Hi everyone. Theatre is weird now.

First and foremost, because this is the first of (hopefully) many, I guess I should start with a hello. We thought it would be a good idea to start something along the lines of a blog to keep everyone posted with how we’re doing as the company grows and progresses, it’ll be a record for us to look back on as much as it will be something to keep all of you in the loop. So, to start us off, I (Lucy) wanted to dump some thoughts about how it’s been for the past few months setting Haywire up, failing a little bit, and working out how theatre works right now. 

Because, let’s be honest, live performance is a bit of a shambles at the moment, isn’t it? It’s not nice to think about, and it’s not nice to try to plan around it, but it’s something we’ve known we’d have to deal with from the start. For context, starting a company was something Olivia and I were speaking about long before the idea of lockdowns was even considered, we’d had plans to tour a show this summer using Phillip Ridley’s Tender Napalm. If you’re not familiar with the play I’d recommend it, it’s funny and sad and childish and mature all at the same time, the kind of play that teaches you something without you even realising it. It’s something we’ll keep in the backburners of our minds for a while as we’re still both keen to work on it (aka watch this space if you’d rather save the effort of buying the playtext itself and instead would rather watch us act it out for you). But I’m getting off track. Tender Napalm aside, Olivia and I have been aiming for this for a while. When we finished our degree, that passion was still there, despite the fact that the whole of the UK was in lockdown at that point and the ‘ending’ of our degree hadn’t been a festival of live performances (including some good Phillip Ridley content) as we’d hoped, but was instead a series of online monologue performances (sadly Ridley-less). 

Both of us knew deep down that theatre wasn’t a thriving industry. It’s hard enough to break into most of the time, but COVID-19 pretty much froze whatever opportunities there were available. I think a small part of me hoped that persevering, pushing ahead through it to get the hardest work done now (establishing and organising the workings of the company, that sort of thing) would pay off at some point in 2021. That maybe other companies that would have been started this summer, and in turn other companies that we’d have had to compete with, won’t be around next year because they’ll have been put off. It sounds horrifically clinical, upsettingly un-theatrical, when you phrase it like that, but I almost couldn’t help myself. It was a fear response to knowing I was about to enter a sector of an already struggling industry that’s currently not really possible. 

Because that’s the big issue isn’t it? The act of starting a company: choosing your ethos, finding your branding, picking a name (which, trust me, is much harder than you’d think, it took us almost a month) isn’t really that changed from how it would have been pre-coronavirus. You can do all that over Zoom and not much changes. Sure, it’s not as nice as being able to sit in a room with Olivia and make those decisions that way, but it’s still doable. The issue comes that we’re not allowed into theatres. We can’t really perform. Or we can, but we’d have to do it to a camera that broadcasts live into our audience member’s laptops, miles away from us. And it’s not quite the same. Don’t get me wrong, I am completely behind the safety mechanisms necessary to keep everyone safe and control the spread of the virus. But it begged a difficult question that we had to answer: how do you make a theatre company at a time when no one is allowed to go to theatres? 

The issue was this, neither of us wanted to make a digital theatre company. There’s nothing wrong with digital theatre, and there are some really great companies out there making really interesting theatre long-distance, using media platforms as a way of doing it. But it isn’t what we want to do. Neither of us have that much experience in it, nor do we have some deep drive to transform the digital space the same way we do the actual stage. Yet we knew we needed something to keep us relevant, keep us creating, and actually give some kind of weight to the company’s name. 

So, out of this need, we came up with the Pocketfull Project. 

(Absolutely shameless plug of our first performance in that project which premiered a few days ago, click here to watch it, more information in the Pocketfull Project page of the website. Go watch it. I promise it’s good.)

The series itself is designed to be a collection of new writing, essentially monologues from different writers about whatever they want. It’s a slice of their reality, or someone else’s, that we then get to rehearse, workshop, record and then publish to a wider audience. It’s our brand of digital theatre, bite-sized ‘little person’ stories that are just meant to refresh, to help people remember what other people outside of their 6 person bubble are like. To repeat a phrase I used in an email to a potential collaborator the other day, a phrase that I am pretty sure I will be using until the day the project ends, Pocketfull is designed to remind humans how wonderful other humans can be. I doubt every single one will be sunshine and rainbows and loveliness, but we hope that every single one will feel undoubtedly humane. To us, it’s the heart of live performance reprogrammed for a safe (and socially distanced) digital sphere. 

Even within that, however, we’ve run into our difficulties. Our first piece ended up being pulled the day before it was released because we realised there was no way to make the author’s vision for the script fit with our vision for the project. Their aim veered much closer to short film; that was something we’d been keen to avoid. It was stressful, and a difficult call to make, but looking back on it now I’m confident we made the right one. Because had we gone with the piece, stuck it out for the sheer purpose of saving face by avoiding having to pull it, our first ever piece of Haywire-made-performance wouldn’t have been what Haywire wanted to make. Our first impression would have been for a company that wasn’t us. And I feel like right now, with how tenuous theatre is at the moment, we have to be confident that what we’re putting out is entirely us. Digital theatre presents that extra little challenge within itself because everything you do is on the internet, it’s there forever. So you have to be confident in what you’re doing before you throw it out. At the time, did that sentiment make the pulling of the performance suck any less? Of course not. It was disheartening, especially for it to be the first thing we’d tried to do, and I think it knocked both Olivia and myself for six for a short while. But once we picked ourselves up and got started again, we created a piece that we’re both incredibly proud of. It’s impactful, honest, and feels incredibly relevant for the world at the moment. It’s what I had in mind when we started planning the project, and it makes me excited to see where it goes next. 

But where was I actually aiming for with all of this rambling? Not entirely sure I knew when I started writing if I’m honest. Overall though, I think I just wanted to use this first post to point out that we’re human. We’re two women struggling through the confusing waters of live performance at the moment, and I’d be lying if I said we had a 100% concrete plan for the future. We have ideas, and aims, of course we do, but all of those could disappear at the drop of a hat if case numbers spike again and Boris locks everyone inside. We don’t know what’s going to happen, and it’s kind of terrifying. We don’t know how well the continuing Pocketfull Project will be received, and that’s kind of terrifying too. Everything feels a little bit like that scene in Corpse Bride when Victor has just accidentally raised Emily from the dead and he’s running away through the extra spooky Tim Burton forest. You know, the bit when he keeps tripping over tree branches and running into tree trunks and getting all freaked out by the walking dead lady behind him? Yeah it feels a little bit like that. Confusing and nonsensical and twisted all the wrong way. And I’m not expecting us to come up with any incredible answers anytime soon. I’m not hoping that we’ll unlock some new way of performing digitally that ascends long-distanced theatre into some fantastical new art form (although if we did, I would certainly not be complaining). I think my only wish would be that we create something that moves people. That makes people feel that little tingle in their stomach, that silent excitement, that’s a sign of good theatre. Maybe we won’t get there, maybe we will. But I’m ready for the journey.

Lucy x