LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION

by Jez Bond

This morning I met with Sacha Corcoran, the lady who developed creative apprenticeships. This is a scheme adopted by educational institutions where, over the course of a twelve to eighteen month period, a student is placed within an arts organisation for four days a week and attends college one day a week. We discussed the scheme in detail and looked at how we might work together in the future – either next year, to engage a student in the pre-launch process, or for the following year when we take full possession of the building.

Dave “I’m now a theatre expert” Hughes and the semi-reluctant Ben Jones had their film debuts in the afternoon. Christina was script supervisor and Nicky and Charlie filmed as we sat beside the model and chatted with plans and pictures of the theatre on the wall behind us. We first met Nicky and Charlie a few weeks back through Maurice who owns our neighbouring ‘London Fashion Centre’. They are highly intelligent, enthusiastic and committed – and they’re under eighteen years old. They are going to document the build over the next year or so and when we open they are going to do some production photography. Its very exciting to have them on board.

At the end of the day I met with director Owen Lewis, with whom I went to university. I hadn’t seen him for years and it was great to catch up, show him round the site and chat about our plans. We retired to the World’s End pub for, amongst other things, some bitching about [deleted], the musical [deleted] and the [deleted] theatre. It was great to have a good rant with someone about the state of affairs. When you are building your dream you need strong ideals.

For the reader new to these blogs, it is only fair to say that Dave Hughes is of course insanely intelligent and will ultimately be up there with the big boys of theatre architecture and to say that Ben Jones, whilst quieter and more politely spoken, was not in fact a reluctant partaker but an active enthusiastic collaborator in the filming.