End of week 2

a lot of things happened this week, so this will be a long post.
on monday we moved all of our set into the lyric and set everything up there. in no time the studio was transformed into the chaos that is currently our trademark. controlled chaos, that is.
at this point the lyric studio is the smallest space we've rehearsed this show in, but it fitted nicely and we even had space left for audience members.






on tuesday the set of The End of Everything Ever went to a place in Brentwood to be fumigated. the word fumigation always makes me think of burning, but obviously we didn't incinerate it, we just had any potential woodworm or other bug smoked out.
at the same time everyone else was rehearsing at the lyric.





on wednesday morning the fumigation was done and we picked up our wood (now all officially stamped) to bring it to a place in barnet where we left it behind to get sent to beijing. i found it quite strange to leave the set behind. this is the first time the set will travel on its own. usually it's with me in the back of the van or it flies with us wrapped in sleeping bags.
i won't be fully at ease until i see our wardrobe in beijing.

when i got back to the lyric i finally had a chance to power up all of our none-theatrical lights and made everything look like marie (our designer) had intended. and it looked amazing.




thursday was the day of our first show. there was a lot of front of house business to think about, because this is our first promenade show. we had a very limited capacity (60), and only 14 stools to sit on, so we had to hope that people would be generous and take turns in sitting or give up those precious seats to those who needed it most.

it all went well.

afterwards we had a q&a session and we asked people what they liked or didn't like. they suggested there was more opportunity for audience interaction.
so on friday that's what we did.






we did three shows in total, each with a q&a session at the end, and it was amazing how most people came back into the space for that, and told us what they felt about the show.

in general the reactions were all very positive, so what's left for us this week is to finish the show and brave the ending.

i would like to thank all the people who came to see us at the lyric and told us what they thought.

End of week 1

We've come to the end of our first week of rehearsals in Cambridge.
Everyone got bikes to cycle from our houses (one house for the boys, one for the girls) to Hills Road College.
It's nice to be near the office for a change. It means that Cat and Nikki are close to hand when help or advice is needed, and we can all have lunch together at the Junction.







Our smallest fan:


From tomorrow we'll be rehearsing at the Lyric in London, and at the end of the week we'll play three scratch performances. It is possible that all three performances will be different, because our main goal is to try some of our work out with an audience. Maybe we'll play everything we have, maybe we'll choose different scenes every day. So you may have to come and watch us on all three nights.

One bridge too far

I nearly refused to board the plane today because of this:


is this really necessary? I think the word is 'to gloat'. Other terms that spring to mind are immature, childish, unprofessional. I mean, who says they won't be next?
Surely a company going down is serious business, it's not just like a reality show contestant that was voted out at the end of a week of utter stupidity.

When I landed in London, I saw another one: Bye Bye SkyEurope.
I don't feel comfortable flying an airline that has this attitude or mentality. End of story.