First day of Brass

This morning, I got up with the lark in order to take myself down to Peckham for the first day of rehearsals on Brass.

And what a double treat it is to be back at Mountview directing my (somewhat grown up) baby.

The new Mountview building is stunning. It feels like it belongs to a confident and classy institution with its eyes very firmly fixed on the future. It’s all industrial chic atriums and state-of-the-arc rehearsal studios.

Of course all the staff were rushing about like headless chickens. Today was the first time students had entered the space, and only last week the place was still a hard-hat-only zone. We had the obligatory fire alarm test, which meant we all had to traipse out into the square outside the school. I’m told we need to expect more of the same whilst those who care about these things are fully convinced that it’s a building which works.

The new cast of Brass are utterly fabulous. They’d all done a hell of a lot of research about the era and the show’s themes. I explained to them that they were entering an incredible family of people associated with the show. Protecting the memory of the Leeds Pals and the Barnbow Lassies feels like a responsibility that successive casts have taken really seriously, and I have no doubt that this new cohort will do their bit. I could feel the show getting under their skin more and more as the day went on and the great pride I feel to have written Brass came flooding back.

We didn’t do a great deal more than you might expect on a first day of rehearsals. I did a meet and greet, and spent an hour or so talking about the show. We had a read through of the script, had a Subway sandwich for lunch and then, in the afternoon, we talked in more depth about the show, before learning the song, Letters.

My creative and stage management teams are wonderful. They all feel like hard workers, yes people, kind people and very good at their jobs. So watch this space. Let the immersive experience begin!

Life can be a funny creature sometimes. I was in a bit of a miserable mood yesterday. I had a much-needed lie in, and finally hauled myself out of bed at about 11am. I could hear the rain throwing itself down outside. I probably should have stayed hidden for the whole day because, as I walked into the living room, I was confronted by a scene of absolute carnage. It seems the workmen who spent much of last month “fixing” the roof, were actually destroying it. Water was pouring through the ceiling. Literally flowing like a waterfall. The printer was submerged, as was the Little Victorian box piano we were given as a wedding present, three lamps and the whole area where the phone plugs in. I rushed about throwing buckets down, but not quickly enough, it seems, to stop the water sinking through our carpet and down into Little Welsh Natalie’s flat below. It was so horrifying that I actually ended up becoming quite zen. I kept telling myself that the mayhem was just for now, and, that, aside from trying to save the things that were being destroyed by water, there was nothing I could actually do. So, I sat for a day in the half of the room which didn’t have a soggy carpet and pretended that I lived in a functioning flat with a proper roof and no rats.