A film about haircuts.
Chapter 13: I could make a joke about performing this at the Edinburgh Fringe, but I'm better than that.
I like unusual venues. Which is just as well. I’ve performed in a lot of them. To start with it was out of necessity. But now I think it is out of choice.
The first time I had the nerve to sit down in front of a group of people and say '‘This is something I’ve written’ was in a meat shop around the corner from my house. Admittedly it was a quite groovy meat shop, but it was a meat shop. There were chiller cabinets around the walls. And in the middle of the shop was a large square table where, in the evening, you could drink wine and eat food.
At the time I was looking for somewhere to try my words out on a few friends. I considered all the conventional spaces – meeting halls, rooms above pubs, rehearsal spaces – but none really appealed. And they all cost money to hire.
Then I spotted a sign in the window of the meat shop saying that you could use it for private events in the evening. I went in and asked them how much it would cost to hire the space. They said it was free, I just had to guarantee that a bit of money would get spent on food and drink. I can’t remember what the exact amount was, but it wasn’t much more than it would cost to hire the other rooms I’d been looking at.
Financially it made sense.
Buy some wine and sausage rolls and you get a performance space thrown in. What’s not to love?
If I’m honest I also liked the idea of performing in a meat shop. I mean, who does that? I guess it appealed to the outsider, the maverick, in me. And, thankfully, the ‘show’ went well. But if any of you out there are contemplating performing in a meat shop I will offer this bit of advice.
At certain points, at certain quite quiet points, in your performance the chiller cabinets may well decide they need to up their chiller-ing. So what was a gentle background hum of activity will suddenly step to the front of the stage and start bellowing out the chiller world’s equivalent of ‘To be or not to be’. That does happen.
But I guess if you choose to perform in unusual spaces you will face unusual challenges. All part of the fun.
Since the meat shop I’ve staged shows in a boardroom, an optometrists, a 1920s council chamber, a front room, a gallery, a room in a Cypriot community centre, the bar of a theatre while a show was going on in the auditorium, a church tower, and a barber’s shop. Oh, and there have been a few more conventional spaces too.
One of the main reasons I like these spaces is that they are not theatres.
Obviously this creates difficulties. The lighting isn’t ideal, the sight lines can be dodgy, sound can leak in from the surroundings, and there is rarely an actual stage to perform on and to focus the attention of the audience.
But for me the big win is this. The audience arrives in a different state of mind.
It isn’t a theatre. It’s an odd space. It’s an unusual space. It’s a space that holds the promise of the unexpected. If you’re used to going to the theatre, then attending a show in barber shop doesn’t allow you to just fall back in to a comfortable, familiar state of mind.
Also your very presence is a transformative act.
You being there means you’ve helped turn a non-theatrical space into a theatrical one. So even before the performance begins you’ve helped to ‘build’ the theatre. That must be immersive theatre at its best.
Equally important to me is the fact that if you perform in unusual spaces maybe its easier for people who aren’t that comfortable going to an actual theatre to come along.
Yes, a lot of people in this country go to the theatre. But a lot more don’t.
There is a Threshold Problem.
For many the idea of going to see a play in a theatre can be just a little bit daunting. But going to see a show in a barber’s shop? How intimidating could that be?
Obviously I haven’t worked out all the finer points of this theory, but I definitely think that there is something in it. If you want to reach people who ordinarily don’t go to the theatre, maybe the answer isn’t only to make theatres more welcoming, but also to take ‘theatre’ to where people already are.
And if the form of theatre you pursue is, in essence, telling a story, then you can do that almost anywhere.
Follow this line of logic and the possibility arises that ‘unusual spaces’ aren’t an alternative to conventional theatres, they just might be the thing that makes theatre relevant to more people.
Having said all that, performing in a barber’s shop was a stupid idea.
It came about because one day I walked past the place I got my hair cut and thought maybe I could do a show in there. At that point I had no idea what the show would be about, it was the space that appealed.
I went in and spoke to Ers – he cuts my hair, and has become a friend. I must have been on good form that day, because when I floated the idea with him he said yes. Also he is a generous, and kind, man. So maybe that had a lot to do with it too.
Anyway, I walked out of the barber’s with a venue secured. Now I just had to figure out what to write about.
You know that phrase, ‘If life gives you lemons, make lemonade’ ?
Well that must have kicked in. And my thinking went if I’m in a barber’s maybe I should write about haircuts. So I did.
Why performing in a barber’s shop was a stupid idea you might be able to spot from the picture at the start of this piece. The basic problem, which I didn’t really figure out until after I’d written my story, was that you can’t get a lot of people in a barber’s. And you can’t bring more seats in.
But, as I’ve explained earlier, all this inherent awkwardness of the space can be a good thing. The picture was taken before I launched into my exploration of getting my haircut as a small boy in the 1970s. And already you can see that the audience are enjoying being a part of something different. Whatever was about to unfold, they were a part of it, not apart from it.
That’s quite a good place to start from.
All of which brings me to the latest film.
This went out on May 26 2020. It features the way too talented Vinesh Veerasami. And it is the opening five minutes of the story I told in the barber’s shop. A story that subsequently went up to the Edinburgh Fringe.
It’s called ‘The Last Man Cave’. And as I’m posting this piece on Friday I’m quite tempted to say that it’s a ‘Something for the weekend, sir?‘ kind of thing.
But I won’t say that.
Coming next Friday: An exploration of intimacy.
But before that here’s ‘The Last Man Cave’ featuring Vinesh Veerasami.