Confessions of a Struggling Actor

I've not had that much time to myself over the past week or so - and with good reasons.

Firstly, the one act play had its competition night on Friday, meaning I was rehearsing that Tues and Thurs straight after work.  It all went OK, despite the fact that it was put on in a rush, meaning that we were horrendously under-rehearsed (I only had two rehearsals before Tuesday) and not entirely confident, as well as having to make last minute changes as the set-up wasn't quite how the director imagined.  We find out on Saturday if we win any awards, but with the best will in the world, I doubt we will.  For the first time, I found some points during the process to be a bit of a chore.  I felt frustrated at times, but still enjoyed the performance.  It's the first time I haven't been either fully happy or challenged when doing a play.

After the show, I met up with Simon, who had brought in four folk to see me - all with Aberdeen connections.  Steve Hay worked with me at Texaco Theatre School and we hadn't seen each other for well over a decade.  We chatted for ages and I know him much better now than I did then.  Also present were two NE actresses, Cassie and Steph.  They're both lovely and witty and both have boyfriends.  Damn.  I heard later that one of them thought I was hot, so my ego took a massive boost.  The other guy, jeff, is a regular on a crime show on TV and was great fun.  He was full of stories and, along with Simon, kept us all entertained for the rest of the night.  I had left my keys at home, so crashed at Simon's, though I didn't get much sleep and missed the following day's rehearsal as I felt really ill.  There's two more shows of this at the start of May and I hope I get some folk in to those too.  But with MacBeth around the corner, i think more people might be tempted by that instead.

MacBeth's rather naturally been on the backburner this past week and a half.  I hadn't rehearsed since the Saturday before last, so I was annoyed that I missed this weekend.  Now it's going to get mental.  This week I have Friday and Sunday off and for the next two weeks only Thursday night.  I also have to learn lines for the Doctor, write letters to agents, try to drag my arse to the gym, be on a fucking diet and off the booze and I can sometimes feel slightly unhinged.  And that's before working 9-6...  At least with MacB, I'm feeling challenged and challenging myself more - trying to change my body shape for the part, trying to get deeper and more truthful than ever before, trying to encourage better performances out of the rest of the cast and not dicking about in rehearsals.  I'm not quite there yet, but need to be very soon.  I'm certain this is going to be my best piece of work so far...

As for the day job, things have been really busy there too, with the ongoing battle to clear the mountain of work and especially the Marathon project that I worked on.  The marathon was an amazing experience but a massively long day where i was let down by transport many times and did a great impression of a blue-arsed fly for most of it.  The project seemed to go down well in the office, but now I can't see me sustaining their expectations of me, as I take no work home and always try to leave the office bang on time - they seem to want more and I'm not going to give it to them.  It would do me some good to have a change of scenery, but don't want to lose the steady wage.  Acting would give me an opportunity to drop it, but apart from that, there's not much else to go for.  I'll see how things go until i go on holiday as I'll have had MacB and the operation before then and will see what their attitude is to me.

On the social front, apart from Friday night after the show and Monday night with Muzz, I've not been up to much.  Unsuprising considering the two plays and being on antibiotics for all last week.  It's also been a bit of a break from denis as he's been working a lot too, so we generally see each other just as one of us is heading off to bed.  Tiscali still haven't sorted our internet and TV problems, but a guy was there this morning and I've not had a rant down the phone from the frenchman...yet.

Right, I'm off to score some performance enhancing dugs in order to keep up this pace I'm on.