Friday, October 31, 2008

The Twelfth Night hangover.

I do find myself standing in a more sturdy wide-legged way than I might have a few months ago.

JGH accused me of enjoying transvestite ways.

Thursday, October 30, 2008

Midsummer at the Traverse by David Greig and some song writing man last night. Just lovely. A brilliant little gem of a play in fact.

We all enjoyed it after having met in the foyer.

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Post show and it's back to work and you wish you had to rush off to the theatre. Same old.

Sunday, October 26, 2008

So the final night of the Twelfth. I got my lines mostly right. Though paused too long before I greeted old friend Antonio in the final scene but maybe no-one noticed. I did the fight technically correctly but again, felt even as I was 'punching' poor Matt that I was wholly unconvincing so suspect Gordon would have suggested we redo it. And I didn't spend too much time standing with my leg cocked in the way that a girl would. I think. So overall, it was probably alright.

I shall miss strutting and fretting as a man. I shall particularly miss my hat. And my dressing room chat with the lovely Esther who had approximately as little stage time as I so plenty potential for nonsensical exchanges. And I shall miss the Shakespearean tongue. Particularly my this is the air, that is the glorious sun nonsensical monologue, which though alarming, I probably enjoyed most. With the possible exception of my do I stand there... revelatory chat.

I shall also strangely miss my twin. A part-time circumstance that I don't suppose comes along all that often.

Saturday, October 25, 2008

Well. Siobhan says it's brilliant. (Twelfth Night I mean.)

I rendered my fight perfectly tonight - though Russell said I punched too fast. But in comparison to last night where poor Matt was left writhing on the ground in be-moustachioed agony for no real reason, it was dreamy.

I also got my lines mostly right apart from the persistent misquote about the tears falling upon my cheek where I have my words slightly the wrong way round.

My own mother said that on a certain diagonal angle, she struggled to tell us (Lorna and I) apart.

Thursday, October 23, 2008

The lighting guy fell asleep over the lighting board last night. I'm sure that's a good sign.

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

First run-through last night in 'performance conditions'. And it could have been worse. It was riddled with the usual hiccups but nothing fundamentally awful apparently. And apparently Lorna and I look very alike, not to say identical. I await unbiased opinion!

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

So a fairly cultural weekend after a Friday night drinking tequila. Although I say that and Saturday morning saw me dragging my weariness around Scotland’s national museum alternately making masks with the child and throwing up sorrowfully in a cubicle sized toilet. Ah, sweet spirits hangovers.


But the day improved with Something Wicked This Way Comes at the Lyceum that evening. A co-production with the National Theatre and the beautifully named Catherine Wheels, this was a lovely show. I hadn’t read the book or seen the film. But at last, when they said it, I twigged that this was perchance the story from which the famous thumb pricking line comes…


And I managed to sneak in Burn After Reading before Sunday’s technical rehearsal and costume check. A stellar cast. A humourous enough story. A farce for the modern day audience who won’t tolerate quite such bloodless but ridiculous mayhem as the French writers offered up a century ago. But worth seeing I would venture.


And now we’re in the theatre. Actually now as it happens, sat at my dressing table wearing one of a pair of very cute little hats that Lorna has brilliantly fashioned from a pair of matching trilbies for the both of us twins. I shall post this tomorrow.


My first scene has been skipped. I await further stage opportunities. Although we do yet have the rest of the week.

Friday, October 17, 2008

My favourite Twelfth Night moment must surely be when Ross dances onto the stage grinning posturing and be-stockinged and insinuates himself around Caroline who assumes a fantastic expression of unbelievable disdain and disgust. I would hand over my ticket money for this moment alone.

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Dammit.

They won't let me cut Pugilist Specialist.

This is where honesty gets you.

Monday, October 13, 2008

Oh dear. So quote of the night on Saturday was surely: "but I've just signalled SOS four times with the lights and they still haven't done anything".

I'll leave you to imagine the rest but let's just say the frivolities climaxed with Esther running across the road in the dead of night and lurking ominously outside His front door.

I await my asbo.

Friday, October 10, 2008

Another neat demonstration of the gulf between the trained and the untrained. DG told me more in about 3 minutes last night than I feel I have learnt on an 'acting' front for a long long time. For did you know that a man walks from the stomach or shall we say, crotch and sometimes very rarely, head whereas a girl walks with her breasts or possibly her head, perhaps if she's an intellectual. I did not know this. And I have always wondered when acting people say 'well you need to get the character's walk first and foremost', whether there was any great science to it but I have never known. And now I know a little more. It still does not mean I can act, of course, but as Tesco used to say before they became Britain's biggest discounter, every little is useful.

Thursday, October 09, 2008

Another lazy gym session where I sit on the exercise bike with a script. I got through A Day in the Death of Joe Egg last night. By Peter Nichols I think his name is.

This, or bits of it, seem to be done fairly regularly in this competition so it felt like a sensible bet. Having read the script, I'm rather to stumped as to where everyone gets their 10 year old paralysed girl from. And whilst it's a great story (parents living out numerous fantasies about their inactive daughter being well but then, with the visit of some posh amdram friends, the cracks start to show), it's a bit suburban for my liking. Though suburban with a hard edge (in act two, father tries to murder daughter to put her out of her misery).

Not my cup of tea but another to score off the list at any rate.

Wednesday, October 08, 2008

It's Shelagh StePHenson and I read another of hers on the train returning from Glasgow last night. The Memory of Water. It was quite funny actually which I didn't quite expect after the tale of domestic abuse there's no excuse in the same volume. But it's too long so can rule that one out.

Another dragging trip through the dusty guady academic corridors and endless stairs to the play library. It was less frantic yesterday. Only one of my competitors had visited, plus a woman I don't know plus an anticipated trip from Wendy to pick up some Pinter scripts for some secret mission.

Then a rehearsal and then surprisingly a snatched clip of dapper Bart, the Mercators man, on Newsnight Scotland. Good to know that the amateur theatre crowd are speaking out in this time of economic crisis.

Tuesday, October 07, 2008

Reading reading reading. Read three plays about families from the Traverse at the weekend, mostly about disease and death. Dreary. Some shortish plays by Tom Stoppard. Witty and hilarious but I just can't get that excited about them. A very bleak play by Shelagh someone Stevenson maybe called Five kinds of silence. I loved the title but the story tells the tale of a mother who almost conspired in the abuse of her daughters by her husband by not speaking out in their defence. Then the daughters shoot the husband and get put into prison.

There must be more to short plays than this.

Friday, October 03, 2008

First full run-through of Twelfth Night last night and do you know, it was fairly decent. Although you still couldn't hope to see a less manly man than I. But I'm hardly on stage so it hopefully doesn't matter toooo much.

Thursday, October 02, 2008

I would love to do bedbound by Enda Walsh. It's a cracking play. The format would be familiar to anyone who saw the Walworth Farce or the New Electric Ballroom. Comfort and consolation through story-telling that hides present pain. In a nutshell.

Features an older man and his daughter who has a 'twisted back' and is confined to bed. They would both have to be brilliant actors. Irish accents. And it's chock full of disgusting language. I feel I can't do that to Susan...

Wednesday, October 01, 2008

Blocked my remaining scenes last night for Twelfth Night. Hooray!

And the SCDA library was again oddly a seething mass of humanity. (Well, there were 3 people in addition to the librarian in there.) I felt panically like they were stealing all the good plays so wildly started snatching up any old script...