The Play - for real now

Ok, so you've had birds eye view, now here it was from ground level. The play that last week took on a life of it's own. We rehearsed every night in the theatre. I loved walking from Colmore Row to the Theatre District (all of 10 minutes) after work every day and mooching about in the theatre. It's one of life's great pleasures. There is a green room and dressing rooms and toilets upstairs. The green room has a kitchenette area and it started to feel like home after a week as we were generally there from 6-11pm each night. I got home and saw Alex in bed, usually half asleep, we'd exchange some tiny bit of information and then be fast asleep.
It was marred fundamentally by the ongoing nonsense of a major member of the cast and while there is expected to be a certain amount of last minute panicking the stress she gave us all on Tuesday night was entirely un-called for. But hey, we carried on through and did ourselves proud, even without her there on the one night. People were still learning their lines and there was a lot of nervousness back stage. But also a growing excitement that we might actually pull it off!
There are at least 2 floors above the stage and one below as well as the wings for people to get lost in and lose track of time. You have to be on the ball not to miss an entrance and there was one occasion when I had to go scurrying off to find Mike and grab him from under the stage with only mili-second to spare before we were on. My costume changes were pretty fast so behind the scenes I was throwing clothes on and off with no dignity intact whatsoever. I suppose it's a relief to many actresses that many actors are gay... The first time I changed I made a vague effort to hide behind some thing but pretty soon I was stood in my bra for all the world to see without a second thought! Fortunately everyone else was so busy there was no time for embarrassment. In the dress rehearsal I missed an entrance because I was desperately trying to get Sam's zip up and failing. Also mine and Anna's nurse's dresses were altered wrongly and we had a bit of a time working out how we were going to wear them. In the end I wore Anna's and she wore mine. Mine was too big for her but it at least covered her bum when she danced and was picked up by Iain. Anna is a size 10, I am a 14 - so to say her dress was tight on me was an understatement! I had to wear leggings otherwise I wasn't going on stage - but in the end it only managed to make more of a comedy of the situation...
On the Friday night we took our bows after the first performance and Leon and I gave each other the most squeezable hug ever. So very proud of us all. That night we went for a quick drink with Lisa and Danielle for some self congratulating and I felt great. On a huge high. By Saturday night my pervading emotion was of being exhausted.  But looking back at it now I can really enjoy the memory.
Girls from work came to see it and said it was really good, as did all my friends and family, but I can quite understand why some actors are a bit needy or get insecure. It makes you insecure; you feel very exposed. You know in your head how you want it to look, how you think you look and sound, but there's no way of knowing. You end up asking everyone if it was ok and then 'was it really?' and again...
On the Saturday night Al, me, Sam, Claire, Iain, Amanda and Jo and Carl and Catherine all went to the Victoria and ended up staying until 2.30. Al's opinion is one I value very highly because he's the least likely to say it was good when it wasn't. So the fact he said 'It was the best of the three I'd seen, and you did very well... that Mike was excellent' was high praise indeed! We broke down the set at 10am the next morning and quite frankly I was a little tired... but we chilled that evening and fortunately it was a bank holiday so I had an extra day to get myself together again for work that week. All that week I was so tired that the soles of my feet hurt - as though I'd gone on a hike - I think I need some time off!

The limelight

Our dressing room's really did have those bulbs around the mirrors

Where I spent the majority of the play - centre stage

Mike coming out from hiding - at the last minute

The view from the stage at dress rehearsal

bloody relief