I got this

I am stressed. There's no other way to describe it right now. We're 11 days in to 2017, and I'm stressed.

Technically today is a day off for me. However, I have come to realise that there is no such thing. I'm always busy.

It has recently been the festive season of Christmas, and I was working as an elf just outside High Wycombe up until 3.30pm on Christmas Eve. I spent half of Christmas day asleep, trying to catch up on lost slumber from having to drive down to said elf job every day, and from then on, I've been trying to catch up on everything that I missed, while rehearsing a play in Bedford.

Last week saw my teaching job resume, and I was hoping to have at least half of a script for the next show for my students to start looking at and deciding which characters they would like to audition for in a few weeks time. That didn't happen.

Currently I only have one completed scene. Scene 1. A good one to have completed, I feel. But still, it's one scene. It's pretty good, but I need more. I'm really struggling with this one to be honest. I had what I thought was a cracking idea, and then when it came to actually writing it, I am stumped.

I am creating an adaptation of 'Beauty and the Beast' set in 1920's New York. Sounds great, you may think.I thought so too. Last year I managed to pull off a cracking production of 'Cinderella' set in the 1980's, by far the best thing that I have done, ever. And that was easy to fit in random characters and extra storylines. But this time my brain just doesn't want to play. In fact, my lessons this week have consisted of "Right, there are the characters in the play, you know the general story, make something up for me so that I can steal your ideas!"

I know that I will get there, even if it takes longer than anticipated, it just seems like a monumental task right now, and I just don't have the time. Well why are you writing this blog if you have no time, I hear you cry. Well, I'm hoping that by doing a nice little rambling blog post, that my brain will remember how to write once more, and it will unclog my horrendous writers block that I've got going on. Plus I didn't blog in the whole of 2016, and I decided to make it one of my New Year's resolutions to get back out here, so here I am!

One of the reasons that I have no time currently is that I'm appearing in the aforementioned play in Bedford this week. It's a really good play, and it's really nice to be part of something really quite dramatic. Thankfully I'm not in it too much, which has allowed me to attempt to do some work backstage or in my dressing room from time to time. But again, it's taken up quite a few days in the last few weeks, and as I still don't live in Bedford (I will one day, watch this space), it's not just rehearsal time, but driving time that keeps me away from my writing desk.

Aside from creating 'Beauty' for the majority of my students, I'm also putting together another production involving my students at the other school that I teach at. After having to postpone the production last year due to performance clashing, I was then let down by the venue completely, and have only just managed to secure a new venue and date for them. Having cast the play months ago, I have since had more students join the class, which is wonderful, but I'm now having to find more things for them to do in the show, as well as fitting in students from another school that I don't teach. Plus I've got 15 students participating in a speech and drama competition in March, for which I need to help them find monologues and poems, and find the time to rehearse them in between all of their other classes and shows. It is building up!

With all of this work sat at my computer, it was inevitable that I would become larger in size(!), and it's no surprise that I don't fit into most of my clothes any more! So on top of all of that, I've got 50 pounds of weight to lose. Thankfully I live a two minute walk away from a swimming pool, my favourite activity, plus I've found some motivation to get running again. An advert popped up on my Facebook for a company called Medal Mad. They have running challenges which you pay to enter, you run, logging it on your running app of choice, submit your evidence and get a lovely medal through the post on completion. If that wasn't good enough, a portion of money from each medal goes to a different charity. Perfect! Thankfully you don't have to do complete the challenges in one go either. So far I have received my 11km Remembrance medal for November, and my 12km of Christmas medal. I've got 3 more medals that I've paid for, so I need to get to work on those challenges too. I can't resist a bit of bling, me!

With all of this going on, for now I can't see the light at the end of the tunnel, but I'm trying my best to keep to my resolutions for the year, and try to spend as much time with other people as I can. I've told myself that I will have Sundays free from work, that hasn't quite happened yet, but this Sunday WILL be the first!
I'm also trying to not do work outside of work hours at night. This means that when I get back from teaching, I'm switching off. No answering messages from parents, not at the weekends, I need time for myself. I will do it. I'm very much a people pleaser and will gladly put everyone else before myself, but I've come to realise that this is probably making me a bit of a pushover and I need to stand my ground.
I know what I need to do, and I also need to push myself in order to actually make some money this year, because lord knows I'm fed up of living penny to penny every week!

But for now, I will love you and leave you, as I must have my dinner and get ready to go to my dress rehearsal in Bedford. Tomorrow is opening night, it's going to be a good one. I'll post details below.

Happy New Year, and I promise I'll be back next week.

Nxxx

'Tomcat', The Quarry at St Luke's. Thursday 12th-Saturday 14th January 2017.
www.quarrytheatre.org.uk

Frozen excitement, a self-taped audition, and 50 Shades of Neverland...?

So another week has gone by in a flash, and I'm back!

Sadly there wasn't a lot of Neverland action last week. I found myself working an abundance of hours in one of my normal person jobs, and doing very little else.

The school that I teach at had a large dance show on at the weekend, meaning I didn't get to work with my Peter Pan cast, but I did get to see them all perform marvellously on Saturday, and they were all amazing. The whole show was flawless, they typically are just before mine come around(!)

I still kept myself busy with show business though, and had the task of finalising my cast list. It was so difficult, but the decision has been made, and the cast will find out their fate on Friday. I've spent the last few days trying to dodge parents and students who have been badgering me to find out who is playing which role, and as I'm the only one that knows the entire cast list, I've tried to go into hiding for fear of being hounded!! And no, nosy parents that read this, I won't tell you before them! ;)

As well as casting, I was still desperately trying to finish the soundtrack to the show, and putting my voice overs with the tracks to make sure they sounded okay in reality and not just in my head. So far, so good. Of course with two plays, comes two soundtracks, and I found the perfect piece of music to end Act 1 of our sequel. When I heard it, it perfectly summed up the tone of the end of the scene and act, and I was really excited that I'd found such a good track to use. Unfortunately, said track comes from the upcoming '50 Shades of Grey' movie. Fingers crossed that it's only a handful of parents who will have seen it that will notice, oops! 

On Sunday I went to the house of a girl I used to go to school with to try on a very exciting dress. This Saturday I will be Elsa from Frozen at her neice's birthday party! I'm so excited!! I tried on the wig, which was a slightly startling look as I was definitely not destined to be a blonde... But once I put the dress on too, my inner 4 year old squealed with delight and I didn't want to take it off! I think I'll be more excited than the children on Saturday!

And then came today. Yesterday I received an email offering me my first audition of the year. (About time!!) as excited as I was, my heart sank slightly when I saw that I had to self-record it and put it online for them to see. Regular readers will remember the traumas I have of having my father assist me in such ventures, but thankfully due to a change in his working hours, he was unavailable, and so the role went to my Neverland partner. 

I had told him that it would only take twenty minutes to film, sent him the script and waited for his arrival this afternoon. It started off quite well. We rehearsed, did an okay take, and then it descended into madness. I got three complete takes (around 4.5 minutes) and over fifteen minutes of outtakes and bloopers! I haven't laughed so much in a long time, and it was so much fun that I forgot that I was actually auditioning for a job! I might take him along to every audition I do from now on!

We then trundled off to work with our 'Second Star' cast, who, despite giving me the most enormous headache (no need to work on their volume levels), made me laugh so much that it hurt! They chose who they want to audition for so next Monday is their time to shine!

On Thursday the script will be completed! I'm really looking forward to having a final script of our first ever original play, but I'm also really nervous about pulling to pieces what we've already got, and trying to make sure that everything is perfect. So far we've written separately, but now we have to sit down together and fight for our own ideas. I think it's going to be a very long day...! We're also off to a party on Saturday night, I do hope we don't fall out before then! But I guess you'll find out next week!

Nxxx

Natalie's Nugget: Before we've even begun work on both of these shows, I've found the next one that I want to tackle later on in the year(!) Nope, not telling! ;)