Verity is a dream to drive; she has 6 gears and 6 seats. Unfortunately, the gears don’t pull the load so well anymore (I blame Carl Davies for his heavy set designs!) and out of the 6 seats, only three seats have a view of where we are going. The front seat passengers have to describe the journey to the back seat passengers, especially the one sat directly behind the driver’s seat, which is the seat fondly known as 'the black hole of Calcutta'. But if you're like Angela, and you want a quiet place to call her kids, or Marissa who's good at sleeping long journeys – the black hole of Calcutta is a good place to be...not!
I bought Verity four years ago. It was love at first sight. She was bright red of course, big, shiny and the Mercedes Sprinter that I'd always yearned after. I phoned my big, bad brother, Bobby, my UK award-winning Car Sales Manager brother for top tips. He gave me trade secrets, tonnes of them, including that to seal the deal, I had to look them in the eyes, nod my head, and say, "That's on the road". "Yes" they replied, unconsciously mimicking my head nodding. I didn't realise that this meant they'd agreed to tax it for a year!
And since that moment, Verity has shown us fun; she's lived a long and happy life; she's taken us to places no other theatre company has dared to tread. The biggest nightmare of a journey has to be the one through Wales... in a blizzard. I wasn't there, neither was any sight of the road. I've just 'enjoyed' it on YouTube (enjoyed it after they arrived home safely - had it been a live stream, I'd have had kittens).
My proudest moment was watching Sarah reverse park it; Sarah was too nervous (and too young for our insurance) to drive our first scrappy white Ford, but Verity's power-steering gave her the confidence to take to the wheel and ride high.
One of my favourite tour games is to choose a well-known song, play it loudly through the crackling speakers, and to all sing along in unison replacing the lyrics with words from road signs we fly past - traffic control alerts, even the sat nav can join in as backing vocals. It's especially good sung along with Joni Mitchell or Kate Rusby (but please note, only front seat passengers can play as back seats have limited visibility).
So why do we need a new van? Well, next year we plan to take both Finding Joy and The Best Thing back out on the road, as well as tour to care homes, and to Europe for international touring, plus researching the new show for the following year in collaboration with the Mercury Theatre Colchester. It all sounds so very easy, so straightforward, it's so far from it.
I'm rubbish at asking for help, but Vamos Theatre is a project-by-project-run organisation that has to work with everything we’ve got to make ends meet. So, even the smallest contribution to the campaign to replace Verity makes a genuine difference: every contribution, small and large, makes us tingle every time the crowd fundraising target gets closer. And let's face it, our target of £4000 will not buy us a new van, but it will go towards it, to help us encourage others to match fund: as well as helping us to share with you, our audience, what keeping a touring company like ours on the road really means.
We can always surpass our target, buy the van outright and crack on with fundraising for the new tour (she dreams). Just think, with your support, just think of all the people we can make laugh, make cry, make think, all in the name of theatre. Please help, I really wouldn't ask if we didn't really need it.
Thank you, and with love: Rachael
To donate to our campaign via our crowdfunding site, just click here