Cast

Excerpt from Cast

With the ice broken between them the question seemed perfectly normal to him and he set about explaining to Phyllis where the other bars and cafes were that had his work on the walls. They borrowed an A to Z from the girl behind the counter. Actually, I might as well tell you now, the girl behind the counter is actually called Sarah. The reason that her name hasn’t come up is that Jack forgot it straight after she told him when he asked her name nearly 2 years ago and now he’s really embarrassed to admit that he’s forgotten it. Sarah is indeed an actress but the number of auditions she goes to is declining as she slides from being an actress who has a bar job to a barmaid who once had a dream of being an actress. It’s a shame, the cruel way life treats delicate souls. Years of dance and drama classes. GCSE’s, A levels, leaving your boyfriend to go away to university and finding that the Alsager campus of Manchester Metropolitan University is actually 20 miles outside Manchester in a Cheshire farming town. That’s the reality of the clearing system. Getting over that and knuckling down to passing a degree in drama. Moving to London bright eyed and bushy tailed with £20k of debts, expecting to land a nice theatre role, or a juicy part in The Bill, or some voiceover work and finding that at every audition there is someone who sings slightly better, someone slightly prettier, someone with a slightly more characterful face, slightly bigger tits, taller, smaller, even more bloody ginger. And at each audition you walk in with your head held slightly less high, with slightly lower hopes and expectations in your heart until you pretty much give up going. Your subscription to The Stage still arrives each week but instead of peering down the street hoping for the postman, they pile up behind the door with the taxi cards and the pizza leaflets and the plastic bags for donations of clothing for some appeal or other. Eventually you’re not an actress. One day you’re filling out a form and in the space that asks for your occupation you enter a ‘b’ without even thinking. That ‘b’ stands not only for ‘barmaid’ but for the ‘broken’ in ‘broken dreams’. And as it was for Sarah and thousands of actors, it also was for Jack and thousands of artists. At least Jack was still using the tools of his trade but he was painting more and more of the stuff he knew would sell and less and less of the stuff from his heart. Jack and Phyllis parted company later that day with a promise to see each other again soon. They did not exchange numbers and did not say where they’d meet. They both knew it would be here in this café and 3 days later Jack walked past and saw Phyllis in the café. As he entered, the bell dinged and Phyllis looked up and smiled broadly at Jack.