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

Victory and Violence!

I've enjoyed this week immensely! I have had a glorious six solid days of acting, and it has been wonderful. Today however, I've been at my normal person job and I've been sulking! But we'll get to that later!

I've just realised that being on the letter V this week means I'm almost at the end of the alphabet. I worked out that my final blog post in the alphabet game falls on the week that Much Ado comes to an end, and I'm really not ready for that to happen. Sob.

But back to this week. I headed over to Bedford on Monday morning for a nice full day of rehearsals, and Jacob persuaded me to go for a cheeky Nando's at lunchtime before we attempted a full run of the show. It was glorious! I'd also taken along some rehearsal props as we had just been miming quite a lot of actions and I was getting concerned that I wouldn't cope when it finally came to using real props and I'd ruin the whole show!

The day got even better in the afternoon when Jonathan, our Don John arrived and brought with him the boys costumes. I casually made my way indoors when they were all trying on different bits and pieces, and what a beautiful sight it was! I had my own little fleet of army boys, fabulous! Suddenly I was feeling much happier about the whole play! Beautiful boys in uniform, thank you Mrs Director! ;)

Tuesday arrived, and a rehearsal at another venue, Stanwick Lakes was on the cards. Like last week, we had to work out all of our entrances and exits as we were in another completely different space. We also had the arrival of our gazebo, which we will be using as our dressing room at a couple of venues. Our teamwork skills were put to the test as we attempted to erect it for the first time, and with the smallest amount of fuss, we did it! Who knew actors could be so versatile?!? For the second day running we had beautiful sunshine, it was a good day! We made our way back to Bedford to rehearse in the afternoon, and worked through a few scenes before we left for home.

It was back to Bedford on Wednesday and rehearsals were back at Castle Mound. For the second time we were spotted on CCTV and this time, people were sent to ask us what was happening. We had a table of bottles of alcohol, and also with there being some rough actions taking place, we were seen as some sort of vagabonds! We talked them out of getting us into trouble by giving them a flyer for the show and smooth talking them around and all was well. As Castle Mound is a public place, again we had a few people watching us. Two girls sat at the side of our performance area quite enthralled, especially when Jacob was acting(!), and two groups of youths seemed to show quite a bit of interest too. I'm probably sterotyping like a mad woman, but they didn't seem like the sort of people who would take any interest at all. They were there sitting on the grass smoking weed, playing their music and having a good time doing what they were doing, but whenever we get near them we could hear them talking about what we were doing... "Well those two are obviously the leads, and that bloke has just killed her..." It was fabulous! I'm hoping they buy tickets!

Thursday rolled around, and we were rehearsing in our first performance venue, the beautiful Hinwick House. It wasn't as far for me to travel to, only about half the distance to Bedford, but I had no idea that it was even there. It was stunning. We got everything set up, got into costume, and were ready to go before we were moved around due to photographers being present. Apparently the house is going up for sale and photographs were needed, and it was going to be too much effort to photoshop a group of actors out of the shots! After they had finished, we reclaimed our spot in the garden and had a jolly dress rehearsal. For a first attempt it went very well indeed, I was quite chuffed. We made our way to the room we were using as our temporary dressing room for the day to receive final notes. I hadn't been getting many notes which can be a good thing or a bad thing. I was just bumbling along hoping for the best. One glorious note was "wedding scene, amazing!" which was a good start, and then to hear "Natalie, brilliant. You're just breaking my heart...." was the icing on top of a beautiful cake! Finally I had received a compliment, I was absolutely buzzing!
We were let home early to have a good rest before Friday's final dress and first performance!

As usual, I arrived early to rehearsal, and was surprised to see a few of the cast in the car park. I was completely oblivious as to why until I finished parking the car. Jacob's car bonnet was up in the air, and then I noticed that it was covered in grass and mud. He had had an accident about half a mile away trying to avoid an animal in the road, and the roads were covered in rain. It sounded like quite an ordeal, but he was fine, it was just the car that wasn't in the best shape. I stayed with him while he was on the phone to various insurance people, and his parents, and helped him to transfer all of his stuff into my car boot.

I rarely know what to say to people when something like that happens, and that day was no exception, I just did what I could and kept my mouth shut. Even though the accident was nothing to do with me, I felt really shaken up. It took me right back to when I did a play a few years ago that was about a real car crash that had happened in Leicester. It also happened on a country road, but it was a car full of teenagers and one of them died, with another having her arm amputated. The play was incredibly powerful, but left me completely drained by the end of the run. One of the girls who was in the crash came to see it, and seeing her made me burst into tears. I know that I haven't known Jacob long, but knowing that these things can happen and that it could have been a lot worse really freaked me out. I'd like to think that we've become friends and thinking the worst made me feel horrible. He was a bit shaken, but like the trooper that he is, we carried on with the dress rehearsal.

My emotions were secretly all over the place by the time we did the run. I obviously didn't want to tell Jacob my worries about him as he had enough to think about himself, but by the time we got to our big emotional scene together, I was a complete wreck, my tears were genuine! I drove us to get some food after the run, before the first performance and felt a lot better knowing that we were all still together and ready to go on. We got back to the house, set up, and the rain began to fall. I couldn't believe it. We had had such beautiful weather all week, and for our first show, it was horrible! Thankfully the audience didn't seem to mind too much. They rolled up with their picnics, waterproofs and umbrellas, ready for whatever we had to throw at them.

Luckily the rain only stayed for about 20 minutes, but five of us still had to endure rolling around on the grass getting soggy! I wasn't overly pleased with my performance that night, I felt that I got a bit overexcited by seeing audience in, but it seemed to go very well. And considering the rain, we had a fairly decent turnout. I couldn't wait for Saturday! I had to wait to go home as Jacob's parents were coming to collect him, and I had all of his stuff still in my car. It was still quite light when I eventually hit the road, but I drove home at a snails pace, terrified that I would end up in a ditch too. I made it back in one piece and went to bed with a smile on my face after putting my lovely opening night flowers from Jonathan in a vase, aaw! So sweet!

I would have absolutely loved a lie-in on Saturday morning, but I woke up with the lark and couldn't get back to sleep again. I pottered about for a bit before getting dressed and deciding to watch Les Miserables. What a mistake that was. I was a sobbing wreck! I cried more watching that yesterday than I did in the cinema! I think I was overtired!! Despite the lengthy film, I still had a while to go before my first destination of the day. It was my cousin Katie's birthday party. Like me, she is the ripe old age of twenty-something, but that didn't stop her having a bouncy castle! :) I arrived early as I wouldn't be staying long, and met my cousin Catherine's daughter Lilia for the first time. I think she's about 3, but they live near Birmingham so we don't get to see much of them. We bonded on the bouncy castle and snacked at the buffet together and had a jolly time. I quickly realised that late twenty-somethings shouldn't go on bouncy castles any more. I was absolutely shattered! I didn't know how I was going to go on!

I said my goodbyes and made my way over to Hinwick again, ready for our second show. I did a few warm-ups before we were banished to our dressing room with the audience arriving (half an hour before gates opened, grrr!)and I watched anxiously for an old friend to arrive. I haven't seen him for many a year, but he came to watch as it is his favourite Shakespeare play. I was very excited to see him, but having someone in the audience that I know made me more nervous than I was for opening night! For me, the performance went a lot better than it had done the previous night. The sun shone down beautifully and things were going gloriously until the wedding scene.

No matter how much you rehearse something, things can always go wrong, and accidents happen, and during the wedding I got punched in the face! Thankfully I was supposed to be in a hysterical state so I managed to use the pain to my advantage, but my god did it hurt!! It was Jacob who clocked me, but he wasn't aware that he had done it. It's happened to me before though, I've properly hit someone without knowing, you just get so involved in the scene that you're not fully aware of what's happened. It only hurt for a while, and thankfully I didn't wake up with a black eye so he is forgiven!

I hastily dressed and gathered all of my stuff together before racing out to see my friend. He and his girlfriend said that they loved it, which made me very happy indeed! I hope they send lots more people along! Most of us trundled along to the nearest pub after the show for cast drinks and had a nice little natter which was lovely. I love being around creative people, and as barely any of my friends do this for a living, it was nice to talk about things and have people understand exactly what each other are going through.

I didn't want to say goodbye, as I knew that I would be home soon, and it would be straight to bed and up early for normal person job in the morning. And what an effort it was today. Getting up wasn't too bad, I thankfully didn't wake up before my alarm, and walking in to work was alright, I just got a couple of hours into my shift when I realised that I wouldn't be performing tonight and I got a huge ball of sadness in my stomach and I went into a bit of a sulk on the rollercoaster! One lady tried to get her daughter onto the ride despite her being ridiculously too short to ride it. Despite her pleas that she had already been on it, I was having none of it and was quite abrupt with her, especially when she wanted to leave her child alone with me while she rode the ride herself. No! I did feel quite guilty afterwards but if I wasn't allowed to have fun then neither was she!

I've been bumbling along with acting for a while now, but today made me realise just how much I need it. I had six wonderful days working with talented people this week, and going back to working the rollercoaster pained me so much that I didn't know what to do with myself. At least I know now that however tough it gets, I have to keep going with acting. It's the only thing that makes me genuinely happy and I can't imagine my life without it.

Like I said earlier, Much Ado will all be over in four weeks time and I'm really not ready to let it go. I'm going to have to trawl the casting websites for the rest of the evening I think.

I still haven't had any agents wanting me on their books, it looks like I'm going to have to work my arse off to get stuff on my own for a bit longer. Watch this space...

Nxxx