The clock strikes fifteen, the clock does not strike

One year ago today I made my first – not so earth shatteringly interesting – post! This would be an appropriate occasion for an insightful look into blogging and life. Loss of The Bald Prima Donna has, however, left me temporarily without inspiration.

Time warps during productions. The wait after casting seems interminable. During the first rehearsals, opening night seems years away. Suddenly it’s next week and you’re nowhere near anywhere you’d like to be with your character, lines, blocking, marionette moves or whatever other special business the director has thought up to torment you with.

And then it’s over. You’re standing in the wings waiting to go on and you realise that this is the last time you’ll ever do this. The last time you’ll find everything extraordinary, amazing and such a strange coincidence, the last time you’ll grove to the Krishna Wallop. And it’s during this last performance that everything finally clicks. All those little nuances that you – and your fellow actors – have been seeking for the last four months choose this moment to appear, the last one.

But a production is more than just your time on stage. It’s the rehearsals, the après rehearsal drinks, the camaraderie, the ups and the downs and the getting through them. I won’t just be missing being Mrs Martin. I’ll be missing the rehearsals themselves; and those interminable hours of make-up and line runs and camera antics while waiting for part one of our double bill, The Maids, to finish. It’s goodbye not au revoir to the standard triple barbara in the dressing room.

There is always some degree of relief when a production ends. Especially as the final weeks tend to eat up a gargantuan amount of time. But after all the neglected washing up and laundry and e-mails have been dealt with, there are – as Kani said – some plays you’d rather not leave behind.

The Bald Prima Donna has been running at the Theatre de la Huchette in Paris with the same scenery, director and (intermittently) three of the original cast since February 16th 1957. Although we only had five nights of performances, fifty years might be a little excessive, even with this wonderful crowd :)