It's good to have a cell phone again. In this day and age to go without your crackberry for 3.5 weeks deserves some sort of medal. Which I'll accept.
After my trips in and out of doctors offices I had to work on my extract for the showcase. The main reason I flew to London in the first place. Even though I am living back home in NYC I am still in my second year of grad school at City University of London. I've been working on my thesis play which is due Sept 1. Then I will be done... But I had to fly over this June to showcase a scene from this unfinished play.
The school hired a director and well established actors. We had two days of rehearsals/ rewrites before the big shebang. While I think all were very talented in this process there were two things I could have done without.
1. The Tube strike (why of all days did the London underground decide today we will stop working?) - the funny part was after I took a 2 hour bus ride for what should be 30 mins. journey I found out that no... the Northern line (the one I was off) was still working. Seriously London? You come to NY and find out what a subway strike is all about. The last time I had one was on my first day of work temping as a Kennedy's personal assistant. She didn't believe me when I showed up six hours late because I had to walk from Queens to the Upper East Side. So in retrospect the subway standstill on a big day for me... should have expected it.
The second issue I had was the Director had the actors get up and move on their feet for the reading. Not just read the scripts from a stationary position. Generally in a staged reading the actors sit. And the playwrights stage directions are read. I would have preferred that but instead the actors did their own makeshift blocking... flying by the seat of their pants so their interpretation and emotions got in the way of my words. Which isn't a bad thing but it brought some lines that were meant to be subtle to a strange and bold place that made it laughable. If their focus hadn't been make up our own blocking as we go the invited industry could have heard the script the way I intended it... but this is theater right? So if it were a full production it's good to know that's the problems with my script. So I mean while I didn't like it for the showcase I enjoyed it for my rewrites. I can hear some of the problems clearly.... I just didn't need the BBC to hear it...
After the showcase finished which was like a snap of the fingers we went to our local school pub where the only industry guest that followed was there prowling for girls not really interested in our work. So I can't say it was a waste of a trip over because I did discover my next draft in the rehearsal room but didn't forge any success for the future. And I had a tone more adventures right after the showcase from Cornwall to Scotland and everything in between....
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