Where was I?
Well, a number of places obviously. It's been a
while. It's been ages. Rewind to - um, Christ - October 1st: So I took
that week off to Write (not this), but then following the giddy
brain-wave on Mount Pleasant I don't know, I didn't get as much done as I
wanted. Here:
And
then I was rehearsing Glen Neath's play "Superheroes" as part of the
Shunt Lounge's first anniversary celebrations, for which Lizzie had
constructed a small reptile house to stick in the ladies' toilets and
Suze covered the lengths of the long corridor with projections of
turning heads and Becky was translucently pregnant with live goldfish
and Heather had done something very excellent with the broken chairs and
some gravity in the bar:
And
rehearsing "Superheroes" was a mild confusion undertaken in excellent
company. It was just never clear to me how much Glen's lines were really
being helped by our rehearsing them if you see what I mean. My
favourite Glen piece has always been "RomCom" in which two completely
unrehearsed performers would simply repeat the lines being fed to them
in their headphones. I've never seen that not work... Similarly in
"Superheroes" four actors wearing masks and spandex and unfamiliar with
their lines would be left in an arena to bellow some text scrolling
erratically above the audience's heads. Easy. Fun. Except that by the
end of the week, of course, we weren't unfamiliar with our lines at
all... by the fourth and final night I was even beginning to make some
sense of them. Which I felt a little uncomfortable about. But for those
who missed it here's the synopsis:I was Captain Mint. Captain
Mint loves The Wisp. The Wisp is in a passive-aggressive relationship
with abusive alpha The Vortex. Captain Mint fears the Vortex. The Storm
is a hobbyist. The Vortex gives the Storm some ibuprofen to give to
Captain Mint. The Wisp returns with some shopping and The Vortex gives
The Storm a bottle of beaujolais. The Wisp walks out on The Vortex. The
Storm gives Captain Mint the ibuprofen. Captain Mint no longer fears The
Vortex. The Wisp returns to The Vortex. The ibuprofen is ineffectual.
Captain Mint contents himself with being a hobbyist. And there's
just the two media ultimately, innit - Doing some stuff and Leaving
stuff behind. The Shunt Lounge is the latter and "Superheroes" was the
former and that brings us up to... what... a week ago? Monday?... when I
found myself once again standing in my pants before strangers from all
nations for money. It's called "Medical Modelling". Students of
anaesthetics are handed jelly and ultra-sound doodads to prod in your
ribs like a heretic's finger while you lie on a rug on a table in a
third-storey Edwardian games room in Portland Place and crane round to
see on the screen behind you something that's being pointed out to them
as your liver. Easy. Painless. The magazine rack that we'd
stationed ourselves by beforehand was full of brochures advertising
brightly-coloured plastic clamps, and things like this
for which it seems quite clear to me that nobody has bothered to read the instructions.
Goodnight for now. I'm back. I'm sorry.
