Craig Hepworth
As with any new play, things are always changing and evolving - hopefully all for the better. This week the script went in to inevitable rewrites (something all plays go through) and things had to be changed, which started to affect the cast line-up.
Before that, though, we got our first blow when the actor Danny Stewart, who was playing Mark, had to pull out of the project which left us scrambling for the CVs and headshots of other actors who were wanting to work with us. We decided that Rick Carter (one of Vertigo's regulars and a guy with so much natural talent it's terrifying) would step in to the role of Mark and we found a great new actor called Mathew Tattum who would fit the role of Danny perfectly and fit in to the Vertigo team with great ease.
After the last rehearsal, however, it became apparent that some work needed to be done on Act 2 of the script - nothing major, just some tweaking, but the biggest problem was that one character, Emily, just did not feel like she was working, and it also felt like the script could move along nicely without her. So during rewrite week Emily's character was removed which meant we had to let Louise Allen, who was playing her, go. This was such a hard decision as I'm great friends with Lou; she keeps me sane and calm when all the madness is going on. She's also a great talent who got rave reviews for her role in our UK premiere of Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead. Luckily she understood and still wants to help out behind the scenes on the show - what a girl.
After a couple of weeks of improvisation and getting to know the characters and one week off because of Manchester's Pride (or as we call it 'our gay holiday'), we start to stand the show up this week and Mathew comes in for his first rehearsal. The script is in a far better state and I'm really excited to see this blossom in to what hopefully will be a brilliant play that my partner in writing and directing, Adele, and I can be proud of.
A couple of other new developments this week are that we have decided that Vertigo's next production will be an original new musical. Adele and I will write the book and lyrics and Rick Carter will write the music. Rick is a great guitar player and comes up with some great music on the spot (how he does that I don't know) and since we are writing a heavy, twisted rock musical then he's perfect. Believe it or not we start work on the musical next week whilst we are still in rehearsals on Rage (luckily we have got multi-tasking down to an artform).
We also found out this week that the Saturday night performance of Rage has already sold out which is fantastic news.
And finally a story which shocked us all here at Vertigo was the arrest of two teenage boys from here in Manchester who were planning a massacre at their school on the anniversary of Columbine. Luckily the boys were caught before it happened. It's stories like that that make me realise that we are doing the right thing doing this play. High school and college shootings will not just be something that stays in the USA; it's only a matter of time before it happens here, and this latest development proves it. The other strange thing in the story is that the first part of the boys' massacre was going to be setting bombs off at an area called Crown Point in Denton to cause a distraction while they shot up the school. It was in Denton just on the outskirts of Crown Point where the first workshop for Rage took place in 2006.
Until next time x
