Bloody Bertie Carvel. So anyway, about a month after I launch the game-changing (though largely ignored) Lockdown Theatre Company a well-known, well-liked, and well-connected actor called Bertie Carvel announces he’s setting up The Lockdown Theatre Festival.
I immediately spring into action and set my lawyers on him explaining that he’s nicked the name of MY imaginary theatre company.
Oh, okay, I don’t do that. For a start, I haven’t got any lawyers. Also, Mr Carvel’s initiative is an excellent idea. It is to stage online, on the BBC, a selection of plays that had been shut down when all the theatres closed.
While his plan was admirable, it was slightly disheartening for me.
I mean, here’s me, on my own, trying to create some new work, trying to pay some actors for their work, making it up as I go along, and now an established name actor, with the backing of the BBC, is staging existing professional plays, but using the same name as my D.I.Y. and self-funded project.
Obviously my slim hopes of generating any publicity, or creating online visibility, had gone out the window. Maybe I should jack the whole thing in?
But I’d started. And my idea was a good idea. And I was creating new work. So, fuck it, might as well push on.
What did happen as a result of the launch of Mr Carvel’s The Lockdown Theatre Festival is that I would occasionally get messages from people wanting to know how to book to see its productions.
At which point I would have to channel my inner Alec Guinness as Obi Wan Kenobi and send a message back saying:
‘This is not the Lockdown Theatre you are looking for…’
And then redirect them to the website they needed.
To be honest, it was all a bit annoying. And time consuming. But I didn’t want anyone wanting to watch Mr Carvel’s project to miss out, or feel they’d been ignored.
But, to be even honester, I was proud of the work of the actors I was working with were producing. And I’d back back my scripts in a fight with anything anyone else was putting out.
So bring it on, Mr Carvel, bring it on.
This is so annoying and upsetting. Any scope for collaboration?
But did Bertie do the same for you?