In 1994, I had some friends who were really interested in theatre. My friends, whom shall be known as Big S and Little G, had already worked together writing sketch comedy. I was interested in doing that too, so I had written some sketches but didn’t really have anyone to do them with. I had also begun to write little monologues and some stand-up as well. They were a couple of years older than me and I looked up to them. They were inspirations.
We had all been hanging out for about two years when I believe it was Big S who had suggested we put on a production of a play by English playwright John Godber called Bouncers. It’s a play for four men who play a multitude of different characters that all revolve around four Bouncers outside a nightclub. I think there were times we performed too fast. The fast bits were too fast, and the slow bits were too slow. But that’s what happens when you’re performing in suits at a considerable rate of knots.
We also knew that there were four budding actresses in our year in Secondary School. And we suggested they stage a production of Shakers, written by John Godber and Jane Thornton, which was essentially the female equivalent of Bouncers, but set in a cocktail bar.
We decided to take it seriously.
Well, as seriously as a bunch of teenagers could, and we formed an amateur theatre company. No, Ltd, no LLC (which is American), none of that. Just a “doing business as” bank account. And a theatre company name – The Group Hug Theatre.
We had been involved in enough theatre games and exercises over the last couple of years, where we learned about the notion of group hugs. So, with tongue firmly in cheek, we decided to use that to name our theatre company.
So we work on our own shows and secure a few nights at a restaurant theatre in a local town. From there, we decided we wanted to do a mini tour. We did a few nights at our Secondary School, however, I don’t recall if the Shakers team joined us or not. Then we managed to convince the owner of a local bar to let us stage the show there. Right in the corner of the bar. Not the most ideal of places to do it. Never good to take over a bar from the locals. Much better to do it in a separate events room. But we didn’t know that then.
Anyway, we made a little bit of money. And then… never did anything again. I’m not exactly sure why. Maybe it was because we never found anything that we were interested in staging. In retrospect, maybe we could’ve done what The Mischief Theatre company would do just under a decade later.
And, to be honest, I forgot all about this until very recently. As I think about it now, it was a little audacious for a group of teenagers to decide to put on a mini tour of a play and make a little beer money. I;ve been told that sort of thing isn’t normal. Normal to whom?
I didn’t realise it then, but that silly little tour, huge at the time, though it never crossed my mind that we shouldn’t be doing it, planted a seed.
I’d learn later that this kind of thing is called entrepreneurship, but back then, it was just what we did.
What I came to understand is that doing my own thing, even creating my own work, which I was already doing, was going to seed the rest of my creative life.
