The Stupid Bat...

When I left university, my best friend and I decided we would try the acting malarkey together. One of the first things we went for – and both got - was an unpaid Sunday night at the London Palladium job. In fact, I believe we had to pay £30 for the privilege of being in the show and wearing the horrendous show t-shirt. Hmmm. Something wasn’t quite right; I thought this was my job. And that meant getting paid. But we all have to start somewhere, and I was happy to have an opportunity to be on such a wonderful, enormous stage and to do some singing and to work with professionals. Or so I thought. The rehearsals were mind-numbing to say the least, with the organisers mostly calling all 130 or so performers to the whole day’s rehearsal, and then obviously not using half of them for the whole day. It didn’t fill me with confidence. In fact, it was tedious in the extreme.

The main piece that I was involved in was a famous trio from the musical Sweet Charity, and this seemed to involve a lot of extra rehearsal, most of which seem to consist of being yelled at for ‘carrying plates’; in other words, don’t walk about the stage with your palms out. Fair enough – I’m not sure it needed an extra three hours a week just for that, but what did I know? I was only starting out. But the rehearsals were really endless and having spent the first month working on only the very first line of the song, I was beginning to worry.

The particular rehearsal that sticks in my mind was in Guildford, in an old church hall with a very high beamed ceiling. For various reasons, the other two girls in my trio were both running very late, so it was me and the director and her son-in-law, who was sent out to get coffee. Whilst he was out, she began to ask me about my stage experience. Summoning up as much of a professional stance as I could, I began to tell her of my various triumphs, when, suddenly, we both heard a squeak. I must say, it sounded like an animal of some sort. The director looked around from her seat at the table and the squeak sounded again:

“Oh my God!” she screeched. “There’s a bird, a poor little bird, and he’s stuck in the roof”.

“Hmmm…it does sound like it,” I replied.

We listened intently. Nothing. And so we decided to continue with my non-plate carrying development work.

“No,” she yelled, leaning on the table, “That’s not how it should be done!”

SQUEAK!

There it was again.

“The bird…the bird!” She was becoming apoplectic in her concern.

SQUEAK! SQUEAK! SQUEAK!

And then it dawned on me. It wasn’t a bird at all. The stupid bat was making the squeaking noise. It was coming from her table. Every time she leaned on it, the squeak would be heard:

“Right,” she announced, “you’ll have to get a ladder and climb into the roof and get the bird out.”

And apparently there was no another option. As I stated before, the ceiling was pretty high – I’d say a good 20-30 feet up. There was no way in hell I was scaling some flimsy step-ladder to go and see if there was a non-existent baby bird in the roof. The thought of mountaineering a feeble step ladder to go and see what rodents, bats and birds actually were in the roof – I’m sure they would have been plenty – was not an option. There was nothing else for it; I would have to tell her that she was making the squeaking noise. I began to speak:

“Actually…I...think it might be coming from…erm…your table.”

“What?” she snapped.

“Yes,” I stammered, “I think you’re making the noise when you push on the table”.

“Don’t be so stupid,” she replied.

That told me.

It was at this opportune moment that the son-in-law with coffee returned, along with my fellow performers. Stupid Bat started her protestations to him of how there was a baby bird trapped in the roof, and he had to go and find a ladder. So off he went, whilst we took what was left of the rehearsal to practice non-plate carrying. I left the rehearsal at 9pm to see the son-in-law returning with a ladder and a grumpy-looking caretaker. I must confess I walked past silently, smirking. Shame on me.