Wednesday 11 February 2015

Shower issues, Neverland begins, and being away with the fairies...

It happens every time. Every single time. And it's so annoying!!

As you could probably tell from the ending of my last blog post, I wasn't particularly happy. It happens every now and then in this stupid career choice of mine. I get so frustrated at not having any work, I cry myself to sleep every night and then once you think that life can't throw any more crap at you, you wake up to an audition offer. Although that wasn't quite the case on Tuesday as it turned out to be two audition offers and a job offer. That's more like it! It's safe to say that my mood had lightened enormously.

I skipped about all day on Tuesday, despite having to go to one of my normal person jobs, had a lovely time working on a scene from Cinderella with one of the classes that I teach, and went to bed with a smile on my face for the first time in a very long while.

I woke up on Wednesday still relatively chipper, and managed to land another audition, which kept the grin on my face for a while. And then it was off to normal person job again. I won't lie to you, I clean people's houses. Yep, someone's got to do it. Most of the time I find it quite therapeutic, until you come across something you really don't want to(!), and it gives me time to think about things as I don't have to talk to anyone! On Wednesday that wasn't the best thing for me...

It finally sunk in how much work there is to do on my upcoming shows, and I started to regret deciding to put two productions on the same day. I realised that I had been totally organised in casting, scripts, letter writing to parents, costume forms etc, but I hadn't put a single second's thought into how I was actually going to stage the shows. At all. Panic started to set in. When you find yourself crying in a stranger's shower whilst holding a bottle of bleach, you have to start questioning your own sanity.

I managed to pull myself together and continue scrubbing without drawing attention to myself. (Being a trained actor comes in very handy when you need a fake smile!) I went home and spent the night whacking out extra lines for our ongoing script, and spent a while pinging emails and texts back and forth to my writing partner, with script pieces and music ideas. We had shot past the deadline that I wanted to have a completed script by, but I wasn't as panicked as I thought I would be. Turns out that writing your own original play is bloody hard, especially when you've got to keep a class of 24 teenagers happy!

I only had a short day of cleaning on Thursday, so I fully intended to settle down with my Peter Pan script and make some sort of plan, but I had had so many people asking me questions about it that I really didn't want to think about it until I had to. In hindsight that was a terrible idea, however, I came up with the perfect idea for my next production(!) and spent the afternoon perfecting the first music track for it! I know, I know, I haven't even finished the script for this one yet. But whenever I get an idea in my head I have to go with it, no matter how much I have on my plate. Oops.

Nothing solidified my regret of my actions as much as when 4pm on Friday afternoon rolled around. Our first official 'Peter Pan' rehearsal was here, and I still had no idea of what I was doing. Now that I think about it, I didn't really know what I was doing with 'Oliver Twist', I just kinda winged it and it turned out pretty darned good if you ask me! But that was then and this is now. I hastily cobbled together a scene and hoped for the best. And it went really well! I'm confident in the casting, everyone pulled their weight straight away. Of course, they all wanted to ask me a million questions about the show, none of which I could answer, but that was one scene roughly blocked which gets a tick in my book!

I also measured up all of my little fairies, which meant that on Saturday morning I could go and buy lots of pretty fabrics and get sewing! I had drawn a picture of what I wanted them to look like, and after almost an hour in the fabric shop, I staggered home and sat down to my trusty sewing machine. Five and a half hours later I had made 11 fairy dresses, and all that was left was to sew sequins on them. Four days later and I'm regretting the sequins, and I've fallen out with my Tinker Bell dress as I decided to cover it in about a thousand bells and it's so noisy! But they look so pretty, I made a good choice!

I also got to read a script that was sent to me by my lovely friend Peter, who I work with at Wicksteed Park (Yes, another job. Told you I'm a busy person!) He has a web series called News Man, and somehow I've managed to blag myself a role in it, so he had sent me the script for my perusal. I love it! I'm not going to give anything away just yet, but it's very funny and actually made me laugh out loud! I'm so excited to be a part of it.

My final high of the week came from the lovely Craig, who was my director on a film I did back in 2013. He has new projects in the pipeline and got in contact with me to see if we could meet for a chat to discuss future plans. Erm, of course we can! Exciting!

I chained myself to my printer on Sunday night as I began to put together Second Star scripts to give out on Monday, which bizarrely my printer decided to produce in green ink, before running out and I hadn't even got through the entirety of Act 1. Naturally the class all kicked off at not having much of a script despite my protestations that MY PRINTER RAN OUT OF INK!!! But we began to put together a couple of scenes, and Neverland began to come to life in it's new form.


Since then my week has been a hazy mix of bathroom cleaner and sequins, but tomorrow sees us working on draft 4 of 'Second Star To The Right', and fingers crossed we'll almost get to a completed script. Ish.

I'd better go off and plan the scenes I'm going to be working on on Friday, as well as a cute Valentine's Day themed lesson for my youngest group(!), and then prepare for lessons next week. My Corby class are working towards a Disney themed show, and what have they requested for next week? Yep, Peter Pan. Something tells me I'm going to need a whole lot of pixie dust...

Nxxx

Natalie's Nugget: I got really excited last night when my writing partner sent me text that started with 'Addition to Tink and Freddie's scene'. It then launched into dialogue from an episode of 'Friends' where Joey is in a terrible play! Send help... ;)





Monday 2 February 2015

Nervous editing, casting revealed, and a whole lotta thinking...

It's been another rollercoaster week, and one that has flown by in an instant...

As well as working various normal person jobs, I was chained to my printer as I put together 40-something scripts for my 'Peter Pan' cast. Yep, Friday saw the big reveal of casting, and I wasn't looking forward to it one little bit. I'd been working all day and was exhausted, was already running behind schedule by 9.20am due to snow, and a sense of doom had been hanging over my head for several days.

In my (fairly non-existent) acting career, I try to forget about an audition as soon as possible. The chances are that I won't get the job. It's not me being pessimistic, I just know how competitive it is, and any yes is just a bonus in the ridiculous world of acting that I have chosen to be a part of. But being on the other side of the table is another matter altogether. I had made the casting decisions all by myself, and I was the only person who knew the entirety of the cast list as I was announcing it.

I knew that with a cast of over 50 who all competed for the same 6 roles, there would be disappointment. I tried to get it over and done with as quickly as I could. There were some lovely reactions, and most of the cast were extremely supportive of others, even when they were clearly disappointed when the role that they wanted went to someone else. And this time around, my casting only made one person cry, so that was an achievement.

Of course the backlash arrived later on in the evening and I had to bite my tongue behind the safety of my computer screen, but that's just the way it goes. I couldn't write 40 main characters in the play or we'd still be performing the thing a year from now. Next time I'm hiring someone else to do the casting, I might go on holiday for a while and then just come back when it's sorted! ;)

But at least I'd had one good day during the week. On Thursday, the editing of 'Second Star To The Right' began. I was determined to have the script completed by Saturday, but I didn't know what a mammoth task lay before us. We met at 11.30am (in a pub!), and settled down with our computers to begin the task. I was so unbelievably nervous. I knew that I couldn't be too protective over what I had written. This was a team effort, and we were allowed to rip each others words to pieces safe in the knowledge that it was for the good of the play. We had read each others half of the script and had told each other that we had loved it, and now it was time to get serious and say it like it really was.

The first two scenes were mine. I took a deep breath and prepared for the honest truth. And it turned out to be absolutely fine! For six hours we managed to storm through the whole play, editing like crazy and laughing all the way through. There were moments when we mocked each others wording, (mostly mine), cringed at awkward moments that definitely should never have been written (Tiger-Lily and her redskins running off to start a pop band- ouch!), and falling in love with expertly constructed lines that made us smile, cry and say "ooh"! I don't know why I was so nervous about it! Of course, people still might hate it when they watch it, but we were incredibly happy with it. After six hours, we had to call it a day. My brain had definitely given up, and with so many more things to add in after cruelly cutting 800 words from draft 1, we needed time away from it to think things over.

Of course, being obsessed with it, I was still looking over it at night, and in my absolute horror, I realised something terrible. I had missed someone off the cast list, meaning that not only did we still have so much work to do, we now had to do extra, as we had to create another new character. Oops!

Saturday arrived, and I was so excited! I was finally going to be Elsa from Frozen for a birthday party! It was such a fun afternoon. I rocked the pink eyeshadow, my dress looked amazing, and the kids absolutely loved me! They didn't want to do any activities that I tried to do with them, they just wanted to talk to me and make snow from polystyrene, but that was fine with me!

After a quick exit and race back home, it was time to go out again, this time to Milton Keynes to an 80's party! I went with my Second Star writing partner and my goodness, we rocked our outfits! We looked so good! I had so much fun, but the morning after brought with it the knowledge that we had more script work to do. Laptops in hand, we made our way to another drinking establishment(!) and sat down for round two. Naturally, considering the fragile state of our minds, things didn't progress as well as they did on Thursday, but we still managed a fair chunk, and got so close to the finish line that we were satisfied with our afternoon's work.

And then came today. Audition day number two. Sequel day. This one was a more relaxed affair, we had two hours to audition 24 actors, rather than my 43 in an hour that I did two weeks ago. Again, everyone was so good that it made it really difficult to cast, but we made our decisions right there and then, and almost everyone was happy with their roles. Result!
I'd been in a sad mood all day, but at least with casting done, that was another load off my mind.


We still have more work to do on the script, I should be writing it right now, but it's 1.30am and I'm taking a break because I'm annoyed that I can't think of happy thoughts to get John and Michael to Neverland. I'll probably end up pulling an all-nighter again,, as I still have a lesson plan and script to write for my Corby class in 14.5 hours!
I know it's my own fault for not being able to think of happy thoughts because I've not been happy all day.

I'm having one of my "what am I doing?" moments and it sucks. It all boils down to the weekend. We had decided to come up with a story to anyone new that we met at the party about what we did for a living. It was a funny idea, but I clearly forgot everything about it once we got out as I told everyone that I was a drama teacher. I didn't know that I'd said that until I was told the next morning, but since then it has been playing on my mind. I was so angry with myself for saying it. Acting comes first, it always has, and I felt that by telling people that I was a teacher, I'd given up, and it really upset me. Of course I like doing it, I'd quit if I hated it, but it's not number one. Acting is the only thing in the world that truly makes me happy, and as I'm not doing any of it, I'm not happy, and I don't want to be miserable. I see people that I've acted with in the past doing wonderful things and I feel like I'm getting left behind. Without wanting to sound big headed, I know that I'm good, and I don't want to never act again. I've only had one audition this year so far, and that was my self-taped abomination that I never heard back from, so things aren't looking great. I spent a lot of time being really upset about it today, and not knowing what on earth I'm going to do next.

Before writing this post I applied for three very different acting jobs, all of which would be amazing, but of course there's no guarantee that anyone will even want to audition me. It's a cruel, cruel world. I just wish I was good at something else and then I might have a chance of achieving something.

But tomorrow is back to normal person work, saving up money that won't be going to me, because yet again I'm putting other people before myself. I know deep down that it's for all the right reasons, but my goodness I'd love a holiday. Just one week away from everything in the blazing sunshine would be glorious. As it is, I'd be lucky to be able to afford a day in Great Yarmouth this year!

Wow, that got depressing quite quickly! I do apologise! Hopefully next week will bring you something brighter! Anyway, 1.45am, I've got work to do! Night!

Nxxx

PS, Natalie's Nugget- Today my Jolly Roger flag arrived. It is so huge that I wore it as a dress around the house for about ten minutes.