Diary fragment · 3 min read ·
My Parts Before They Cast
A pocket list I keep for knocking doors in pencil had the whole second set of parts written out before the company ever sat down to cast them.
- dated: "the rehearsal weeks"
- narrator: "Josey Waite, call-boy"
Monday 9th. I am the call-boy at the Queens and it is my job to knock the dressing rooms and doors when the stage manager calls places, so I keep a pocket list in pencil of who is where, page January's order. That is all my list is for. I write it myself, at the top of the stairs, off the call sheet when it comes up.
This morning the list was in my pocket already written, and it is not January's order. It is the spring show, the one with no call sheet yet. Nine rooms, nine names on nine parts, every knock written out in my own pencil hand. I remember doing January's list and I do not remember doing this one, and the pencil is worn to the wood past the point my morning's sharpening would allow. I have not rubbed anything out on it since the pantomime closed.
Thursday 12th. Casting meeting tonight for the spring show, chairs on the stage, the director with his pipe and the company manager with the register. I was sent up with the tea at half past seven, so I heard near all of it. Parts went round the table and came down again and changed, then changed back. Wren took the second footman, then the manager said Wren was wanted upstairs, and the second footman went to Mr Owlett. Nine parts settled at the finish, four minutes to nine.
I checked my pocket list on the stairs after, knock by knock. Same nine. Same rooms. Second footman to Owlett, the way it ended, not the way it nearly went. Nobody had seen my list. I had it buttoned the whole meeting, and it was written before the parts were said.
Monday 16th. I asked the deputy stage manager, careful, whether lists ever got drawn up ahead for nothing, in case they did it to all of us as a practice. He laughed and said call-boys' lists aren't worth practising at anything. Then he asked to see mine, and I should not have shown him, because he went quiet over it and gave it back without a word and has called me where the sheet says since instead of where I stand.
Thursday 19th. The rehearsal weeks go on. Nothing for it but to keep knocking the nine rooms and keeping the pencil sharp. One thing more and then I will stop writing this down. On Tuesday the director moved the first knock to the bay window room, part and all, and by Thursday morning my pocket list had the bay window room first, in my hand, with Tuesday's date at the top of the line.
The list is right before they cast, and it moves before they move, and the only thing I have counted that does not come off it is the knock. Nine parts, nine names, and no part on any call sheet for the knock itself, ten times a night, that they all of them answer to.