Looseygooseyness deficiency

I had a weird job really briefly in 2019. I was completely unsuited to this job, largely because the person in charge of this project and I were…not operating on the same wavelength, to put it mildly. It was a v short term contract so it wasn't that big a deal. But still.

This was during my Theatre Era which does make it all slightly less weird than if we were teachers or mechanics or zookeepers or meteorologists. Because theatre people are known to be a bit more looseygoosey than the average person. I, however, am normal-person levels of looseygoosey. I am probably (and I have thought about this number) one of the top 3% least looseygoosey people who have worked in the UK theatre industry in the last decade. Also, no other environment I have ever been in has ever been anything like this.

There was a general culture of, what I would consider, severe weirdness about the whole thing. The person in charge of this project was a performance artist with a gruesome/vulgar persona name.¹ I won’t use it here for obvious reasons. Instead, I will call them Putrid Bulge. I didn’t enjoy typing that any more than you enjoyed reading it. Comfort yourself with the knowledge that Putrid Bulge is not as unpleasant as the real name.

PB immediately declared the workplace a ‘safe space’ which in theory can mean whatever you want it to mean and in practice meant ‘I have no intention of behaving in a normal fashion henceforth.’

We began every day with morning pages, which was presented as if it was a concept PB had come up with. I have since learnt this is not the case. PB would walk around the room as we sat on the floor writing our three A4 pages. I only ever saw PB wear vintage overall pinny apron things (like the kind of thing I can imagine a woman might have worn over her clothes to go to the steamie?) but worn without any of the clothes you would expect someone to wear underneath. These apron things were quite short and, while you were writing your morning pages, PB would stop in front of you to see how you were getting on. If you raised your eyes from your morning pages, you would get at minimum a hairy thigh two centimetres from your nose; at maximum: white pants, visible…outline.

Each day would then be filled with a schedule of various ~creative~ activities. I have dredged up a few of my favourites.

ONE

Every morning, straight after the morning pages, we sat in a circle with a lit candle in the middle and we all got a bit of string and one by one we had to put the end of the string in the flame and then talk uninterrupted until the flame burnt right to the top of the string. The given instruction was that you could talk about anything you wanted. The heavy subtext was ‘please detail for the group a significant trauma of your choosing.’ Some people love that kind of opportunity. Which is fine and I don’t mind hearing it. But I am not one of those people. (a room full of strangers!!! colleagues!!!) I also don’t love fire. Not like a phobia or in a way where I can’t be near a candle, but definitely in a way that I don’t want a flame racing towards my fingers while I detail the worst things that have ever happened to me (in front of strangers!!!)

So I would do the thing. But I would just talk about whatever. As per the official instructions. Mostly I would give a boring narration of my journey in that morning. Except one day when I made the grave mistake of making a passing joke referencing that I was a bit hesitant around the flame due to my generally being a bit hesitant around flame, and oh my god PB loved that. That was the best thing I did the whole time we knew each other. They immediately latched on to that, asking (even though, as you will recall, I was the only one meant to be talking) questions about why I’m scared of fire (it’s burny), what caused me to be scared of fire (knowledge that it can burn you), and to share any Previous Experiences (read in your own subtext) I have had with fire. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on whether you are me or PB, I don’t have any Previous Experiences (with subtext). So I took the question at face value and talked about my subtext-free experiences when I did Camp America and had to build campfires and light them using flint. PB was deffffo on the edge of their bit of floor waiting for this story to end with a traumatic incident. But it didn’t. It ended with children eating pizza bagels around a camp fire.

TWO

Mercifully, this activity was only inflicted upon us on one occasion, but once was more than enough for me.

We had to take turns sprinting at full speed across the rehearsal studio (big empty room). Also, we were blindfolded. PB would stand at the opposite end of the room with their arms out to catch you as you ran into them. The stated objective was to push past the instincts screaming at you to slow down to stop yourself smashing into the wall. I don’t know what the actual point was, like, artistically, for the project at hand. We also weren’t allowed to put our arms out in front of us. So, to recap, we were sprinting blindfolded across the room into the arms of a barely clothed person who chooses to go by a name more vulgar than Putrid Bulge. You may be unsurprised to learn that I did not excel at this. Largely because the only thing less appealing than the prospect of smashing face first into a brick wall was the prospect of a blindfolded cuddle from that freak.

THREE

PB would often invite select people back to their hotel room to receive a tattoo, an opportunity which was very exciting for people whose personalities were diametrically opposed to mine. I was never invited (not a complaint). I can only assume this was because of literally everything about me as a person (still not a complaint).

But not to worry even if I had felt left out, because sometimes PB would bring the tattoo gun into the rehearsal studio and tattoo people right there and then. I mean, why wouldn’t they???? I don’t pretend to be an expert in tattooing, but I can’t imagine it’s good practice to whip out a tattoo machine and administer a tattoo on the dirty floor that people walk on in their outside shoes, without so much as wiping the skin or the floor or their hands before just fucking going for it.

I can remember exactly what the tattoos looked like and I can also remember that there was a reason PB was a professional performance artist and not a professional tattoo artist.

Thinking about it now, I think I might have been the only person to leave that job without a very poorly done tattoo physical reminder. Thank god for my bad vibes.

FOUR

Sometimes PB would take themselves off to the side, where they would sit and silently draw on a piece of paper. They would then come back to the rest of the group and reveal the artwork. Said artwork was always a drawing of what PB imagined someone in the room would look like naked. They would then ask the group to guess who they had drawn. Those who were very much on PB’s wavelength would join in this game enthusiastically. I didn’t join in enthusiastically or otherwise. This one was actually really horrible. Even thinking about it now makes me feel icky.

This all took place in the spring of 2019 and as soon as it ended I never once thought about it again, but the memory resurfaced yesterday with quite nice timing. I’ve been really missing this period of my life recently so it’s nice to be reminded that it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows; sometimes it was absolutely fucking mental.

Pre-empting the ‘why didn’t you just quit if you hated it so much?’ comments to save you the bother: 1. couldn’t; 2. didn’t want to.

If you’re feeling particularly generous, you could…

1. I don’t know what to call it but it isn’t a stage name as they use it offstage, too.