In the arts I suppose it's not at all uncommon, for actors in film and television it is part of the routine but for me it was something more unusual.
In 2010 I received an email from the University of Sheffield Theatre Company, SUTCo about the upcoming season's auditions. I'd been involved with them before but generally thought myself too out of the loop to get involved again; more often than not I would just delete them but, for some reason, this email had been lingering, unread, for several days. I got around to opening it on a Saturday morning, stared at the screen blankly for several minutes and then scrambled to find out when the audition was...three hours. I sat in the same chair, at the same desk where I'm typing this now and weighed up my options.
It was still sunny and bright when I arrived and was handed a slip of paper
Name:
Course:
Contact details:
Can you play the piano?
Have you a part in mind?
I didn't have a pen and for a moment panic passed through me. That was it, the three hour old dream was dead, I didn't have pen, I couldn't fill in the form, shit, what am I going to do, I need a pen, why the fuck didn't I bring a pen they only have these forms in every bloody audition, I wouldn't be able to fill it in so would have to go, the director would see that I was clearly so unprepared for an audition by not having a pen that he probably wouldn't even let me audition never mind cast me in the damn thing, I might as well just leave. I heard a voice behind me:
"Does anyone need a pen?"
I turned to see the director holding out what were clearly pencils.
I took one, skipped straight to the end of the page, and nervously wrote 'Posner'.
I barely slept for a month. There were the callbacks; waiting to hear; a phonecall at half-one in the morning which left me grinning at the ceiling until the sun rose; rushing straight from school to rehearsals and then bolting home to plan lessons at ten-thirty. There were the lines, so many wonderful words; the endless singing in the car; the utter terror the night before.
It was only a play, a bit of fun, but to me it was everything because I wasn't acting in a play I was being me when I was at school; I was sad, I was lonely, I was desperately struggling and didn't know what to do, I wanted to go places but didn't know if I could make it, I liked a boy.
Last night I saw 'me' on stage. He was a different me, that's the problem in being in plays; you see others being your character but this was different. Perhaps he didn't feel as self-conscious as I did when I was at school, perhaps he wasn't as saddened by the poetry, perhaps he sang to perform rather than express how he felt but couldn't say, perhaps he didn't even like boys. He was a Posner with a different life, a Posner that wasn't really 'me' anymore, it was a strange experience.
There does, however, exist a Posner that will always be more me than anyone could possibly recreate and it comes courtesy of one of our reviews. There's a particular line in the play that would get a laugh anywhere but gets a great reaction when it's performed in the city in which the play is set: "I'm small, I'm Jewish, I'm homosexual and I'm from Sheffield...I'm fucked." This particular critic quoted the line but decided to insert his/her own suggestion of "and I'm ginger" to the mix. As Lintott would say "Twat, twat, twat".
Anyway, the revival of 'The History Boys' is on at The Crucible for the next couple of weeks and it's wonderful, how can it not be...go and see it if you can.
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| 'My' History Boys |
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