So, it… kind of took me a while to get back to this. I’ll explain in a bit.
When I left off, we were at the end of the first week of rehearsals for our end-of-August extravaganza. What happened next was that real life intervened. As well as writing the three updates I promised, I had to collect, collate and organise all of the research I’d done for SHJ up to that point and forward it to Tessa in order that she could write the actual storyline (which was kind of important, not gonna lie), and work two shifts for my muggle job. And I had to do all this by Saturday evening, before heading up to Edinburgh for two days at the Fringe. Needless to say, blog posts got shifted pretty rapidly to the bottom of the pile.
After getting back from Edinburgh (inadvertently discovering I had ceased to be a Young Person six days earlier than anticipated) on the Tuesday morning, I was thrust into a chaotic environment in desperate need of a guiding hand. Unfortunately, that environment was the entirely unfulfilling muggle job, where I was desperately covering shifts for colleagues who were ill or on holiday. I wouldn’t make it back to Hope Street until Thursday, and as a result was entirely absent when the key dramaturgical decisions were taken. I still haven’t quite forgiven my employers; even writing about it now, at a remove of three months, I still feel more than a little pissed off.
By the start of the third week, my role as a researcher was starting to wind down, and not being able to partake in the dramaturgy meant I was essentially exiled from the production team. Not to worry, though; thanks to the vision of Andy Gledhill and Luke Thomas, our musical directors, I was soon busy memorising trombone parts for the procession, and – far more dauntingly – teaching myself to play the accordion. The blog had, by this point, completely fallen by the wayside, but I made a vow to write an epilogue once the dust had settled and I had finished my time at Hope Street.
Midway through the third week, another task was handed to me – scriptwriting. The event on the 31st was to begin with a walking tour, led by four of our performers, and they needed a framework for them to work off; and, as the guy who knew the most stuff about the legend of Spring-Heeled Jack in Everton, I was evidently the guy to write it. I’d never written a script before, and what I wrote certainly wasn’t a script in the traditional sense – it was mostly paragraphs of talking for the actors to chop up and use as they felt best – but it was excellent fun to do.
And then they asked me to be a character on the tour.
I’m not saying I did a bad job here – I certainly think I entertained people and added an extra dimension to the story, which was my main reason for being there – but, looking at it now, with the benefit of hindsight and with my dramaturg hat on, I can see the questions that little segment in particular raised and the issues it created with the story – mainly because my character, a sceptic academic (sounds like an Arctic Monkeys song, that) who didn’t believe the myth of Spring-Heeled Jack, was only scripted for that little segment, but I kept showing up in costume throughout the rest of the event. Still, it was a speedy job; I wrote it on the Wednesday, amended it to Tessa’s suggestions on Thursday, and scooted back up to Edinburgh on Friday for the August Bank Holiday.
And so to week four – Tech Week. Here I was all of a sudden wearing three hats at once; musician, actor and production team appendix (our legendary stage manager, Christos, left to go and spend a month with Welsh National Opera, so I offered my rusty stagehand skills in whatever capacity they were needed). Chaos abounded – we had a walking tour, a promenade, a procession and a carnival to perfect by the Sunday, the weather was against us, and nobody was quite sure who would turn up and whether we’d have a show for them. We managed it – just; I can still remember watching the final bits of choreography being rehearsed in a showery Everton Park on the morning of August 31st, awaiting a drenching downpour. And then, at about two in the afternoon, the clouds vanished and the sun blazed in the azure welkin, and it suddenly seemed like we might just pull it off.
We did, of course. The sun shone and the crowds came, and we had a marvellous time (except for our town crier, Danny, who was accidentally hospitalised after inhaling a large amount of artificial smoke). We got everything packed down under the kind of glorious sunset that only Merseyside can really do, and then we all went and got gloriously drunk. Which may not have been the best idea when we had to finish a get-out from West Everton Community Council at 9am the next morning…
So ended (for now, at least) the tale of Spring-Heeled Jack in Everton. Why, then, has it taken me three months to write this? Well, I might’ve been done with Jack, but Hope Street wasn’t done with me…
Huyton Couture 