Bentwater Roads: Zoran With A Z

It has been a very long week, we've run the show 10 times in the space of 7 days, the heat and mugginess has been intense all week and opening night celebrations etc have lengthened the week that little bit more.

I was up nice and early, 8am, for a run around the park. Then I sat down to write the blog - I headed into town to do a little shopping, including a sports top to stop getting my own clothes and the costumes so sweaty between the runs as we ran about, some headphones to listen to music on our way into Bentwaters on the bus.

It was another brilliantly sunny day and we had a change of driver, Silki, was driving us into Bentwaters and Penny was already on site getting things ready. Pam (playing Josephine, Charlie's dead mother in the play) had brought her very enigmatic friend Zoran along and we all quickly warmed to him and his mysterious ways. He was gifting out cigarettes like Santa Claus and had thick, deep Yugoslavian accent, which we all found hard to place, his white hair and linen shirt and trousers and cheeky sparkle in his eye and riddling phrases made us all think of the character Mal from the play. The girls couldn't remember what his name was and he simply said 'just call me sexy' so that's exactly what we called him for the rest of the day.

When we arrived on the base we had a quick game of football, I almost rolled my ankle but it was worth it to score the 6th of our goals, Mark having potted away 4 already. A quick wipe down with a towel and into costume - I tried something new with the chewing gum in the pilot scene and it really didn't work. Then as the Mason my words were coming out all a little slurred as my mouth wasn't keeping up with my brain, all a little embarrassing really but by the second half everything was trucking along nicely, the pilot/commander scene hit a little speed bump but Peter pulled it all back under control and the play went on. Coming off stage I felt it had been a little tired but Zoran came straight over to us with glowing praise, followed by insistent praises as 'if I hadn't liked it I would be too embarrassed to be standing with you now' - it always amazes me how your understanding of how a run is going while you are in it, can be so terribly inaccurate - thank goodness.

Zoran even invited us all to join him for a feast from the grill they've set up outside the hush house, but we all had our heavily reduced ready meals from Tesco to plough through. After which we scrapped together a few of us for a quick game of touch Rugby. Mark's friends Eddie and Dan came to say hello before the evening show, they are doing a play in Aldebrugh called Stalag Happy which I saw a longwhile back in London and must say its well worth seeing, they're both brilliant - I had oddly worked with Eddie before in a project similar to Bentwaters in Lichfield, the acting profession is a very small world indeed and you always find you have ties with people in your cast and their friends.

The evening show dare I say it, seemed to run really well, everyone throwing their energy into it, knowing that tomorrow would be a well deserved and much anticipated day of rest.

I couldn't keep my eyes open in the van on the way home. So all my hopes of being up for any celebrations or after show antics were dashed as the cast headed off for a late night curry at Maharani's but I slumped into my digs, room and then crashed onto my pillow...