Tomcat

I'm not going to lie to you, I'm hungover. It's 3pm and I've got back into bed after an epic shower, and I'm wrapped in towels and trying to work out how to lower the brightness on my laptop screen.

I drank a lot of wine last night. I think. I had at least three red wines and two glasses of Prosecco. Turns out I can't handle it like I used to. I probably also need to calm down when people tell me that I can drink for free.

It was the last night of my first play of the year and we went out with a bang!

The play in question was 'Tomcat'. I don't want to give too much away because people may want to see it in the future and I don't want to ruin it for anyone, but let's just say that it wasn't the happiest of plays!

We began rehearsals in September, I popped over the border to Bedford every Wednesday and had a truly fabulous time. The entire cast were phenomenal. I had a smaller role which meant that I got to watch it a lot, and saw it coming together piece by piece which I don't normally get to do. Even though I was in it, and I knew the story, I was genuinely captivated and on occasion forgot to get ready for my entrances because I was so swept away by it all.

The feedback from our audiences was immense. We got to have some cracking conversations in the bar afterwards, and received nothing but positivity. It is such a well written play, and people lapped it up. Occasionally I would take a sneaky peek at the audience to check out some of their reactions to various moments, and every single person was transfixed. Normally in the theatre there are the annoying people rustling sweets or having a little natter between themselves, but every night they were completely silent for the whole 100 minutes. I've never been in a play where that's happened before.

It's a weird feeling knowing that I'm not going to be going to the theatre tonight. Since Christmas I've been over to Bedford more times than I can remember for rehearsals and obviously performing, and now it's over. I have to stay in miserable Kettering. We all said last night how we felt we were just getting started and were ready to do more performances, but we can't. We're done.

I have no acting work lined up for the rest of the year, and who knows how this year will pan out, but if this is the only thing that I will have done in 2017 I'll be happy. I personally got some incredible compliments about my performance from several people, so I'll keep those in my head for a while and enjoy it while I can!

I love how close people get when we work on shows together, and I will truly miss everyone so much. In every show that I do, there's always the talk of meeting up soon just to hang out, and it's always just that, talk. But I do hope to see everyone soon. I learned so much from everyone, and it was so nice to get to know new people, work with friends and just enjoy myself for a while.

There's talk of taking the play up to Edinburgh this year which would be fantastic if it happens, I don't think I'm quite ready for this one to end just yet.

Thank you, 'Tomcat', it's been amazing. I'll get dressed now.