Let's Lose Money!

I'm exploring the possibility of putting on a three-week run of three of my one-man plays at a fringe theatre in London next year. They would be Ben and Joe's and Los Feliz, hopefully with Barry Clarke and Robin Holden reprising their successful performances from July, and Sunset, a piece for an older woman, which exists in story, but not yet script form. And yes, you've noticed that I would not be reprising my role as the priest in Angel. This is not just from modesty, but from bitter experience that to be both actor and producer in the same production is to be overworked, underrewarded and highly frustrated.

It's early stages and I have only got as far as researching theatres, finding out which ones are available, what they cost and which productions they will accept. The most promising at present is a pub theatre in Zone One. I had initially balked at the price - £1,500 a week - but after sitting down and working out the figures, I realised that it would be possible to break even at around 25 seats a night, and the actors might even get some money for their pains. (Another theatre, in Zone 2, far from the Underground, wanted £450 a performance; it was the same theatre that made me and half a dozen others who had paid for rehearsal space wait outside in the cold for half an hour beyond their scheduled time and neither apologised nor offered a refund when, after repeated knockings and phone calls, someone finally decided to come out from their warm office inside to open the door.)

Assuming we do go ahead, we will need investment of £5,000. I cannot afford that amount of money without a guaranteed return and of course there is no guarantee that any money will be returned. (Remember the three-quarters empty Vaudeville Theatre last Thursday - how much money, I wondered in the interval, were producers Thelma Holt and Bill Kenwright losing?) So the money has to come from elsewhere, the customarily-named "Angels" - people who gamble with unwanted cash in the one in ten chance that they might see some return. If we go ahead, I shall be asking for 50 lots of £100, with the slight possibility of getting a profit on their money, and the much greater possibility of only getting ten or twenty percent of it back. Watch this space...

In the meantime, I have received the script for O Sole Mio, the short film in which I am to appear as Chief Bodyguard Mike. We shoot on Thursday evening, Saturday and Sunday. It looks easy and fun. More anon.