Up Out O' The Sea : Down To Business...

Pakefield is beautiful. Memories of my childhood came flooding back - staying with my aunt and playing with my cousins on the beach, swimming between the groynes and later, drinking at the Trowel and Hammer. After rigging the set on friday we had some time to find a chippie and eat our fish and chips on the beach with seagulls swooping down trying to get a look in...

Doing the show for the first time was amazing. A few line drops and a little bit of prop juggling and we did it. Our energy and enthusiasm wasn't lost on the Seagull audience. We had some lovely feedback after the show and Jon provided us with some well deserved vino.

Having an audience in changed the play more than I had imagined, the laughter in places we had not percieved and the focus of the audience on the story we were telling powered us through and brought many elements of the play together.

The second night is traditionally not as good as the first, but I think we managed to pull it off, still buzzing from opening. Again our audience was really receptive and I began to see that each of the seventy-odd performances would be different. I can't wait for more.

The second night involved our first "get-out". I have been made van-packer, which involves compressing our massive lovely set into the Eastern Angles van. I obviously have the necessary skills for van packing: strength, precision, bravery, problem-solving, agoraphobia, social ineptitude... etc... The get-out took about an hour and a quarter and everyone pitched in. It is pretty knackering but by the end of the tour I think we will have muscles in places we didn't know existed.

After Pakefield I am really looking forward to seeing the other beautiful places we will visit next week: Polstead, Hatcheston, Hindolvesdon and more! Getting to see East Anglia will be one of the nicest things about this tour, and I hope that the villages and towns we visit will embrace a bit of professional theatre on their doorsteps.

The jokes took a bit of a downturn in the last blog. I am not too sure where to go next with the theme of the made-up jokes. But I think the blog reins will be gracefully handed over to another cast member very soon so perhaps they may have some better offerings. One thing we have started playing in the van is a game my lovely pal Gareth Fordred taught me, "I've got a business". The format goes like this:

A - I've got a business!

B - What's your business?

A - My business is - (lead up to terrible pun)

B - How's Business?

A - (terrible business-based pun)

So, for example:

SC (Steve Cooney) - I've got a business!

EA - What's your business?

SC - My business is Scuba diving trips through toilets

EA- How's Business?

SC- It's gone down the pan!

Or:

FW (me) - I've got a business!

EA- What's your business?

FW- My business is Pig farming on mountains

EA - How's Business?

FW- well, there's peaks and troughs...

and many, many, many more...