Trains and boats and frames...

So, on Sunday we were in York, at the RNLI's Presentation of Awards Ceremony held at York Racecourse. A sweaty affair given the glorious weather. It was very nice and they gave us (the theatre) a crazily disproportionate citation, a nice reception and an even nicer framed award for the fundraising that took place during On A Shout. Director turned to me and said, "It's been quite a journey, hasn't it?" And it has.

We - M and Finn and little old me - spent the evening and the whole of the sun-soaked day that followed in the city that feels like our spiritual home. We took Finn to see trains at the NRM, although it was probably all lost on him. Especially the Shinkansen he's pictured in front of.

Matinee...

Dropped in on the matinee with grumpy son Sam to find a nicely packed house who were all keen to have a good time. I think the play even won Sam round in the end. Lovely it were. Just a week left. Then the super cast and crew disperse and our memory play becomes just that. Shame. We won the lottery tonight. Ten of your English pounds. Life ain't so bad after all, eh?

How insulting...

This is the best thing, in the short time I've been able to read such things, I've ever read about myself...

"After his play Sully, whose rugby hero united the city’s halves, Windass now insults most places within easy reach. Hull itself, Goole, Grimsby, the villages of Cottingham and Dunswell, all come under the lash of his pen."

Reviews Gate

Eye candy...

Louise Buckby has taken some gorgeous production shots. So, just in case you were wondering what On A Shout looks like...


There are a few more here.

And another...

****
"...yet another success for the theatre, and a second for former journalist Windass ... Windass has a bank of characters he accesses for the play – some hilarious and surreal like David Barrass's Ronald Rix, some heartfelt like Laura Doddington's Louise. All of them feel real. Windass's first play was about a Hull rugby legend and here he makes legends of a group of Hull characters."
Yorkshire Post

Concrete and play...

Normal life resumes. Drove 17-year-old daughter to Leeds for the first of several university interviews she's heading to. A nice day and a reminder that I'm not as young as my inner child would have me believe. Lots of hanging around the upper floors of Leeds Met's School of Architecture, Landscape and Design tower block. The view through the glass was The Plaza - not the fancy hotel it sounds like but another addition to the student accommodation around these fancy parts. The interview went well. Tomorrow, she's heading to the Leeds College of Art & Design. Seems like five minutes ago she was leaning over a colouring book and frantically sribbling away with some chunky Crayolas. Amazing. And frightening. We - daughter, her current beau and lil me - went for some food then I headed for home, leaving them to enjoy this city of a thousand tower cranes.

The play? There were a few final nips and tucks to the script. The cast are flying now. Me? I'm overwhelmed, dizzy, wandering around in a daze. The temptation to head to the theatre every night is very high. But that would be weird and incredibly vain. So, tonight at least, I'm here instead. And, of course, I just sit here, unstaring at the TV screen, all of life out of focus, wondering how it's going. I feel rather peculiar. If anyone stumbles across my sanity can you let me have it back?

More reviews...

****
"Gareth Tudor Price's production vividly taps into the irregular pulse of a group of characters whose lives are divided between salt-lashed heroism and the slow, domestic drift of life at the sharp end of the most isolated and unstable peninsula in Britain. There is a commanding performance from Edward Peel as George, and great support from his loyal crew, not least Laura Doddington as one of the country's small but growing number of lifeboat women.

Windass's complex, intelligent play is a fitting tribute to those in peril on the sea - the measure of its effectiveness was perhaps not so much the warm applause as the sound of money rattling into RNLI collection tins on the way out."
The Guardian

"...evokes the tradition of service, the lure of the lifeboats and the lure of Spurn Point."
The Stage

And, just to bring me back down to earth...

"On A Shout has the Hull Truck trademarks of earthy humour, multiple role playing and emotional swells, but is rather too much report, not enough drama."
York Press

A pair of reviews...

****
"a particularly impressive mix of entertainment, moving celebration of the lifeboat service and powerful stage re-creation of a unique part of East Yorkshire life."
whatsonstage.com


"A drama with a storm-like intensity...Alongside the set-pieces are the tough but straightforward realities of their life - brought out with great panache by the cast - told through a script which mixes blunt humour with moments of pure poetry."
Hull Daily Mail

What will they say?

I am still alive. Just waiting on a few reviews. It feels as if I'd be speaking out of turn to tell you how Friday went before the small throng of assembled press give their official view. But...it seemed to go well.

Funny lark, this. You think that you'll wake up the morning after an opening night and there'll be some kind of epiphany, that life will never be the same again. But that never happens. Instead, there are just incremental changes. Luckily, to date, these changes have all been in the right direction. I hope that continues to be the case. Recommendations for a therapist welcomed.

Almost opening night...

Nice regional press coverage here and here.

Where else?

Global recession? Economy in freefall? Credit crunch? Forgive my selfishness but all I can think of right now is On A Shout. Maybe all that other shit is even my fault and I've not realised what I've brought upon the world because I've been lost in, well, me. But I'm not that concerned with the hole that sub-prime lending's gotten us into, rather with whether the gags will get any laughs and whether the play will hold up as a piece of drama. Will it work? I don't fucking know.

I've not spoken to anyone from the theatre since Monday and the play previews tomorrow. Having avoided the latter stages of rehearsals I shall pop along tomorrow night, no doubt skulking somewhere at the back and chewing my nails until blood springs forth. As for the big night on Friday, I have nothing to wear, I need a haircut and there's a rather big chance that I won't have any money in my pocket with which to buy a much-needed drink.

And, hey, fuck the global recession.

Notes to self: Remember that this is a dream come true. Don't run away. Staring up at the sky whilst muttering please let it be alright might not help.

Where?

What's happened to me? I'm not blogging with the kind of irritating in yer face regularity that I used to be relied upon to blog. You keep coming here and there's nowt but a post from last week. There's a production opening this week with my name on it and I haven't blogged about it in ages. Why not? Why haven't I told you about my appearance on Radio Humberside? Why am I not thrilling you with my every encounter with the media? Why am I not sharing my nervousness with you? Why am I not demanding that national critics come along on Friday night? Huh? What's wrong with me? Where the hell am I?

Coverage...

My friend Jamie, a sports hack for the Scunthorpe Telegraph, sent me a text to let me know he was on the local radio's evening sports phone in and, while he was at it, asked me if he could have some free tix for the play. "Mention the play and you can," I txted back, not thinking he'd stand a cat in hell's chance of getting in a plug for a play about lifeboats between all that chat about transfers, sidelined players and FA Cup coverage. But miraculously, just after a push on what readers could expect in their Telegraph, he got the plug in and got it in well. Very impressive. Meanwhile, over on BBC Look North, On A Shout was getting some visual exposure, albeit atop the set for another play (the real thing is still in the workshop). I would have been there but I was otherwise engaged at a rather thrilling sub-regional economics conference (don't ask!). You can view the video for the next few days here.

Sets and the city...

Apologies for the intermittent service. Very shoddy and stereotypically theatre blogger of me. Those darn rehearsals and a few days of freelance PR work did for me I'm afraid. Saw a run of the play today - quite miraculous progress for eight days work. The set - designed by Richard Foxton - is coming on apace too, as we found out when we trotted down to the workshops:

Richard, right, is demonstrating the ideal stance to use on his creation to director Gareth while, below, Laura Doddington throws a few shapes into the mix:

Castaways...

They're a bonny looking bunch, eh?

My mind's not in this room...

As tempting as it would have been to simply remain in rehearsals, I said my goodbyes on Saturday and, yes, there were hugs and handshakes. I was interviewed about the play yesterday by a couple of local newspapers, both interviewers former colleagues of mine. The usual incoherent babbling from me, I think. The first interview was a face-to-face experience in the pub (ah, home territory!) where I got so caught up in trying to say something quotable that I failed to eat the chilli con carne lunch I'd purchased (but I did manage the lager, which probably says a lot). The second was a mere phoner and, with one chat with a journalist under my belt, at least I had something to draw on. I look forward to reading what they've made of the nonsense that I spew out. So I'm back in the office, earning money to service my writer's many and varied debts. Strange to think that just a few miles away a room is inhabited by a bunch of people getting to grips with words I wrote. I'm going back on Friday to see what miracles they've performed thus far, and really looking forward to it. In fact, that's what's keeping me going. By press night I imagine I'll be on the verge of exploding.

Rehearsals...

Matthew Stathers, Edward Peel, Laura Doddington, David Barrass and Richard Standing gather to protect director Gareth Tudor Price from my paparazzi ways. Rehearsals are going well. Very, very well.

Shout, shout, let it all out...

Emailed over the latest and almost final draft of the play to the theatre. There's never a satisfactory sense of closure with email, as the minute you press send there's the distinct possibility that, within seconds, it will get snared up in an organisation's over-zealous spam software - and with a surname like mine that happens more often than not. So I arranged to hand deliver a hard copy, like wot I imagine was the norm but a few years ago before everything started to travel down telephone lines. Passing the brown envelope containing the necessary 110 pages of A4 over to the director, the handing over of a baton if you like, was a delightful moment of relief and release. And I know it's in safe hands. Rehearsals start on Wednesday. Although I've offloaded the paperwork, I'm now getting angsty about the start of that process and, as the days click down to January 24th and the play's first appearance in front of an audience, I'll get increasingly nervous, wondering how the paying customers will react. Only then will we know if it's any good. Funny old game I've got myself into - the only time I'm truly happy is when I'm belting out the first draft, when the magical moment of stuff appearing on the page seemingly out of the ether with my fingers just being a glass on a Ouija Board-style conduit happens. The rest, my, it's bloody hard, brain-boggling, madness-inducing work. Still, it's not like a big long shift down a mine shaft so I shouldn't complain. And it's a dream come true, so I shouldn't complain. And there's a part of me that loves the pain too, so I shouldn't complain. So I won't.

The Hull Daily Mail have been very kind to me and included On A Shout rather prominently in their "What We Rate For 2008" entertainment feature, which is blinking lovely and I'm very flattered. I don't take press coverage for granted - I mean, for starters, who the fuck am I? And I didn't exactly leave the paper clutching a folio of glowing references. So it was nice to find the play leaping off the page at me. Nerve wracking too - I read "expectation is high for the Hull playwright's latest work" and emitted a "shit!" then promptly nabbed the clipping from M's mum's newspaper for filing away.

Theatre business...

Cast went to extraordinary lengths and rolled into town today for a read through of the play (actor Ed went to the additional trouble of baking cakes!). Everyone was extremely enthusiastic and all went very well but, of course, there's still a lot of work to be done. Then we shot up to Spurn for a team excursion on the lifeboat, which was as fun a way of getting to know each other as can ever have been dreamed up. A very good day, wrapped up nicely by the theatre's Christmas party, which was our first night out of the house together since the arrival of the famous Finn.

Standing room only...

Auditions were fun. As for the train journey, well, we'd had a heads up at 7am and throughout the day from various other people via the miracle of text that there'd be some hiccups coming back to Hull but it wasn't that bad. Standing room only on a GNER so we decided to stand, or rather lean, in the bar carriage and drink several cans of beer from plastic glasses. We got on rather well with bar manager Darius, who humoured our feeble efforts to create the kind of atmosphere you might find, say, in a public house in South Cave. In Grantham we hopped back on a Hull Trains train and did some work on the script. Made a change from sitting at the dining table clattering on the laptop on my own.

Tags: London, On A Shout, public transport