Monday 17 June 2013

A-Z of Acting: T is for...

Theatre.

Yes, theatre. My first love, sigh. I had another two rehearsals for Much Ado this week, Monday and Friday. I was so excited to be heading back on Monday, but I only ended up being there for 90 minutes. Don't get me wrong, it was a good 90 minutes, full of giggling and mirth, but I wanted more!

Unfortunately, some people weren't available for rehearsals so there was only a limited amount of work that we could do with the cast members present. I drove home again happy that I'd been able to flex my acting muscles for a short while, but already itching to do more.

I was slightly grumpy for the rest of the week until Friday rolled around. There were other rehearsals happening during the week, but I wasn't required for them. I felt like I was missing out and I didn't like it!

Thankfully Friday rolled around and the smile was back on my face. The tunes were banging out of my iPod, I was belting them out while cruising down the A6, life was good!

We were back rehearsing scenes that we hadn't looked at since day one of rehearsals, so it was nice to get back and see what we had come up with... And then everything changed!

It was fantastic! I've said before how I love watching things evolve throughout rehearsals, and this time I got to be part of it!
It's amazing how you think that you've done such a good job on a scene, and then someone sugegsts an idea for it that completely transforms it into something even better. We've still got the best part of two weeks to rehearse too, so I can only imagine how much better things can get!

Of course it helps that we have such a fabulous cast too, they're all so good that they just come up with things that amaze me every time! We completely transformed the opening scene from what we previously had, and now it looks amazing! It's funny, it sets the tone of the play perfectly, and it's thrown my character an interesting moment which could get the audience's brain ticking over. She is no longer quite the boring person she used to be!

I absolutely cannot wait to get back into rehearsals this week. From now on I'm involved in every single one so I won't be feeling left out any more! We're starting to rehearse in our venues now too, which is very exciting indeed! I can't wait to see them! The whole cast will be there on Wednesday so we'll be able to do a full run of the whole show. I'm beyond excited! There's so much that I haven't seen and I'll get to see it all put together for the first time. I can feel the magic in the air already!

And the best part is that we've still got so far to go! More things will change, even on the performances. That's why theatre kicks film and TV's arse. Things are never ever the same twice. Once you're on camera that's it, you'll see the same thing every time, but with theatre, you can come and watch our show all 9 times and you'll see something different every single time.

I've also been making my costume too! I bought a dress that I've had to alter, to make it longer, as Hero was looking like a bit of a floozy(!), but I've also made a wedding veil for her. I know I'm biased, but oh my goodness it's beautiful! I've put beads all around the outside and it has fabric butterflies along the bottom edge, it's perfect! I think that I've put it on and gazed at myself in the mirror every night since it's been finished so far! Oops! I just look so bridal! Haha!

I received my final call sheet last night with our final rehearsal schedule and call times for the shows which got me very excited indeed. They were all scribbled down in my diary in huge letters while I was squealing with delight!

Last night I also caught up with 'The Voice', the BBC singing talent show. Some people think badly of me for watching it but I don't care. Yes, many moons ago when it first began I used to watch X Factor, but it got out of control and I'm fed up of seeing Simon money-maker Cowell exploiting people to get his Christmas Number One. What I like about The Voice is that it really is about people's talents. You don't have the endless comedy auditions that they put on for the audience's amusement, it's people who can actually sing, and the coaches can't see what they look like. It's how it should be.

Anyway, a contestant on Saturday's show was Cleo, who used to be in a band with her sister back in the glory days of pop, called Cleopatra. She's back and is trying to carve out a solo career for herself. In her VT before her solo performance on Saturday, she said that she had been receiving and reading things about her about how she didn't deserve to be there because she'd already had her moment of fame, and people were being negative towards her.

It's not the same, but I felt that I knew where she was coming from, as I had received another agent rejection last week. I'm not beating myself up about it, and I just brushed it away and forgot about it, but I felt that we both deserved a chance. This time she's doing something different to what she'd done in the past, we're both just trying to show people what we can do.

Cleo stepped onto the stage and in my opinion, gave the best performance of the night, hands down. She was amazing. More than amazing. Phenomenal. She was up against a girl in her team who she did lose out to, (who I think is a bit overrated)and in her interview afterwards, she said that she knew that she would be going home so she made sure that she was going to go out in the best possible way. And she really did.

One of the coaches on The Voice is Jessie J, and she said something that stuck with me, so I had to go back and watch it again. She said, "There's a very very thin line between survival and giving up, and you can either be defeated and go "I'm done," or you can step forward and give a performance like that."

After all of the doubts that I've had about myself over the last few weeks, that was another thing that made me sit up and think, screw you all, this is my career, I'm bloody good at what I do. If you don't want to see it then fine, but I'm going to carry on because I love it, and one day maybe I will make it and you'll be kicking yourselves that you didn't see it sooner, and then it will be too late.

So watch out audiences, because I'm ready to kick some serious ass in these last two weeks of rehearsal, even if my character is a bit of a wet lettuce, I'll be the bloody best wet lettuce you've ever seen. Bring it on!!

Nxxx

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