New Fish A Musical From the beginning Part 2

Let me continue on from where I left off, Scene and Heard dreams dashed by an icy Beast from the East.

Collaboration is key

I was pregnant and due in June so I wanted to get to work on the script and music before inevitable baby brain ensued. I met a wonderful, kind and generous person during our short lived time at Scene and Heard who agreed to come on board as a producer. They were not only passionate about creating, well liked amongst their peers with extensive knowledge in making new work, they were extraordinarily kind as well as efficient, a killer combo. If you are kind, people will like you and help you and because this person was so well liked we manged to gather another group of incredibly talented unpaid actors together to workshop a reworked script with a new director in my husband’s office in town. Workshopping and collaboration with the right people is invaluable.

Workshop with a pack of legends

Motivation to make something happen resulted from the workshops. We got some friends together to make some more demos and I started emailing people I looked up to in the industry looking for mentorship and guidance. One of the first people I met was Philly MacMahon from This Is Pop Baby. Philly explained more about funding routes, advising me to start off with my local arts office and build up a profile by applying for little amounts and getting my name out there. Donal Shiels and Pat Moylan met with me, mentored me, guided me, they have been extraordinary. To this day Donal is still there to answer a question for me. I remember Pat Moylan saying,

-If you ever have a question, anything, even if you just want to know how many bananas you should include in a dressing room for your actors, I’m here for you.

People are amazing, do you know that?
Willie White met with me and talked to me about the Dublin Theatre Festival. Mark O’Brien took a call with me and even guided me through an application I was making at the time. Sadly I was due to meet Karl Shiels but he passed away. There are people out there who will help you, you just have to ask them to.

I applied for the Dublin Fringe Festival and after my application was unsuccessful, I asked for a meeting with Ewa Senger, always ask for a meeting or a call, here is where you learn.

Ewa was honest and straightforward which I appreciated. New Fish was not experimental enough, not playing with its form and looking back, I would say my application was neither well thought through nor well planned out.

New Fish A Musical Rehearsed Reading at The Liquor Rooms 2018
Gavin Ryan, Ken O’Regan, Tony Coloe, Aoife Fitzpatrick, Fergal D’Arcy, Michele McGrath, Ranae Von Meding and Niamh Walsh
Photo Credit Joanna O’Malley

Ignorance is bliss

Baby girl arrived in June and I did nothing for three months. In September I rallied a crew and we put on a Rehearsed Reading in The Liquor Rooms for one night. I called in a favour from a friend who was managing the venue at the time, he gave us their Boom Boom Room on a Thursday night in November 2018. It was an invite only event, donations would be accepted with gratitude. We invited friends, family and music theatre enthusiasts to watch another group of actors volunteering their time to read the script and sing through some of the songs. The reading was recorded. I got my cousin in to take photos. More content to share on social media, more material to work off to make a better script. We saw improvements and huge potential. Ross and I wanted to put on the show, properly put on the show. I set the cog wheels of my brain in motion.

I started looking for venues in town. I was so inexperienced, I didn’t even start with the maths! In London I would have put it on in a theatre above a pub, so that’s where I started. The Brazen Head, Theatre Upstairs above Lanigans, my brothers had just opened a new pub in town with a small performance space, The Landmark. However, our show was a musical and needed a bigger space and good sound so I moved on to venues like The Sugar Club and Project Arts Centre. They were so expensive! Then I met Karen Lee, our husbands worked together and not only was she wickedly funny, creative, an all-round brilliant human, Karen had run the Gaiety School of Acting for a decade and had huge production experience. Ah Karen, clever, kind Karen who set up a google hang out with documents such as budget excel spreadsheets, contracts, insurance policies and production bibles. Karen who also knew everyone in Smock Alley so when she emailed them about renting the theatre, they trusted us. We started out looking at the Boys School smaller space but because it is a musical, we ended up taking the Main Space. Without funding, without a director, without a proper script, I put down a non-refundable deposit of my own €2200 and rented Smock Alley’s 178 seater Main Space for a week in October 2019. Ignorance truly is bliss.

Myself and Ross O’Connor in The Liquor Rooms
Photo Credit Joanna O’Malley

Go Fund Me, please!

Karen and her excel spreadsheets showed me how much money we would need, a lot. This was going to be our first professional production and so we would finally be paying everyone involved. Even if we did manage to sell out 5 nights at €28 (discounted tickets at €25) we would be nowhere near covering our costs without other financial support. Ross and I took to Indiegogo to crowdfund for our musical. I also organised a couple of fundraising events, musical bingo in my brother’s pub was a wonderful evening, we raised enough money so that the financial pressure was lifted, it would still be risky but not so much that it kept us awake at night.
Closer to showtime I sold adds in the programs, mainly to businesses of family and friends. A full page for €400, half a page for €250 and a quarter page for €150. We were selling programs for €3. I printed way too many, I think around 500. I ended up leaving them on the seats before the show for Friday and Saturday nights which we should have done from the beginning.
Spring was in full swing, Karen and I were both juggling family life and producing a musical. Karen also had older kids who would be home all summer needing entertainment beyond a morning trip to the playground; that plus an added complication of personal matters, meant she unfortunately had to bow out around this point. I never would have had the confidence to book the theatre without her and although her co-producer role was ending, she was always there for me. I knew I was the only one who cared enough to see this through so I didn’t even try to find another co-producer, took the reins myself and instead, I found Claire.

Myself, Ross O’Connor, Emily Carroll and Barry John Kinsella at fundraiser for New Fish in Bath Pub
Photo Credit Joanna O’Malley

Meet the Director

Having lived in London for the past 10 years, my contacts were limited but Ross had people in mind. One person stood out to both of us immediately to direct. Claire Tighe not only had her own stage school, her own production company, a huge involvement in AIMS (Amateur Irish Musical Society) but she built the Helix Pantomime with her team over a decade to the roaring success it is. I emailed Claire explaining who I was, what I was planning to do, attached the script and asked her to meet me. We met one Tuesday morning at the Fitzwilliam Hotel and she gave me quite the reality check. I was settled in, drinking my green tea ready to sell our musical to the perfect director for it but when she came in I could tell this was going to be a harder sell than I had anticipated. Sitting down uncomfortably, she avoided small talk and too much eye contact, this made me nervous. Initially I pegged her as difficult to work with but I realised later she was uncomfortable because she knew she was going to have to deliver me a huge dose of honesty and she didn’t know me, didn’t know how I would take it or how I would react. In her opinion, my “script” was not structured well, there was a good story there but there were too many characters, the dialogue was full of exposition and there was no point to the entire show. What message was I trying to get across? I told her that I just knew it was a great story, that I could see it on stage, that I tried to get someone to write it for me but when I didn’t find someone, I just wrote it myself. Claire advised me to get in touch with Karl Harpur, a writer who she worked with who is also married to her cousin and everyone is best friends or something of that ilk. If I could work with Karl and pull out a clear story from the mess, Claire was interested. I told her that I had put a non-refundable deposit on Smock Alley’s Main Space to which she muttered,

-Of course you did.

I had no other choice really. I would have to get Karl on board in order to get Claire on board. Claire was the woman to deliver this show and deliver it the way I wanted it. Claire was no nonsense, get the work done, cut the bullshit and had incredible instincts. No one else would be able to make this happen. If I wanted that show to go ahead, I would have to find a way to work with this Karl chap.

Ross O’Connor, Claire Tighe, me and Karl Harpur at Smock Alley Theatre
Creative Team of New Fish A Musical

Sleepless in Sweden

Karl Harpur is an actor, director, children’s podcast creator, writer, panto genius and thankfully a gas craic of a man. Karl Harpur is also based in LA. So, we Face Timed, a lot. Immediately we clicked. He read the script and he just got it, he could hear the character’s voices, he knew what to do. We came up with a flat payment for Karl to write the script with the opportunity to further negotiate on a percentage should the show ever be taken beyond Smock Alley. I never organised signed contracts with any of the creative team as it just felt too crazy to even think beyond the October production. It would have been better to hash this out in those early days but I really just wanted them on board and didn’t want to scare them away with contracts. Plus, I couldn’t afford a lawyer. Everyone just wanted to get the work made and put the show on but I can see how problems could occur if financial agreements are not put in order from the get go.

I was spending the summer in Sweden with my family. Most evenings I would take my laptop to my room and call Karl for his LA morning time. We would talk through all the characters, the setting, life in London for a struggling actor, life anywhere for a struggling actor. Because the story is based on my own experience, I just talked and talked and he listened. It was like the early days of a new relationship when everything is thrilling and you just get each other and you’re so excited to see where it’s going. Karl would send me over pages, I would make notes, he would take some of them on board and we ended up with a script that was miles ahead of where my work had landed but still held my work within it. It still felt like it was mine. Claire also made notes but I knew her main editing would come in the rehearsal room.

In the meantime clever Karen who remained at my disposal, helped me out with an application to Fishamble’s New Work Clinic which meant we would have more invaluable workshop time and could offer the actors and creative team more paid work which is always a bonus. It was time to hold auditions. 

I’m ready for my close up

When I was an actress in London, I had no idea how tiny the role of the actor is in the grand scheme of creating and producing new work. If I had known then what I know now, I would have been more inclined to get the creative team a coffee once in a while.
With Claire, Karl and Ross all behind this musical, we had no problem spreading the word to musical actors in and around Dublin. New Fish itself had a pretty decent following on social media, I posted on a few FB pages and people who had been involved previously were very supportive. The word spread and over two days in August we held auditions on the top floor of The Landmark pub. There is so much talent in Ireland. I wish we could give more paid jobs to musical theatre actors but that’s a whole other blog post. Our new script called for a cast of 6, 3 males roles and 3 female roles. We were so, so lucky with our gang. Our cast was made up of Niamh McAllister, Christine Scarry, Amy Anzel, Colin Flynn, Chris Corroon and Barry John Kinsella.

Full cast and crew of New Fish A Musical in Smock Alley Theatre

Fishambling Fishes

Our mentor for the Fishamble workshop was Conor Hanratty who sat in with us and guided us discreetly, backing up our instincts and stamping his approval on our decisions, it gave us great confidence. We worked on the script one day and brought in musicians on the second day to rehearse music. We had to keep the rehearsal period to three weeks to keep costs down so to have this two day workshop before it all kicked off was superb. We got a trojan amount of work done and it gave us an opportunity to rework an already fairly solid script before heading into rehearsals.

We started rehearsals in my brother’s pub again but once we were up on our feet and needed more space, Claire got us a great deal taking a room in a secondary school she works with.

What an exciting time to be alive! I will never forget coming in to rehearsals one day in the final week and seeing it all come together, it was incredibly emotional. Because of all the changes with the script, Ross also had to continue to write new music, the songs got better and better. The music alone gave me the drive I needed going into show week but backed up by a script full of humour and heart and gathered together to create moments of magic by Claire, I was ready to show our work to the world…or at least to 780 people.

Ross O’Connor, Myself, Conor Hanratty and Claire Tighe at Fishamble New Play Clinic
Photo credit Joanna O’Malley

Full Team for Fishamble New Play Clinic
Photo Credit Joanna O’Malley

PR and Marketing

Other than posters at the venue, local coffee shops and restaurants, all my focus went into social media this time around. Trying to get influential people down in the first night or two in the hopes they would enjoy and post about it would have the most impact on ticket sales. The show was selling ok but I was disappointed, it was a harder sell than I had expected. I spoke to Donal Shiels about it and he told me not to worry too much, that Irish people are notoriously bad at buying tickets and mostly leave it to the week or even the day of. While this was comforting it was also frustrating.
A week or so out, just as Donal predicted, sales improved. Having a few members of AIMs involved in the show sold out one night alone. I tried to get on to a big radio show but no luck, instead I worked on collaborations on social media. Wilde Gin, a new spirit just launched were looking to get involved with the arts so they worked with me on social media and gave us free stock. Some friends I had with big followings gave us a few shout outs. I did an interview with Dublin City FM. But the game changer was the show itself. We had about 85 tickets sold on the Tuesday and 120 for the Wednesday, once those people came in, saw it and talked about it, tickets sold out for Thursday, Friday and Saturday.
Karl flew in and surprised us all the way from LA for Opening Night and I didn’t care anymore. I just started enjoying it. I sat beside Claire and when the music started, she put her hand on my knee and said

-You did this, be here now in this room and enjoy what you’ve done.

I had tears in my eyes watching the entire show.  

I called our production a Showcase Premier. I didn’t want to present it as a finished product as this would be the first time we would see it up on its feet in front of an audience. It wasn’t ready for reviews so I didn’t work at getting reviewers in. I wanted to get Theatre Directors, Producers and Artistic Directors in to see it, it was tough work. Nobody knew who I was and the musical theatre scene in Ireland was so separate from the theatre scene so not many people knew our creative team either. It helped that I had been emailing people I looked up to over the past few months and had started building relationships, these were the people that came. It also helped that my cousin, Conor Linehan came to see it, enjoyed it and tagged producers and theatre directors on a FB post urging them to get along to see it. This resulted in Neil Murray, Director of the Abbey Theatre at the time, requesting to hold a ticket for someone from the Abbey and the following evening seeing Graham MacLaren, co-Director of the Abbey at the time, coming in and taking a seat, not having a notion what lay ahead of him. The absolute excitement of having someone in the audience with the power to give our show a future, I can’t tell you how excited we were.

I went to see him at the interval to introduce myself and to thank him for coming along, my heart was pounding, I had to hold my hands together to keep them from shaking. Graham said that it was exactly the kind of theatre we should be making, bold, fresh and exciting. Graham wanted a meeting. Graham MacLaren wanted me to come into the Abbey to talk about our little show. Right then and there I was on the highest part of the rollercoaster ride that is getting new work made and produced. Up on top, soaring through the sky. Little did I know something else would come from the East to wreak havoc once again.

Dress Rehearsal for New Fish A Musical at Smock Alley Theatre