Stage Mum (6 page)

I dimly remembered taking part in one such festival during my reluctant speech-and-drama-lesson years. We performed an extract from Brecht’s
Mother Courage and her Children
. I was badly miscast in the wrong half of the title role, by a new young teacher who mistook my lack of aptitude for and interest in acting for intelligent and spirited rebellion. It might have worked okay if I could have been
and her Children
, but at twelve, being neither remotely maternal nor very brave, I was a poor choice for
Mother Courage
. We came bottom of our section. I wasn’t the least bit upset by what the judge wrote about my contribution to the performance. I agreed with him.

As if to counterbalance all the waiting-room chat about how appallingly pushy so many (other) mothers could be, I was also initiated into the world of www.notapushymum.com. ‘I’m Catwoman,’ said one of the other mums. ‘That’s nice,’ I said.

‘There’s loads of information and gossip on the site,’ said Catwoman. ‘Especially gossip. It’s addictive. Very.’

I was twitching to get home and check it out. It sounded exactly like my sort of website, one where I could waste hours and hours finding out about things that I didn’t really need to know about in minute detail, whilst fooling myself that I was engaged in serious and productive research. It was, as Catwoman said, highly addictive. Over the successive months, I lost hours – probably days in total – immersed in the discussions and jokes. I followed individual stories with interest and occasional prurience, enjoyed the community feeling – supportive rather than competitive – and, just occasionally, contributed myself, under the moniker ‘inconspicuous’. On notapushymum.com, people post details of upcoming auditions, and parents who’ve taken their children – and sometimes the older kids themselves – share information about castings they’ve attended. It is,
as
Rachel had told me, great when you’ve been for an audition and heard nothing, because you can find out if everyone else is in the same boat, or if people have already been told about recalls. Or if only the ‘nos’ have heard.

Meanwhile, back at the Baptist church, the kids emerged from their audition. ‘We learned a dance,’ Dora told me. ‘A man called Frank taught us. It went like this.’ She started to demonstrate, then stopped. ‘No,’ she said, ‘not like that’ and started again, got confused, waved her arms around a bit and ‘… well anyway. I can’t remember it.’

‘And did you do the lines?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you have to do one of the boys’ parts?’

‘No.’

‘Which parts did you do?’

‘Only Gretl. It’s not fair. I hardly got to say anything, just to do this.’ She stamped her foot. ‘And I wanted to be a boy. Did you get me anything to eat? I need to practise the dance at home. Can I go and play at Beth’s house?’

‘No. Not today. She lives too far away.’

‘Can she come to mine? Oh please. Please please
please
?’

‘Not today, sweetie.’

‘But
why
?’

‘Because you have another audition tomorrow, and you need an early night.’

‘No I don’t. I’m not tired. Can I go to her house tomorrow?’

‘Say bye, now, you’ll see her at the audition tomorrow.’

I used one hand to wave goodbye to the other mums, the other to guide Dora, still demanding a play-date with Bethany – which she would continue to do for the entire journey home, with the odd break for a quick and tuneful yodel – firmly out of the room and back to the car.

The following day’s audition was back at Really Useful’s offices,
after
lunch. Rachel was there with Bethany, as were one or two others I recognised and several I didn’t: they’d mixed the groups up from the previous day and also some of the other mums had been nattering outside. The office was much less crowded than last time we were there, and there were enough cups and glasses to go round. While we mums sat up at the table, drinking the complimentary drinks and talking, the kids bounced round the room, chatting, laughing and practising the dance, getting it wrong and saying ‘no, not like that, like
this
’, and laughing more.

‘Look,’ one of the mums pointed out. ‘Even though they’re all competing with each other, and they know they are, they’re still helping each other out.’ And they were. There was no sizing up of the competition, no putting anyone else down, or withholding of information that might help another child, just open friendliness. And if I’ve managed to make that sound a bit vomit-inducingly Pollyannaish, it wasn’t. It was heartwarming.

And perhaps the parents were taking their cue from the children, because if any among us were wondering whether there was any way we could sabotage someone else’s chances, in order to give our own offspring a better chance, we’d concealed it extremely well. All was sweetness, light, empathy and laughter. I began to wonder if maybe Dora and I had stumbled into a parallel universe that neither of us might ever want to return from. Perhaps that’s the start of the slippery slope to stage motherhood. At first, you try just one audition. Just one – it won’t do any harm. Then your child gets a recall and another until, eventually, he or she lands a part. It’s all so much fun, you want to do it again. And again and again. Pretty soon, you’re hooked. And that’s when it starts going bad – or, more accurately, when
you
start going bad. You need your next fix. So you do everything, no matter how mean, nasty and underhand, you can to make sure you get it. Before you know it, you’re dressing your acutely embarrassed son in lederhosen and yelling at him to smile whilst simultaneously demonstrating a faux-Germanic leg-and-bottom-slapping
dance
and keeping his place only 123rd in the audition queue (you made him stand there alone while you counted. Twice. From his spot to the front and then back again, to make sure that no one had pushed in in your absence). Or you threaten your little darling that unless she sneaks to the front and pretends she’s someone else’s daughter – someone so keen that they got out of bed obscenely early so
their
little darlings could legitimately be amongst the first seen – you’ll NEVER TAKE HER TO ANOTHER AUDITION AGAIN.
UNDERSTAND???!!!???
Or, on a freezing cold winter’s day, you make your pubescent daughter bind her chest, remove her shoes and socks and stand in the gutter, hoping that the nice man with the measuring stick won’t notice that she’s too tall and too physically developed to audition for the role you’ve set your heart on her playing, and when he does notice, you scream, ‘SHE HAS TO BE SEEN. SHE’S PERFECT FOR THE PART! I SHOULD KNOW, I’M HER MOTHER!’

The children were called in. A few of the parents popped out for coffee, the rest of us sat round the table or sprawled on the sofas. We talked about our children: which, if any, shows they’d been in before – this ranged from none to every major West End musical with kids in it as well as the odd high profile film – and which
Sound of Music
roles we thought they might be being considered for. The occasional sounds of angelic singing wafted through into the waiting area and temporarily silenced us.

During these interludes, I wondered how the people responsible for selecting eighteen or twenty children – people who were, if Dora’s information was correct, mostly called Jo – from the sixty or so they’d whittled it down to could possibly do it. How could they decide which talented moppets were the right talented moppets? In the early stages it must’ve been comparatively easy – if they couldn’t sing and didn’t look feasibly Austrian, they were out – but surely all those who’d got this far must be capable of doing the things they had to do to play the parts.

Although, to be fair, they hadn’t yet been tested on their ability to stay awake and continue functioning in front of a few thousand paying theatre-goers way past bedtime. I had concerns about this, but decided not to mention them to anyone connected with the production.

The children were returned to us on reasonably good and only slightly hyperactive form, and we were told they’d let us know soon about the next round. Predictably, the first sentence out of Dora’s mouth was ‘Can I go to Bethany’s house?’

Predictably, the first word out of mine was ‘No.’

But we did go for coffee and cake together at a local café.

‘Did you get to be a boy today?’

‘Nah. Just Gretl again.’

‘I had to be Brigitta today,’ said Bethany, who’d been Marta the day before.

Having failed in her attempt to secure an invitation to play at Beth’s house, Dora upped the ante and asked Rachel if she could move in with them. Rachel took the request in her stride. She didn’t look remotely panicked or even slightly fazed. ‘Not today,’ she replied. ‘Dora,’ she wrote, in an email to me the next day, ‘reminds me of how Bethany was at the same age. Beth has started to get more “grown up” and serious these days, but every now and again it all breaks loose like she can’t help herself.’

It was the first time anyone had ever said to me that Dora reminded them of their child. It’s not that my daughter is an uncontrollable wild thing. She’s just exuberant, strong-minded, vocal, extrovert and determined. In most circumstances, this is a good thing.

Jo Hawes called that evening to say they wanted to see Dora again. The audition was the following Tuesday, would take about two hours and would again be at the Really Useful offices. She needed to remember the dance Frank had taught them, her lines and the music.
They
were, Jo said, hoping to cast that day.

‘Sorry,’ I told Mrs Kendall on Monday morning. ‘She has to take tomorrow afternoon off. She’s been recalled again.’

‘She’s going to get a part, isn’t she?’

‘Um … well, er, I suppose …’

‘She is.’

‘Well, yes. She might well. We’ll probably know after tomorrow.’

‘How exciting!’

The audition was at 2 p.m. on Tuesday, 11 July. We arrived at Really Useful’s offices with the customary apple, bottle of water and time to spare. Rachel had emailed to say that that Bethany hadn’t been recalled, which Dora and I were both a tad sad about, although, naturally, not quite as sad as Bethany had been. But, Rachel said, her disappointment had been short-lived: she’d been upset when first told, but by the next morning she’d bounced back and started to feel excited about the tap exam she was due to take the following week. ‘It’s always much more traumatic for the parents,’ Rachel told me. ‘The kids are straight on to the next thing, and we’re left reeling.’ You’d need, I thought, to be pretty tough to survive doing this on a regular basis. The more auditions, the more knockbacks. This could, I supposed, be character-forming: good preparation for the difficult realities of adult life. Or it could be confidence-destroying – and anyway, how early
should
kids start preparing for adult life? Should you protect them – as far as is parentally possible – from exposure to life’s cruelties, or should you allow them to experience, or at least know about, what can happen out there so they’re forewarned and forearmed?

‘I want to be prepared for adult life,’ said Dora, when I read her that last paragraph, a year and a half later. ‘Definitely. Can I start walking to school by myself? Now? When I’m in Year Four?’

You would, I thought, as I recharged my Oyster card, also need plenty of time and cash. I hadn’t expected expenses to be reimbursed for early rounds of auditions – but then neither had I anticipated
recharging
my Oyster card quite so often. To be fair, I hadn’t given that side of it much consideration as I hadn’t thought beyond the first audition.

We were amongst the first to arrive, and found a seat at the boardroom dining table from which I would be able to get a good look at everyone else coming in. As others arrived, I counted round and noticed that there were only six or seven potential Gretls. I figured Dora stood a fair chance, as they were looking for four or five of them. On the other hand, they were all slight, big-eyed, gazelle-like creatures, who looked delicate as glass next to my meteorite of a daughter.

Adrianna – who we’d met at the first audition – was there with her parents, Darren and Shana. Dora attached herself to a slightly taller and, it turned out, quite a lot older girl called Yasmin and her mum, Wendy, an attractively trendy, laconically funny and down-to-earth woman, who worked at her daughter’s school as a teaching assistant. Dora left me, climbed on to Wendy’s lap and wrapped her arms around her neck. Nuzzling into her cheek, she skipped the whole ‘can I come to Yasmin’s house to play?’ stage and cut straight to the chase, asking hopefully if she could move in with them.

There were also a set of twins, a minuscule but feisty and disturbingly strong five-year-old, who bounced around picking up children three times her size, a pair of Viking-blonde sisters – one Gretl-sized (competition!), one much bigger – whose mum, Jackie, I had a quick chat with, lots of older girls and nine or ten older boys, some of whom came in, slightly late, in a giggling horde of shiny, smart, well-behaved children, all dressed in the uniform of the Sylvia Young Theatre School. These were the last twenty-six children culled from the original thousand auditionees who’d queued outside the Palladium three months earlier. I apologised to Wendy for Dora’s forwardness. She laughed. In my (now extensive) experience, people don’t seem to mind too much when someone else’s child asks to come and live with them: I suppose it counts as a compliment.
Although,
of course, I don’t know what they say behind my back after we’ve left, about how terrible Dora’s home life must be for her to want to move in with complete strangers. Anyway, I expect it would only get really scary if she turned up on their doorstep at dusk, unannounced and unaccompanied, pulling her small purple wheelie suitcase with a smiling picture of Cinderella on it with one hand, and clutching her formerly white cuddly unicorn by the leg in the other.

I looked around the room.
She’s in with a good chance
, I found myself thinking.
Oh no she isn’t
, I argued back at myself
. They’ll take the skinny little ones. The Gretls will need to be picked up and carried
. Dora is not, and has never been, fat, but she looks well constructed and feels even more solid than she looks. Once she hit five I could only carry her for very short distances, and only if she was riding piggy back.
But, on the other hand, I’m not very strong. And they probably aren’t testing the kids for portability …