I always start with endings.
It’s often not complete, more often an image or a feeling. A sense of how I want to leave people.
I remember being drunk on champagne on our balcony and describing my idea for the plot of the play which would become Champions to Alex. Our Bluetooth speaker blasted my matching playlist as the sun set over the city.
It was the first play I wrote for only me. It was weird and raw and disconcertingly honest. I went into it thinking it might only resonate with me, that it was something I had to express, without any concept of how it might be received, or if I would even open it up to that.
I had reached a point, though, of feeling tired of my own fear. It’s not that the fear of putting things into the world had gone away, it’s just that it started to feel so tedious.
In a move so unlike me that I still can’t quite believe I did it, I cold-emailed Harriett to see if she might be interested in directing a reading of my script. At this stage, I only had the first 30 pages, yet somehow she said yes. I drip-fed her scenes over the next few weeks, and she responded with the most delightfully expressive and chaotic selfies as she read.
Months later, on a break in rehearsals, our stage manager Hannah (a true port in our storm) asked how long Harriett and I had known each other, assuming it had been years.
It’s a friendship that feels like that, like someone who has always been part of my life. We’d been orbiting each other for years, characters in the crowd of each other’s lives without realizing it.
When we were searching for a producer, Harriett (a brilliant casting director of both actors and friendships) suggested a poet/stage manager she knew. A poet. I was already sold.
Harriett and I sometimes joke that Tate is who we want to be when we grow up. Poised and genuine, the most ardent cheerleader. She brought tarot cards to our first day of auditions and I knew we were in the best of hands.
Something that struck me about the process of making things with people you trust was how you can carve a path in a way that feels true to who you are. Being an onlooker of art being made, it felt like there was a way to do things and a way to be. But working with Harriett and Tate, I learned that it’s possible to create your own culture, and a way of working that fits your circle.
As a casting director, it was important to Harriett that we hold auditions for the play. As was so often the case, she was right. Harriett spoke often over the coming months about doing right by the script, treating it with love and attention.
We were lucky enough to hold these auditions, and most of our rehearsals, in the studio attached to my childhood home, a converted old church hall. The space is used for all sorts: yoga classes, castings, music videos, meditation groups…It is where my aunt got married, we held my dear friend’s baby shower, I celebrated my 21st birthday. It is a special place, and it held us with gentle, loving energy as we worked.
The auditions are something I’ll always remember. I’d once upon a time been on the other side of them, though never devoting as much thought and hard work as it turns out you should.
There was something so intimate about hearing my words come out of all of these different people. People who had given them time, and thought, and care.
We tried to make the space as welcoming and easy as possible. It was so different to the auditions I’d experienced over ten years ago when I thought I’d be an actor. It felt like a full-circle moment, watching the way Harriett was locked in with each actor. I thought of all the men who’d auditioned me who couldn’t care less, who’d turned to talk to the client like I wasn’t in the room, who’d made me feel insignificant.
And instead, here was Harriett, crying as she watched actors because she was so moved. After one person did a particularly vulnerable scene, she got up and gave them a hug. This was something I never could have imagined back then. I was glad to be a witness to how it might be now, to play a small part in a different way of doing things.
It felt twisted, after all that, to then be in the position of helping choose who to cast. We spent upwards of five hours at Tate’s apartment, poring over the audition footage, gliding headshots across Harriett’s laptop screen to make different ensembles. It felt like the most unfair luxury.
We drank wine and ate cheese and talked and talked and talked. Everyone moved and impressed us all over again and it felt like there were endless paths we could follow.
Yet when we landed on our cast, they felt so undeniable. Made for us.
Yes, of course that’s who it should be.
We had the start of something.