Yesterday we made the trip down to Bristol for the first performances of our two Edinburgh Fringe shows - Probably The Greatest Goal Ever Scored and There's Absolutely Nothing Wrong With Oscar Pike. When we agreed this performance a few months back there was a general feeling that it was probably a week too soon looking at our fairly tight rehearsal schedule, but we were keen to perform at this venue having done our research so we accepted the contract and went for it anyway. Since then we've had some sad and unfortunate off-stage issues meaning our rehearsal time has been extremely limited, but we still approached this one in a positive frame of mind. A week before the show I didn't know my lines for the Oscar show - literally, none of them. It shouldn't have worked really. But...
Running the script with Izzy and Alan-the-soundman on the way whilst driving was fun, car trips are fun, and there we met up with Grace and Michelle to grab lunch and look at the venue on arrival in the early afternoon. Despite some initial technical problems (something to do with lights, I wasn't really paying attention) we all loved the venue - it's a great little space, it's called The Little Black Box Theatre and that's exactly what it is - a little black box. Absolutely perfect for what we do - great size, and because we're from out of town and unlikely to attract a huge crowd it wouldn't take much to make it feel busy. Rehearsals in the space in the afternoon felt a little stressful - but that's because we care so much, and a decision was made to only perform the title piece from 'Greatest Goal...' and not the other two short pieces that go alongside it, along with the Oscar piece. That was because Michelle is all about the quality, and I trust her judgement completely, it's nice to do things to the right standard.
It later emerged that the posters/flyers never reached the venue, and were probably sat in a sorting office somewhere, so it was a miracle we had any audience at all. Luckily, one of my best friends Matt lives in Bristol and managed to drag a few friends with him, other people we didn't know showed up (not sure how they heard of it, but grateful they did), and suddenly the venue was half-full and given the tiny size of it, it felt busy.
Probably The Greatest Goal Ever Scored, a piece I wrote last year (and the show where I first met Grace - she's now taking the starring role in it again) was first up. It's just so lovely you know, and that's nothing to do with the writing. Grace is so easy to watch - it's effectively a long monologue, but she never gets boring, it's just so comfortable and Michelle's direction matches it completely. Yeah, it's a bit gentle perhaps, but that's the point of it - because the bits where it's not are really effective. Grace, Michelle and Izzy are brilliant, I can't wait to see what they've done to the other two pieces in this show as they just have this knack of bringing everything to life.
After a quick change of set, allowing the audience to grab a beer from downstairs, it was time for Oscar Pike to return for the first performance of the new show. This is obviously the second time I've played Oscar, following 'Is It Too Late To Save Oscar Pike?' last year, and there's no denying the character is an extension of myself anyway so it's not really 'acting' as such, but that still didn't mean it wasn't going to be hard work. 47 pages of hard work, to be precise. Before Saturday evening, such is the way things have been, we have not run the play in it's entirety with music cues, the set, costume, props...it really could have gone either way. Yeah, it was a little messy at times, the odd line was scuffed, but there was an energy throughout the whole piece. Perhaps slightly too much energy when (not wishing to give away too much of the plot here) one of Izzy's characters, Belinda, pushes me away - last night I was pushed a little too forcefully and as a result flung across the stage, banging into a table and knocking a can of beer over everything. It threw me (literally) and I messed up the next line but the audience seemed to appreciate my honesty, if anything it relaxed them even more, it seemed to break any boundaries between performer and audience. Last year, if I had dried up on stage, I would have been a wreck. A year later, I just laughed it off...maybe I'm getting the hang of this. All of us seemed to be really enjoying ourselves up there, even when the lines weren't perfect we knew where it was going. And luckily for us that audience last night were fantastic - we felt welcome, they enjoyed it, everyone came away happy. On paper, there was no way this show should have happened - it could have been an absolute on-stage car crash, but we just about got away with it. In Cambridge on Friday it's going to be a bit special, I think, we're rehearsing a lot next week.
I've really enjoyed this weekend, the beers afterwards, the banter post-show, all the socialising after all the very hard work. Izzy said later on that we're the 'best team to work with ever' - and I agree, completely. It's a bit like being in a band, sometimes things just really work. I'd be happy to work with Izzy, Grace, Michelle and Alan forever - there's never a cross word between us, we all move in the same direction, we work extremely hard and we laugh along the way. I'm bloody loving this, you know, long may it continue.
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