I’m sitting in a rehearsal room on my own. The walls are covered in handwritten ideas. There’s a pink ukelele, a casio keyboard and four pairs of musical spoons. On a long trestle table there are lots of books about London, architecture and octopuses. There’s a karaoke machine and two microphones. A costume rail stands in the corner. Hanging on it are two superhero capes, two octopus costumes and two vintage dresses from the 1970’s, plus a metaphorical tool belt.

I’m part of a double act, but I’m sitting here on my own, surrounded by all of this stuff, writing this.

We should be warming up our voices and practising our song. We should be learning to spin plates and play the spoons. We should be creating physical comedy antics set to music. We should be receiving our first week’s wages from the theatre. We should be telling people we’re rehearsing our new show when they ask us what we’re up to at the moment. We should be worrying about how many tickets we’ve sold and how many stars we’ll get and if our neighbours/family will be offended by the references to them in the story.

We should be rehearsing our show. But I’m sitting here, writing this. On my own.

Seven years ago, we started the process that would lead us to this moment. The moment where we begin to rehearse our new show, Some Old Street. A show about our friendship, housing and capitalism. Seven years ago, we had an idea. And we developed it and got excited about it and wrote funding applications for it and got rejected lots of times and had meeting after meeting and got funding and support for it from lots of different theatres and organisations, and we found new and brilliant collaborators to work with us on it and we pitched and pitched it and we held it precariously and passionately through two years of a pandemic and we found more new and brilliant collaborators because the first ones we found weren’t available anymore and we had a photoshoot and wrote a press release for it and hired an access PA and got lots of free rehearsal space and hired some more rehearsal space and said no to all the other jobs that clashed with it and got we got even more excited about it and got everything ready and to the point where we could actually start rehearsing it. 

This is that point. It’s February and we should be opening Some Old Street at Hampstead Theatre in April. But I’m sitting here writing this on my own. On the Wednesday of the second week of rehearsals, I get a phone call early in the morning from Lisa. I know something serious is up as she never ever calls me that early. She tells me her Mum has just been taken to Hospital and that she has to go there straight away. I tell the team there is a family emergency and Lisa won’t be around that day and we carry on working as usual. The show must after all go on. The next day Lisa calls again to tell me things are looking bad and at 5 o’clock the same day I receive a text saying “Mummy died at 3:30pm, all of the family were with her. I’m broken.” I’m in the rehearsal room, with our production manager, surrounded by all the stuff. He suggests we go for a walk. But we don’t. We carry on setting up the microphone we need for rehearsals.

In the days that follow I carry on being in that room on my own sometimes and with various members of the team at other times. I carry on rehearsing the show on my own. I carry on having the meetings, writing the scenes, practising the spoons and singing the songs, on my own. One day, I have a phone call with the lighting designer about his availability in the preview period, cycle up to Lisa’s to feed her cat and then interview a woman in Scotland about living off grid and van dwelling. One day the stage manager pops into the room to introduce herself for the first time, the designer asks me lots of questions about what the set should look like and I send an email to the photographer to apologise for the delay but there is a family crisis going on so could they please bear with us. Then I cycle up to Lisa’s to feed her cat. And while I’m doing all of that, Lisa carries on doing what she’s doing. All the things you do when someone very close suddenly dies. Sometimes on her own, sometimes with her family. We don’t know what else to do or how to do it. All we know is that we both have to keep going, doing all these things until we are able to be together. Because how can a double act know what to do on their own?

Thirteen days after Janet dies, me, Lisa, and the core team finally manage to have a conversation on zoom. Lisa is at home. We are in the rehearsal room. It is really hard and a very shit and unsatisfying way to discuss this kind of thing. No one knows how to talk about the options for the show whilst holding space for massive grief. No one has ever done it before. Especially on zoom. It feels frivolous to discuss show business. We don’t know what to do. Eventually, Lisa says, “There’s only one thing I know. I know I can’t perform the show.” And that’s it. The unspeakable has been said. The truth is told. The show must NOT go on. Trigger. BANG. 

Breathe. 

Cancelling a show feels completely alien and strange. A massive shock. A deep disappointment. Like you’ve been cheated. Shameful. Wasteful. Relieving. Unbelievable. Essential. Thrilling, embarrassing, sickening. Desperately sad. Deeply distressing. Really worrying. It’s our job and our livelihood too.

Cancelling a show never happens. We’ve never done it before. We don’t know how to do it. It’s just not done. We always carry on. It’s what we do. We’ve already carried on with this show so many times and even through a pandemic when we all thought theatre might not even exist anymore, we still carried on. In the blurb for the show on the Hampstead theatre website it says…..”they are city people - hard working, resilient chancers…with a shameless determination and a familiar war spirit” This is not the description of people who cancel a show. These are show business people trained in the art of not quitting. We buck up our ideas, put the sick bucket to the edge of the stage and we dig deep. The not doing of the show is actually harder than the doing of it. The undoing of all the work, is too much work. The hurtling head of steam feels impossible to slow down, let alone stop. 

Cancelling a show feels impossible.

Carrying on whilst Lisa is grieving for her Mum feels impossible.

So I’m sitting here in the rehearsal room on my own, writing this.

I’m repeating the line from the beginning of the story because I’m finding it hard to end it and it’s one of the things I’ve seen writers do to signal that the end is coming. I know the end of a story is meant to provide the resolution or suggest some kind of hopeful solution to a conflict or problem but I’m not sure how I can end this story like that. I am so programmed to carry on that cancelling a show, ending it, giving it up and letting it go is really difficult. And when something is difficult, I usually get help with it from Lisa. And if she is struggling with something, she usually gets help from me. 

I am taking down the large, handwritten notes and drawings from the wall. I am putting the pink ukulele back in its case. I am unplugging the microphones, karaoke machine, keyboard, computer, camera, monitor and mixing desk. I am folding the octopus costumes. I am noticing that it’s quite hard to fold an octopus costume. I am tidying the tea and coffee area, throwing away the old biscuits and putting the leftover milk in the communal fridge. I am rolling the musical spoons in bubble wrap and putting them in a box. I am dismantling the costume rail and tripod. I am thinking shit I need to do a time lapse video of this for arty content and documentation purposes. I am wondering if it’s shallow to be thinking about arty content and documentation at a time like this. I am placing the books in the trolley. I am putting the chairs back against the wall. I am taking the table back downstairs to where I “borrowed” it from. I am putting on my coat. I am trying not to cry. I am turning off the light. I am closing the door. I am leaving the building. I am going home. I am sorting out the kids. I am getting on my bike. I am going up to Lisa’s. I am letting myself in with the key from the lockbox. We are drinking tea and wine. We are talking. We are watching reality tv. We are saying nothing. We are ordering food. We are noticing that normal life, work and death all happen at once and how that is brutal and relieving. We are making some decisions. We are postponing the show. Watch this space…

Some Old Street is paused for now but will return to Hampstead theatre as soon as possible. Thank you so much to everyone at Hampstead for supporting us and our freelance team through this difficult time. Thanks to Kirsty Housley, Annie Siddons, Nick Sweeting, Mishi Bekesi, The whole NDT team, David Ralf and all at Theatre Deli for going above and beyond throughout this whole project and thanks to Janet Hammond who made the lights flicker when we asked when we asked her for a sign of what to do. 

For now, the show must not go on.