Friday 13th in Ashton

Yes, I'll admit I am a little superstitious.  I'm not OCD about it, but I adhere to a few random routines before shows:  eating the same food, drinking the same drink, laying my clothes out in the same way before I go onstage, doing warm up exercise in a particular order, nothing out of the ordinary, I wouldn't say.  However I did notice that my first show of 2012 was to take place on Friday 13th, and then tried not to think about it and treat the day like any other.  In the morning I made some bread.  I have forgiven our bread maker for some catastrophes last year and have made some pretty darn delicious chocolate croissants recently, so I thought I'd have another go at plain bread and set the machine off on its three hour marathon while I went through my show day rituals: running over lines,  packing the car and ironing my costume.  At lunchtime I removed a wadge of spongey goo from the bread maker and tried to convince myself that this disaster was not a portent of worse to come and that it counted as my dose of Friday 13th bad luck.  

I should have concentrated more carefully while I was loading the car.  When I unpacked it at the venue I realised that I'd left my microphone at home.  I only use a mic in venues where I feel I need it and prefer not to use it at all.    If I'd had the choice the hall in Ashton would have been a close call.  It wasn't particularly big but the acoustic was dull, plus the large audience expected would add to sound absorption.  But I didn't have the mic so I'd have to manage without - even for the finale song, when I really do prefer to use it.  Time for the routine sip of diet coke - brilliant for zipping up the energy level and putting me in performance mode.  Aaargh!  I'd left that behind too.  Then a horrible noise started to come through the speakers.    I recalled the date and began to feel nervous about the show.

At this point David, John and John came riding in on white chargers.  John produced a cordless radio mic for me to use during the song and assured me that he could hear everything else I said crystal clear from the rear of the hall.  John II (St John actually, since he has recently agreed to tech for all future shows) obliterated the noise and David drove off to get me some diet coke. 

From that moment on it was a dream night.  The audience was perfect:  a mix of lively young mums who were hell bent on having a good time and happy to laugh at themselves and me, and sprightly and attentive villagers - nearly a hundred of them, which is a fine number for a village audience on a cold January night.   Ruth Rich was very happy to be back on the boards.  There was only one disappointment.  During the play  Ruth "writes" in her diary.  What actually happens is that I write my own remarks about how well the show is going down.  There are some entertaining entries: "Could the person with a cough please shut up!"  "Nose running - will they notice if I sniff?" "Love you, audience"  "HELLO is there anyone out there?"   But the pen had run out, so my effusive words came out as nothing but a few scratchy marks.   Never mind,  for lashings of bad luck this Friday 13th was a flop.  But that's not to say I'm giving up my pre-show routines.  Quite the opposite actually.  Just imagine how the evening might have gone if I hadn't stuck to them. 

Rounding up 2011

It only went and happened again, didn't it?  No, not the microphone thing, nor having royalty in the audience.  The allergic reaction.  I've narrowed the offending substance down to paracetamol or ibuprofen. Sometime later this year I've got to go in to hospital for a controlled experiment to discover which of those two provokes the reaction.  Or I could just take one of them now ... no, maybe not.

I've got all behind with my performance by performance blog though.  After Waingroves there was Heage in Derbyshire.  The last time I went there someone put their raffle prize on my set.  This time, I couldn't work out why people were setting off fireworks outside on November 18th.  Turned out it was the tea urn making all the noise.  Heage is a bit like that, but for its eccentricity, remoteness and the fact that people are prepared to go out in the pitch dark in the dead of winter to see a performer from warm and cosy Warwickshire, I love it.

Then Alrewas, where I must confess I had a sense of humour failure when the lights played up again as we were setting up.  It was the wrong place to get stroppy because the Alrewas welcome is very special:  the food is amazing, the backstage help second to none and the audience are wonderful.  Why the lights keep playing up is anyone's guess and I'm just not a good enough actor to pretend that everything is hunky dory before a show when I'm faced with the prospect of performing with one light, or no lights, as the mood takes them.  They have now been fixed.  Did you hear that lights?  You have been fixed.  No more allergic reactions from you, if you wouldn't mind.

So .... it was a huge relief and big, big treat to go to perform at the Bridge House Theatre in Warwick.  Oh, what a night!  One of the best.  But before the show my son was terrified.  This was a fundraiser for his forthcoming school rugby tour and lots of his friends were going to be in the audience. He couldn't bear to be present and waited at home whilst his mother cavorted around on his school stage before his teachers and classmates.  I'd hardly entered the house when I arrived home before he asked how it went.   "Terrible."  I replied.  "They just didn't laugh at all.  In fact I think I'm going to give up doing this.  It just isn't worth it."

Why did I say that?  I don't know.  I'd wanted to pick the audience up and take them home with me, they'd been so great. Just seemed like a bit of fun to tease my son.

I waited for an outburst of recrimination:  Why did I have to do the show there in the first place?  How could I let him down in front of everyone?  That kind of thing.  But I'd forgotten.  Son is a nice chap. "I'm really sorry."  I said, attempting in a fake way to cover my own fake disappointment at my fake flop, ready to disabuse him of the disaster as soon as he reacted.  Son looked at me kindly, covering the humiliation he must have felt.  "It's all right, mum.  Don't worry."  Five minutes later he dump tackled me onto the sofa and got his own back.

After that it was one more visit to Bulkington and I was home and dry for 2011 - well nearly.  Bulkington holds the record for seeing all three of my shows in the space of ten months.  Most venues take three years. I was therefore pleased to be able to tell them that I was still one step ahead and that a new play "Something Fishy" would be ready in March.

As a finale for 2011 I did a preview of "Something Fishy" before a selected audience of friends in our garage.     The performance wasn't flawless  but I was pleased with the reaction and can't wait, really can't wait to doing some more  in 2012.  Brighton here I come!  Maybe Buxton too ..... Edinburgh, not sure.

See you soon.

Quite a fortnight

Week commencing 31st October 2011.  Noone ever books a show during this week.  Ruth Rich can't compete with Hallowe'en and Bonfire Night.  Time to relax........... no such luck.  One day into my week off I was rushed to hospital with anaphylactic shock:  nose and eyes streaming, itching, funny feeling in the throat followed by funny feeling all over as blood level plummeted and body went into meltdown.  Had to stay in overnight while medics got blood pressure back to normal.  Thought they were overdoing things a bit when they gave me an ECG.  Discharged self from hospital feeling far worse than when went in on account of lack of sleep, but blood pressure was normal by now.  Returned to GP and got a gratifyingly sharp intake of breath when she glanced at notes and saw how low blood pressure had dropped.  The cure:  adrenaline.  Two days into a week off and my body was craving its regular rush of excitement.  Honestly, talk about a drama queen!

Following week, adrenaline level hit the roof as prepared to perform at Inner Temple Grand Day with The Princess Royal, the Attorney General, the Home Secretary, the Master of the Rolls, the Lord Chief Justice and goodness knows who else besides in the audience.  Felt more nervous than ever could remember.  Had new material to deliver and knew would be filled with self-loathing if I messed up.   Didn't mess up.  Husband Bill did a turn too.  He didn't mess up either.   Whole occasion SO exciting.  Sniffer dogs cased the joint in advance.  My room for pacing around in nervously before the show was filled with bodyguards drinking coffee who seemed to be an awful lot less nervous than me.  I've seen The Bodyguard.  These chaps are supposed stand a centimetre away in dark glasses, packed with weapons and ready to kill or die for their protege.  "You all seem very relaxed."  I remarked.  Turned out they were the back-up party.  The main dining room where the royal party was seated was stiff with invisible others.  

Then two days later up to Waingroves Community Centre near Ripley to perform Double Booked.  I love Waingroves!  An evening of entertainment is not an evening of entertainment in Waingroves without a game of irish bingo at the end.  It is thrilling and funny and then it's down to the local pub asap to get in lots of beer.  Before that there was my show to watch and I was introduced and thanked like royalty (I should know.)  But during the interval I committed a major blunder:  forgot to turn off microphone before commenting to techie about how things were going so far.  Show organiser came running in to tell me that everyone was falling about laughing in the audience.  Mind travelled back in a rush to try to remember what I'd just said.  (Last time I did this I had commented rather impolitely about the group of drunk women out on a Friday night in Claverdon who'd chatted and giggled throughout my performance).    No, it was OK.  I'd been congratulating myself on a bit of hasty, back of the foot type re-arranging of the script when things got out of order.  Figured the audience wouldn't have minded being let in on the secret.   At the end of the evening the organiser said I'd got a good memory.  People do mention this occasionally.  It isn't true though.  Yes, I can learn a lengthy script ..but can I remember where I've left my glasses or car keys? Not a hope.  Can I remember to turn my microphone off?  Only sometimes.

Middleton Cheney and Broughton

Oopsy - getting behind again... and how could I not mention Middleton Cheney.  OMG Middleton Cheney audience I am so totally, yeah, in love with you.  You even laughed at things that weren't funny.  And it was a Thursday night just before half term.  Weren't you tired at all?  Not looking forward to a break? Bit kind of fed up about having to go out to a school do?  I mean, Educating Essex was on the telly and it's a programme too good to miss, isn't it?  Not a bit of it.  MC were up for it.  I thank you.  

Had a bit of a double take when I was shown my dressing room:  the nurse's room.  There was a screen, a bed with a propped up head, syringes, wadding, lots of antiseptic bits and bobs.  The entire area was sanitised and disinfected and I worried quite a lot about contaminating things.  This is not something I usually have to concern myself with.  In fact usually it is the other way round.  Not many village halls are blessed with Artists' Dressing Rooms and I am only too accustomed to changing in cupboards, disabled toilets, lobbies and corridors.   One day it will all change and I'll see my name on a dressing room door.  It's only a matter of time, I feel sure.

Talking of disabled loos, that's where I changed in Broughton.  You know what, Broughton?  I reckon  I did one of the best performances I've ever done that night.  It just all seemed to work, and your happy smiling faces were a joy to perform to.  Nightmare on lighting street but it'll be sorted.    I wonder if I was so relaxed because I'd taken a short holiday earlier in the week?  Three days in Paris with son and girlfriend.  Son is 16.  I reckon it takes some character to go to Paris with  your mum and your girl, and son rose to the occasion.   On the whole we agreed about most things:  The Mona Lisa is overrated, the Moulin Rouge is worth every penny, the metro is hard work, there is absolutely no fathomable reason for a gothic scene of flowers and overpainted lady to be represented in the players' dressing room of the Stade de France, and the walk beside the Seine was great despite the fact that the Musee D'Orsay was shut when we got there.    Funniest moment:  son and girlfriend trying to remember their actual birthdays and say them in French in order to prove that they were under, rather than over, 18 for a change in order to get in free.

Um - if you are reading this (like, who?) may I just mention that the next performance I will report will take place before the Princess Royal.  Aaaaarrrrrgh.

Family Matters in Sandiacre, Abberley and Dunchurch

Three performances of "Family Matters" this weekend, starting in a school.   I remember visiting adults trying to make us laugh at my school.   It was hard for them.  Even if we thought they were funny we only laughed if everyone else did for fear of being picked on afterwards for finding something funny that wasn't.  And if it was rude we didn't dare laugh in case the rudeness was accidental and we got told off later. "Family Matters" is the most risqué of all my plays and it features a super sized papier mached sperm cell as one of its punchlines.  I liked the  Friesland School audience. I particularly like the whoop at the end and the girl near the back who clearly didn't care if she got picked on or told off.  The school is quite a little drive from home so, after the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo fiasco of the previous week, I looked round carefully for any forgotten props before leaving.   I always enjoy the drive home with the John, the techie.  The show is done and we talk comfortably in the dark.  I have an understanding husband who is perfectly happy for me to drive around the countryside late on weekend nights with men other than him.

In the morning I received a text from John:


"Hi Ginny, just for peace of mind did we bring the sperm cell back?  I woke up in the middle of the night and nowhere did I see it.  Then I realised I never looked behind the curtains at the back."

Realising that this was open to misinterpretation I read it aloud to the next two audiences and on both occasions it got one of the best laughs of the night.

The next performance was deep in Worcestershire. At this venue I am also blessed with the help of an old (he wouldn't mind me saying) chap called Marc whose lights, according to him, are older than he is.  Marc is a tiny bit deaf.  He has built his own lighting desk and he operates it himself.  He has to because it takes both hands.  Whenever there was a lighting cue John had to signal it to Marc.  John himself isn't in the first flush of youth (retired after 30 + years of teaching).  There was something very touching about seeing the two men seated at the control desk, John's hand gripping Marc's wrist to prevent him anticipating his cue too early and whispering "Dim the lights now!" from time to time.  They both smiled throughout the show and added to my enjoyment of it.

Performance no. 3 was in Dunchurch: close to home and the venue for an earlier performance of Ten Days ...that shook the Kitchen!" with one of the most appreciative audiences I have had.  John and I set off happily in the knowledge that it would be a good night.   Then John received a phone call which changed everything.  Worrying news of close family illness meant that he really needed to be elsewhere - though he vowed to stay if he couldn't be replaced.   I rang James, my 19 year old other techie.  Chances of him being free on a Saturday night were slim but miraculously he was and he got straight in his car, without pausing for food.  This was a shame because he's a meat person and the hummus and lettuce wraps which were all that was there to offer him on his arrival nearly made him turn round and go straight home again.  John gave a perfectly cogent handover and James said it would be fine.   I tell all this as if we were all calm.  Well, maybe they were.  Personally I was more than mildly panicky.  But a calm and unflappable temperament is an essential quality of a techie and I delight in the services of John and James whose sangs are about as froid as is possible.  Every five minutes I asked James if he was sure he knew what he needed to do.  Every five minutes he gave a sweet smile and assured me that he did.   He was right.  He did. The show went as smoothly as it could.   I told the text message story and got a huge laugh .. sad that John wasn't there to hear it.

St Michael and All Angels Church, Church Broughton, Staffs

I have never before performed in a Church.  To be honest, I've never wanted to.  My shows about the challenges of modern family life aren't all tea and toast and I've worried that occasional blasphemies or references to bodily functions might be inappropriate in places of worship.  However, last night I had no choice as the booking was made on my behalf.  In rehearsal I discovered that during the show I took the Lord's name in vain on three separate occasions and used other impolite expletives on three others. Indeed, there is a whole scene dedicated to the use of a family swearbox.  This worried me, and over the course of the week I have experimented with the substitution of other words.   I'll have to give an example, if you'll mind my language.  At one point I say as if to a 5 year old "For Christ's sake, Freddie, get that bloody thing off me." referring to a snail which has got stuck to my face.  I considered substitutions for Christ and bloody.  They needed to be rude words at least because that line is immediately followed by the imposition of a fine for swearing.  Running through my mental dictionary of swearwords I realised that every alternative would actually be worse.  You have to try it. Substitute Christ and bloody in the sentence for bodily functions/sexual acts and the sentence becomes far more offensive, viz.  "FFS Freddie, get that sh***y/p***ing thing off me."  So I stuck with Christ and bloody and braced myself for an enraged gasp from the audience.    Luckily it didn't come.


I always think it's a good idea to appear relaxed before a show when talking to the promoter.  It's a trick I learned as a barrister:  Never good to show the client that you are nervous.  So before the audience gathered I chatted to the Church Warden and he told me a story about the bats in the belfry which come out when the heating is on at night.  Bats!?!  I have inherited an irrational fear of bats from my father who claimed to have got one caught in his hair as a young man.  I really didn't fancy the idea of bats swooping and diving at me during my show (though one consolation would have been that any involuntary expletives would have been in character, I suppose).  Luck was with me once more, however, and the bats remained in the belfry throughout the performance. 


The Church had been equipped with a makeshift stage.  It was rather small, so I improvised  and incorporated the pulpit into the performance, making it double as a bedroom.  (I know!)  I walked up and down the steps a couple of times and felt that this new layout worked really well.  The organisers had been very concerned that I should not trip or graze my shins on the edges of the Church structure and furniture and reminded me more than once to be careful.  "Oh I'll be fine." I said airily, pumped full of adrenalin just before the show went up. After the Church Warden's introduction the houselights went down, the stage lights went up, my cue to enter was played over the sound system and I descended from my pulpit boudoir, caught my foot on the edge of the staging and stumbled into the limelight, narrowly avoiding a fall flat on my face.  Third time lucky?  No chance.  I was in a Church, after all, wherein superstition has no place. 

Tutbury - lost prop

So there I am in Tutbury, Staffs setting up the props for a performance of Double Booked.  Feel quite relaxed and looking forward to the show.  Suddenly realise a prop is missing.  I obviously left it behind at a venue in Sussex last week.  A copy of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larrsen.  It's an important prop.  The fact that it is written by a Scandinavian author whose gender and sexual orientation are hard to determine from his name, if you don't already know them, is a joke in the show.  Probably one of those "you need to be there" moments.  Panic!  All the shops will be shut.   Nevertheless I set off to the high street , confident that I'll find one that is open and selling the book.  Turns out that Tutbury doesn't have many shops, certainly none that are open at that time.  I stride into the likeliest option.
 "Do you sell books?"
 "Magazines?"
 "No, not magazines, real books."  (I'm getting a bit terse.)
 "Sorry, no, just magazines."
  I go into the second most likely.
 "Do you have any books?"
"No, just fish and chips here, love."
  I race back to the venue.  It is in a road with houses.  Time is running short.  A girl is outside one of the houses.  I run round.
  "Hello, do you live here?"
 "Well, sort of.   It's not my house but  ..."
  I interrupt.  "Sorry, I'm in a bit of a rush.  Don't explain.  But you live here, right?  So do you have any books."
 "Er, yiss?"   (At this point I detect a foreign accent.)
"Well, look, I'm just wondering if you happen to have any books by Stieg Larrsen.  You, know, the Millennium Trilogy?"
 "Yiss, I do actually, I'm in the middle of reading the third one.  I've got the second one upstairs."
 "Oh, thank god!  Can I borrow it?"
  "Yiss?  Mind if I ask why?"
It's a reasonable question in the circumstances.  I look at my watch.  Curtain up in 45 mins and we haven't done the sound check yet.  I gabble an explanation.
"Oh, that's great." says my foreign new best friend.
"It's not great."  I explain.  "It's an emergency.  Can you possibly lend it to me?  Where are you from by the way?"
"New Zealand.  Yiss sure, I'll go and git it."
She skips upstairs and returns with the book which I fall on avidly, kiss and hug her and dash back to the show.   It's not the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, but its by the same author, and that'll do.
During the interval I explore my dressing room which doubles as a store room.  I open a cupboard.  Books ... hundreds of them, are in boxes are piled high.  There's Dan Brown, Maeve Binchy, Joanna Trollope. Somewhere, I know, there's a Girl with a Dragon Tattoo -  I don't have time to look for it now, but I know its there.    How weird is that?  The very thing I needed was almost certainly in the same building all the time.

Tutbury Castle is haunted, you know ... I wonder if the poltergeist had wandered into the village for the night?  I wonder if he'd nipped down to Sussex en route.  They can't find my book at the previous week's venue in Sussex.  If anyone in Tutbury is reading this ... go through those books in the cupboard, I bet The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo is there.