Bentwater Roads: Warming Up, In More Ways Than One...

I (not surprisingly) woke too late to share in a morning jog with my 77 year old landlord Ivan Hamilton. He kindly left me asleep to recover from the night's celebrations. When I did finally rise it was already near midday and a swelteringly hot day at that. Rather foolishly I braved the midday sun (I must be a mad dog, since I'm sadly not English) with a long jog through the park to sweat ‘it' all out.

Then some quick finger taping for yesterdays blog and a trip into town for supplies and to recover my bike. Dementia seems to be creeping up on me, as I (very unusually for me) am forgetting my bag in all sorts of strange places. I found it the Sir John Mills Theatre then headed into town to buy a rugby ball - well there are about thirty of us between cast, crew and chorus.

Sitting near the round about on the high street I called Trina and had a little chat then called my Nonna (Italian Grandmother) to chat about missing Trina.

We arrive at the air base at 5pm for the 730pm show and Mark and I start a little battle over which activity we should do as a warm up - Mark is opting for a nice relaxed game of football since he's a little worn out from a long day in the sun at the beach, while ding ding, I in the blue corner was fighting for a game of touch Rugby as I was still loaded with energy from a rather slow-paced. Somehow I won out and Max from the crew came and joined as along with the two Jameses from the cast and Alice (with her crazily apt ball skills). 

It was a fierce and fast game and we were all well warmed up by the end. Maybe tomorrow with the two shows in one day we should stick to something calmer like cricket. But I'm very grateful people let me have my way and I got to play rugby for the first time in ages.

We sat down to notes just a little bit past 530pm and were taken through safety hazards with Steve and fire drill with Jon. Then we went over all the scenes involving the tower just to make sure that it was being done safely and that everyone knew what they were meant to be doing.

With time for a little food and a change into costume we were at 7pm with half an hour left till show time. Peter is a great storyteller and he had me in fits of laughter telling me tales of one very famous actress he had worked with who had kept of the boredom of doing the same show day in and day out for 9 months by putting a theme to each curtain call, actors having to step forward to take their bow after a very serious and touching play pretending to suffer from a terrible disease, with tails attached and many more funny variations. This actress even played a prank on Peter by telling him a funny joke in the wings followed by ‘I'll tell you an even funnier one.' ‘What?' replied Peter after a very silent pause ‘you've missed your entrance' and sure enough two of his fellow actors were on stage adlibbing dialogue in great reams to fill the gap she had sneakily made him leave behind.

Then the show started and it really had some pace to it. Pace is usually measured by the gaps between one character finishing talking and the next starting. All scenes have variety of pace in them, when a scene gets more poignant or delicate pace tends to slow down, but when something is exciting it speeds up and the gap between people speaking is almost indiscernible. I try to think of it like the audience's heart beat, so, if you want their hearts racing pick up the pace. (so in short pace as in fast pace is good).

The show flew along, building and building then having little calmer moments before building again and the audience's applause seemed to mark it as another success. Ivan was smiling again at the end of the run. Always a good sign and we were all drenched in sweat from what had been a very hot hush house for that evening's performance.

Fiona Simpson (our lighting designer) came to the show with her husband Matthew. They have a young baby girl named Isobel and by some odd coincidence I have named my daughter in the play Isobel as well. 

Fiona is as of yet an unsung hero in my blogs but I must say she's done a phenomenal job. In what is a very grey, metallic, unforgiving space, with a limited amount of lights due the temporary lighting rig, she stepped in to fill in someone elses shoes only a little over a week ago (more or less like Peter) and her work has been Herculean, atmospheric and uplifting for the entire play, helping delineate the different ages, giving them each a different feel and heat, as well as building the UFO scenes and rituals with bolts of lightening and the flickering lights of unidentified flying objects flickering across our faces.

Post show - Silki invited us out to Woodbridge (her hometown) for after show drinks and those of us that weren't too exhausted were happy to head to the pub with her.

I'd never been to Woodbridge and it was one of the cutest and loveliest towns I've been to in England. We headed to pub in the main square of the town but it was overflowing with people waiting to order at the bar. There was a little flurry of panic as we noted it was 11pm and a lot of places would now not be letting new customers in. Silki in organized stage manager fashion called up her friend who owns the Anchor and ask/pleaded for us to be let in if we arrived in the next five minutes. On our walk down towards the station and the marina, we passed by The Moorish Lounge a beautiful restaurant with Moroccan lamps and out door tented picnic tables on a pebble garden, all candle lit under the clear night sky. So we slipped in there for a drink and surprise surprise Silki knew the bar manager there as well.

Steve, Max, Fiona, Peter, Silki, Mathew and I sat round the table with our drinks having a good laugh and the chef brought as out some delicious potato wedges free of charge, since we were at a restaurant and should have been eating as well as drinking.

Peter and I sat there with our Campari and Orange juice - and I thought we're bloody lucky to have such a wonderful group of people working on this project. Ivan and the Eastern Angles team has really made the company feel like a family. Max (technician and operator) turned to me and echoed my thoughts in his own words.

A wonderful night and a good performance, Cheers to that!