Bentwater Roads: Anyone For Cricket?

Petite Penny with her seat pushed as far forward as it can go - and some more - arrived at our doorstep in the enormous Eastern Angles van at 9:30am. Caitlin had stopped off and got Bacon Sandwiches for all aboard. We pulled back up to the Hush House and unloaded ourselves from the van. I had cheekily brought my cricket bat and ball, hoping for a quick game between the two acts.

We crept into the dark from the light and started to run the show as Fiona (lighting designer) adjusted lights and chose settings for each of our scenes. The run speed along through the first act thanks to the work we had done the night before and the only thing that I found strange was trying to adjust to the acoustic of this very unique space. Normally when you enter a performance space after rehearsing somewhere else, you become very aware of the different way your voice is rebounding of the surfaces of the space and feeding back to you how loud you need to be to be heard throughout the space. At the Hush House there is no feedback, you hear your voice as it leaves but miraculously you never get any sound bouncing back, a little spooky and eerie compared to the familiar sound of your voice rebounding back at you.

We took a break in the afternoon between the acts, emerging into the bright sunlight. I ran straight for cricket bat and ball and successfully coaxed Mark into joining me for a few balls. Mark started immediately hitting me for fours left right and centre, while I caught him out off a sitter only to miss every attempt at slogging his accurate bowls for six, one even bounced back of our improvised wicket to hit me square in the mouth. Angered by the pang in my mouth I hurled the ball even faster... only to be hit even further a field.

Running to what felt like the other side of the airbase to retrieve the cricket ball, dripping in sweat my ears pricked to hear we were being called back into the darkness for rehearsals. The second act was a bit harder to keep the momentum flowing through as we still have refined the transitions for the new and much larger space. Still the object of the exercise was to get accustomed to the space and to give Fiona a chance to try different settings with the lights and familiarize herself to the newly filled stage. Roger Eno (our composer) was softly crying at some of the more touching moments and laughing away at the comedy scenes, so I think we've got a great show on our hands both with touching moments, laughter, a bit of action and a lot of heart.

Early afternoon and we shuttled back to Ipswich, Mark, Richard and Caitlin jumping on the train back to London for the 18 hours before rehearsals recommence on Monday. Monday will be a long day, 10am til 10pm so I hope they all get a lot of rest as well as enjoying England thrashing Germany - fingers crossed.