Hi folks,

I'm back again! I know you weren't expecting it and neither was I but I realised that if I wanted this to be the charting of the experience of putting a play together then I should probably talk about what it's like to go through press night and what it's like once the show enters its post-preview life.

So let's do that.

But this really will be the last one.

(In this series).

ANATOMY OF A PRESS NIGHT

Let's get this out the way - I bloody hate press nights. I understand why they happen, why they're important, why a fuss is made and I (more or less) love theatre critics no matter how they react to a show. But a press night is essentially taking an act of love that you're slowly trying to build and shaping it entirely around a climax. As I mentioned in my last newsletter, it's a high-stakes situation that's reliant on so many factors outside of your control. Anxiety Klaxon.

And yet I woke up the morning of our press night less anxious that I expected to be. What, after all, was there to be anxious about? I'd just seen a terrific run of the play in the last preview. Everyone was in good spirits. OK, I had some small anxieties, mainly paranoia around minutia. But really I was feeling unexpectedly calm except for the fact that I'd not done my cards. There's a tradition in theatre of people handing out cards on press night which I'd absolutely forgotten about.

So on the way to the theatre, I ran to a gift shop in Waterloo station and, after the final work through of notes on stage, I squeezed into a corner of the bar at the Yard Theatre and tried to compress my experiences from the last few months into twenty cards. I managed a few but it quickly became clear that the consequences of this being my biggest ever show was that I had too many feelings and not nearly enough cards.

Balls.

I decided to prioritised the tech team who would be leaving after tonight and figured the actors could wait til tomorrow. Which was made a bit awkward when the actors handed me a few of their cards and I had a little ego-driven cry about them. Director James raised the stakes dramatically by handing me not a card but a present which was lovely but also meant I'd now be seeking one out for him in return. (Status: Now sorted, as of this morning).

Then I remembered...I'd not bloody eaten anything. I always do this on press nights. If I can give you one piece of advice for when you experience this, it's to make sure you have a plan to eat! Rosie, the designer, and her associate, Tomás kindly let me join them for dinner and we took a little moment to exhale while I inhaled a pint.

It was then that The News came to me: The Overground was absolutely screwed.

A fire at Hackney Central meant the whole line had severe delays or was suspended. I felt sick. The Yard's biggest transport connection is Hackney Wick overground station. That being out of order meant that you'd have audience and critics enduring a disrupted, grumpy trip if they could make it at all. Not ideal.

My sister (who is always my fancy event guest) did manage to join us in time and she's such a wondrous presence. Within seconds she was connecting and joking with the others (yes, she was the more popular one growing up, thanks for asking) and I felt a bit calmer. I went to check what would be happening and the sensible decision had been made to hold the house opening for a while to make sure everyone could get there. In the end, this turned out to be twenty odd minutes. Not too bad in the scheme of things. But I felt for the poor actors - you do your warm ups, you psychologically prepare for a Big Night and then - hold hold hold hold hold. Like a sprinter suddenly being told to take five when they were already set. It would absolutely mess my head up.

The play started and I watched from high in the back, right in the middle row. I'm not sure if the circumstances had tripped me up, but pretty quickly I felt like something was a little off. I spend the first few minutes of a performance trying to calibrate myself to the audience - how they react to jokes, where they were looking, what's drawing them in and I couldn't quite get a read of this one. There is also nothing more dispiriting when you're in that state than watching a critic having to be let in late to the show (though in this case, of course, there's a good reason). As the first act continued, all was going fine, the actors hit the beats, people were reacting to the right moments, but as I came out for the interval I was aware that - for me - that quality of being drawn in to a piece, that visceral connection, the purr of a compelling rhythm wasn't there.

Anxiety Klaxon.

When we returned, a bit of the set came loose at the start of the third act, and I wondered if it was an omen. The top of that half is an intense moment. It happens. It was no-one's fault. And hey, it sort of works for a decaying starship? It was almost kinda fun. However, a crucial bit of theatre trickery towards the end of the play, which is small but holds a whole heap of catharsis in it and shapes the rhythm of the last act, failed to fire properly and that did make me crumple a bit inside.

There's a joke I've been making about how Chekhov is pure vibes and he is of course more than that, but in place of traditional drama his work tends to operate on an alchemic level - something in the combination of bubbling feeling, repressive social situations and textured lives creating a profound experience beyond its parts that makes sense of its rhythms and its worlds. It's vulnerable. It's fragile. And I have felt that alchemy a lot in rehearsals. I have felt it a lot in previews. As I watched the play that night, I didn't feel it.

What makes it really frustrating is that it's no-one's fault. Certainly not the actors. Or the crew. Or the theatre's. For a myriad of reasons, you can throw your whole heart at something, it can work beautifully for ages and then - on one important day - it doesn't. That is what it is to embrace and love a live medium. And the show can still be baseline good. The press show was absolutely good. It's simply that - with a play like this - it's the difference between being able to appreciate something and being mesmerised by it. Between finding yourself questioning logic or having an innate emotion-led understanding of the irrational, which is what Chekhov's original also relies upon (Just chop the bloody trees down!)

That's all the more true with science-fiction, I think. So much of how we know how to receive a made-up world is how the characters themselves sit within it. While, for me, an old Russian manor house has no more innate sense of home, connection or tangibility than a starship, that's not going to be true for a lot of people. I think our spaceship is a relatable space but for many it will still be a more difficult setting to bring their feelings towards. Also, the startle of genre on the stage means it looms so large as you approach it. You can go on to have a breath-taking ride through its atmosphere, watching the world below you unfold in all its richness....or simply bounce off of it and into the darkness, getting an overview glimpse over your shoulder. My affection for science-fiction has taken me on both journeys over the years.

I walked out into the bar after the lights went down, wanting and trying to be upbeat. So much work has gone into making this moment what it was. The team produced little bags with a playtext, card and various goodies in them. I felt very loved and that meant a lot. But, honestly? I also felt like they'd taken a big punt on me and I'd let them down, though they repeatedly reassured me that this wasn't the case. In turn, speaking to a couple of the actors after, they were anxious about their performances and wanted that evening to have been something I was proud of. That helped me contextualise and understand my own worries. They have never in the whole process let me down and definitely didn't that evening. I was and will always be proud of them.

Once I got home, I stayed up til around 5am, trying to figure out what to do with myself. I sat and read through the cards again and I don't remember falling asleep. 

When I got up, I was tempted to hide in bed all day. Stern advice from friends won out and I took myself for a nice breakfast and calmly went through the responses which were more or less in line what I had expected - it was all fine, actually pretty good even for the most part, with deserved praise for the actors, but also some atmosphere bounce (and the odd sheer factual inaccuracy which is maddening but always happens). Definitely not how I hoped I'd feel in this moment. Not how I hoped years of work would end up. 

In that sense, it was the perfect Chekhovian anti-climax.

THE SHOW GOES ON

But. Of course. That isn't how years of work ends up. Because the play still runs.

I took an evening away from it, and was heartened to receive messages from friends and strangers who were in that night and had a great time. It seemed like it was all working well again. The trickery definitely did at least, hooray (heroic stage management team, thank you). I went to bed still a little down but mostly relieved.

The next day, I sat and wrote my cards for the actors. It was so easy to tell them how good I thought they were and the specific ways in which they'd illuminated this text. As I was writing, I found myself longing to just be back in that theatre and see them doing their thing. I asked for a comp for the evening and I went in early to catch up with them. They seemed in good spirits and I was reminded of how remarkable it was that they'd been together since the end of July and here they were in the middle of September still bouncing off each other and the stage management crew with joy and empathy. I handed out the cards, greeted some people I knew who were in that night and then went to take my seat. I deliberately picked what I think is the least cathartic seat in the house - tucked in a corner, by itself, away from the fullest force of the work, with my notepad in hand.

And I wrote so few notes in that pad because that performance was absolutely blistering. I couldn't believe what I was watching. It was all there - the detail, the grace, the confidence, the connection, the tangibility, the rhythm, the alchemy. The truth of those lives and the space they were in. I spent half my time glancing at the audience, wanting to know: "Are you seeing this?". They were absolutely flying and my heart was going with them. The Trick even came off to glorious effect. I was able to marvel with friends afterwards and I just couldn't stop myself saying, essentially: "Did you see that? Did you see what those actors conjured?!"

I realise now it was the moment that the play properly left me and became theirs. They were doing things I could not have imagined for those characters but felt so utterly right. It was such an unexpected gift as a writer to be emotionally sidewindered by your own play, but that's exactly what happened. I haven't been as thrilled as that in months and in an instant I felt the weight of it all come off my shoulders.

So I'm writing now from the bar of The Yard Theatre, waiting for the audience to come out, my next play in front of me. I think it's good? Needs work. They always will. I'm excited though for it to be in the world.

But before that - I am going to try and enjoy the time I have with The Cherry Orchard. Because I love this show. I'm grateful when friends and strangers tell me they feel the same. Everyone, from the creative team to the front of house to the producers, has been a dream to work with. I can't wait to see how it grows and morphs both as it runs here and when it arrives in Manchester next month. It's full of intimacy, laughter, mourning, terror of the unknown, hope in the same, moments of true spectacle, and it all pulses beautifully through a terrific cast who've embraced a big idea more generously than I could ever hope. They find more and more depth in it with every performance.

It's a fun night out.

It speaks to this strange moment.

Come join us in space (aka Hackney Wick).

(P.S. On the 8th October at 5.30 PM, I'll be doing a panel with brilliant Meghna Jayanth and Sangu Mandanna about South Asian representation in sci-fi so if you're about after the matinee or before the evening show, we'll be about. And on the 14th October, the Bitten Peach are hosting Peach Chutney! Chekhov in space and late night South Asian cabaret as a chaser? What more could you want?)

CHEKHOV CORNER

For this final Chekhov corner, I'll end with some Cherry Orchard chat but not from Anton - but rather from the actress Olga Knipper who was married to Chekhov in his final days. She corresponded with him via letters while she was at the Moscow Art Theatre and he was bound to Yalta by his illness. The following is an extra from her memoirs.

1903/4

That winter we looked for a plot of land with a house near Moscow so that in the future Chekhov could spend the winter near his beloved Moscow (nobody imagined the end was so near). And so, on one sunny February day we went to Tsaritsyno to look at a small estate which it had been suggested we buy. On the way back (not that we missed the train, there was none) we had to go about thirty-five miles by road. Despite the very heavy frost, Chekhov revelled at the sight of the white plain mourning in the sun and the sound of the runners in the tightly packed snow. It was as though fate, in his last year, had decided to spoil him a little and give him all the joys he longed for: Moscow, winter, the production of The Cherry Orchard and the people he loved...Work on The Cherry Orchard was, I would say, sheer torture. There was no understanding between the directors and the author. But all's well that ends well and after the trials and tribulations that surrounded its birth we performed The Cherry Orchard on January 17 1904, Chekhov's birthday.

(James is great and we got on absolutely fine)

I've been remiss to not mention that Chekhov's family had a cat, the wonderfully named Fyodor Timofeyevich. He also once said that a cat placed on the belly is a great way to soothe diarrhoea so imagine that poor cat's life for yourself...

Will leave you one of Pretty Cat, his effortless beauty radiating from him as he considers how best to jump on me from a height in the middle of the night.