This month, I’m off to direct a play for what is the last surviving Equity standard weekly rep season in the country.
The Frinton Summer Season in Essex is now in its 69th year. Every summer, a company of professional actors and directors arrive in this genteel seaside town to rehearse and stage 8 plays in 9 weeks over the summer months. This is my fourth year and I’m staging a thriller called Veronica’s Room by Ira Levin; other shows in the season include One For The Road, April In Paris and Absent Friends.
For a while during it’s 6 decades, the season was run by British actor and film star Jack Watling, who states in his biography that rescuing the Frinton Summer Theatre from closure was by far his finest achievement. Actors who have had their ‘break’ in Frinton include David Suchet, Owen Teale, Vanessa Redgrave, Lynda Bellingham and many more.
Over the years, the small stage has played host to many classic plays: Ayckbourn, Coward, Shaffer, Neil Simon, Oscar Wilde and on and on. The residents of the town spend all year raising money and during the weeks that the actors and directors are in town, we are all treated like minor celebrities – invitations to garden parties abound! Each performance begins with the National Anthem(!) and after the curtain call, a speech thanks the audience for their kind attentions and reminds them of next week’s offering.
Unfashionable? Possibly. But for me, it’s the finest example of a non-process process that I can think of. We begin on the Monday morning with a read-thru, we then rehearse 9.30 to 5.30 for the next 5 days (unless your cast are in that evening’s performance, in which case they have to be released at 4pm!). The week ends with a run thru on the Saturday morning for the stage management. Monday is tech. Tuesday is Dress and First Night! No time to think, no time to talk, no time to discuss or worry if decisions are right; you go in with quick thinking and a complete trust in your story-telling instincts because before you know it, they’re tearing the set down ready for the next one and you are back on the train home. I’ll let you know how it goes!