It’s business as usual in the household. The Girlf’s wisdom teeth are playing up, the Eldest is distraught and stressing over a boy and the Youngest is still immensely gay. The house is tidy, clean and cozy so my day off is exactly that, a day off. The weights have been pumped, the body throbs and I am having dinner cooked for me tonight so I’ve absolutely nothing to do, which suits me nicely.
This is a stark contrast to the last few weeks. We’ve had the insanity of Christmas, a heavy workload and of course Hound of the Baskervilles. My return to the stage is complete and finally I can sit down, relax and take stock.
With hindsight I went straight back in at the deep end. As parts go the stage time of Sir Henry was huge, pretty much up there with Holmes and Watson. I suppose his lines were concise by comparison but as per-usual I didn’t consider any of this and just said yes to everything. How hard could it be eh?
Something I realized eventually was I hadn’t worked hard enough on the character. Learning the lines isn’t the be-all and end-all, merely the first step. This didn’t really dawn on me until after the first night, a mixture of tension, stuttering and corpseing that the Girlf pointed out in no uncertain terms afterwards.
The accent was certainly a distraction, but a poor excuse if I’m honest. I totally overlooked the physicality in rehearsal, for a character to not merely be you standing on stage and reciting you have to imbue him with habits and physical characteristics that set him apart from you. At the very least this gives the actor the sense that he’s working harder on stage and this settles the nerves and increases the confidence.
My Thursday night notes were dually absorbed and Friday and Saturday were a great improvement. Work I’m genuinely proud of. All in all I couldn’t have hoped for a better group to work with, easy going and talented they helped ease my re-introduction to theatre. It’s still hard work but it’s nice to feel all those old synapses firing again after a decade long sabbatical. Still a work in progress, I’m looking forward to the next project, totally modern, funny and dark it will be a completely different experience. Hound as been a gentle route back into acting and now I can use all I’ve learnt from it on the next thing. I’ve still got to do a bloody accent though.
The world has continued to turn during my intellectual absence. The depressive cloud of reality still hangs over humanity; it’s getting to the point that I don’t bother watching the news anymore. It’s becoming evident that soon none of us will be able to afford to eat, drive or generally do anything. I’m sick of hearing about austerity, the lack of growth and cuts. We’ve gone from a prosperous country to a third world state in under three years. This perplexes me because nothing has actually changed. We have the same amount of people and the same amount of stuff yet because a few naughts have fallen off some-ones computer screen we’re all fucked.
We now think are houses are worth half what we thought they were worth. They’re still there, still keeping us dry and warm yet they have less value. It doesn’t matter anyway, the banks aren’t lending to anyone so even though your house is nice and cheap no one’s going to buy it. The horror is we’ll just have to content ourselves with living in them. Shocking.
What does interest me is that the Middle East is currently over-brimming with optimism, dictators are being over-thrown or in the process of being over-thrown. On the brink of real change endorphin levels in North Africa and Arabia must going through the roof. Providing one survives all the turmoil this could be the best few weeks for these people in living memory.
Of course this excellent news can’t pierce the fog of our depression. It is in fact yet another reason to be pissed off. With the prospect of change imminent we’ve latched on to the possibility that it will be a change we don’t like. Those nasty Muslims could take over… in Muslim countries. Our favorable status quo is teetering and we’re coming over all Daily Mail at the prospect. This has a lot to do with that fact that these horrible dictators were installed by us in the first place. Totalitarian partners with our interests at heart, mutual back-scratching with Satan himself, we struggle with democracy at home let alone in far flung, oil rich areas abroad.
The big fear is whoever gets control in the end won’t like us very much and make life awkward, democratic or not, what might be good for them could possibly be very shit for us. It’s not a surprise that any fledgling ‘democracies’ in the region are being set up in the wake of our armed forced blitzkrieg. Who’s going to get overly stroppy with an invading army sat in their living room?
Certainly, as Libya smolders, there is a real threat of another war. Our special forces are over there right now trying to get British nationals out. Kaddafi is being investigated over any possible crimes against humanity and that in its self posses the question, what do you do if he has committed these crimes?
Saddam Hussein and Iraq have set a precedent.
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