Tuesday 29th April 2014

Hurtling towards production week. At the moment, it feels like running down a very steep hill, so fast that my feet can't quite keep up with themselves. It's going to be a somewhat busy few weeks, the longest performance run I've yet been involved with, and - it's just occurred to me - the largest part I've played in a fair while. The plan is to keep myself sustained with fresh fruit and gallons of ginger tea with honey. Knowing my organisational skills, however, it's much more likely that my diet for the next month will consist mainly of lucozade and pot noodles. 

Because my bloodline is apparently under sufferance to an ancient curse which means I can't keep a bike for longer than two months without it either being stolen or falling apart, it comes as very little surprise that I have a flat tyre. This, traditionally, adds about a hour and a half to my commute per day, as I'm having to walk to and from train stations. On the walk to work this morning, I lost my cap, which I'd been meaning to use at tonight's rehearsal, as part of the costume. I'm guessing that it will be no great hardship if I can't find one that's both reasonably nice looking and big enough for my freakishly large head, but I can have some sympthay with actors who attach undue importance to an item of clothing that they've been using to inform their character. It's oddly unsettling; you almost feel that, robbed of the chance to rely on props and the like, that your acting will be exposed as the charlatans dance it really is. And even if you're not quite that self deprecating (who, me, self deprecating? No, there must be some mistake), there will always be a part of you that feels bad that the audience will never get to see the 'good', the 'original' version. 

Yes, I'm fully aware it's just a cap. 

Tonight is our first rehearsal in the space itself, which I'm fully expecting will throw us all a curve ball: we haven't ever really been able to be in an environment that in any way truly replicates the space we will actually be performing in. I'm expecting lots of wide eyes, cold sweat, and incoherent gibbering. 

I imagine that everyone else will be fine, though.