Fortunately, it’s not quite as sinister as it sounds. The cast of Kiss of the Spider Woman and Iron took a recent opportunity to visit the prison cells at Steelhouse Lane Police Station in Birmingham city centre. As both plays, running in repertory at The Crescent from July 3rd to July 11th, are set in prison, it was a great chance to sample the atmosphere and feel the sense of confinement of a prison environment. The cells at Steelhouse Lane were built in Victorian times and resemble a prison wing with three floors of cells – something reminiscent of a scene from the prison in Porridge (without the laughs!). The casts had an opportunity to run a few lines inside a cell and the chance for some atmospheric publicity photographs wasn’t wasted. I’m not sure that I’m allowed to name the custody officer who arranged the visit but we would like to extend our thanks to him and his colleagues for their hospitality during our ‘incarceration’.
Meanwhile, rehearsals for Kiss of the Spider Woman are progressing very well. With just two actors, who are on stage constantly throughout the play, the roles of Valentin and Molina are both demanding and intense. But the rehearsals have not been without their lighter moments. Trying to fit two 6ft-plus grown men into a single bed being one such instance. There are plenty of technical challenges as well, such as Molina’s domestic chores – boiling water, making tea – while Valentin has to deal with a lot of eating – porridge, chicken legs and digestives with marmalade! July is approaching fast but everyone is working hard to ensure a successful production.
It’s not so much squeezing us into the bed that causes the laughs – it’s what the characters get up to when they’re in there!
The most interesting thing about the prison visit for me was how it felt to be shut into the cell, and – particularly – that there’s nothing to look at once you are. Just bare walls – no window. As actors when we’re not talking to someone else on stage we tend to do a sort of “stare off ino the middle distance” type of a thing… )or is that just me!) I’ll be expermienting in rehearsals with trying not to do that – I need to remember those blank walls just a few feet away from me.
As a Brummie, born and maybe not so much bred, I’m ashamed to say that the everyday sights become so familiar that they don’t even register. I’ve walked past Steelhouse Lane Prison, been aware of its existence but never really registered what it’s for, what happens inside or even why. As a director, how could I offer ways to emulating the truth of two prisoners, if I, or the cast, had never been inside one?
Going through the air locked doors, I have to say, was notoriously exciting, I was going to see where the ‘bad people’ were kept. Maybe we’d hear them! Maybe we’d see them! How ignorant and simplistic we make our lives! How very Molina! And yet, inside, it was stark and cold and empty of personality. The cell is stripped of all individuality and as far as possible, any opportunity to make a tragic escape through suicide. Due to the plumbing, you can’t even flush your own waste away. You have to press a button and the custody officers come along and do it for you. The two cast members, Matt and Pete, were each locked in a cell for a short time. And then locked in together. And suddenly, the sheer boredom, futility and hopelessness hit home. When I can download films in 3 minutes, organise my life on a crackberry, when we are advanced to a point where not even technology can keep up with itself, we can’t escape the fact that often, rehabilitation doesn’t work. That innocent people are sometimes incarcerated. That poverty has a direct relationship to crime. That if, as a society, you accept that certain elements of society live in dilapidated tower blocks and go to failing primary schools in the second city of the sixth largest economy in the world, then isn’t inevitable that leaving school without qualifications increases the likelihood of offending? Without thinking, at the end of our session, whilst still inside the prison; the cells with inmates were steps away, I announced that I needed a beer, a little too loudly and clapped my hand over my mouth instantly when I realised what I had said.
Directing Kiss of the Spider Woman offers a rare opportunity to take the completely familiar and the utterly foreign and make it personal, significant and utterly present. You can’t escape. And I wouldn’t want to.