Bentwater Roads: Accent On The Positive

Another quiet day for me. I wasn't due in for rehearsals until the afternoon so I headed back into town after swimming a mile and I bought myself a copy of The Pillars of the Earth - a highly recommended novel whose main character is a Stonemason travelling through Medieval England trying to scrape a living. It's been wonderful reading and a cheeky way of researching for my character. As well as that I snuck into Ipswich Museum and spent an hour or two in the early Anglo-Saxon section getting a feel for Post Roman - Pre Renaissance England.

In the afternoon I headed down to the social club where the contemporary scene actors had been hard at work all morning. Richard and I stepped up to the plate and went over the first of the cold war scenes again; this time with quite a fine -toothed comb. I struggled to get into the flow of the scene as my attempt at an American accent kept ringing in my head like an alarm bell warning of ham acting. It's a great little scene and sets up for later in the play and there is a great play against in the tensions of the piece with my character telling a laid back story about his youth (heavily laden with metaphors and a poignant analogy of the guilt felt for bringing nukes to Suffolk) as well as the highly sprung anticipation of being put through the wringer by his commanding officer. Went to sleep a little frustrated with myself.