What a thing Laughing Boy is.
Rehearsals have been extraordinary: uproarious laughter one moment, overwhelming sadness the next; veering from outrage against the system that failed Connor so badly to incredulity at the way that his mother Sara and his family were treated; driven by an absolute commitment to Connor’s story, while also knowing that we must offer our own creative response, our own version, if the play is to mean anything.
I’m writing this on my day off.
After our final run through in the rehearsal room yesterday we unrolled and spent an hour looking at the utterly beautiful Justice Quilt. What an amazing thing. It brought the whole campaign into vivid life. I’m thrilled that it’s going to be hung in St James’ Piccadilly, just along from the theatre, for the duration of the run.
And tomorrow the technical rehearsal starts: those extraordinarily creative days when the whole thing finally comes together. Hour after hour of adjustments and discoveries, the decisions and insights that shape so much of what the audience will experience.
And what’s strange is that although today I know what the set looks like, how the actors are playing their parts, the details of the projections, the music and even the lighting, I don’t really know what the final result will be. And as playwright and director, both sides of my brain are filled, with pleasure and anxiety, joy and fear, emotion and thought. I’m knackered.
And then this: we have our first preview this Thursday and I’m told that along with the production team the theatre is jammed with Connor’s family and friends, and so many of the people involved in the campaign. All people who, one way or another, feature in the play.
What are they going to think? How are they going to feel? Gulp!
But as I said to Sara: I know this will be weird, but I don’t want it to be weird for the wrong reason.
And that’s the point.
Because what I know for certain is that everyone involved in putting Laughing Boy on—the actors, the creative and technical teams and the amazing people at Jermyn Street Theatre—is utterly committed not just to celebrating Connor and the love and laughter that he inspired, but to insisting on the infinite value of people like Connor—people like my Joey and so many others—and demand that our society finally grants them the full humanity that they so manifestly deserve.
As Sara said, ‘I want people to leave the theatre and think, bloody hell, that boy mattered’.
A change has to happen.
