Blog Archives

Another week flies by. Are we any better? Any more polished? Any slicker? Are our Mid-West accents any more believable?
Our dear Director doesn’t really think so but I, for one (maybe the only one), believe we are making progress against all odds.
So far we haven’t managed to get the entire cast in the same place at the same time for a single rehearsal and, you know what - it might never happen until the day of the performance. Covid, shingles, colds, hospital and dental appointments, breakdowns (not mental), dead motorbikes, work, holidays, you name it, have all conspired to have us forever acting our individual parts whilst at the same time reading-in for absent friends.
And, would you believe it, we almost ran out of chocolate biscuits last week. However, due to the generosity of the actors so nearly tragically and disastrously deprived of their weekly chocofest, we now have several rehearsals worth of supplies in hand now jealously guarded by our Director and only dished out by him when he thinks we deserve it. The words “mutiny”, “strike” and “resign” are being heard but not as often as in the corridors of Westminster and Holyrood.
So everything will be fine in the end because we can’t survive without our chocolate biscuit fix and we can’t let them go soft, can we?

Anon Y Mouse

What’s it like being a part time, useless, amateur actor then?
Are we all sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin.
It all kicks off at around 3am. You wake up to banish the Dad’s Army nightmares and the ghost of Denis Norden and then the seismometer needle gives a definite shake and tremble. So, at five past three, you start revising your lines. The trouble is that about half way through you fall asleep only to wake up with a jolt to start the whole process again. At around 4 o’clock you fall back asleep again, exhausted, but content in the knowledge that you’ve remembered your lines at the tenth attempt, only to be woken again at 7 o’clock by your dear wife requiring her morning cuppa and demanding to know what you were thrashing around in bed about half the night. Not that you can remember because you’re brain dead at this point and simply on tea-making autopilot.
During the day though, strangely enough, everything goes pretty much to plan although your lines are still whizzing around your brain at regular intervals. Every now and then you dive for your hard copy which is always somewhere at hand in case of emergencies. At least once a day you banish yourself to the garage so that you can recite your lines aloud and for The Long Christmas Dinner in the most excruciating false American accent you’ve ever heard (you’re incapable of anything better).
After dinner and a hard day in the garden (all of 15 minutes in reality) you feel like a nice bath. Ah - relax. But no, the dreaded lines make another appearance.
Eventually you crawl into bed for another recital and sleep soundly until 3am when it all kicks off again.
Am I alone, the only useless amateur actor with this problem? At rehearsals everybody seems to do everything so easily - except me. Or is this just an illusion?
Oh - the joy!

Anon y Mouse

Life Backstage 2

10/11/2023

It seems like a long time - a month. But that’s only 3 rehearsals away until we’re all thrown in at the deep end. Vague tremors of panic start to set in. The seismometer needle has just started to quiver and we cannot ignore it. The earthquake of performance day is just around the corner. The tsunami is building. My well rehearsed lines have escaped me to be replaced by well known quotes from “Dad’s Army” - Corporal Jones’s “Don’t panic, don’t panic” or worse, Private Frazer’s “We’re doomed! We’re all doomed”. Then Denis Norden makes an appearance with the reassuring words “It’ll be alright on the night”. And all this is at the unearthly hour of 3am. The light of dawn banishes all these negative thoughts - almost.

Anon Y Mouse

Life Backstage:

6/11/2023

Life backstage really starts with no stage at all, just a few thin wooden battens taped to the floor of our rehearsal hall. We’re told that these represent the margins of the stage and the set. The gaps between the battens represent the entrances and exits. The batten along the front is supposed to be the edge of the stage and we mustn’t cross it. Hilarity strikes when we inevitably do just that, or inadvertently walk through an imaginary wall. It’s all a bit Harry Potterish in the initial stages of our rehearsals but we quickly get used to it.

But it all changes at dress rehearsals. Until then we’ve never seen the actual set, sometimes not even until the performance day. At this point it all becomes quite daunting because suddenly you are unable to see what is happening on-stage. You’re standing behind the set, in costume, in the dark, in silent mode, quietly mouthing your first lines over and over again whilst listening for your cue to come on stage. There’s nothing worse than appearing on stage and promptly forgetting what to say and, believe me, it’s so, so easy just to freeze and be totally unable to get started.

For the Long Christmas Dinner it’s pretty easy because nobody with a speaking part appears more than once. We just sit around chatting whilst eating imaginary food and awaiting our turn to grow old and die but knowing all the others backstage are quietly scoffing your favourite chocolate biscuits.

Usually though, backstage during performances is a nightmare of frantic, hectic chaos. Everybody silently scurrying around looking for props, revising lines, trying not to bump into things whilst attempting to give the actors and actresses a modicum of privacy when they are changing clothing. What was seen “out-front” in Calendar Girls was nothing to what wasn’t seen “out-back”. All this is carried out in darkness and totally unrehearsed.

Of course, all this chaotic scurrying like a family of blind mice ensures that the wheels on stage all move with co-ordinated, oiled precision in front of our audience.

Anon y Mous

Another weeks flies ...

Life Backstage 3

Life Backstage 2

Life Backstage:

Previous posts