Well, well, well. Here we are at the end of July and the cautionary words of our leader, Ian Forrest back in May rise up from the memory and smack us in the face. He said we'd be tired and he wasn't wrong. The thing is, anyone who has lived a bit, worked a bit and travelled a bit has experienced tiredness. So you think you know every kind of tiredness. Had to wait in an airport for a missing flight? Had to go without kip for a teething baby? Been kidnapped and chained to a radiator? ( too much?) Ok maybe I have gone too far using those metaphors, but relatively, the way everyone is feeling right now compared to three months ago, folk are pretty much at full stretch, even perhaps breaking point. If tempers are going to fray, my money is on them fraying sometime in the next ten days! We were warned about this tiredness and still we choose to go out for a beer or two, head off into those hills for a spot of fell-walking, go visit friends & family on our one day off. Strangely it would seem that we always have to find out for ourselves about the blooming obvious instead of taking someone's word for it even someone who knows from lengthy experience.. I don't know! Ian must despair of us lot at times!
Saturday night we bade farewell to Bedroom Farce and Doll's House for two weeks and settled in to the final technical phase of our Summer 2012 season.
The Great Expectations set has gone up and is now looming in the main house in all its Gothicky finery. I snuck in to have a peep and watched as the lighting effects were being added and played with. It looks incredible and I can't wait to see my talented chums get on it and bring Dickens' splendid story to life.
On a far more minimal but no less exciting platform, Roma & the Flanellettes is now being rehearsed for full 8 hour days this week. Suddenly in this marathon stint at TbtL, we in the studio show find ourselves with our evenings off, as the production team all focus on pulling the main house show together and we get to have a final week's work to fine-tune the new play that has yet to be tested in front of an audience. So, the plus side, we have some free evenings; on the downside, we're back to 10 o'clock starts. Swings and roundabouts ( Actors always have to have something to complain about!). We've recorded our Motown songs and they've been mixed beautifully by Matt Hall at the theatre. Young Jess Ellis as Delie would give any X-Factor finalist a run for their money singing A Love Like Yours and Nicky, Steven & I do a pretty decent job backing her up even if I say so myself. I have a whole new respect for backing vocalists after this experience. Unsung heroes and heroines of a good pop song!
Today we had our final costume fittings and finally got to see our Flanellettes group costumes. I think show-stopping is a fitting description...! Our designer Thomasin Marshall has done a great job plotting how each character looks throughout the play and has taken all our concerns and ideas on board gladly. Her inspiration for the karaoke costumes came from a group called the Marvellettes; check them out on Google images! We can now picture ourselves more fully in the world of Roma; costumes take on a new importance in traverse or theatre-in-the-round productions, where the three-dimensions of a proscenium arch is missing. For my character, as an outsider, I really wanted to feel that she would look like that and that her clothing would evolve as her story changed. I think we got that right today, which is just grand.
So two good full days ahead for us to go over the play in detail before our first run on Thursday. All will I am sure be well. Ever so slightly nervous of performing it in front of the writer and our colleagues before going into the studio space and our tech next week.
I keep thinking of that calming piece by Julian of Norwich; 'All shall be well and all shall be well & all manner of things shall be well'. Or words to that effect!
It'll be alright on the night.
To all my esteemed colleagues, toi toi toi.
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