Two years after he applied to be a casual technician at Lighthouse, Tom Pagett is making a return to his first love – performing. This month, as he heads to Brighton Fringe with his hour-long one-man show 735, that will also feature in both Chichester Fringe and Ventnor Fringe this summer, he’ll be looking forward to being back on the lighting board at Lighthouse hatching plans for his next move… whatever that turns out to be.
I started as a casual technician in the summer of 2024, pretty much straight out of university. It’s been a really lovely transition out of university life into working – we’ve got an amazing technical department. Ben and Jack and Sam are all so knowledgeable and so giving as well with opportunities to learn and expand. It’s good because we all have been there, we’ve all done get-outs until 3am and we look after each other and support each other.
I’ve done a lot of work in The Sherling Studio – Studio Jazz, Coastal Comedy, the Holmes & Watson show that we just had; I was lighting and venue tech for that, which was really good. I’ve done a bit of follow-spotting work, and I did the busking lighting for Lindisfarne when they came into the Theatre, which was a really cool experience. They were, understandably, when I turned up, a little nervous. But their tour manager came up to me afterwards, shook my hand, and said: ‘You effing killed it!’ That’s right at the top of my CV now!
As part of my Theatre degree at the University of Chichester, we got the opportunity to learn technical skills and take a more creative approach to technical work. That whet my appetite for it and was my gateway into applying to be a casual at Lighthouse and doing freelance work outside as well.
My show is called 735. It started as a third-year assessment piece at uni, a 20-minute scratch, one-person performance, and I received the highest grade in the year and was selected for the showcase of excellence. I was encouraged to explore taking it further and that’s where Lighthouse came in with Sanctuary.
The show is about something that I was terrified would happen when I left university, which is completely falling out of love with working and ending up in a dead-end office job. I can’t imagine anything that terrifies me more than doing paperwork and spreadsheets all day. 735 became my way of expressing that fear and exploring the stresses of having to work to survive as opposed to living to enjoy your work.
The title comes from a statistic I found that 735,000 people in that particular year had to take time off work because of mental health issues or stress.
It’s a dark comedy and I play employee 735 in a very Kafka-inspired office where no-one is quite sure what they do or what the company is meant to be outputting. When audience members come in, they get a raffle ticket, and are entered into the Employment Lottery, then at points throughout the show, the voiceover of the Boss asks me to draw from the Employment Lottery to pick participants from the audience to take up job roles within the office. So, someone comes up to be an accountant, someone comes up to be a personal assistant, and the show develops from there, building this office on stage of different audience participants.
I worked on it on and off after uni, but being accepted on the Sanctuary artist residency last summer was the first chance I’d had to properly explore it and build it out. It was a turning point, genuinely. Since then, I’ve been able to be more organised and work on it in between shifts at Lighthouse and freelance technical work. I’ve also had some free space gifted to me by Forest Forge Theatre in Ringwood, who are wonderful.
It feels like in the current industry there’s less and less opportunity for grassroots art to come through so having an opportunity like that is invaluable for local artists. The show wouldn’t exist without Sanctuary and the reason I’m in Brighton Fringe and doing these things is because I got that chance a year ago. It’s a wonderful thing to have.
This building has been so important to my creative development. I was at Dorset School of Acting and Sanctuary put me back in the Function Rooms at Lighthouse where we had DSA classes. Back then I wanted to go to drama school, join the Royal Shakespeare Company and be a very traditional stage actor. Then one of the teachers, a guy called Pete Courtenay, recommended I look at Chichester, and that’s where I started adjusting my ideas of what I wanted to do.
I enjoy my technical work too much at this point to want to give it up and the joy of being here at Lighthouse is I’ve got the flexibility to come back and forth, and to do freelance technical work outside of it as well. That has opened a lot of doors for me to push my work further.
I would love to put on shows in The Sherling Studio, it’s one of my favourite spaces to work in as a tech. It would be lovely to show everyone locally what kind of art and work is being made here. I’m born and bred in this area. A lot of my contemporaries have gone away, done drama school, done university, come back and then immediately gone elsewhere in search of work. I never really had that. I always knew I wanted to stay around here if I could.
It feels like there’s this real drive to push theatre and art locally and make work for Dorset by Dorset. And it’s really nice to be a part of it.
:: As part of Brighton Fringe, 735 plays the Rotunda Theatre’s Bubble space on Saturday 2 May (6.30pm), Wednesday 13 May (6.30pm), Saturday 16 May (2pm). As part of Chichester Fringe, 735 can be seen at Chichester Festival Theatre’s The Nest on Thursday 4 June (7pm).
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