It’s Saturday. A baby seagull is on the lawn outside. She’s been there for a day now. Not flying. Not eating. Walking about. Snoozing. Live-dying and die-living, a slow-moving dapple feathered target for foxes. Inside the flat there’s conflict. Feed the bird and create dependency. Or starve it and murder through negligence. I asked Angie if we should bring her up and put her on the table on the balcony. For safety. Until she flies off. Emboldened by my care and kindness. No said Angie. She’ll jump off the table onto the floor and then be more acutely imprisoned. Within the balcony walls. Suffocated by mint and watering cans. It’s decided. We will offer it food. Angie goes out of the front door with raw fish in a yoghurt pot. She’s back. She didn’t make it down to the bird. She found a half dead bee on the stairs. She gives it sugar water and a resuss area. Now she’s out again to save the seagull. And the dog has a limp. It’s sunny and clammy and existential today. Breathe.
It’s last Tuesday. Our creative team Kate, Helen, Anna, Loz, Angela, Judith and Margaret sit around a green table in the rehearsal room at Salisbury Playhouse. I stand in front of them, slide showing a power point presentation like a seasoned power point presenter. All space bar nudges and 180-degree pivots, anxious joking and fighting the somnabulatory quality of my own voice. We don’t do talking at Separate Doors. Silence is our USP. But we need to plan 2 days of creative activity. And we do. Everyone is incredibly smart. And articulate. Ready to take the Silent Approach into new places in new ways in masterclasses at the Conference. Exciting.
It’s last Wednesday. In the rehearsal room at Salisbury Playhouse again. Lily Swift, Advisory Board member, Blue Apple actors and participants are engaging with our team and actors in a dynamic Silent Approach masterclass. Someone cries (in a good way) and Loz takes us through a development of the song. I direct Yana and Joe in a scene from HOPE VALLEY HOTEL (& Spa) and Angela leads everyone in a tea dance. Anna directs another scene. We come together. We connect and breathe. It works.
It’s yesterday. I buy hotel rooms and send emails. I check people’s availability. I look at spreadsheets. I plan a photoshoot. I budget for a couple more actors on the 22nd September. I shop for branded tote bags. I consider the philosophical and political position of integrated theatre within the sector. I eat ice cream.
It’s today again. The bee has recovered. It’s flown off.
If I was Lucy Kirkwood or James Graham or any kind of half decent scribbler with twenty minutes to spare I’d craft something witty and cogent about the nature of life and death by building a bridge from the stranded seagull and the limping dog and the emancipated bee into the precariousness of integrated theatre, the hierarchy of speech, shifting cultural mores, vocational acting as a craft, learning disabled and neurodivergent talent as a specific demographic, financial/funding constraints, censorship, criticism, AI and the vital place of theatre that is made for – and with – everyone but there’s plenty of time and space for that…62 days in fact.