Juicy Gossip and a Hard Lesson Learned.

How to spot red flags in the theatre space.

Last week I promised to tell you about my experience with the theatre that we used for ‘Thick as Thieves’, so here I am. Frustratingly, I can’t call this ’10 things I hate about you’ as there’s more reasons to list. In this blog, I will not be using the names of those who work at the theatre, nor will I be naming the theatre itself. This is not because I don’t think that these people shouldn’t be called out or held accountable (if you really want to find out, I’ve not been subtle in the past), but because I want to remain professional and I see this as a teachable moment so others will not be as naïve as I was. Having said that, I promised receipts and I have brought them.

Before we begin properly, I would just like to make absolutely clear that I am only talking about those behind the scenes who I was personally communicating with from the beginning of the project. The building managers, front of house and those in the bar were absolutely wonderful and really helpful. I have nothing but the upmost respect and gratitude towards them. They did their job and then some. There will be a red flag counter as we go along. Now, one or two red flags doesn’t necessarily mean a deal breaker (eg a theatre not offering to show you round the space because of a current production but if they send you a video of what it usually looks like and offer an in person look round at a later date, then you may choose to justify that flag). This is about the red flags I spotted and overlooked until it was too late and I couldn’t anymore. With that out of the way, it’s tea time.

To begin at the beginning, when I first got in touch with the theatre with a mind to hiring the main space I reached out to A who was the assistant theatre technician. They weren’t terribly responsive to emails (seemingly only working Wednesdays and Thursdays) but they were helpful enough. Besides, it was a community theatre so my assumption was that they just worked part time for little while having another job that paid them enough to live (more about this later). When I arrived to look around the theatre, I was met by B who would show me round. They were very friendly, interested in what I was doing and seemed to be the one in charge. They also ran the youth group which they encouraged me to come along to until they realised just how far out I was. For some reason, it never struck me as odd that I never got any contact information for them, even later on when they said they would give me their email. Red flag counter: 1.

There was another thing about B that on its own may not have been a proper red flag but looking back on it, it’s something that I will definitely be more aware of. B was incredibly chatty. As I say, not a red flag on its own but when I think about it, any time that I seemed to be looking around or closely at something they would try to engage me in conversation. For instance, when we went to drop off leaflets to the theatre and so I could see the space again, I was looking down at the floor and trying to work out the measurements for the stage when B asked me how rehearsals were going. As I say, I had been trying to do something and we had actually already discussed rehearsals in the office but I wanted them to have a good impression of me so I talked to them, forgetting all about what I had been doing. To be clear, it is perfectly fine for you to politely say ‘actually could you give me a moment as I’m just measuring up but I’ll be happy to talk in a bit’. As I hinted to in my previous blog, I had a lot of problems with the floor. Red flag counter: 2.

Fast forward a few weeks. Tickets are on sale but they’re not selling quite as well as we hoped. Up until this point, my only other proper experience with ticket sales had been at SLT which is another community theatre. The difference was that we were on their main website which was clearly about theatrical events and was easy to book tickets from. We found that come the week before the show, sales started rapidly increasing as the community seemed to show interest. We hoped this would be the case for ‘Thick as Thieves’. It was not. We were not actually on the theatre’s main site (although, to be fair, I don’t think any events were), rather a different site which was linked to in the original site which would link to our site which is where the tickets would be bought. This would be confusing enough but the site seemed to be for promoting music events so people may have clicked on us expecting some kind of gig but actually getting a family drama. Oh, and the community that they sold us on seemed only to comprise of one person. Red flag counter: 3.

While we’re on the subject of community, the theatre does something that’s fairly common for a theatre with a youth group. If there is something the member wants to see, they can get their ticket for £5. As I say, this is completely normal and I took full advantage of this when I was a youth group member at the Rose. The problem was that this was something that was mentioned and (sort of) signed off on when I wasn’t in the room. While I was at work, my parents had gone in to give the theatre posters for them to put up around the building and they had mentioned that ticket sales weren’t going quite as well as we had hoped, so B said that they would put the offer on the youth group WhatsApp. This was phrased in a way that made my parents think that I had already agreed to this when actually nothing had been said to me. I would like to once again reiterate that the practice of discounting is normal and I would have been absolutely fine with it (we ourselves give concessions), however there is a different way that I would have wanted it handled. I would have wanted to give them a discount code so that they would come through the website. If nothing else, this would have enabled them to see the play’s trigger warnings. Having said that, I think we can all agree that the way that B handled this was pretty disrespectful. Red flag counter: 4.

Around this time, I received an email from A confirming that get-in would begin at 12 and that the tech handover would be at 1. I replied that that would be absolutely fine. The day before get-in, A emailed me confirming that tech handover would be at 12. Just to be clear this wasn’t a request, I was just told. Not only was I told but it was phrased in a way that suggested that this was what I had already agreed to (are you starting to sense a bit of a pattern?). When I told them that I had told my techie 1 so that would be when they would be arriving expecting to do handover, A simply stated that they had somewhere else to be and so wouldn’t be able to give me the full hour. That I had already paid £20 for. Like I said earlier, I have no problem with people having two jobs to make living easier but if I pay for an hour, then I expect an hour. To add insult to injury, when handover was done and A left, my techie said ‘wait, that was handover?’ But I’m getting ahead of myself. Red flag counter: 5.

Get-in day dawned bright and early. Anyone who has done a get-in knows that they can already be quite stressful, and that’s without an hour and a half’s drive up the North Circular, but when I got to the theatre my day was going to start getting worse. The first thing that happened was A bluntly told me that they had another job so they wouldn’t be able to stay long. Again, I appreciate the need for additional jobs but I am paying for the space and have been in the diary since 5th October (six months!). As you can imagine, this put my back up a little bit but I tried to push it to the side as I walked into the space. When I walked in, I saw that a small stage had been set up which was something that immediately had my alarm bells ringing. Now, I understand that if someone is using a space for theatre then you might think that setting up a stage would be helpful for them, however this stage, while long, was certainly not big enough for a theatre performance. Not only that but I had been very clear from the beginning that the play was in the round, that I would be putting some kind of carpet on the floor and that I didn’t want a raised stage. When I asked if the stage could be removed, A asked several times if I was absolutely sure that I didn’t want it – not even as a raised area for the audience members? When they finally took my answer and started moving it, it soon became clear why they wanted me to use it. Getting rid of the staging was annoying and they didn’t want to do it. By the looks of it, it hadn’t been moved for several months. Not only was there dust and dirt but there were cups and bottles down behind it…and the floor was coming up with the stage. Unfortunately, I was so stressed that I had to take a moment outside and didn’t think to take a picture of the state of what was left before the cleaner came in to tidy it up. The best I got was this picture of the floor after it had been partly patched up. There were many more pictures of the floor to follow. Red flag counter: 6.

Luckily, techie Lettie had arrived early (I had warned her about A’s email the previous day) and went off with A for the tech handover which gave me an opportunity to put costumes into the dressing room. When I was first shown round the space, the dressing room was large with tables by mirrors, racks for costumes as well as a fridge, microwave and kettle. It would have comfortably fit a cast of ten. Traditionally, an understudy stays in the dressing room during shows so that they can be ready in case they have to go on mid-show so this would have been perfect. However, when I went into the dressing room to hang up the costumes what I had actually walked into was a storage room. Ladders, wires and just random piled up rubbish. This is also where they had put the stage (while putting it away, A had still referred to it as ‘the green room’). On top of all of that, there was a strange smell which we think (we hope) was coming from the fridge. During the day, someone came in to add more stuff to the room. There was no way that I was letting my cast step foot in there. It was just plain dangerous. Red flag counter: 7.

When I left that room, I started planning on how I wanted the audience arranged. You may have noticed that on the 11th April, the tickets page on our website went from ‘out of 100’ to ‘out of 53’. Unfortunately, this wasn’t because of a sudden rush of interest but because when I was putting out the chairs it became immediately apparent that there wouldn’t be enough space to safely have an audience of 100, even though that is what I was told the capacity was if my show was in the round. Not only was there not enough space, there weren’t even enough chairs. Red flag counter: 8.

During this time, A left for their other job. The ‘hand over’ had taken half an hour at most, during which Lettie was basically shown where the sound and lighting desks were and A focused a light…which Lettie had to refocus as they had not done it well. She had not been told how to turn the desks on or off, something which every theatre has a different way of doing so this is almost always talked about during handover. We weren’t even sure how to save the lighting cues so we did just have to leave the desk on. Luckily, Lettie studied theatre production at uni and does the tech for professional theatres so is very familiar with lighting and sound desks. If I had had to do the tech myself, that would have been nowhere near sufficient and I would have been in real trouble. Red flag counter 9.

As I say, A had left and we were on our own so we took the opportunity to have a proper look around. During this look around, we discovered that the LED lights in the fire escape signs had been taped over and that the stage had been put in a place that blocked the fire exit from the dressing room (yet another reason not to use it). It was only then that we realised that we had not actually been given a fire briefing nor had we been asked to sign in anywhere. This is something that is normally done as the first thing when a new group get into the space (before any kind of handover or other get in task) and will be repeated when the full cast arrives later in the day. This is a legal requirement! The fact that we had to ask someone if they could give us a briefing was worrying to say the least. To B’s (sort of) credit, they were horrified when I told them how A had treated us when I saw them later that week and paid me back the £20 I had paid for the handover (in cash, without receipt and amazingly well timed as I was in the middle of warm up) . Strangely though, they still didn’t give me their email when I asked them for it as they were in a rush and had to get to Manchester. Red flag counter: 10.

Back to get-in day. If you are in the same place for about eight hours, at some point you are going to have to use their facilities. Kyle had already been to the loo and come back with no issues, so I thought that there wouldn’t be a problem when I went. How wrong I was. The cubicle that I elected to use had water on the floor and when I looked at the ‘last cleaned’ sheet, the date was 31/03/2023…a date that by that point was two weeks old. I was certainly not going to use the ladies’ so I went off in search of a disabled loo I could use. There was one, however the red chord was too far away to be able to reach it from the toilet and most certainly did not reach the floor in case someone required assistance because they had fallen. This loo was also less than clean so I elected instead to use the men’s toilets. These were the only ones that were in a reasonable state. Of course, I let someone know about the water and they sent the cleaner in their straight away to sort out the problem. I used the men’s toilets again the next day as the water was still very much there. Red flag counter: 11.

Last but not least, the floor was an absolute disgrace. Words cannot adequately describe how angry and concerned I was, so below is a slideshow of just some of the pictures of the floor that we took. We went through three rolls of duct tape and a quarter of a can of floor glue in order to fix the worst of it just so that I could get cast, crew and audience members in safely. If we had not had the carpet to put on the floor for the set, I would have cancelled the show as it would have been hugely unsafe and irresponsible to do a fight on that floor. Just to remind you, a youth group takes place in that room every Saturday with children as young as six running around. Just some food for thought there. Red flag counter: 12.

I’m sure you can appreciate why, after the run, I left the theatre hoping not to have to use it again. I did not feel the need to name anyone in this blog because, to slip into teacher mode, they know who they are...