The Roundup - Edition 82

A message from 
Rich Jones, Head.

In the past week, I’ve spent a few hours sitting with my father while he had some routine tests done – the sort of things that seem to come with getting older. Nothing dramatic, nothing worrying, just one of those appointments where the waiting takes far longer than the actual scan.

There is a certain atmosphere to these places: a mixture of patience, boredom and unexpected kindness. I was there long enough to see nurses and doctors swap shifts, the police come in and out dealing with everything from sickness to scraps, and people drifting between fear, humour and outright exhaustion. It was humanity in all its messy, honest forms. As the hours passed, I ran out of pages in my book, ran out of people to watch and even ran out of ways to eat a small bag of Maltesers slowly so that the chocolate would disappear.

Some of the moments stopped me in my tracks, though. I watched a nurse show a level of calm and compassion that would put most of us to shame, even when a patient hurled abuse at her. I watched Tunde, the blood pressure nurse, explain the same thing again and again to a drunk man who kept forgetting what he had asked. Among the noise and the mess, there was so much compassion and kindness.

We ended up next to an elderly couple, Norman and Rose, who were waiting for their own appointment slot. When Norman discovered I used to teach history, he suddenly asked if I could explain the Suez Crisis - something he said he’d heard about all his life but had never quite understood. So there I was, talking about Nasser and Eden while Rose dozed gently on his shoulder and my father flicked through an old magazine. The whole scene was oddly peaceful, a little pocket of conversation in the long drift of waiting.

Somewhere in that quiet stretch, watching people pause when a doctor came in to see if it was their turn to go, before settling back down when they realised they still weren’t first in the queue, a thought struck me: this slow rhythm - the long spells of nothing punctuated by brief bursts of activity - is exactly what this week, and a number of recent weekends, have looked like for so many of our students and staff involved in this week’s production of Chicago.

For every moment of applause, energy and spectacle, there are hours behind it that look very much like that clinic corridor: waiting, repeating, trying something again because it wasn’t quite right yet, supporting others while they take their turn.

In life, we always focus on the performance: the music, the lights, the costumes, the energy and applause. But creativity is very rarely just a string of fireworks. More often, it is patience stitched together with persistence. 

Hours of waiting. Hours of doing the same bit again. Hours of watching someone else get their scene right before it’s your turn. Our staff have poured in days and evenings that the audience will never see. And our students have matched them, rehearsal after rehearsal, giving their time and focus to something that grows slowly before it shines brightly. The same is true for our musicians, artists, robotics teams and sports squads. The real work sits beneath the surface.

Yes, they are learning teamwork and creativity. But they are also learning something far more valuable. Patience. Commitment. Sticking with something when it is no longer instantly thrilling. Accepting slow progress. Learning that not everything has to be fast to be worthwhile. In a world that is impatient and fixated on outcomes, these slow hours matter. They shape us just as surely as the big, showy moments.

Eventually, my father was called, seen quickly and declared perfectly well. On his way out, Rose tapped my arm to say that Norman had asked about Suez because his older brother had served there but had never spoken of it, and he had always wondered what had really happened. A small conversation in a patch of waiting had meant something to him, however small. It reminded me that patience has value. These slow moments shape us quietly, even when we think nothing is happening at all.

If you’re seeing Chicago this weekend, you’ll see the final result of hundreds of those quiet hours - the patience, the graft, the shared effort - all coming together in something joyful. If you’re joining us for one of the performances, you’re in for a treat. Enjoy the show.