I am in the midst of learning more lines than I knew existed and I’m talking lots of painkillers for a foot injury. This could not be a worse time to have an injured foot!!!. But, amongst the “oh, my God, they will be coming to see this soon” and “ow, I should have bought solpadine”, every now and then I stop and think how amazing it is that in 2010, BERLIN LOVE TOUR will finally happen.
The show, like most shows, popped into my head when I was just about to fall asleep.
I moved to Berlin in 2006, wanting escape from Ireland. I lay in bed, trying in vain to fall asleep and in my eyeline were flyers for a tour on my desk. I had been thinking about getting a job as a tour guide as all the other ‘reliables’ were not so reliable. Teaching pays next to nothing unless you work in a University and translating sounds interesting but in reality meant translating surveys for Volvo and learning new and useless words. (Das Tacho= Speedometer, I can’t even drive!).
I was going out with someone at the time and as with all couples we had one of those fights that makes you think” oh, shit, is this it, is this how it will end?” I lay in bed and in my eyeline lay were fliers for a tour of Berlin on my desk.
I though about how ridiculous it would be if I had to get up tomorrow and show a bunch of tourists Berlin, pretending that everything was ok when it wasn’t. I had learnt about Berlin through my boyfriend. Every bloody building would scream at me as I passed “remember this???”. I got out of bed and wrote a few ideas down. Yes, in real life it may be awful, but it might make a good idea for a play. (It turned out that that fight would blow over.)
Skip to a while later and after talking out the idea with the other half of Playgroup, Tom, we decided that it was worth investigating. We very luckily got a travel grant from the Arts Council to go to Berlin and see what we could dreg up fom my time there. We spent weeks taking all types of tours, ranging from inspiring to interesting to downright awful, historically inaccurate and downright racist. We brought the always amazing Colm Hogan over to film footage of us and looking back at it now, it’s hard to see the play that we have in front of us today.
We traced my life there on maps and Tom dragged story after story from me about my jobs, flatmates, my german boyfriend. We wrote it all down and let it stew.
Then we tested the idea at Project Brand New. I was really anxious that people would reject the idea of another city being Berlin but they bought it. Phew.
So, now in 2010, my head is again spinning at the idea that we open in a few days and I have to do this in front of people but also, how my time in Berlin has become the basis for a semi-autobiographical piece. It’s hard sometimes, to say ok, the Hilary in the play, she says this but what does Hilary in real life think and what’s the difference. And just because you were there the first time round, it does not make it any easier to replay it for an audience. I have a feeling that what I’m searching for I already have inside and what I’m sure about is not so safe at all.
We’ll see. In the Fringe brochure, we ask the audience to come with appropriate clothing and an open heart. Once I get my lines down (AAAAAAGGH!!), then I can work on opening mine. I’m a little scared, to be honest.
But that’s why it’s worth doing, right?
Hils.
