Keeping theatre on the road – here’s to the touring circuit’s unsung heroes
Rob Halliday
It’s been a while since I’ve had to do a long, late-night run across the country by car. I generally try to schedule better and take the train, because there always seems to be some work to be done and that travel time provides a good opportunity to do it free from the distractions of life.
But the combination of two slightly overlapping panto schedules and someone’s decision to dig up the railway tracks north of London at the weekend (helpful scheduling perhaps for normal commuters, less so for theatre people trying to move around the country) meant that a four-and-a-half hour drive from Guildford to York was really the only option.
Back in the day, when I was first touring, I used to do this all the time. Looking back, that seems slightly crazy, and I wouldn’t recommend it (the late-night driving part; I would highly recommend a good dose of touring as a fantastic way of really learning about theatre in general, your craft within it and the state of your nation). But at the time, it seemed to make sense.
The biggest difference now, three decades on – apart from the amount of average-speed cameras on the roads – is the joy of satnav delivering you to your destination in an unfamiliar town, rather than having to rely on paper maps, road signs, intuition and luck.
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Somewhere en route, I passed a lone Paul Mathew truck. If you’re a backstage reader, you’ll know the name; if you’re not, while this is not the only trucking company doing theatre, it is certainly the most prevalent. The truck would have been heading somewhere to pick up a load of scenery, or costumes, or lighting, or sound equipment, to then move it to somewhere else on the touring circuit.
I’ve always imagined this as an intricate dance that takes place every Saturday night, each show moving one step to the left – except that tour planning is never that logical. Plymouth to Aberdeen was always a favourite of mine. If we were lucky, for us that meant jumping on a plane. But the stuff still had to go by road.
And since we’re not yet in the world of Elon Musk’s imagination, those trucks – regardless of the trucking company being used – don’t drive themselves. They have to be driven – by people.
These are the real unsung heroes of every touring circuit. Literally the last ones to leave, and hopefully the first ones to arrive so the load-in can begin on time. In between – as my drive reminded me – they have perhaps the loneliest job in touring, but one that also requires huge amounts of care, concentration and attention. Without them, the touring circuit would have no shows.
As every theatre in the country fills up with pantos, the touring circuit calms down for a bit, which might mean those drivers’ schedules calm down a bit, too. Enjoy the break. To you, to all of us: Merry Christmas. See you in the new year when the truckers return to move those pantos out and bring you new shows again.
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