an open mind, accepting the way things were and getting on with them. I know a good few professionals who wouldn’t have been as cool as they all were in their position. So even though none of them had done the last sections of the show on stage before, it all went relatively smoothly. We still hadn’t done a proper run through without stopping, as we would have to do that evening, but we had done as much as we could.

To say the energy on stage before the first show was high would be as redundant as saying the universe is fairly big. Nonetheless I am going to say it, it was high. For a lot of the guys it was the most nervous they had ever felt in their lives, one said he even felt sick. I think this would be a good moment to point out that what us professionals had learned over a decade to get used to, we expected the boys to do in about two weeks. None the less, the first show which was our first EVER proper run of it, went by with only minor technical issues. Catching the boys eyes on stage and seeing their excitement is something I don’t think I’ll ever forget. A lot of the boys upped their game even more now that it was a live performance, surprising us with what they were doing. At last we closed on the final scene and were greeted to a standing ovation, much to the relief of everyone involved. Afterwards there was a party front of house to celebrate, but not before the boys were stopped outside stage door to sign autographs for fans (much to their surprise and bewilderment).

The rest of the shows went by, as always, too fast. It was a shame we didn’t have a longer run, if only because it would have given us more time to improve the show and our performances in them. When the last performance was done all the boys broke into cheers of celebration and congratulations backstage. Soon after this though, they began to realise that it was over. Our room’s dresser came downstairs to get our costumes and told us that all of the boys were upstairs crying their eyes out, unafraid even of looking silly in front of each other. After we had changed there was a knock at the door to our dressing room and some of the boys came in, they still had tears in their eyes and were fighting them back as we hugged goodbye. I met one of the other professionals on the way out who told me he hadn’t wanted to cry so much himself in his life. It was really touching to see how moved they had been by the whole experience which is, after all, what it was all about in the first place. Until that moment I don’t think I realised how much of an impact that this project has had on all of their lives. I hope that it’s enough to urge them on to continue a career in theatre, as all of them have so much potential.

Until the next time….

Jack