17 Thursday Nov 2022
They are about fourteen, a baker’s dozen of them or so, and ever so slightly miffed, because they had to give up an hour of sports to have me talk to them. The fact is, they are taking extra-curricular drama classes this year, and they’ll be staging a shortened version of my own Nellie Bly play at the end – so the teachers thought it a good idea to have the author discuss the play with the class. Continue reading
03 Thursday Nov 2022
Posted in Theatre
You can see me here in the green room, wearing my Suez costume. The copper water-vessel weighs a ton.
Well yes – the last week or so has been… busy. About A Treasonous Path you know already, but there was also a lot of stage work.
Over the weekend, I’ve covered up for a member of the Crowds in our version of Around the World in 80 Days – my own translation and adaptation, and a jolly, colourful, bustling show, with 24 people onstage, which, in our Tiny Theatre, is no mean feat in itself… Continue reading
06 Thursday Oct 2022
Posted in Theatre
This is a landslide
Miss Imogen Ralph has the plague;
Miss Imogen Ralph’s understudy (who also sells oranges in Suez) has the plague;
The slipper-seller of Kholby has the plague; Continue reading
02 Thursday Jun 2022
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Last Sunday we had the second – and last – performance of the school play for the Third – and last – Course. It went really well, and I’m truly happy and proud of ‘my’ pupils and the work we’ve done together. The’re a fine group. I’ll miss them.
That said, of the whole hectic, glittering week, there is one moment that I want to remember, the sort of thing that, when it happens, makes you stop and think that “Oh, how book-like!” Continue reading
17 Thursday Feb 2022
Posted in Theatre
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I went to the Tiny Theatre yesterday, for rehearsals.
Not a terribly peculiar occurrence in itself, I’ll admit: we are opening a new play next week, and the plague has wrought havoc on my cast, so it’s been a carousel of understudies, and Nina is away, so I’m also rehearsing things for her, and, starting tomorrow, we have a one-week reprise of an old play… Continue reading
02 Thursday Dec 2021
Posted in Scribbling, Theatre
Once upon a time, December used to be a rather non-writing month, all given to Christmas preparations. Crafting ornaments and decorations, trimming trees, baking Lebkuchen, making the pudding, searching for presents, listening to carols… this sort of things.
I just believed – in all naive honesty – that there was no time to write in December… Continue reading
25 Thursday Nov 2021
Posted in Theatre
Tags
dress rehearsal, Noises Off, Opening Night, Philip Henslowe, Shakespeare in Love, stage superstitions, theatre
Us – after dress. Or tech. Or whatever it was.
So the play opens tomorrow night.
We had dress rehearsals, last night – or perhaps not quite… I mean it in that Noises-Offish way, you know: if this is tech, when do we do dress? And if this is dress, when do we do tech?
Yes, well… Continue reading
05 Friday Nov 2021
Posted in Theatre
The real-life Bea
Oh dear. Oh goodness me. Oh Spirit of the Bard…
I’m going to play again.
As in, on the stage. On the Tiny Theatre’s stage. Before an audience.
I’m going to play Bea. Continue reading
15 Friday Oct 2021
So they’ve been tidying up the Company’s extensive collection of books, plays and whatnots over the summer – and, as has become the case these past few years, everything and anything that isn’t in Italian has been set aside for me.
And I really mean anything: I once ended up with a book of plays in Serbian. Nobody had an inkling of when, how or, more relevantly, why on earth it had landed in the Company’s library – but, quite regardless, it went in the “Clara” box. That I don’t know a single word of Serbian didn’t seem to matter much. For the record, the book is still somewhere in my shelves – obviously unread but there… Continue reading
23 Friday Jul 2021
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Early morning walk (because I truly am that good… if only once in a blue moon)
Rush to town
A meeting
A gazilion small things (“Since you’re going to town anyway…”)
Home and the quickest lunch ever
The images – oh Lord, the images! (Because I did have them all but ready – but then lightning struck, and I changed them all, and had to begin again from scratch, and this one is much better, and… and… and…) Continue reading
Scribblings 