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... ;)
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