1994 – Tequila Summer, continued

The next three weeks were almost entirely consumed by rehearsals for "Blood Wedding", all of which took place in the drama studio at Burleigh Community College.

A decade and more on from this summer, it strikes me that the day we travelled to Edinburgh was the last time I ever went into the drama studio when it was ‘mine’. I visited it a few times later on, but that’s all I was - a visitor. Over the previous four years, particularly the latter two, I had spent more and more time in there, to the point at which it was like a second home to me, where every square inch had a separate memory attached to it.

So, to totally digress from the story in hand, here’s the story of the drama studio.

The drama studio was a combination of class-room and fully working theatre, and a place where magic and mayhem were created in equal measure. Officially known as Studio Two, although there was no Studio One to speak of, it was a square, flat-roofed and windowless building that stood alone from the rest of the school, only attached to the main building by a small piece of roofing, and some stairs from a fire exit. There was no internal communication, merely a walk way and some covered steps leading from the rarely used rear exit to an equally unutilised door that led, via a corridor, into the Expressive Arts department. The studio’s independence in construction was a financial accident - it was originally to be linked to the backstage area of the nearby Main Hall but the project had overspent itself - yet it mirrored the independence in spirit that permeated through successive generations of drama and theatre students.

Walking through the front door led into a vestibule which from time to time was festooned with posters advertising forthcoming attractions. The door from there into the studio was to the left, and led straight into the main performance space, which was surrounded on three sides by black drapes. If one looked left, one could see steps up to the lighting box, and stacks of school chairs. If one looked left, and the drapes were pulled back, one could see two large whiteboards on the far wall, which represented the full extent of the scholastic side of the studio, suffice for many dusty books that were kept in a chest-of-drawers upstairs and never used.

The chairs also represented the sum total of furniture provided by the college, although later on a sofa, and indeed a bed, became permanent fixtures in there after being used as props in various pieces of theatre. There were also several blocks of wood, which were usually kept piled up to the left and right of the main space, behind the drapes. There was also a lighting tower, a terrifying contraption used to change the many lights that hung on a rig in the roof. Constructed from pieces of interlocking metal and planks of wood, the tower was completely dismantleable so it could be stored in a compact space. Building it so one could access the lighting rig was always an adrenalising experience as one climbed an ever-growing, and ever-more rickety tower with pieces of metal in hand. The lights were controlled from the box high above the main entrance, accessed by slippery metal steps that were almost as dangerous as the lighting tower itself.

At the rear was the backstage area, which could be accessed from either side of the back wall, and was on two floors. Downstairs, to the left, was a small area known as the kitchen, simply due to the presence of a sink, hot running water, and a kettle. To the right was a general sea of detritus, plaster of Paris, cardboard boxes, metal hoops, whiteboards, chairs, and sheets. Also on this side was the rear exit, outside which was one of the two main unofficially designated smoking areas. The other was the dark and dusty disused boiler room that lay behind the lighting box, above the front vestibule. Upstairs in the backstage area were large wardrobes, all filled with dirty, dusty, old costumes from years gone by. Like the aforementioned books in the chest-of-drawers, they were rarely, if ever, used. At either end of the upstairs area were two balconies that looked down into the main performance space.

The great spirit of independence that the drama studio represented was exemplified by my theatre studies group, which had formed in the autumn of 1992 and had ceased to exist to exist just before the summer of 1994 at the conclusion of our A Level course.

We spent an inordinate amount of time both in and out of school hours working on our theatre studies projects, Youth Theatre plays, and other theatrical endeavours to the detriment of our other subjects. We had no respect whatsoever for many of the rules of the college, which we constantly flouted, particularly with regard to smoking and drinking alcohol on campus We tended to walk into the drama studio like we owned the place, and as far as we were concerned, we did own it - we even had a key to the door, which had been loaned to myself a year earlier by one of the drama teachers, Paul Farrell, a year earlier, and never returned. The key, which opened almost all the doors in the Expressive Arts department as well as the drama studio, was a highly useful device and tales of its illegal use became semi-legendary amongst those in the know. Before lessons would begin, we would stroll across from the sixth form common room, and amble into the drama studio showing little regard for the ringing school bell, or for any of the other students congregating around doorways and classrooms. To them, the rest of the school, we must have appeared either highly cool, or spectacularly arrogant - or quite possibly both.

Out of school, many of us socialised together, but not all of us. In fact, there were several people in it who wouldn’t dream of spending time together outside of the group. Different lifestyles, different friendship groups, different attitudes. And yet we we came together, something happened.

In my 1994 diary, which I have briefly quoted from earlier in this story, I wrote:

"Sometimes, in my more nostalgic moments, I look at the people I know, and wonder what it will be like without them. Although they piss me off at times, and I get on their nerves too, there’s a bond - friendship, camaraderie, or whatever - that keeps us alive. It’s always the little things that make you think this way - tonight it was things like Ben and Sam embracing, crossing whatever social divides that seem to bridge their lives outside theatre studies, a moment that was very touching, special, warm, important - real, in a surreal world, light in a black sky.

I said, ‘the people I know’, I didn’t want to say the theatre studies group, because they are only part of it, but tonight it’s them I mean. Whatever swords that have crossed between everyone in the group at various times are dropped in the name of whatever our link is. Whatever we are when apart, when we come together we’re special, unique - a team if you like."

Yeah, I know. It’s clearly the diary entry of a pretentious teenager. But it’s a better description of how close this group of students had become than anything I could write now. And the drama studio was the centre of our world. It was the nerve centre of our course, where we learned of Brecht and Stanislavski, of Greek tragedy and Restoration comedy. It was the place we wrote scripts of our own, constructed sets, ran the lights and sound, and directed the action. But in equal measure, it was our place of relaxation - our coffee house, our smoking room, our place of refuge, where we laughed, and cried, and swore, and fought, and raged, and tried to make sense of our lives.

Lindsay Ross once famously said, either before a lesson, or a rehearsal, that whatever was going on in our world should be left at the door so we could focus on the project in hand. For better or worse, it never was, because the two were inextricably linked. The world outside informed everything on the inside, and vice versa. It was home.

There was one truly memorable event of the whole theatre studies course that actually didn’t happen take place in the drama studio. That was the occasion a member of the group said, "The only way to get a grade A in theatre studies is to shag your teacher" during one of our more academic theatre studies lessons which took place in a more typical classroom in the Expressive Arts department.

Why is that memorable? Because the person who said it was the only member of our group to get an A, and he did indeed shag the teacher. But that’s definitely another story.