The Nights Must Fly By

Well that Bank Holiday weekend went a bit too quickly, didn't it? I keep reading Facebook statuses about people enjoying the sunshine, but I'm not at all bitter that I missed out of most of it due to running around all over the place, no, no not at all. Actually, not at all - I always get lazy when the sun comes out, luckily my weekend was pretty much booked up anyway so there was no chance of that happening. On Saturday we took the, 'Some Plays By Paul Richards' show up to Kendal. To say I felt fresh and active in the morning would have been a lie considering it was my birthday drinks the night before in which I met up with many good friends, drank many beers, and probably offended many people - I can't really remember much of it to be honest. According to Nadia I was dancing outside a pub, I literally have no recollection of this at all. All I can remember about the latter half of the evening is Izzy drinking my last pint for me because I (kind of) knew my limits but didn't want to seem un-manly by rejecting a beer, and Grace being wonderful for driving me home...I can only imagine what nonsense I must have been saying to that poor girl. I got her some Kendal Mint Cake to say thank you. Kendal itself was a long-ish drive, a 9 hour round trip, but Hind and I are so used to working with each other by now that it wasn't much of an issue - there's the banter for a couple of hours, a few good tunes, a line run, me getting stressed about how late we potentially could be, Hind will spill something on my floor, I'll de-stress when I realise we are going to make it in plenty of time...it's all quite routine now. Good show in Kendal - Wilf's Cafe is a fantastic venue and with food that I'd heartily recommend to anyone. My performance was a little rushed at first and the audience were, in the nicest (and factually correct) way, of an older nature and it took a few minutes for everyone to feel comfortable with each other - but we got there, and after about 10 minutes things were very much going the way they should be.

Due to my inability to switch off despite being exhausted after the drive home (instead of sleeping I started working on an idea for a cabaret show), I needed a bit of Red Bull to get me going yesterday morning, but it was worth it - a day at the ADC theatre with the WriteOn lot. I was acting in a fantastic short play by Jenny Scudamore called 'Multiple Choice: Vignettes' alongside Erica (who I've wanted to work with for a while as she's brilliant) and directed by Michelle (who I've worked with a lot, and she's still brilliant). It was proper serious theatre at times, I was slightly out of my comfort zone as an actor, because I still don't consider myself to actually be one. But there was also some nice comedic moments in there, just awkward glances, that kind of thing and as you know - if there's one thing I can do, it's awkward. A great challenge, so many potential intricacies in the script, and Michelle had so many ideas - I think we got a good few of them across, in front of a large (sold out?) audience. Also on the same bill, my new play, 'The Nights Must Fly By' was performed by Sarah Middle and Alan Hay, directed by Geoff Broad - they all did a cracking job with it, but from a writing point of view it wasn't my finest offering. Written in a rush, it's about a woman who gets frustrated by a smoke alarm continually going off, and she drifts from completely losing the plot to trying to retain her dignity...it's a nice enough concept, it got a few laughs, the feedback was largely positive, but this will probably go into my 'leave this for now' pile, despite the great work of the cast and director. I do like these WriteOn evenings though, I was at the ADC for 10 hours yesterday but it didn't feel like it - Hind and Izzy, who I both work with extensively of course, were both coincidentally in other plays on the same billing, and Sarah Ingram - who directed 'An Embarrassment Of Richards' and who is about to direct our forthcoming show, 'Redundancy Club', was the producer for the evening. In between the rehearsals, the tech and performance, it was nice to hang out with them all - Izzy and I even found time to run through, 'Redundancy Club' ahead of the staged reading tomorrow night.

Today I've been rehearsing with The Prisoner Of Mars ahead of some live shows soon and it's great to be playing some rock and roll, they're good tunes, they are. Then I met up with Alister, and then Grace, and then putting together the essential voiceover bits needed ahead of tomorrow's, 'Redundancy Club.' I live by myself, but my landlady is next door. She can only have assumed that I was talking to myself when I was recording the material on my iPhone. Not sure what she would have thought when I had to record the line, "get your kit off" in a particular pervy voice though...