morris 14 May 2011
The streets of this town continue to throw up delights for the public to savour. Sheffield is overrun with Morris dancers today. And so it is a very jingly jangly place. There are all sorts here from the traditional looking (to my eye anyhow) with silver bells and hats with ribbons, to those with multi-patched coats, and even some younger women with blue face paint and fabulous blue bells. I presume that the dancing steps are quite complex but made look simple enough when well done – ah yes that old, terribly difficult, trick of making something look effortless (I am hoping for that myself in the show HAPPY DAYS at the Crucible, but it is a DEVIL to pull off!). AND, who knows if today’s gatherings are to make up some sort of ‘convention’ of morris dancers…or an invasion…just saying…
street 10 May 2011
it’s sometimes hard to separate real life from work, and often times (i know I KNOW) when they mean one and the same thing, at least for a while. so, i took to the streets of sheffield after a tough but good day’s rehearsals for HAPPY DAYS (see the crucible website for all details) and was confronted by youthful types shouting and pushing one another around. for a few, though brief, moments i though they might be a part of the group that’s been around the theatre since the weekend and, perhaps, publicising their show – they were quite adjacent and vocal and explicit about their problems with one another, after all…and then, the horrible dawning that this was in fact a young couple, egged on by their friends, having a quite vocal and physical row about life…but then i thought maybe it IS the youth group after all because the local novelties shop was also party to a young shop assistant loudly telling another youth to leave shop, so SURELY these were all related? erm, NO, my head is too far into theatreland. and i also then realised that the last i had seen and heard of the youth theatre group was their, rather excellent, rendition of Owl City’s FIREFLIES over the screens and monitors backstage at the crucible
panic 8 May 2011
we attempted a run through of the play HAPPY DAYS on saturday, here at the crucible in sheffield, and i was left in tatters with panic about how much work i still have to do. the only solution was to have a lovely time with Himself who is here to visit and then 14 glorious hours of blessed sleep. a much rested pauline then spent a relaxing day of nailing lines and i am READY for next week. sounds plucky, i know, but it has to be done so onwards i go. still feel like part of my brain is now on permanent vacation but, if so, the rest of it will just have to kick in…
barnett 6 May 2011
we’ve come to the point in rehearsals where i just HAVE to know my lines in order to be able to move on. it’s PAINFUL trying to learn them though. Sam Beckett is a bit of a pervert when it comes to changing a seeming repetition just slightly enough for it to mess you up as you approach it. every so often our director, the wonderful jonathan humphreys, reads me a piece of an actor’s recollection of performing Beckett or working with him and it’s usually just how i’m feeling and i suddenly don’t feel quite so alone…though, in fairness, i WILL be alone each night trying to remember what comes next. i fear i may not have enough brain cells left to hold what i need to hold and unleash on the good people of Sheffield each night…SO, all seems to be going to ‘plan’ then for this paint in preparations…
bells 4 May 2011
sheffield sounds like some long summer holidays to me, in as much as it has a town hall bell that chimes the hours, in the manner of Big Ben = notes on each quarter and adding notes as it goes alone, then it counts out the beat at the top of the hour. this was the sound of my parents home town when – that is Sligo in the north west of Ireland. the only time i found it awful was a night i spent at my uncle’s house when i couldn’t sleep and heard every single bell chime all night long, ringing out the wretchedness that i was still awake. these days, here in sheffield, it ticks off the rehearsal time but also underpins the panic of hours ‘lost’ when maybe i should have nailed more of mr beckett’s lines to absolute memory. however i hope we’re getting there…
just one thing, though, my cohort and wonderful acting partner (peter gowan) was talking today about how scientists…physicists?…have weighed the Universe (i KNOW – how?? we don’t know how it can and has been, apparently, done) and have as many black holes/unusual volumes as anything else…
which may help to explain why i can learn one line and forget the following three…?
scars 30 April 2011
i am lucky enough to have quite a few items that remind me of all kinds of events or jobs. sometimes, i’ve been lucky enough to have money over to buy a painting, perhaps, and i can say ‘suchandsuch was the show that got me that’. these days, however, it might just be MARKS that i can point to. i fell against a sharp edge in my SHAMELESS days and still have a little scar on my bottom from that, though it’s fading (bet there’ll always be a slight silver line on the buttock though!). here, in Sheffield, while rehearsing for the play HAPPY DAYS at the Crucible, i seem to hit the heated towel rail with my bum every time i bend into the sink to spit out toothpaste and my right shoulder every time i straighten up and think ‘i seem to hit my bum off that every time i bend down’…
huge 28 April 2011
my dears, apologies for dipping out over the last while – consider me BACK now. the poor old noggin took a while to recover from the bang i gave it while i had that bug. in the meantime i’ve also had to use it a lot to rehearse the play HAPPY DAYS in sheffield, and that play is a bit of a beast i can tell you. it’s a samuel beckett so its very intricate and i say 98% of all of the words…EEK. we’re near the end of our first week now and with 2 to go to performing The Beast i am humbled and, of course, quietly and sometimes not so quietly terrified – which is how it should be. i find that i am quoting from the play in ‘real life’ already so i hope that’s a good sign/omen. thing is, i’ll be trying to learn some lines from here on out and will probably be appalled at how loose my ‘quotations’ from the text have been so far. sheffield is lovely, what little i have seen of it, and the people very nice. also, unlike manchester, no one walks into you without a care in the world or a thought for it – i did find manc a tad rough like that, a tad ‘careless’, wonderful as it is.
census 21 April 2011
I made Himself hand the census form over as it was a disgrace by the time it was to be collected and I was too chicken to stand over the work of our household. No one would have doubted that a small attitudey cat had had a go at it…and that MAYBE I had left coffee cups on it and PERHAPS a dinner or 2.
I’ve been in a bin for a while due to that vommy bug but also while in the throes of that I banged my head hard against a wall and it really did scramble my brains. I have a spongey egg shaped bump on the back of my head now and it hurts like hell. Every so often I list to the side and that’s quite funny (well, Richard points and laughs at me). I hope it hurries up and goes/is cured over the weekend because I start rehearsals in Sheffield next week for a production of HAPPY DAYS, by Mr Samuel Beckett, at the Crucible. Terrifyingly exciting…Check out the theatre website and do come along if you are on the island at all…
more anon…
vommin 15 April 2011
vile vile vile tummy viral thingy last 2 days – all hell on the loose – so be thankful that I am keeping the gorey details to myself, but trust me when I assure you it was spectacular. I had a reggae version of a song (Jammin?) going through my head that started ‘vommin, vommin, we’re vommin in the name of the vom’ – quite QUITE maddening.
By the way, for those of you who don’t live in Ireland, there is a town called Gorey in County Wexford and it’s really very pleasant.
Brendacat is savaging the census form and I truly hope I am not the one that has to hand it over in the state it’s in (to the State) – while I admire her plucky distrust of authority, and The MAN as twere, it’s me that’ll be in trouble not her – she doesn’t even appear on the form…Actually I did wonder about that – why, for instance, wouldn’t something like the number of domestic pets be counted as surely that would give an indication of what food/supplies would be needed for them etc.
front 12 April 2011
I am basically a big child, and one of my favourite things is to sit upstairs in the front seat on a double decker bus. Today was a big bus day and it started incredibly well when I could have my favourite spot on my way onto town. But 2 stops from getting off a mum and dad and 3 small people got on and had to sit behind me – so I did what was only right, I let the kids sit in the front seat. I swear to you, the DELIGHT they showed was worth so much and it has set me up rightly for the day.
Later, I had one of those almost apocryphal moments waiting at a stop when 3 of one particular bus turned up in a little convoy. And, no, there hadn’t been a 145 in a while nor was there a single one in the time afterwards while I was awaiting my own chariot.
I was almost deafened by a woman SCREECHING ‘Leah’ at her daughter as I passed her nearer to home but perhaps I had frightened her ‘cos my mouth was all numb and therefore I didn’t quite notice the runny nose above it upon my fisog – can’t have been a palatable sight…(and there ain’t no dignity in involuntary snotting, ever…)