RAPPORT FRINGE ... MARGINAAL VERSLAG ... FRINGE BERICHT
Reviewing fringe theatre, film, art and performance in London and internationally credits
venues
|
awards
|
interviews
|
features
|
fashion
|
newsletter
|
recipes
|
news
|
gossip
|
home
|
about
|
dublin
|
edinburgh
|
links
|
contact
|
drinks Monday 4 August 08
Interview -
Michelle Flower & Zena Barrie – One Day
Running a small theatre – The Etcetera, Camden Town - and a comedy company – It's Alright For Some - may look simple, but it takes lots of experience to do well – and style. Zena and Michelle have style – and matching deodorants. There’s no typical day in their lives, but this is one ...
by John Park
Zena Barrie and Michelle Flower are sitting in the Etcetera Theatre’s very small, single-bedroom-sized office. They’re back-to-back at laptops. Zena has the window seat – well, it’s an internal window over an escape stair. They’re at the theatre 10 to 6, then go and see shows. It’s 11am, and the radio’s on.
A girl comes in - she wants to change her show’s technical rehearsal from today, because they’re not nearly ready in rehearsals. She wants to chalk the theatre floor. Zena is sympathetic, but chalk leaves a mark, and they already have a black magic chalk pentangle to deal with.
Michelle’s on the phone about Edinburgh. Today’s post includes a work-placement application and an invite to a show - with a free massage. Zena is tempted.
Actors arrive to rehearse. The production team of an upcoming production is in today, looking at logistics. Someone’s rehearsing 10-5 tomorrow. An actor phones Michelle about the design of a prop.
BAD SCRIPT
Silence and typing. Michelle says ‘I’ve just realised, we do most of our work by email, so it’s probably not very interesting for you.’ Zena’s reading junk emails. Michelle: ‘Sometimes they’re more inspiring than the scripts we get.’ They receive a play proposal: ‘How a husband in love becomes a serial killer, why a woman in love still adore him? And now a young junkie girl analyze the world as a University Proffesor. If the world is a big play around down perhaps become the slides on which dead bodies roll down on?’
ZENA DOING THE BOOKS
Zena: ‘We are both numerate. Michelle tends to do the It’s Alright For Some money, and I do the Etcetera Theatre money - more or less.’ Zena opens the box office takings envelope, and tips pound coins onto the desk.
Six people have made reservations and there’ll be credit card bookings. Zena puts cash received into a spreadsheet, does the bank paying-in book. She does 7 days’ cashing up, entering it on her spreadsheet against shows. ‘We’re converted to Martin Lewis - he’s a finance journalist - at www.moneysavingexpert.com. It’s a way of life.’ She goes off to the bank.
The office is clean and well-organised, with neatly-labelled and hung cables, shelves of tools, plastic boxes of parts neatly laid out, certificates on the wall (including a couple of Fringe Report awards), shelves of paint, and posters of their acts.
MICHELLE’S WEEK PLANNER
Michelle fills out the theatre’s week-planner time-chart on her laptop. She chases up a prop - a Monopoly board, enlarged to 1.5 metre sides, which her friend Jenny Samuels is making. Michelle proofs a flyer – she’s going through all her Edinburgh fliers today.
They’ve advertised on the Edfringe site (www.edfringe.com) for an Edinburgh technician, and taken on a new one. Their Edinburgh personnel are technicians and a street team - the people who give out flyers. She explains the importance of colour. Last year, they were in orange.
MICHELLE’S GREEN BELT, VEST AND PANTS
Michelle is a Green Belt in karate. She’s having to give it up tonight to go to a venue launch party in London. A friend texts her to say that Danielle Ardini has the same vest and pants as Michelle: ‘I don’t know how she knows.’
A flow chart calendar is carefully marked up in yellow, pink and blue marker. Natalie Haynes texts Michelle. A corkscrew hangs up at the door. Zena’s back and types fluently with two fingers. Michelle and Zena listen to Radio 2 and they like Jeremy Paxman. They like Jeremy Vine, but he is not on today.
Zena looks at email pictures of a pregnant friend, and pulls out the office doll. Michelle: ‘Are you getting broody?’. The office wall display includes a display of finger-puppets and small doll in underwear with dangerous blue eyes. Michelle: ‘We spent Sunday at Harrods wedding-dress department’. A friend is getting married. Michelle’s on the phone saying she regrets not having £800 to buy a puppy she saw in Harrods - ‘It was all on its own in a glass box.’
ZENA PHONES THE COUNCIL
Zena rings Camden Council about the changes in licensing the theatre. They need a theatre manager licence to manage the theatre and will get forms in a couple of weeks, but can never get anyone on the phone. The change is from a separate licence for the theatre and pub to one licence for the premises but a separate licence to manage the theatre.
Michelle’s on the phone advising a company about insurance: ‘If you drop something on someone in the audience, you’re liable.’ They discuss public liability and props insurance.
Zena goes through contract documents. Michelle and Zena run comedy company It’s Alright For Some, and Zena has several acts in the Newbury Comedy Festival. But bailiffs came into the venue - Newbury Football Club – the week before. Zena works on re-housing all their acts with Martin Sutherland, director of the Festival (www.newburycomedyfestival.com - July).
COMMUTING
Michelle and Zena commute from Hackney. This morning it took Michelle 90 minutes. Michelle gets up 8am and walks to Finsbury Park and gets the bus, arriving about 10am. Zena: ‘My alarm goes off at 7am, I reset it for 8am. At 8am, I have 3 10-minute snoozes, get the over-land train from Hackney to Camden Road, and get in about 10am.’
Zena’s on the phone to arrange secure storage in Edinburgh for flyers and goods. Michelle’s phone bleeps with a reminder - ‘tea and toilet breaks’. Zena shows off her pencil case, made from a denim trouser leg. It has a pink strip for a zip. Michelle: ‘Is that a bit of your bra? I can’t believe you’ve done that.’
Zena checks that Michelle has done the answer phone message for the week. One has to leave the room when the other is doing it - for laughing. It’s time to go down to the courtyard of the Oxford Arms pub - which houses the Etcetera Theatre - for lunch.
ABOUT ZENA
Zena Barrie was born in Bury, Lancashire, in 1976. She attended Elton High School in Bury, and took A Levels in Theatre Studies, English Literature, Philosophy & Theology at Stand College in Whitefield, Manchester. She had glandular fever all the way through her degree at Queen Mary University, Edinburgh in Drama & Theatre Arts. She graduated 2:2 in 1999. She has two older brothers.
ABOUT MICHELLE
Michelle Flower was born in Bicester in 1975 and attended The Cooper School, Bicester. She did 6th form at Bicester Community College, with A Levels in English, Theatre Studies, and Maths. Michelle did her degree in York at University College of Rippon & York St John. It was English Language With Drama Film & Television, and Michelle gained a first, graduating in 1997. She took her MA at York University, post-graduating in 1998. Her thesis was ‘Contemporary Writers; Fictions of Conflict’. She has one younger brother.
Zena was in Bury Children’s Theatre aged 4, and her mum enrolled her in creative writing classes aged 11. Michelle: ‘We both differ from the norm in that many people in the comedy business originate from Oxbridge and traditional backgrounds.’
Lunch is either Pret a Manger or in the pub’s courtyard for something more substantial. Today they are going out straight in the evening after work. So it’s downstairs for Cokes, lemonade, and the pub’s lasagna - Michelle’s is vegetarian, Zena’s meat - and chips.
TAKING SHOWS TO EDINBURGH
Zena and Michelle take typically a dozen or more shows to Edinburgh. They are producers. Zena: ‘We do everything apart from writing the show. Find them somewhere to perform and live. We find a technical operator, design their flyers We don’t finance any of it. They pay us a deposit up front. We give them a budget of the maximum we’ll spend on fliers, design, photography and any other costs. Once all tickets are sold we give them the money back. We take a percentage of ticket sales to give us an incentive. And we give moral support. We’re someone to blame when things don’t go well - and someone to ignore when things go well.’
Zena goes through an example, with the biggest cost being the venue – having to pay the venue a deposit. ‘The other big cost is accommodation in Edinburgh. A one-man show could be done quite cheaply. A four-man comedy show would be more expensive.’
A show would be paying ‘Say between £5,000 to £8,000 up front’ to Zena and Michelle. ‘We spend it within an agreed budget. There is a fee to cover our administration. Venues, on the whole, take 40%; The Pleasance is 45%.’ Income for the shows comes from ticket sales - of which Zena and Michelle receive a percentage. ‘The official Fringe Office takes a percentage off ticket sales made through them of about 10%. Sales through venues cost the shows less, as this percentage is not charged.’
HOW MICHELLE AND ZENA FIRST MET
Michelle and Zena met working in 2000 in the Pleasance Box Office ‘counting the money with Penny Sims,’ says Zena. ‘We met in 2000. Michelle had come to Edinburgh, she’d been working in the Pleasance London for 6 months.’ Zena had worked in the Pleasance box office in 1999, just after graduating.
They met and got on. Zena: ‘I told her to take her hat off, when moving computer boxes round Courtyard.’ Michelle: ‘It was a blue sun-hat, from lost property at the Pleasance’. Zena: ‘I had pigtails that year’.
First impressions. Michelle of Zena. ‘I can’t remember. I liked her because I’d liked her CV, cheeky, that she had droopy breasts. There was me, Zena, Penny, José Ferran and Amy Leggett. That’s when me and Zena and Penny became a gang. Zena accidentally came to London, (she helped with the get-out late) in a lorry to London, so me and Penny put her up for a while, then she settled down here.’
Michelle and Penny had been working together in London at the Pleasance. ‘After that festival, I got a job at Fat Bloke - Piers Torday from the Pleasance and Andrew Collier – I went to work for them. Zena and Penny worked for Pleasance London. Fat Bloke was in Covent Garden. I worked for them 2 years and did 2 Edinburghs with them. That’s where I got all my production experiences.
‘Zena had set up It’s Alright For Some to produce The Trap and The Gonzo 'Dog-Do' Bar Band - she was working at C Venues by this time. Once I left Fat Bloke, Zena was looking to expand It’s Alright For Some, so it all came together. Fat Bloke disbanded in 2002, six weeks after I left, and I joined Zena at the end of 2002.
‘We had a launch party at Chats Palace in January 2003, and then got ready to do Edinburgh. Zena was still at C Venues. I was temping with Office Angels, doing admin, secretarial and typing.
‘We got 6 acts together: The Trap, Bad Play, Gonzo, Gary Le Strange, Flirt Lab, Live Ghost Hunt.’
YOUNG BOYS AND A STUFFED UNICORN
A woman comes in to look at the space for her show opening in August at the Etcetera. Michelle goes off to the Post Office to post ‘some stuff I’ve sold on EBay – an old magazine that had some pictures of young boys in it – God, that sounds awful – and a stuffed unicorn. Camden Post Office is one of the worst Post Offices in the whole world. Junkies cashing their giros and strange hand-made signs. There’s no photocopier.’
ALL ABOUT ZENA
Zena: ‘I left university and worked for the Royal Bank of Scotland Mandate Centre in Edinburgh. It was during the Festival and my friend I was at uni with, Silke Dykstra, had gone to work in the Pleasance box office - and I’d met her there for a drink. They needed somebody. She talked me into going and asking for the job. I was quite pissed on Asahi lager – I can’t quite remember. I was interviewed by Many Castile. I didn’t have a CV, so I wrote on a piece of paper ‘please give me a job as I am working for a load of bastards’ roughly. I started 9am next day. I just slipped into it really easily and loved it, loved everybody I worked with, and the punters. That was 1999.
‘When the Festival finished, I went to work for another company doing shares on computer in Edinburgh. Still in 1999, I went to work for Virgin, saying ‘Hello, trainline, would you like to buy a ticket?’, answering the phone and doing bits of admin.
ZENA’S MILLENNIUM
‘I spent the Millennium night at my friend’s house in Haslingdon in Bury, Lancashire. On 5 January 2000 I moved to Brighton with my friend Rachael Collins. We’d both split up from our partners. Neither of us had been there before. We went in the sea and both got the flu. We lived in a room above O’Neill’s pub in Ship Street. Rachael’s friend Susan ran the pub. We lay in the room recovering for 2 weeks. On the train coming down we wore all our clothes, as many as we could put on, and the rest in rucksacks.
‘We found a flat in Hove, which was really scummy. If you put your shoes on the floor, they’d get a haze of mould over them. We woke in the night and had to call each other ambulances and then go back to bed. We both got carbon monoxide poisoning.
ZENA’S DINNER LADY EXPERIENCE
‘I did some temping for Family Assurance and then it ran out after 13 weeks. To qualify for holiday pay with Kelly Agency I had to do 14 weeks. So I got a job to make up the time as a school dinner lady. I turned up, and found the dinner hall. I did the washing up. I had gone to the wrong school. I didn’t get paid or get holiday pay.
‘I went to work for East Sussex County Council in Lewes in teacher training - Education for Teachers - courses for teachers, in 2000. I was there for quite a while. There was no theatre work in Brighton. Rachael still lives there, but I left and went back up to Edinburgh at the end of July and met Michelle.
‘I was helping with the get-out. I didn’t know where I was going to live. I had a bus ticket to Manchester, but missed the bus because the get-out ran late. I didn’t know where I was going to live, so I got on the lorry to London.
‘I arrived in London about 4 o’clock in the morning and went to the Pleasance London to unload, exhausted. Candida (Anthony Alderson’s wife took me to the station, bought me a ticket to Manchester and put me on the train. I went home to Bury for about 2 days and slept. I came back to London and turned up at the Pleasance, started working there and making myself useful. After a couple of weeks (Pleasance director) Christopher Richardson took me for a drink to Shillibeers beneath The Pleasance and offered me a job. It was September 2000.
‘I was there till December 2001, and did various thins such as box office, bar, selling ice creams, cleaning, press and marketing. I helped Piers Torday programming for Edinburgh, and did the Pleasance brochure.’
Michelle is back from the Post Office. She applies deodorant to her and Zena’s armpits. Zena: ‘Michelle uses Violet Balm Vaseline Lip Salve, and I use Vaseline Aloe Vera.’
ZENA GOES TO C
Zena: ‘I left the Pleasance and got the job with C Venues in January 2002. (C Venues director) Hartley Kemp interviewed me. He answered the door wearing a small pink towel and all covered in soap – I was a little perturbed. He went away and came back fully-clothed. It was a very thorough interview. He went to Australia and phoned me while I was in Job Club – near Old Street. He offered me a job – I got a round of applause. I went to work for Hartley in London in January.
‘I did Edinburgh 2002 for C Venues, and left the following June - 2003. While at C Venues, I worked with Hartley on programming, I did all the recruitment, and listened to Erasure. On the C Venues phone line, there’s a cupboard where the lines come together, and the music on hold is Erasure, Pet Shop Boys, or Marc Almond. I dealt with all the complaints, 150 emails a day - I was like the line manager for press & marketing and operations, and dealt with all the stuff.
‘In December 2001, I set up It’s Alright For Some for Gonzo. I ended up looking after the Gonzos, The Trap, Bad Play, Bagpuzz, Play Wisty For Me The Life Of Peter Cook. I produced all these shows in 2002 as well as working for C.
HOW BAD PLAY BEGAN
‘Bad Play. I had a bag of scripts and finished work at Hartley’s, around May 2002, and went to meet The Trap at Jeremy Limb’s house in Brixton. They were all really pissed and I had this terrible script I’d been reading, and gave it to them. They started performing it in the living room. They were camping it up. I was on the floor (on my own) laughing and crying with laughter. It was after a Fringe Roadshow at The Cochrane. Me and Hartley and The Trap had gone to the pub near The Cochrane and then we got quite drunk and I think Paul Litchfield said we should perform it and call it Bad Play, and Hartley said you can have a slot. That’s how the whole Bad Play cult happened.
‘When we were in Edinburgh, me and Dan Mersh and Paul went to see the real play that inspired Bad Play on at the St Augustine’s. It was hilarious. We managed to keep straight faces, until we heard the technician snigger. We were the only people in there apart from one old woman. Then we became hysterical. The actors had a moment of realisation that what they were in was shit - then they started playing it for laughs. It was about a man going out with a girl who committed suicide every night at midnight by slitting her own wrists. And he didn’t realise’. We put on Bad Play for one week at 10:30am at C Venues for the first time.
HOW ZENA AND MICHELLE CAME TO THE ETCETERA
‘We knew Kirsty Housley who ran the Etcetera Theatre. She was leaving in 2003 mid-year. There was an ad in The Stage. We put in a proposal that we would both run it together. We didn’t hear for ages because David Bidmead, who founded the theatre, came back for a while and ran it.
‘We hadn’t heard. I pretended that we wanted to do a show at the Etcetera to get a meeting with David and then just charmed him. And we slowly just pushed our way in. It was a long-winded thing. There was never a point where David said ‘Oh you’re going to do it.’ We slowly took it over. By January 2004 we were running it.
FIRE
‘A week after we had officially taken control of the theatre the pub had a kitchen fire. We had to evacuate just before we were about to start our first show. It was a mixed-bill comedy night.’
THE ETCETERA’S LOGISTICS
‘We’re the smallest fringe venue in London. We seat 42. We have 2 shows a night at 7.30pm and 9.30pm, and on Monday evenings just one at 8pm. The theatre is open 7 days a week. We are a receiving house rather than producing because it is a very expensive place to run, very difficult to make any money out of - so we can’t pick and choose what we programme. We have to have the theatre fully-programmed. Else we potentially can’t pay ourselves.
‘The 7.30pm slot is £800 per week, 9.30pm is £550 per week. The 7.30pm slot can handle a 90-minute show, with the 9.30pm at 60 minutes. Rates are for 6 nights per week.
‘The shows keep all the box office. The Etcetera has a membership fee of £1.50. If people haven’t been before, we charge £1.50 and they get a membership card. If they see any more shows in that year they get £1.50 off the ticket price on every visit. To hire the theatre for one night, the general rate is £150. The theatre is right in the centre of Camden Town next to Camden Lock, 200 metres from the tube.
ETCETERA GRAND TOUR
It’s 4pm. We go on a tour of the theatre. The Box Office. Then upstairs to: The WC. The Tech Room – it’s very minute, up a ladder from a small storage area. The Theatre(over the front room of the pub below). A small dressing room. Zena finds a fez and models it. Michelle wants it. Zena puts it on Michelle’s head. They both put on false moustaches.
In the office, they put a CD on. It’s Jeff Wayne’s musical version of The War of The Worlds, with David Essex, narrated by Richard Burton. Zena has a frog and 3 little pigs on her desk. There’s a used rubber Smiley man squashed in Michelle’s computer. Zena plays with some plastic toy soldiers. She discusses setting up the microphone for tonight’s show.
WHAT ARE YOU WEARING, JAMES SEABRIGHT?
Zena phones producer James Seabright: ‘What are you wearing? Stupid top? And is your t-shirt tucked in your trousers or loose? Mm. Nice’ - and asks him about secure storage in Edinburgh.
Michelle: ‘On a typical night, quite often we’ll see a show either here or somewhere else. That happens most nights, probably four - our own acts. We see most of the shows that are on a couple of weeks here.
‘The most a play has booked the Etcetera is 4 weeks since we’ve been here. Usually it’s 3 weeks or 1 week. Three weeks is good, because usually you’ll get the press in: Time Out, Camden New Journal, The Ham & High, occasionally The Stage. January and August there’s so little happening in London, you get very good press in - Evening Standard. Occasionally you’ll get nationals in, especially if the show has PR, or worked really hard on it themselves. If it’s one week, that’s nice, they usually get people in. There’s more comedy than theatre. We’ve instigated this Edinburgh preview season, which runs all of July.’
A buzzer goes for teatime at 4:30pm.
They’re proofing fliers. Chris Limb at CatMachine designs their flyers. Someone phones to make a reservation. There’s a comic on tonight – a Jewish Welsh comedian.
WE ARE BOTH VERY CLEAN
Creative Week rings about a forthcoming production by Theatre de Cunt of ‘Hitler Wrote 20 Pop Songs, Have You Heard Them?’. Michelle: ‘‘We’re both very clean. Sometimes I have a shower before I go to bed as well as in the morning if it’s been a very sweaty day.’ Zena: ‘I prefer to have a bath in the morning.’ Michelle: ‘I never fart. Zena does, and makes it really obvious by leaning forward. We keep the door open.’ Zena asks Michelle ‘Do you put deodorant on before you go to bed?’ No. They both agree this would be madness.
Michelle says ‘I’m quite anal about tidying things.’ It’s a small office. It’s very neat and well-organized. The lavatory is very clean. In the hallway leading to it are small and arty designer mirrors. Michelle: ‘I don’t think Zena ever cleaned it.’ They do the hoovering together. The lavatory has a velvet slogan - ‘Love your bum’. Michelle and Zena have painted squares and circles of pastel colours on the white walls.
The friend who’s getting married is It’s Alright For Some’s lawyer, Ruth Blay. Michelle will be chief bridesmaid. Michelle sees an alternative future as a honey farmer – a bee keeper, she explains, rather than slang for running a brothel. She went to Edinburgh for the first time aged 16. ‘Everyone said you’re very lucky. I said, there’s no luck involved, you do it. You create your own luck.’
Zena has a cooking tip. ‘Instead of draining vegetables, such as broccoli or cauliflower or anything, add Smash – one of the five varieties – and stir until thick and serve. It looks like a kind of mashed potatoes but with vegetables in. Add gravy to taste.’
Michelle grabs a hand-held vacuum cleaner and whips round the theatre. It’s 20 past 6, and the night staff comes in - Martyn Donnelly who’ll run the box office tonight. It’s the end of the day, and Michelle and Zena are off to a party.
Zena: ‘I want to find a nice husband and maybe foster children and have some children. He’d be like a modern day version of Artic explorer Ernest Shackleton. We’d live in East Sussex near to London, the best of both worlds, and have chickens. Michelle could come round and bake cakes. We’d have a nice car. If all this goes well, I’m going to sell dirty knickers on EBay. They go for a fortune.’
END
John Park - Monday 14 August 06
Fringe Report first interviewed Zena Barrie and Michelle Flower for this article in June 2005, with other conversations to August 2006. Any money figures are 2005 rates. Michelle and Zena are joint directors of Etcetera Theatre and It's Alright For Some.
Fringe Report (c) Fringe Report 2002-2008
