An awkward business ... starting a theatre company is never easy but Chekhov at the Chapel is finally ready
Bronwen Wilson and Becca Cox set up an interactive community theatre company, Cilgwyn Theatre Company, earlier this year. Their first show, Chekhov at the Chapel, opens on September 19 2006, at the Union Chapel in Islington, London. In the first of a series of blogs, cofounder Bronwen charts the highs and lows of the past few months as her fledgling company prepares for its debut performance.
We had a play (The Crucible), we had a name for our company, and we had marvellous ideas about an education programme, but still no venue. I longed to put our play on at the Union Chapel in Islington, a 200-year-old church oozing with character. It was so perfect it seemed out of our league. But I somehow managed to convince the manager to give us a discount and even get excited about our idea. The Chapel do a great deal of work with vulnerable groups and one of our aims was to make theatre accessible to the widest audience possible. In our enthusiasm we excitedly handed over a cheque for a sum of money I shall only call "a lot".
Ah, happiness, such an ephemeral thing. Our producer, Becca, reminded me I still hadn't checked out performance rights for our chosen play, The Crucible. I shot an email off to the publishing company that afternoon. A missile came back to me about an hour later: all rights for the play were frozen. That was it. I realise now we had been incredibly naive. I knew about the RSC's play, but I thought that because it was a six-week run it wouldn't cause us any problems. And, anyway, what do the RSC have to worry about a little fringe show in Islington? Apparently a lot.
Not giving up quite yet, I contacted the publisher in New York and started a very polite email battle. Buddy calmly explained that the RSC might do a tour and might transfer and so they'd decided to not let anyone else do the play. All of which they did to great acclaim, but, hey, that's hindsight for you. Buddy signed off saying: "Thankfully for you, there are many other plays in the Arthur Miller catalogue, and many other wonderful pieces of writing in the world for you to choose from." I felt like throttling Buddy.
It was probably the best thing that could have happened to us. After ransacking our bookshelves we came up with the idea of doing a devised show based on Chekhov's short stories. We soldiered on and after several months of research and writing we were ready to cast our show.
This proved to be an exhausting and strange experience. The exhausting part was being nice to all the auditioners, all 50 billion of them or so it seemed. I knew tiredness levels were dire when I managed to ring someone, offer them a part, put the phone down and then realise I'd offered it to the wrong person. Luckily he turned us down as we weren't important enough for him. But then when I offered it to the person we actually did want he turned it down too. This happened again with the next person and the one we eventually cast dropped out after a week. Luckily the role has been cast now, which is a relief as we start on Tuesday.
So, we had a venue, a play (sort of) and a cast. Now how to afford all those things?
~ For more information about the company go to cilgwyntheatrecompany.co.uk or myspace.com/cilgwyn.
