Tonight!!!

First night of the competition last night. The adjudicator looked like a kindly slender Santa Claus so I feared he might despise anything "racy". But then he told someone off for saying "dyke" in too much of a throwaway way and I thought we might be back in the game.

He seems to be a very thorough man, reviewing the set, the costumes, the characters versus the script, the direction and then the individual performances. Just as the score sheet would have him to. But he's not one to speak for the sake of it.

Nor is he one to mince his words. He sharply told the last group that they hadn't quite pulled it off. And on that very downbeat note, the curtains were hauled shut and we all went home.

I feel anticipation.

We're into the final stretch. Dress rehearsal Sunday. Penultimate rehearsal tonight.  Ultimate rehearsal tomorrow. Competition starts Thursday. I'm selling raffle tickets or something. We're on on Saturday. I'm very biased but the dress rehearsal looked wonderful.

Monday night. A "crafting" frenzy. I choose the word advisedly as there wasn't much actual craft involved. Just lots of "hacks". Corner cutting.  Hasty fixes. But I have some nicely adorned cushions for my set now. Which was the purpose of the exercise.

So that's January done then. It has lurched past in a sea of working, working,  some rehearsing and more working.  Lion, Witch and Wardrobe aside, I haven't been anywhere near a theatre,  a cinema or a concert hall. Though I did finally notch up the complete five series' of Breaking Bad which is well and truly worth all the hyperbolic hype. (Tautology? Probably.)

It was enlivened mainly, at the eleventh hour, by a photoshoot (only partly attended by me because - hey, guess what - I was working - at the weekend) with the rather wonderful Judith Fieldhouse. To form - how would you say? - the multimedia element (if you're being pretentious) of the forthcoming one act play.

As the play debates the importance and influence of self-image (in a very school girl type way) surely, I thought, it should feature some element of these self-images. So the photographer crept into the script along with the girls' own social media endeavours.

So the photo shoot on Saturday consisted of a combination of Judith shooting as photographer Christian. Portraits of the girls as part of the exhibition of photography featuring influential Scots. And then Judith shooting as a teenage girl would. Complete with selfie stick to ensure the angle was right for her camera. 

We'll end up (hopefully) with a couple of elegant masterpieces and a bunch of daft disposable teenage-style selfies that document the demise of the girls' relationship as jealousy took over their until then BFFness.

The snap below is my amateur version of one of Christian's shots of Nina. One influential Scot with another.  With a handily discarded park bench that made the whole thing a bit more interesting. 

It was an extremely cold Saturday at the end of January so hats off to the girls for patience,  their indulgence of my silly vision with various costume changes and braving the weather and impending sleet with narry a hat (mostly) for comfort.

But bigger hats off and thanks to Judith who gave up the other half of her Saturday to traipse about Edinburgh snapping a passel of (two) (not) brats in the cold, the sly sleet and the threatening to rain under the louring sky to take a whole pack of pictures for this vanity play. I hope they end up serving her as well as they'll serve us.