Where Coffee Cannot Go

There is a tiredness that stretches from the rib-bones to the finger-ends, but that can be chased away by strong coffee, sex, brandy and other pleasurable things. And then there is a tiredness that feels as though a hand has reached inside your head, screwed your brain into a rag and tossed to slop around the back end of your skull.

That is the tiredness of theatre.

It comes from the endless, but never mindless, concentration on the details of a project for hour after hour, day after day, week after week, and so on unto the ends of space and time. It is not simply that every smallest thing must be thought through thoroughly, but that it must be thought through thoroughly an infinite number of times. It is like having a banjo player inside your head.

Panic accounts for some of this. After even only your first five minutes in theatre you know that almost nothing is ever under control, and so you dare not ever let go of the little control you do have. It is the ultimate superstition. When I was still green in game of solo performance, I would run my lines backward while driving. It was the only way I could convince myself that I really knew the text. I am not so rococo now, although it is an effective (if hazardous) technique.  

Even so, this still only causes the tiredness that can be cured by coffee and sex. The real tiredness comes next.

After all that thinking all the thoughts get mixed up - the opening lines merge with the budget projections for the second week, which are indistinguishable from the poster design, which can’t be told from the names of the investors, or from the number of seats, or from the slider marks or from your own name. Now it’s like having a banjo player that has been put through a blender inside your head - and he won’t stop picking!

This is theatre tired.

Lord Reith, who was entrusted with founding the BBC once said that there was no pleasure like having one’s mind at full stretch. There is truth to this - but sometimes the stretch is so great that coffee cannot go there.

And that is what separates us from them.

 

Noël Christian

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