Confessions of a Struggling Actor

Things have taken some strange turns over the past week.

Firstly, the play has been less than satisfactory.  One of the girls in it corpsed all the way through one night which amazed me.  how can that happen?  I've corsped when something completely untoward has happened, but got it back together very quickly - and that was when i was still a kid.  She found one of the actors faces 'funny' and this led to her laughing all the way through the scene.  I have held off sending letters to agents so that the other male in our cast can join my efforts - better chance of getting agents in if there's two or more actors for them to assess - and this made me think twice about inviting anyone in.  I've been getting kind words from audience members and no notes from the director so have little worries about myself, but rather with the show as a whole.  The gloss has been taken off this job now and it's not been all I hoped it would be.  Still, I'm being professional about it and giving my all on every performance and looking for ways I can improve.

One of the ways I can do that is to get more sleep, but I've not been able to do that for various reasons.  The most common cause is that I generally need a couple of hours to zone out after the show.  if my flatmates are up and drunk, this makes it difficult as I'm not one that can stare at my bedroom ceiling and pass out.  My rubbish laptop has now given up the ghost and refuses to switch on so I have no music in my room, which normally helps me drift off.  I've given up fags too (well, around 6 smokes in 10 days (including drunken times) is pretty good going) and this is meqans I am less lethargic, though I now have a hacking cough.  This is partly due to less chemicals invading my lungs but also because I've had a cold for the past week that is refusing to shift, meaning having to go straight home for coughing fits and aching limbs into the wee small hours.  This meant that I couldn't hang around for the second half of the show until Friday, and caused me to leave early when some friends had kindly come along to support me on Wednesday.  It has meant that I've been watching some TV through homechoice when I get the living room to myself, enjoying Funland and the wonderful Alan Clark Diaries with John Hurt.  The only problem was that it made me laugh and that provoked coughing and pain.

I felt better on said Friday and met some people at the Pit Bar under the Old Vic - some of the R&J lot as our Romeo was heading off to play Dorian Gray on tour in Italy.  it was nice seeing some of them, though Ami couldn't have been more obvious in her wish not to talk to me.  On arrival I said hello to her and started chatting to Alexandra who was sitting beside her.  Within a minute, Ami had upped and left and i only saw her briefly at the end of the night to say goodbye.  A little sad and a great shame that she feels ilke that.  I was also in the prescence of The Man Mr Spacey, who came down to the bar after doing Moon for the Misbegotten.  He was in a roped off area and surrounded by people I assumed were either friends or hangers on.  For the first time ever, I felt like approaching someone famous or revered to tell them how much they were an inspiration or how I respected and enjoyed their work.  But I didn't as he wasn't there for long and should I have been next to him at the bar (though not the gents - never approach someone in the loo, even if you want to express admiration!) I might have said something, but in the end I'll wait til I work with him to tell him my opinion on his talent.

After the following night's show, I went to meet up with harry and a few others after they'd been to see fireworks at Ally Pally.  In the pub I was chatting to Helen, a girl I'd know thru harry for several years.  She's cute and looks like Christina Ricci's older sister (if she had one).  After a few pints, she asked of she could kiss me and then proceeded to tell me how beautiful and marvellous I was.  She ended up staying at mine and left the following lunchtime.  I wasn't quite sure how it came about or what I really thought of her, but resolved to meet her at some point over the next couple of weeks.  However, I had another girl to meet first.  Charlotte and I saw each other very briefly last year when things weren't great in my world and I let things slide.  Very much right girl wrong time, but we had a fantastic date last night and she's joining me on Sunday to see Laura's play.  If that goes well, then I'm going to arrange to see her again very soon and try and make something of it.  if not, I'll go on a date with Helen and see how that goes.  It's nice to be popular.

The visiting friends period continued as i met Moray on Sunday and had a good chat and drinks with him and Mark, but stayed out late enough to have to get a night bus which put my cold back in my chest.

Finally, Geir told me he's moving out.  Rather gutted as this leaves me and the Frenchman-iac to find someone to move in at the start of December, which is going to be tough.  I even offered to pay Geir's council tax to keep him on til February at least, but he's made his decision and we're going to have to live with it.  I've already contacted a few people to see if they or their friends are interested, but I'm worried as 1) we had so much trouble finding a flatmate last time, 2) Denis can often put people off with his abrasive personality and loud volume, 3) with it being winter, the estate looks more menacing in the dark and 4) who moves into rented property within 3 weeks of Christmas?  I don't want to have to go through the same as I did while doing Richard 3 and my time is already about as filled as it can get.  However, I'm getting on to it this week to make sure we get ANYONE in.

Shirley's in town this weekend and work will be ridiculously busy as we have a massive global marketing day coming up that I'll be busy with, so no real rest for me.    I now just want a quiet, unexciting, relaxing December, with no reason to go out unless it's with a special lady or to head up north.