Two out of three ain’t bad

And I’m back again with shameless advertising part the second! I was meant to be keeping some kind of writer’s/director’s/nervous wreck’s blog on The Mourning Primrose, but what with one thing and another I’ve had neither the time nor inclination.

I never thought directing this play was going to be easy, but it sure feels like it’s been a lot harder than it ought to have been. At least compared to any of the shows I’ve ever been involved in – though I’m sure my former directors will want to take me to task on that, the Fish in particular!

The Primrose has been beleaguered right from the outset. Firstly, there’s a lot on at the FBS this autumn and I’ve been struggling to find suitably sized rehearsal space at the times we need it.

Then an injury in the second week of rehearsal meant I needed to find a replacement for a character that never shuts up and is in every scene of the play bar one. The replacement was half way up a mountain in Chile for three weeks.

After reshuffling the cast, sod’s law stated that it was the reshuffled people we’d been focusing on thus far, and we needed to redo everything with the new cast. But a variety of stealth business trips, illnesses and general wtfness meant it was an unbelievable five weeks before we had a rehearsal in which everyone called actually showed up. (And as there were only two people called that day, it was a bloody good job too!) At the nadir, I was on stage standing in for three different people, a nightmare for all involved: ‘No, no, no! It’s quite simple: when I’m wearing the antlers, I’m Cuthbert…’

Sorting out all the above and being sick with salmonella for a couple of weeks also means I’m personally way behind with admin, costumes, whatever you care to name.

Yet we’ve just survived a horrendously long weekend containing two of the most laborious rehearsals of any play. A first full walkthrough (with blocking incomplete) on Saturday that went straight into a full off-book walkthrough on Sunday was cruel and unusual, but necessary under the circumstances. So a huge thanks to all cast and crew – it went far better than I’d hoped it ever could!

It’s now six weeks and four days to curtain up. We’re under-rehearsed, but pretty much back on track.

There was a point – after everything that could go wrong seemed to have done – when I wondered why I ever thought I could do this. Someone being hurt so badly in rehearsal they had to pull out of the show – a failure for me, whatever the extenuating circumstances, because I was in charge. Gaping holes in the backstage and technical crew (still true), and hordes of people not showing up to rehearsals – a failure for me, because I couldn't motivate people to do so. Struggling for rehearsal space – my first failure in the management skill department, plus all the things I'm personally behind on. Top that with the seesawing confidence that comes with dealing with your own work and...

The Players had just been asked to do something to commemorate the 250th anniversary of William Blake’s birth, and the director of that was finding it tricky to put together a cast as our rehearsal periods overlap almost perfectly. I asked myself, what if I just say to him, ‘You want a budget, a theatre and a cast? You got one!’

Anyone who read my preoccupations will know I have one for independence, the flip side of that coin being a horror of dependence. I hate to need anything or anyone. If I can’t do something alone, I shouldn’t be doing it.

So I put on my Meatloaf mask, looked in the mirror and asked, do you want it, do you need it, do you love it? I do want love it, I do want it, but yes, I could give it all to Blake. And when I realised I could walk away and survive, I knew I didn’t need to. The show will go on.

Those two out of three aren't the traditional ones, but they still ain’t bad, and are what I aim for in all aspects of life.

Patches of Hidden Icing

Did I say I was back? I seem to have neglected my blog for almost another month. Not only have I been spreading myself thinner than Becel margarine on a weightwatcher’s rye cracker, but thing after thing has been going wrong and, strangely, I just haven’t felt like publicly whinging about it – damn this year of the pink toilet!

But now it’s time for some shameless advertising, kicking off with this season’s Poetry & Jazz – the food edition. What with the play, the move and all the calamities, I said to myself that I wasn’t going to do Poetry and Jazz this autumn. I spoke to myself sternly in the mirror every morning and said I simply didn’t have the time, no matter how much Joel twisted my arm.

But Joel left my arms alone and unleashed puppy eyes on me; and at the last moment I found myself not only doing Poetry and Jazz, but performing (and therefore memorising) two poems and a 1,600–word story!

The full-length version of Turkey Wrangling was originally written as a sort of pastiche of Joel’s Turkey Hills series and is therefore set in the fictional town of the same name in Massachusetts. For some reason that now escapes me, I therefore decided I would do all the speech in an American accent…

Joel, who grew up in Massachusetts, gave me a few pointers. He didn’t, however, comment after my first accent rehearsal. I finally plucked up the courage to ask him about it in the pub afterwards. The reply? He hadn’t ‘noticed anything untoward’. Err … hadn’t noticed I was doing it, or hadn’t noticed anything hideous? Hadn’t noticed I was doing it! I attempted to take this as a complement, figuring that if he hadn’t noticed, it can’t have been so diabolical, nor had I gone all cringingly Southern belle on everyone’s ear holes, as is the unfortunate tendency.

However, after tonight’s final rehearsal – still no comments from Joel – I remain convinced that my American accent sucks ear and I have no one to blame but myself.

Oh, and I still don’t have any curtains.

Home Canderel Home

Has it really been a month since I came back from India? Various sicknesses and ordeals have shadowed the past few weeks to such an extent that I haven’t felt like blogging. I may get around to gradually filling in the gaps, just as I may eventually get around to writing about India!

Where to start? Here I am, sitting at my desk in what’s meant to be my home, but I feel as if I’ve just dragged all my stuff into a hotel room.

The move itself was utterly miserable, took forever and cost me a fortune.

The charity shop came round to look at my (perfectly serviceable) excess furniture and decided they didn’t want it – one hour before the van was due. I was still stuffing clothes into bin liners fifteen minutes before the van was due. I had so much stuff even after my mass junking that I had to pay for two and a half hours of overtime – plus the removal men’s dinner break in Hesburger! The cleaning firm I hired didn’t do a very good job, the new owners complained, and I had to go back and de-cat piss the bathroom.

Autumn with its work and theatre commitments is now in full swing, but my moving house to-do list is still overflowing with little household tweaks that I ought to see to before it’s too late. (In over four years in the old place, I never got around to putting up the bathroom mirror.) I now have three huge windows at ground level, no curtains and – after decades of living high up – a habit of wandering around with little or nothing on.