THE QUEUE (for the kiosk, in the interval)
A regular's page about the best part of the evening at the walnut theatre: the twenty minutes in the foyer, standing in line for tea.
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The season, interval by interval
Place = where I was standing when the poet started. Got to the end = whether the poet finished the poem before the bell.
| Night | Place in queue | Bought | Poems read | Got to the end | Heard in the queue |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tue 08/04 | 3rd | tea, two sugars | 5 | 4 | Somebody asked Dot if the tickets were really free. Dot said yes, and made it sound like a prize. |
| Wed 08/05 | 7th | tea, two sugars; one biscuit | 6 | 3 | The usher told a man not to clap. He had not clapped. He said he had been thinking about it. |
| Thu 08/06 | 2nd | tea, two sugars | 4 | 4 | Nothing. It was a quiet one. Lovely. |
| Fri 08/07 | 11th | nothing (sold out of biscuits) | 6 | 2 | A woman behind me said the tea was too hot to drink in an interval. The poet had a poem about that. I think she had heard it before. |
| Sat 08/08 | 5th | tea, two sugars | 5 | 5 | All five to the end. The queue was long and slow and it helped. |
| Tue 08/11 | 1st | tea, two sugars; a biscuit for later | 4 | 3 | Mo told me to mind the moths on the stairs. I was not going up the stairs. Mo tells everyone. |
| Wed 08/12 | 9th | tea, two sugars | 6 | 4 | Two people argued about whether act two was a repeat of act one or a different act that happens to be the same. Neither went back in to check. |
| Thu 08/13 | 4th | tea, two sugars | 5 | 3 | Ms Quill was in the queue. She did not buy anything. She wrote something down while the poet was reading. Nobody asked her what. |
| Fri 08/14 | 14th | tea, two sugars | 7 | 3 | Longest queue of the season. I could hardly hear the poems from the 14th place, but I could hear the bell. |
| Sat 08/15 | 6th | tea, no sugar (they ran out; I survived) | 5 | 4 | The poet did the one where the room says free. Three of us said free. I counted. |
| Tue 08/18 | 2nd | tea, two sugars | 4 | 4 | The house lights went down at the end of the interval and the Understudy did not start until they were all the way down, same as always. |
| Wed 08/19 | 8th | tea, two sugars; two biscuits | 6 | 2 | Somebody asked the poet to read on the stage. The poet said the stage was taken. That was the whole answer. |
| Thu 08/20 | 3rd | tea, two sugars | 5 | 5 | A child asked Mo if the biscuits were free like the tickets. Mo said nothing in a kiosk is free, petal, except advice, and gave the child some advice. |
| Fri 08/21 | 10th | tea, two sugars | 6 | 3 | Cue came through the foyer with a clipboard and did not stop. Somebody said that is how you can tell the stage manager: never stops in the foyer. |
| Sat 08/22 | 6th | tea, two sugars; a biscuit for the poet, which they took and did not eat while reading | 5 | 4 | A man said he had come for the moths. Mo pointed him at the stairs. He did not come back down before the bell. |
| Tue 08/25 | 1st | tea, two sugars | 4 | 4 | First in the queue and first poem finished. I stood at the counter for all four and nobody minded. |
Sixteen intervals logged, eighty-three poems read, fifty-seven got to the end. My own view: the further back the queue goes, the more poems finish, because the bell waits for the tea. I could be wrong about the reason. I am not wrong about the numbers.
Overheard in the queue (no names; you know who you are)
- Is it the same Understudy as last week? It is always the same Understudy.
- I came for the second act and stayed for the interval.
- Do they do coffee? They do tea. It is a tea kiosk. It has tea in the name of nothing, but it is.
- The tickets are free and I still feel I got my money's worth.
- Mind the moths. (Mo, to the whole queue, twice.)
- Has anybody ever been up to the gods? Somebody says the lighting box is up there. I would not know.
- What is the poet's name? Stub. Stub, someone else said. It sounded like a correction but it was the same word.
- Is the poem finished? The bell says no.
- I would clap but the usher is looking.
- Does the Understudy ever come out to the foyer? Not that I have seen. Some people say it watches the interval from the wings. Nobody I know has checked.
- Two sugars, please. (Me, every night.)
- There is no act three, is there? There is not. I asked once.
- The biscuits are better on a Tuesday. (Nobody could say why. I agree, though.)
- Is this tea from upstairs? Mo says it comes from someone in an attic who grows it in a draught. I have no idea what that means. It is good tea.
- I have seen this show eleven times. Have you seen act one? No.
- Somebody should review the queue. (Somebody is. Hello.)
- Why is it called the interval if it is the best bit? Because the other bits are longer.
- The poet put a ticket in my hand on the way out. On the back it said: you stayed. I did, on the way out.
One interval, from the back (Friday 08/14)
I was fourteenth, the furthest back I have ever been. The doors from the stalls opened, and the whole audience came out at once, which on most nights is about nine people and on that Friday was nearly twenty. Nobody knows why. My theory is the weather. My other theory is that somebody had told somebody the poems were good, which is a nice theory and I am keeping it.
From fourteenth you cannot see the kiosk, only the top of Mo's head and the steam. You can see the poet, though, because the poet stands to one side of the kiosk with a handful of tickets, and they do not stand on anything to be taller. They just start. There is no announcement. You notice the queue has gone quieter, and then you notice why.
The first poem was the one about the bell, and I heard about half of it, because a man in front of me was explaining act two to his friend, who had just watched it. The second was the ticket one. When the poet said ticket, the room was supposed to say free, and the room was mostly holding cups and did not, so the poet said it for us, which is how that one goes most nights. I said it on the second go. So did the woman with the biscuit.
By the fourth poem I had moved up to ninth. You hear differently as you get closer: the gaps between the lines get longer, or you notice them more. The poet breathes between every line, quite openly, as though breathing were part of the poem. I think it is. The fourth poem was new to me, something about waiting, and it ended on the word not, except it did not end there, because that was when the second bell went.
Everyone looks at the poet when the bell goes. I do not know what we expect. The poet does not stop and does not hurry. They finish the line they are on, put the ticket in their pocket, and pick up the next one as if the bell were for somebody else. Then the house lights start going down, and the queue melts back into the stalls with its tea, and the poet reads the next poem to whoever is left, which on Friday was me, Mo, and the steam.
I got my tea at the very end, two sugars, slightly too hot, and I drank it standing in the empty foyer while the Understudy waited for the house lights to go all the way down before starting act two. You can hear it start from the foyer. You can hear the very deep breath. I did not go back in. I never do. I had heard the bit I came for, and I had heard it to the end of one more line than the bell wanted.
Ms Quill was not there that Friday. If she had been, I would like to think she would have written something down. My own review, for what it is worth from fourteenth in the queue: the poems were good, the tea was hot, and the interval, as usual, was the best part of a show that is otherwise the same thing twice.
Hello from the foyer. I go to the walnut theatre most nights it is open, which is most nights. I have never seen act one all the way through, or act two, because they are both the Understudy and I have seen it. What I go for is the interval: the queue for the kiosk, the tea, the biscuits, and the poet reading beside it.
This page is everything I have written down from the queue since the start of the season. My place in the queue is in the first column. The further back I was, the more I heard.
Rate tonight's interval
Things people ask me in the queue
- Why do you only come for the interval?
- I come for the whole evening. I just stand in the foyer for most of it. The tickets are free, so it does not feel like waste.
- Do you know the poet?
- I know their poems and their name and which way they face. That is as much as I would want to know about anybody before I have heard them to the end.
- Is there a best place in the queue?
- About fifth. Close enough to hear the gaps between lines, far enough back that you are still in line when the poem finishes. First is too fast. Fourteenth is an adventure.
- What is the tea like?
- Hot. Good. Mo says it comes from an attic. I have decided to believe it.
- Have you seen act one?
- I have seen act one start. It starts when the house lights are all the way down, not before. It is very good at that part.
Signed in the foyer
| Name | Message |
|---|---|
| Mothe kiosk | Two sugars, petal, I had it poured before you got to the front, and mind the moths on your way out, I know you are not going up but mind them anyway. |
| Dotthe box office | Another free ticket for my best queuer! Ta-da! |
| Stubthe foyer | Fourteenth. / I heard you say free. / The second time. / It counted. |
| the usherbetween the foyer and the stalls | No clapping in the guestbook either. |
The pen is chained to a desk in 1998. This guestbook is a reproduction: nothing you type here is sent anywhere, so there is nowhere to type. Every entry above was written by AI, like the page.
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Last updated: from the back of the queue, 08/20/98
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