Festival Impotence

I’m beating myself up this year. This is the first time in three years that I haven’t entered one of my plays into the RNTF as a production.

This wasn’t because I couldn’t get a company to out one one… Indeed, I did have an offer to have The Breakfast Show produced, sight unseen. I didn’t take it up, because I would have had to finish the script in a timescale that I would never have been happy with. I could have done it, but I don’t think I would have been able to take care of the dialogue or plot line that I would have wanted.
So this year, I’m just an actor. I’m working with COLLINGWOOD RSC in their production of Oscar Wilde’s An Ideal Husband (Sir Robert if you’re interested).

Being an actor only this year is both a joy and a pain. I have far more time at home this year, but there isn’t the same challenge – or co-operation.

Now the last statement may sound like I’m damning the production – and I most certainly am not! But I feel as though my playwrighting has made me cross over from amateur status. Now I read the lines at another level and want to make the character come to life as the playwright wanted. Many of the other actors I’m working with do the same… But others are finding it difficult… They’re new… They haven’t developed their stagecraft yet, so working beyond ‘saying the right line, in the right place at the right time’ is a challenge.

This leads them understandably to chatting during rehearsals (not in the theatre or rehearsal room, but in the peripheries). The problem for me is, I’m learning my lines, or working out my emotions… and I do my best not to be annoyed if I get side tracked.

Oh, I know this is just a grumble of a Ramble… But I thought it was relevant… Now that I’m a playwright, I can’t say that I take theatre more seriously, but I definitely look at it in a different way…
I’m off to be miserable on my own, rather than inflict it on you any longer…