deird_lj

Last night, the boyfriend and I went to an improvisational theatre performance.

For the first half, we listened to Jane Austen, Jackie Collins, HP Lovecraft, and... some other guy... as they told each other stories. (Yes, this was more exciting than it sounds.)

Jane Austen's tale involved Fanny Smithson and Harold Jones falling in love over mathematics and telescopes, while Lovecraft told a very creepy tale involving four masks - and only managed to get to three of them before the performance ran out of time, thus handily giving me nightmares about what the fourth mask would do.



Then, for the second half, we watched a court case.

They asked for suggestions from the audience of random objects that could be submitted into evidence. We suggested a rubber mallet - and they promptly decided that the defendant was a clown who had killed her fellow clown by substituting a metal mallet for the standard rubber mallet, thus causing a weight imbalance that made the clown fall to her death during the high-wire unicycle act.

So we listened to lots of circusy witnesses, telling us exciting tales of clown love, affairs with the ringmaster, the props master being seduced by the bearded lady, and malicious rubber mallet substitutions by all sorts of people.


It was wonderful fun.

Had rehearsals last night.

The scene I'm in is one long party sequence. And yes, I have many lines, but I have even more time standing around in the background murmuring to people in vague having-a-conversation tones.

After a while, you run out of stuff to say to each other. Some people have been just saying what they're saying ("Pretty dress, pretty dress." "Ooh! Admire, admire, show off my dress." "Admire."), which is hilarious to listen to.
And last night my conversation partner and I got sick of that, and started reciting nursery rhymes to each other. There's something extremely entertaining about saying "Incy-wincy spider climbed up the waterspout" in very serious tones, while fluttering a fan and trying to look beautiful...

Last night I had the most useless rehearsal in my entire history of acting.

We went through the lines, discussing the motive and direction of each line.
Then we all sat in a circle and discussed our characters, and what their history and childhood is like, and how they feel about life, and what colour best describes them.
And then we walked around the stage, clomping our feet, then floating lightly and gliding along, then moving suddenly, and moving gradually, moving aimlessly, moving in straight lines, moving with motivation, moving without reason, trying to truly capture our characters...



It's Oscar Wilde. My character is a socialite who spends her life going to parties and not listening to what anyone's saying. She's shallow. And it's Oscar Wilde. She doesn't have any deeper motivation. That's kinda the point.

I'm aware that I'm being impatient, but really, trying to wring deep inner emotion out of characters in an Oscar Wilde play strikes me as fairly silly.

I've spent another weekend almost entirely without internet.
This was not a good thing.

On the other hand, I was very busy, so at least I had plenty of non-internet-related things to do...

( my weekend )

Some day soon, the Social Norms Police are going to break down my door, arrest me for "violating accepted standards of conversation with strangers, and profiting from said violation", and cart me off to the funny farm.

Well, we've finally finished! I can't quite believe it, yet, but we've actually done all 25 performances. Our final show was last night.

I've been fairly quiet about what's actually been going on with No Love Lost for the last couple of months, mostly because I didn't want to bore you all. So I figured I'd put it all into one post, and then move on to other stuff.

 Second dress-rehearsal last night. And our first time with an audience. You see, the front-of-house people get a free showing at our second DR, and then tickets for the third DR go to charity. So from now on, if I stuff up, there are people watching.

And last night? I stuffed up.

One Cat.
Free To A Good Home.
Preferably In China.
(Or in some other place a long way from here where he'd run the risk of being eaten. Suggestions, anyone?)

I had gone, very carefully, through my wardrobe, and found enough teenage-girl-ish outfits to come up with six different costumes for No Love Lost. And I put them, very carefully, in a bag by the door, ready to take to tomorrow night's rehearsal.

And my bloody cat went and peed all over them.

Do you know how horribly cat urine stinks?
Not only did he pee right through my costume bag, he hit the carpet underneath. The carpet that I had had professionally cleaned a couple of weeks ago - after the Hole In My Ceiling debacle.

NOT HAPPY JAN!

...especially in the amateur theatre.

Wendy (the director) had to spend fifteen minutes at last night's rehearsal trying to teach me how to STAND STILL. Seriously! My entire stage direction for one page of lines was "stand still, and look at the audience". And I just couldn't do it - my body rebels against anything which doesn't allow me to fidget.

At one point I ended up walking three metres across the stage, and every other part of the rehearsal stopped while the entire cast and crew tried once again to explain to me the concept of "staying where you are"...

I  spent the Australia Day weekend down at Philip Island with my family. (Well, not quite all of them. Dad was in Canberra shooting.)

My nephews are just wonderful! We read stories, made sandcastles, learned how to say "radio" (well, Alex did), and practised walking (Caleb).
I think I could happily spend ten years in a room with the two of them, and I'd never get bored (hungry, maybe...).

In other Philip Islandyness, I read through Harry Potter #7 again, played Kill Doctor Lucky, and bought a doll as a future investment for when someone I know has a daughter of the appropriate age.

*****

Very glad I got comprehensive insurance for my car - I reversed into someone, coming out of my driveway. It was about the most minor accident that could still be called an accident, but I still have to pay excess.

*****

Play rehearsals resumed last Thursday, and are three times a week from now on. I'm frantically trying to learn my lines, with some success...