Events, dear boy, events

The real story behind the scenes of an arts festival or awards ceremony

(This piece originally appeared on my Substack, Artless. Subscribe to that here.)

Zadie Smith, in her sympathetic and inevitably empathetic review of the film Tár, classes Cate Blanchett’s title character as a (fellow) ‘Cultural Luminary’. This class, it’d seem, have it great; Smith writes:

Cultural Luminaries make a lot of money. Their imperious attitudes and witty bons mots are in demand everywhere [and delight] the grey-haired festival goers.

What about the festival workers though? What’s it like to attend not the awards ceremony so much as the Cultural Luminary him or herself, escort them from hired car to backstage, wait on their dietary needs and quibbles, screen their mingling? What’s it like doing the weeks of work that set up the Cultural Luminary for all their witty bons mots?

You start via email with an agony of over-polite scheduling: cancellations and suspected counter-cancellations, till your boss, at first indulgent of every change, goes quiet on the thread and asks to be switched from Cc to Bcc. On a private thread with your counterpart subaltern, you swap emails ending in a frustrated but amused ‘dammit!’ or a flat ‘lol’ or ‘ARGH! All the best.’ The PA confides in…