The Inner Child Keeps on Growing

So The Pajama Game is done and dusted. And you know what? It went really well; a lot better than I expected and was a lot more fun than I expected as well. Our audiences where okay, rather than brilliant, but very appreciative.

The lack of rehearsal time did show in a few places each performance - there were several scenes where consistently not everyone got their words in, or in the right order - but unless you knew the show well then it wouldn't be visible to the audience. Our principals were mainly fine - everyone made mistakes but nothing too serious (although James, playing Sid - the leading man - and Jes, playing (brilliantly I may add) Hines, the time-study man but needed a certain amount of ego-stroking at various points).

Most of the time my stuff was fine. Except one bad moment. As some of you may know I have a real problem with names: they can suddenly go out of my head; I just can't find that 'tag'. I've always had a problem with this and I can honestly lose the names of people I have known for years, even my own family. I can't really describe it as 'not remembering'. The best description I can think of is that there is a hole in my head where the name should be. Believe me, this can be very scary sometimes!

Anyway, during the 'Hernando's Hideaway' sequence, a group of us are on the platform at the back of the stage with torches and have some bits of dialogue in with the music. My character was supposed to be trying to find one of the minor female characters, who glorifies in the name of 'Poopsie'. So in one bit of the song I have to call out 'Poopsie' 3 times before one of the other guys has to respond 'Hey bud, this ain't Poopsie!' You're way ahead of me I'm sure! At that moment, in the Friday night performance, the name 'Poopsie' just totally disappeared from my. I switched on my torch and went 'P. P. P. Oh Shit!' (luckily very quietly and I wasn't miked so no damage was done). Thankfully Hazel, one of the other people on the platform, was able to feed me the name.

So that was my show disaster!

We had decided that we were going to do The King and I, the next show, but then had that scuppered by discovering that it is on at the same time as WisCon. If it had been a show we desperately wanted to do, then we might have cancelled the trip, but as there isn't a lot of chorus work and it's not a great show if you are one of the leads then it's not a big deal. I just hope this timing doesn't become a habit!

Anyway, rehearsals for that don't start until after Christmas so we've got a couple of carol concerts to prepare for next...

The second performance went very well, and P. was back, hoorah! We had a much more reactive audience who laughed at most of the right places (and as always some where you find yourself thinking: huh? Did I miss a joke somewhere?).

Just to explain, Tuesday night (the first performance) was the night when the gang of miscreants we refer to as 'The Chain Gang' turn up: in other words the Mayor of Andover and his or her (her this hear) fellow local mayors and hangers-on. They tend to be a quiet audience in general - they enjoy the music but you don't get too much laughter. My personal theory, for what it's worth, is that all that metal they have hanging around their necks absorbs the sound so they are really laughing but we can't hear them!

Anyway, my voice held up okay last night, though not perhaps as well as Tuesday. But today my throat has been much less sore and my voice less croaky so I think I'm finally on the mend.

At the dress rehearsal on Monday I took my camera with me and took over 400 photos (with the help of our chairperson who took my camera when I was on stage), which I may very well  inflict share a few of at some point.

In other news, the new windows are now finally in our loft (hoorah!) and as I type this can be heard the sound of the scaffolding being taken down!

Sorry, been a little bit unposty lately again. No real reason, just not much to say.

We are now only three weeks away from Thoroughly Modern Millie. We ran through the second act in full for the first time last night and it was a bit traumatic. For some reason a section of dialogue which had never previously caused me any problems went completely to pieces. How cross with myself I was probably a reflection of how tired I was feeling. All better now.

I've now become totally fed up with the speed of our broadband - several evenings in the last few days it has been almost unusable; even downloading an album from iTunes, which normally takes a handful of minutes just kept on hanging yesterday. Initially I was inclined to blame the new Vista-running pc, but when I tried the downloads first thing in the morning it was absolutely fine, so it's definitely the connection.

After taking advice from someone much more pc-savvy at work I have decided to move us to BT Broadband. Yes I know some people have had some issues but it will definitely be better than the creaky Virgin.net we are on at the moment. So just a bit of advance warning that the 'chrisandpenny.hill@virgin.net' email address is likely to disappear in a week or two. I'll post something more definite nearer the time.

In general the new PC is behaving well. The Vista interface is a bit meugh but I'm getting used to it. The only thing that is driving me a bit potty is the excessive security measures. Yes, I want the best protection from outside interference I can get. But the internal security is ridiculous - there is only one user of the pc. I want access to everything on the pc. But the number of times I've had to f**k about with security settings to move things about in my own pc is winding me up!