Somewhere

Well, it has been over a week since the last performance of WSS. I have found it surprisingly hard to return to every day life in that span, and even more difficult to attempt to explain how I am feeling. Between our two weekends of performance I was both a physical and emotional wreck. I lost my voice, I was exhausted, I am not ashamed to admit that I was very close to tears for most of the week. I assumed that the week following the close of the show would be very similar. In some ways I was right and in some I was wrong. But I am getting ahead of myself. I'll start with Wednesday.

I met up with my carpool first thing in the morning, at the grocery store. Wednesday was a two show day, which meant that we would be spending our dinner break with the boys and would be bringing in food for an informal potluck. These meals were some of my favorite parts of the entire process, an hour of quality time with the entire cast. We would bring in a range of goodies - from fresh fruit and veg to a huge assortment of biscuits and chocolate. And in return we would get a lot of great reactions from the guys. I remember one guy just sort of sitting there, speechless looking at all the food spread out picnic style on the floor. He was just dumbfounded that we would go out of our way to do this for them. We also had a few guys who demanded to know why we hadn't brought certain things, or who would try and smuggle out entire trays of cookies before anyone else had a chance to sample. So, like I said, a full range of reactions. But either way these meals were always a good time. A lot of chat, a lot of joking around, everyone relaxed. Really nice.

So we buy our groceries and trek out to the prison. Two shows on Wednesday, plus a several hour drive to get there. We were all pretty knackered by the end of the day. The shows went well, and everyone was glad to be back and working again. Our digs were another story entirely. At different points during the week we had no phone signal, no Internet (these two were basically a given), no gas, no heat, no hot water, no cooking facilities.... basically we had beds. But we were really really close to the prison. It was interesting. But it definitely added to our state of mind during the final week of shows.

The first of the two shows on Wednesday was for employees of the prison. It was one of the most interesting audiences we had during the entire run. They were absolutely silent during the entire performance. Really no feedback, whatsoever. No laughs, no gasps or reactions, really just active silence. No one was really sure what this meant. Even when it is quiet you can usually tell when an audience is just being really attentive. This came across differently somehow. However when we got to the curtain call there was thunderous applause. It was if they had saved all of their noise until the very end of the show. It was kind of amazing. After bracing ourselves during the whole show for nothing, it was almost overwhelming.

I do wish that we had more of those performances. The ones for the people in the prison, both the inmates and the employees. I think it is great to invite the general public to the shows as well, don't get me wrong. I wish that everyone I know had come and seen the show. I think just being in the audience is an amazing growth experience for everyone. However I think that this is even more the case for those involved in the day to day of prison life. I think really outside of our little bunch, no one knew exactly what was going on in our rehearsal process. I know that a lot of the prison staff thought we were a nuisance, and that the security state was heightened the entire time we were there. So to finally get a chance to invite them in to see the work we had done, everything the guys had accomplished, was absolutely necessary. Now I know that we didn't win everyone over, but really if we got even a few people thinking about how the arts can help in prisons then I think we accomplished a lot.

We had a day off on Thursday, which was really nice. Several of us went into Bath and spent the day sort of mooching around. Unlike the few days at home, where all I wanted to do was go back to work, this was actually really relaxing. Maybe it was being outside of my normal surroundings, maybe it was being with the cast as opposed to sitting at home by myself. Whatever it was, it was a much needed respite to prepare for the coming weekend.

Now a lot of things happened on Friday, I've been trying to figure out how much of this I can actually share. Lets start with this. I had some bad news Friday afternoon, news from home. Nothing I could do anything about but which made me quite worried. However, upon entering the prison for the day you are basically cut off from the outside world. The officers even tried to let me check my email (to get updates from my family) at lunch but we were unable to access even the most basic pages due to the security system. So I just had to wait the day out until I could leave and call home after both of our shows. Not my best day, but everyone was really there for me. Our guards did everything they could to try and get me in touch with my family, our cast was there for me and looked out for me all day. It was really touching how much everyone had my back.

Now this second story is the delicate one. See it has to do with the balance of power in the prison. Not everyone in the prison was entirely happy about our presence there. We disrupted the schedule, and heightened the security risks, and not everyone agrees about how valuable the arts can be. So even after the wonderful reaction from the officers on Wednesday there were still some unhappy parties. And one of these decided to push some buttons. Now our guys are not perfect, they are all in prison for a reason, but most of them have come a long way from the crimes they have committed. Many are very close to release, or at least transfer to D cat (the next step down, basically an open prison). And the very fact that they are allowed to participate in the show indicates that they have earned special privileges and are on the road to rehabilitation. Now our presence, and the work that we have been doing, has been to help with this process. We have been encouraging the guys to open up, to trust us, to do things completely outside of their comfort zone. All a very delicate process. I wont go into detail but basically someone tried to completely undermine that during our last weekend.

One of our guys was told that we had been bad mouthing him at the pub after one of the shows. This is a complete fallacy. The conversation in question was actually highly complimentary of this guy, and our words were deliberately twisted to convey a negative meaning. Needless to say this guy was pretty upset. I would be too if someone told me that my cast mates were badmouthing me at the bar. I think anyone would. And he came into the show that morning prepared to basically shut us all out. However, and I think this shows some of the measure of how far these guys have come during the process, after a few minutes he came and spoke to me to clear the matter up himself. Instead of snapping to a judgement he calmly talked things over and realized that we were all still rooting for him. Now this could have gone a completely different way, and I am very glad it turned out the way it did. Deliberately undermining someones confidence and trust like that is cruel, and can be incredibly damaging. And for someone who is still finding there feet in society it can be outright crippling.

Now add to all of this dynamic a major power outage. And I mean major. The last time we stopped the show all we had to do was reset the lights, a relatively simple procedure, merely time consuming. Not so in this case. Now the prison does have generators. So what kept happening was that we switched back and forth from grid to generator power. And our systems - lights, sound, everything - had to restart every time this happened. It was a mess. I think we stopped for over 45 minutes. Half of this was spent in pitch blackness. However the guys, once again, handled things well. Aside from some impatience backstage (felt by everyone, we were all pretty hungry and ready for a break at this point), people stayed in the moment. We had to stop and start several times, each time the energy being harder and harder to build back up - because of course this would happen right before all the big dramatic stuff right at the end. The guys went out and did another Q & A with the audience, done by the light of flashlights. They kept things pretty light, and the audience all seemed willing to sit there and wait for things to right themselves. Turns out the power had gone out in the entire surrounding area, not just the prison. So it was a major deal. But in the end everything turned out ok. We finally reached the end of the show and everyone took a much needed break.

After that things went pretty smoothly. The shows went really well. One of the guys had a major blank during his big number, but it was handled with a ton of flair. The other guys in the scene covered it incredibly well, it was actually kind of amazing to watch. But other than that, no big mishaps. No more power outages, no crises. Smooth sailing. And then we had to leave.

Leaving was really hard.

Yeah, I am not sure what else to say about that. It was emotional for everyone - the professionals and the guys alike. I always find the end of a show to be emotional, and sad. But this was especially so. You know with a regular show, that you will most likely see the majority of these people fairly soon. You'll do other shows, you'll hang out, the theatre world is pretty small. We are going back as a cast to visit the guys on Friday, so we will get to see them again. But it may just be the same thing all over. Right, that's all I can articulate about that right now.

I'll update again soon, because these last weeks have had their own challenges. But enough for now.