Glitter rolling

That's my job now.

You can't polish a turd. But you can roll it in glitter

Champagne, flowers and delusion

Press night tonight. No press arrived.

I fluffed a series of lines and stood back stage imagining myself in a melancholy film following a failing actor. But then the audience seemed to enjoy it all the same. Were they all friends?

Flowers at the curtain call. Champagne and canapes at the pub afterwards. I feel awful for thinking what I think of the whole thing, because at heart they're all such decent people. Decent, yes, but also so utterly deluded.

You can't make people want to see a show, or enjoy it when they do, just by being nice. You've got to be talented, and even then you also need to get advice, to polish the whole affair.

I find it complete insanity that I'm the only person (other than the designer) working on this project who isn't a friend. To presume that you'll be able to write a great play, make a great press release, design a good flyer without asking advice from people who do it for a living is just retarded.

No writer worth his salt doesn't go through an editor, even if that editor is simply a discriminating friend - one who's willing to disagree.

What worries me even more is that maybe the writer/director/producer didn't presume anything, but instead simply didn't think about making the script/press release/flyer the best it could be. Simply didn't think

4 weeks are looking like a very long time

"It's only acting, darling...", drones the overly camp, prematurely senile actor for the fiftieth time, "...it's only a comedy"

I'm silent. But I want to throttle him and shout, "Shut up, shut up, shut up, you stupid old queen"

If your so blase about it all, why don't you f*&k off and leave it to someone who cares... and would therefore create something infinitely more watchable and truthful than the stock camp moments you create.

And as for saying "It's only a comedy" - you f*&kwit, comedy needs twice the discipline to be genuinely, deeply funny.

Four weeks to go - I can't imagine how we'll continue to get audiences. I anticipate the reviews with equal dread and masochistic pleasure.

Forgotten Scenes

It always happens on the nights leading up to the opening of a new show. A dream. I'm playing one of the scenes, but can't remember half the lines. The scene fades in and out of my grasp and I struggle to wake myself up, to find the safety of the script.

But when I do, the scene isn't there either. It never was. I'd made it up.

Long ago, on a French exchange, I had a similar experience. I was dreaming in French, chatting to my exchange's father, whilst we rowed in the middle of a gigantic lake. I understood everything he said, but one word. So, on waking, I looked up the word in a huge French dictionary.

I am the inventor of brand new French words - if I only I knew what they meant.

Taste (buds)

Funny how it changes. Funny how they change. I love a good Ale now. Never used to touch the stuff. Wouldn't drink it on a big night out - but my taste for those is on the decline.

But for a casual pint after a good day's rehearsals, it's quite quite delicious. And with the very slight inebriation it brings me I feel a huge desire to exclaim,

"God, it's good to be British"

Three come at once

Tonight was my first public screening of a short film I've acted in. And the second. And the third. Over the last three months I've been in about 9 shorts and the first three to screen all screened on the same night. One at a central London cinema, then the following two at a major art gallery in London - luckily pretty close.

Then I got drunk, kissed the girl who was in the third short and cycled home in the pouring rain. I've sobered up a little now... but I'm still wet.

I was feeling like a student again, utterly careless. But as I looked in the mirror I was drawn to the lines appearing under my eyes. Only in my mid-twenties, and the fear of old age is already setting in. I tell myself it's ridiculous, that you should accept you are and how you change.

Yet at the same time my vanity shrieks out the lack of time. Age hurtling onwards as youth slips inescapably away; a previously unwanted treasure sinking into the depths, forever further out of reach.

Narcissistic fool

Fearful Dreams

How ridiculous! I woke up in a state at 3am this morning. I was dreaming that the cast and creators of this pantomimic comedy had read my first blog (below) and were deeply hurt by what I wrote. It was so utterly real. So hard to tell myself it was jut a dream and I could go back to sleep. That I didn't need to do anything about it.

In the clear light of day, I see it's just foolishness (it's an anonymous post after all), mixed with an equal measure of arrogance (that anyone would be reading this blog yet, let alone the technophobic old queens I'm working with). Strangely enough, they weren't angry, just hurt. Which was infinitely worse.

"Gosh, if only it were a tandem"

These were the words uttered to me as I prepared to hop on my bicycle just now. It was only as I cycled away I realised that this might have been a chat-up line.

Which bothers me. She may have been drunk, but she was also beautiful and charming. She didn't bark out some drunken slur, but rather just turned when I accidentally rang my bell and said "Bbbbrrring!"

"Sorry, I hit it by... Sorry" I said, as I hopped on

"Gosh, if only it were a tandem", winking, smiling. I'm sure. I cycled off

I didn't say "You can sit on the pannier". I didn't cycle her back to hers. We didn't swap numbers. She didn't invite me in for a drink. We didn't suddenly find that we had an incontrollable attraction to each other. We didn't start making mad, passionate love.

I just cycled off, fast at first, then slowing as the realisation washed over me. It might have been nothing. Most likely. But I'm single. And it saddens me not to give things a chance. Not to at least talk to someone, who seems (on very first impressions) to... impress.

More shame than glory

Will it be everything I feared it would?

After accepting this, my first paid theatre role, and signing the contract it suddenly dawned on me that I may have opened the door to a whole world of shame... and little or no glory. The contract surely couldn't have any real legal hold on me. We hadn't started rehearsing and I wouldn't be taken to court over something as trifling as this. But it did bind me morally. It was too late to change my mind now.

"You make your bed, you have to lie in it", my Dad declared apologetically when I told him of my fears. My fears of ridicule - paying audiences and reviewers watching me churn out cheap gags and camp innuendos.

My cheeks redden with embarrassment thinking about it.

Why did I accept this? There's many others who would have happily filled the role saying, "it's your first offer of paid theatre, how could you turn it down"... well, the answer is I couldn't. Not because of the money, but because I felt I should. Swept along by the excitement of winning a paid theatre role, I failed utterly to listen to myself screaming "Don't do it, they'll be something else around the corner"

But would there be? Maybe not immediately, but wouldn't waiting be better than prostituting myself for a show I don't believe in. A show that my parents, my friends, even distant acquaintances are going to pay to see.

Maybe it won't be as bad as I imagine. Maybe we might manage to find some kind of truth in this vainly concealed pantomime. But with one week's rehearsals down and only one left to go, I still feel lost.

Yet the director is delighted. For him all is going to plan.

I suppose it's all a matter of taste. If only it were to mine.