Juliet England: Treading the boards with a hearing loss: Act III

A few Saturday evenings ago, I walked offstage for the final time at Reading’s twelfth century abbey as Progress Theatre’s two-week open-air run of Much Ado about Nothing took its final bow.

“It’s all over,” I whispered to Mikhail, fellow thespian and acting mentor extraordinaire as we walked off. “It’s really all over.”

Fine, I was being a luvvie. But indulge me and forgive the constricted throat and a tear or two. We’d been in rehearsal since March, so had spent well over four months on this project. It has been the dominant event of this long, hot, hot, hot summer of 2018.

And Much Ado was many things, uplifting, confidence-building, exhausting, occasionally infuriating, but never less then mesmerising.

Mikhail took my hand for a moment, and said gently there’d be other plays. And I hope there will be. But they can’t be the same. As the Bard himself said, “our revels now are ended…melted into air, into thin air.”

That being indeed the case, I can look back on those heady, golden weeks with the inevitable benefit of hindsight, and reflect on the experience from the point of view of having a hearing loss.

Rehearsals sometimes required epic patience on the part of my fellow cast members and the director. One particular instruction about when to carry a lantern to Mikhail needed to be repeated at least a dozen times.

Feedback was given after each rehearsal by voice, similarly notices beforehand, and someone usually had to repeat those for me.

There was a good gag to be had in saying ‘Sorry?’ and cupping my hand to my ear with an innocent face when praised was being dished out. But the director only fell for that once or twice, repeating it earnestly until he realised it was a wind-up.

And once the curtain lifted (metaphorically speaking, this being a twelfth century ruined abbey there was no actual curtain), there were a few niggles.

I have the world’s loudest foghorn for a voice, and am always being told to pipe the hell down by hearing friends. While being able to project words was certainly not a problem for open-air theatre, it could be mildly problematic backstage.

Once the audience fell quiet before each performance, the stone in the abbey walls wasn’t quite as thick as one might have thought. Sound carried quite far, so more than once someone looked at me in mild exasperation and shushed me with a finger to their lips.

On stage, I was generally close enough to other actors to hear everything well enough not to miss a line. Towards the end of the run, I did fail to catch one cue, which was frustrating. It was only an interjection (‘By mass, that it is!’ I think), it was picked up quickly by someone else and the audience wouldn’t have noticed the skipped words.

But still, when it’s your line you want to say it, however seemingly insignificant. And, anyway, everything you say is important as the cue for the next speaker.

I’m delighted to report I could hear the applause each evening as we walked on to take our bows, although I wasn’t always sure if I’d heard laughter or not. (In my scenes, probably not.)

The other Sunday, in a local park, someone approached me to say she’d enjoyed the play. I couldn’t hear her, and I’m not great being approached randomly by people I don’t know. So, to my shame, I ended the conversation somewhat abruptly, only realising her kindness afterwards. When I retraced my steps and tried to find her, she’d gone.

The cast last-night party ended gone 3am, my hearing seeming to worsen with each glass of rosé downed. Actually, correction – I was put into a cab after that hour and sent home, an early leaver. I gather there was a survivors’ breakfast somewhere. (I also thought it was a good idea to sleep in the bath – it really wasn’t.)

Anyway, next afternoon, props, costumes and set dismantled and stored, the magic really gone, we sat outside a town centre pub, feeling too hungover and sad to say much.

Someone I hadn’t spoken to that much before, and who I didn’t know well enough to realise his language was saltier than a ready meal, waved his fag around, turned to me and said:

“Doing this and not being able to hear. Must have been ******* hard.”

Well, sometimes. Would I do another? Hell, yes.

Read more of Juliet’s articles for us here.

Juliet England does freelance social media and PR work for cSeeker.