Sunday 6 June 2010

Disappointment

Bloody hell. This is a bit much to take. The Country Wife has been cancelled. No, I wasn't properly prepared for it. No, we hadn't had a great deal of rehearsals. But bloody hell! This is intolerable. Every production I've touched this term has withered away into nothingness. Hindsight is a beautiful thing. I know now that I should have accepted Measure for Measure when the part was there. Now I'll just be all bitter and acerbic and begrudgingly trundle from play to play, feeling a general envy for everyone else having a grand old time making theatre. Very sad, very depressing. Not the end of the world, of course. But a bitter pill to take. I'm only here for two more years! cries the panicky voice in my head. And those years are going to be so much busier than this one! With exams thrown in for good measure! So, just as I bid goodbye to the spirit of Abel Drugger, immortal in his purple bow-tie and Holmes-esque pipe, so too must I take leave of Mr Pinchwife, resplendent in tweed and now perpetually doomed to worry whether his wife is cuckolding him. There's a great sadness when these characters aren't allowed to get out. Sounds like a load of romantically-charged codswallop, but the despair is heartfelt.

Not really sure what to do now. Probably the best to come from this will be some genuine rehearsals for the Dickens show. I was going to be saving my voice for the week of the production. No point in that now. I can roar until my lungs are bloody and red and it won't make the faintest lick of difference. At least Pickwick & Nickleby will be sacrosanct. One of the early motives for the show was the glorious freedom it offered. A sort of pure acting, without the need for an infrastructure. But can it be possible to stoke enthusiasm for such a time without an audience? Theatre can't ever exist without one. Not really.

What a way to ring down the curtain on my first year of Cambridge drama. An allegedly exam-free, worry-lite Summer term in which I would act to my heart's content - sullied and spoiled by cancellations! Ah, well. Must count my blessings and move on. I've done some other stuff - it just seems so long ago now... Haven't done anything in a theatre since February. February! Ridiculous... Where the devil is it leading? This may be the nub of my theatrical obsession. I don't much care where acting takes me - but it must not end. That is imperative. Seeing so many promising projects collapse into the dust around me reawakens that primal terror. I think the best I can say is that I've encountered some entirely lovely, splendid people at work on these graveyard productions. Theatre is too often a supplement for my woefully inadequate social life, so at least it has served me on that basis.

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