So the updates have been scarce of late because I have been ridiculously busy of late. I returned home from Israel and the next day, jet lagged up to my eyeballs, I began rehearsing for my play.
I was turning up to rehearsals 10 days before we actually went up, so everyone else was vastly ahead of me in the process, remember I was doing Shakespeare so this wasn’t ideal. I will now let you in on a secret, I have no idea what the hell Shakespeare is ever on about. When I audition for plays by him I just read the punctuation and try and sound like I understand the text, apparently it worked.
I walked into rehearsal where the director, who was a dead ringer for Neil Warnock, was standing. He told me to stand on the stage with the rest of the cast and ‘Shoot Love everywhere’..... excuse me! He wanted me to shoot love to the heavens, then down to hell then to the person standing to my right. At this point I shot the guy on my left a look which said ‘don’t you dare.’ With the stage now covered in Love rehearsals could get underway.
The rehearsals themselves were pretty straightforward, but my worst rehearsal came last friday.
Hungover from a JD and Coke filled date (toped off with a little Blue 9 of course) I stumbled to the train to try and make it to the rehearsal on time for 9 am. It was proving to be difficult. The train transpired to work against me so I walked twenty blocks in the rain, hungover. As I arrived at the theatre I saw Neil Warnock sitting outside smoking a cigar, I feared the worst. He started to laugh before enquiring what the hell I was doing there? Turned out we didn’t have a rehearsal. Great, I thought, back off to bed. Oh how wrong I was, Neil decided he wanted to have a a half hour chat about Shakespeare (who remember I know very little about) and if they would stage the play the same in England. Once more I bullshitted.
A few days ago the shit really hit the fan with the play. There is a song at the end that we had all assumed the director had cut because, well because it was silly. That was until our final rehearsal when he decided to put it back into the play. We all started singing the song and then Neil Warnock had a genius idea. ‘I want Costard to sing the song’ (that’s my character). You have got to be fucking me. Suddenly two days before I go on I have to learn a song, and sing it.... solo..... In Shakespeare! Oh do fuck off.
So yesterday I turned up at the theatre, song prepared and ready to go for the first show at 1:00. Neil came in smelling of cigar smoke and decided he wanted to change the end. So as the the clock ticked over to 1:00 we were all stood onstage working on a new ending. Lo and behold I didn’t have to sing. The shows went well and my little celebration dinner with my rock and sugarpop was a lovely way to top off a hectic week.
Another reason I am exhausted is hay fever (or for the Americans, allergies). Dear sweet lord they are bad. I wake up at 5 with my nose full of snot, and I mean full. It’s usually dripped out a little and formed a pool above my lip. My eyes look like I am constantly stoned and my throat feels like I have swallowed a cheese grater. Of course my mother loves to tell me ‘I knew you’d have hay fever because you had eczema as a baby’ well gee thanks for telling me now Mum! I refuse to be the prat who wears sunglasses at night so instead I suffer. But you know me, I’m not one to complain.
And before anyone else tells me, yes, I know, local honey is a good cure, I can google too.
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