Stop Counting Already!

That's it. I can't keep counting the weeks now, it just makes me come over all peculiar and unnecessary; especially as I have started to get enquiries from the world outside about my availability in November which doesn't bear thinking about right now. This action-packed schedule has meant not only scrambled brains, but  that  also our token day of leisure can simply become a day of frantic 'enforced' enjoyment, as you think of the  immersive week ahead and all that is still to be learned and remembered, as well as the acting that goes on top of those basics. You want to make the most of this lovely day of freedom, but what to do? Choices choices.
It's easy to feel torn between high-tailing it first thing on a Sunday morning, heading for a high hill somewhere for a long day's adventure and doing all the other things that 'normal' folk take for granted; go to the pictures, a country fair, watch the tennis/ alternative major sporting event of the day,  get rained on up a hill, barbecue etc etc. I might be going on rather a lot about this, but we are very much in a hot-house kind of bubble in this summer season thingy and the edges can get a bit blurred. Reality can feel a long way off. It's a rarefied atmosphere without a doubt. I use the hot house term without a hint of irony, as we squelch our way through a truly soggy July, tussling with the vital sartorial question of what to wear when being rained on almost constantly, while inside any sensible rain garment, you heat up to about 24 degrees.   Now that we have dressing rooms we do at least have somewhere to stash a change of clothing, dry off after another near-drowning and prepare to run about in a nice hot building, so a degree of composure can be restored.
 The tunnel of play number three is proving long and a little tortuous in places, but again you find yourself checking off the plus points:
I am working.
In a beautiful part of the world.
With one of the best bunches of people I have ever worked with.
I'm loving performing in two fab shows.
My digs are glorious.
There are excellent tea shops everywhere.
Not that bad then really.
So into this fourth week of rehearsal for Roma & the Flanellettes and we are knuckling down to the final learn which is inevitable in a new play as rewrites pop back and forth between writer & cast. We have been really lucky to get into the studio space to rehearse and to feel the banks of seats on two sides, which is so easy to forget about when in the upstairs foyer!  We are much more at home in the space now and are working to open the show out, while enjoying the intimacy that a small performance space can bring. This week we get to record some of the key Motown tracks featured in the show. A little light fun was had last week with a BBC Cumbria recording of excerpts from David Ward's  book Noisy Owls & Dead Nuns about funny show reports from the theatre. If the powers-that-be like the article, it may end up on Radio 4 Today Programme no less! These show reports are brief summaries of every show intended for the director,  including a summary of anything out of the ordinary or off-script that can sometimes occur- like the jammed door in Dry Rot, or an audience member getting involved in a show like last week in Bedroom Farce. Someone in the audience had clearly been in a production at some time and was to be heard quoting loudly at key moments and at one point uttered the punchline to a joke that Jessica Ellis should have said first. Much to her disgust! We have our own spy onstage in Bedroom Farce in the shape of Adrian Metcalfe who as Nick has the unenviable task of lying onstage all night. So he has to find ways to entertain himself!   Many of the TbtL show reports seem to feature consummate professional Peter McQueen who appears to have got up to all sorts here over the years, a lot of it involving his trousers or undergarments. I'm saying nothing. Buy the book!