Aaron Connor (14 page)

“
You’ve been
watching too much Sky News” I said,

“
You what?”
asked the women irritably, “are you trying to insult me you little
council house scumbag!”

“
Now listen
here!” bellowed Joe, who was getting more and more aggravated by
the way she was treating his new guests, “what do you know about
anything? You old bag! Leave them alone. I’ve chosen them to work
with us, so you’d better get used to it!”

Laura was taken aback by this.
She wasn’t used to being talked to like this. She was usually the
one who told others off for being dicks, Joe was giving this
horrible “Marvellous Person” a piece of her own medicine. I and
Lizzie couldn’t help but smile. People like that don’t deserve
respect or power. It’s just such a shame that everyone in
parliament, running this country, are all “Marvellous People”. All
of our world leaders are at the top end of “Marvellousness”. Except
for you Obama (wink).

“
It’s your
funeral Joe” said Laura, rather hurt by Joe’s comments, “do
whatever you want to do. Just don’t come crying to me when it all
goes tits up.”

“
I’m pretty
certain that it won’t” said Joe, “they’re going to do the full week
of shows in Edinburgh without fail. You’ll see. Come along you two,
let me introduce you to the cast and crew”

Joe led us away from the
gobsmacked woman behind us and into the drama studio. The drama
studio was a small room which was painted entirely black, had a
dozen lanterns with many gels and filters, black curtains lining
the walls and a black granite floor. Many young actors were
scattered across the room; chatting, laughing and memorising lines
from their scripts. An overweight man with a monk haircut was
playing on the piano, he was playing for some girls who were
practising a dance routine for the show.

No one even noticed us at first
as Joe took us over to the man playing the piano. As we walked
across the granite floor, some of the young actors finally took
notice of us. Some girls coming out from a second room after
changing into their costumes, saw us and stood their ground looking
confused. They were dressed in ragged clothes and covered in make
up which was designed to look like dirt. On their shoulders were
armbands with the Star of David on it.

When I saw that, I began to
worry about what kind of show we’d agreed to work on. I looked
around and I saw props of old suitcases, period antiques from the
1940’s and, to my shock, a giant Nazi swastika banner. It was on
the wall where the door was, the one we came in through, so only at
this angle did we finally notice it. Then from the changing room
where the girls had come previously, came out a man in a full Nazi
uniform.

Both me and Lizzie saw this at
the same time and panicked. What kind of play is this? I thought,
if this is some sort of Neo-Nazi shit, I’m bolting!

“
What the hell
is going on?” Lizzie asked, “This is seriously starting to freak me
out”

“
Don’t worry”
I told her, “if this does turn out to be dodgy, then we’ll be out
of here and up the road before Joe can say anything about
it”

“
Ok” she
replied, “good plan”

Lizzie paused for a moment,
before tugging at the shoulder of my tracksuit to gain my
attention.

“
Aaron?” she
asked, “Aaron?”

“
What?” I
asked,

“
That guy’s
wearing a gas mask” she answered,

“
I know” I
said, “just don’t look at him. Don’t make eye contact. Just keep
looking forward. Pretend he’s not there, pretend he’s not
there”

Finally we arrived at the
piano. The man with the monk haircut stopped playing when he saw
Joe and told the girls to take a break. The girls went away into
the changing room, giggling among themselves all of the way. The
large man turned to face us, while wiping his sweaty brow with a
handkerchief. His face was bright red from the strenuous effort of
playing the piano. Like everyone else we’ve seen here so far, he
looked confused by our presence.

“
Who are
they?” he asked,

“
They’re our
new light and sound operators” answered Joe, “I can assure you that
they are the real deal. They’ll do just fine”

“
Joe?” Lizzie
asked, “What kind of play is this?”

“
Oh, of
course, I haven’t told you yet” said Joe with a smile, “It’s a
musical about the Holocaust”

I remember there being a very
awkward silence after he said that, a musical about the Holocaust?
What writer and musical composer would think that that would be a
good idea? Who would have thought that anyone would want to watch
something disturbing like that?

If it was a serious straight
play then that would be fine, in fact it could be very powerful but
a musical is just going too far. It’s like me going to the Really
Useful Group and asking them to fund my production of 9/11: The
Musical. It’s offensive, unnecessarily and insensitive. Besides
even if the play did get on Broadway, if the choice was between
Holocaust: the Musical and Mamma Mia, people would go to Mamma Mia.
People pay to watch a “feel good” show not a “cut your wrists”
show.

You can imagine that I and
Lizzie were a bit hesitant to work on the show. Then I was reminded
that we wanted to help as many people as we could. We didn’t want
to be selective about who we helped. It wasn’t like they were
extremists or racists or anything. They were just an amateur Youth
Theatre company, whose Director had picked a very edgy play to
perform. My assumption was that the play was picked purposely to
cause controversy, a bit of a cheap attempt to get famous in my
opinion. Then again I was not on this journey to judge others, in
fact I was there to do the opposite. Even though Lizzie still felt
quite hesitant, I had already decided to be opened minded about the
group and work with them. We were only going to get out of it if
something really weird happens.

“
A musical
about the Holocaust?” I asked, “That’s….different”

“
For sure!”
said Joe, “It’s going to be the biggest controversy since Jerry
Springer: The Opera. We might even get in the papers!”

I was right. This wasn’t
anything to do with the Director’s political beliefs or agenda.
This was just a deliberate shot at getting famous. It was very
seedy and unnerving but they were not causing any real harm with
it, well not yet anyway. As Joe Pepper turned to the man on the
piano to talk about some music, I leaned over to Lizzie and
whispered in her ear. I told her that if this play begins to
seriously upset people, then we’ll leave Joe and his actors to
their own devices. I told her that we’d only stay, as long as
people were watching the show without getting too mad about how
despicable the whole idea was. We knew that people would hate what
Joe was trying to do, so really it was just a matter of time before
me and Lizzie could leave. We didn’t want to seem rude at first, as
that would completely contradict what we were trying to do on this
road trip.

From that point on it became a
case of gritting our teeth and getting on with it. As we watched
the rehearsals we saw this horrific play unfold. We learnt how to
work the equipment while children as young as ten were pretending
to die in the gas chambers. We learnt the light and sound ques from
the script while the young actors sung very disturbing songs. On
the front of the script we discovered that Joe Pepper wrote the
book and music himself.

We were then suspicious that
Joe might be a little bit ill in the head. Once again we reminded
ourselves that we didn’t want to be a couple of back stabbers. We
chose to assist this horrible production, unfortunately before we
knew anything about it, so we had to keep our promise. We knew very
well how angry this show would make people. We knew that we could
only get out of it when things got too hot. Joe would be so caught
up in all the hype that we could leave without him knowing.

I know that many of you reading
are all asking the same question: Why didn’t we just leave then and
there? There are two valid answers to that question. One: we wanted
to keep our promise and carry out our mission of being good helpful
people. And two: we’d never come across anything this messed up
before and we wanted to see how much it would piss people off, not
in a cruel way but just out of genuine interest. As disturbed as we
both were by this encounter, both of us also knew that this was
going to be an adventure we wouldn’t soon forget. We would had been
mad to miss this opportunity to see the darker side of mankind, in
this deceitful quest for fame which we were going to become apart
of.

CHAPTER TWELVE

A day after our first meeting,
we were at the Train Station and ready to travel to Edinburgh. The
actors were boarding the train as me, Lizzie and a couple of the
train’s staff was putting the Moped into the cargo carriage at the
end of the train. Once the yellow Moped was inside the carriage and
firmly secured down, the doors of the carriage were closed. I
remember worrying about the bike for the entire trip, but I want to
assure you that it arrived in Scotland without any problems what so
ever.

Joe was nice enough to pay for
our tickets to Scotland. As nice as he was, we were still scared of
him. We really began to worry when we saw him place a copy of Mein
Kampf by Adolf Hitler into his hand luggage. We sat far away him
from for the entire journey. He was reading the book for the entire
four hours, without any realisation of the looks he was getting
from people passing by. Many people who saw the front cover of the
book, moved away from him quickly. I don’t blame them. He looked
like a complete nutter. Our suspicions about him were at boiling
point.

We got to talk
to the actors, all of whom were perfectly nice. They told us that
the hated the play and wanted to do
Grease
. Joe insisted on doing this
play because he wanted to “tell an important message”, what that
message was none of them were sure.

“
This isn’t
the first weird play he’s done” said one girl, “last year we did a
musical about the plague, before that we did a show about French
Prisoners at Dartmoor Prison, before that we did a show about The
First World War, the year before that we did a show about witch
burnings and who knows what we’ll be made to do next
year!”

“
Why don’t you
join another group?” asked Lizzie, “If you want to do happier
plays, I’m sure you can find a group that will do them”

“
This is the
only Youth Theatre group on our area” replied the girl sadly,
“there’s not really much else for kids like us to do”

“
We know how
you feel” I said, “that’s why we ranaway in the first
place”

“
You guys
ranaway?” asked the girl,

“
Yeah” I said,
“there wasn’t much else going for us, so we decided to make our own
destiny”

“
That was
silly” said the girl, who now had her hands on her hips, “where’s
that going to get you? If you don’t go to school, then university
and then get a job, that makes you a failure. You’ll just be a
lighting man all your life. You’ll probably go homeless within the
year. I’m going to an Arts College so I can be rich and famous,
while you spend the rest of your life sweeping the roads and
cleaning dustbins”

The girl then
gave us a smug look before going to tell her friends what she just
told us. We could see them looking at us and shaking their heads in
disapproval. From that point on I’ve always disliked young actors,
they are some of the worst “Marvellous” people you can get. I know
I’m becoming a bit cynical and unpleasant about these experiences,
but that’s how I felt at the time. Now I wish that I hadn’t let the
“Marvellousness” get to me like it did. Then again, I now wish that
I didn’t go with Joe at all. Nonetheless it was an experience that
made me see the side of humanity that I
didn’t
see with the band members of
Purple Skull, the “Marvellous” side.

For the rest of the journey the
actors and crew ignored us. That girl most likely told everyone a
distorted and exaggerated version of the conversation we had.
Everyone must had believed her overly dramatic version of the
story, making them all avoid us and only give us scorning looks as
they passed us to go to the toilet.

This treatment made both of us
feel very bad indeed. It wasn’t that we felt offended by what they
were doing, we just felt sorry for these people who could get so
worked up over something so silly. It would seem that these people
can get wound up about anything. It was a world I was previously
unaware of. I had no idea that people could be so egotistical, that
they were willing to hurt their fellow man in the way they do. It
was sad. Of course we didn’t say so, because we didn’t really want
to be thrown off the train.

We slept for most of the trip.
At first we didn’t want to in case those childish actors were to
draw stuff on our faces in markers while we slept. The journey was
so long that there wasn’t anything to do but sleep, so we allowed
our tiredness to get the better of us and we fell asleep.

Thankfully we slept for the
entire journey, as we were awoken by the overly excited Joe who
shook us violently to get up. We were at first a bit baffled and
forgot where we were. Then the memory returned to us, of the stupid
promise we made to help this crazy man so he could put on his
offensive show.

“
Come along
you two!” he said, still shaking us even though we were obviously
wide awake, “Time to go. We’re in bonny ol’ Scotland!”