Week 10-11

Week 10 passed in a 6 day stretch that saw us as follows:

Shrowsbury Castle - a little castle central to the town.

Chatsworth House - awesome estate - amazing grounds and top notch house with exhibits

New dancemove....'Do the CHATSWORTH'

Morden Hall Park - South London park grounds - rainy mosquito madness

Langley Park Essex - a big park grounds and little else

The Vine  - average house - stage was set by the lake which was rather charming

Nymans garden - very well kept grounds

With love from The Vine

And now 2 days into another 6 day stretch for Week 11:

Lyme Regis - awesome set up overlooking the sea. Fish and chips for afters!

Holkham - nice walled garden - got to go to a great beach and swim in the sea!

Details of the venues aside I want to write about our state of mind and the key features of the tour that are in play at this late stage. I've never played a show that has run to this many performances. (About 60 down and 20 to go). Let alone whilst going through the challenges of life on the road.

So. Firstly, the challenge of acting. I've done these scenes so many times now that I can very easily run on autopilot and come off stage without having even felt a single thing. My body and voice can go through the motions but it's an effort to truly discover things afresh and truly live in the situation. I'm so bored of my usual choices with how I say my lines so I'm endeavouring to be different every time. Sometimes this can leave me feeling insecure about what's coming across but at least things are fresh and so ultimately good.

I'm pleased to report that we're still working to fine tune the scenes and look for improvements in telling the story. It's funny how our whole working day...checking in and out of hotels, driving for hours, building the set, waiting around, warming up and ushering...revolves around these fleeting moments during which we get to spend a few minutes on stage and practice our craft. It's important to keep that in focus and apply ourselves fully as such.

Life with the same seven people day in day out with very little privacy from each other or time off from the job. Thank goodness we get on. It could be a fucking nightmare if we didn't. Even though we have great respect for each other; life is still a consistent negotiation between each other's mood swings, folibles and patterns. Patience is paramount and it's great that we're all still fully unified.

This working life can be boring and frustrating. It's non-stop. It's very easy to feel disenchanted with the lifestyle and start counting the days to the next day off or indeed the end of the job. How peverse! I spent years training for this and now here I am and I'm wishing it away so I can get on with being an unemployed actor again. One must keep this in perspective and make the most of the moment in hand. But this isn't a typical acting job where you turn up at the theatre at 6pm, do the show and are on the way home at 9.30pm. Hey ho!

Ed lodges a complaint with the management:

There are lots of positives, but just for the sake of getting them off my chest and giving you some insight, here's a list of pet hates that bums us out:

• No phone signal throughout the whole day because the venue is in the middle of the countryside (1pm-11pm
• When a venue gives us a naff lunch
• The fact that breakfast is at 11am at an overpriced motorway services, lunch at 3pm and dinner at 11pm
• Having to buy the dinner that you're going to eat that night from said overpriced motorway services
• Mosquito bites (currently have 5)
• Always having to share a travelodge room with someone and half of the time on a crappy camp bed because that's how they often sell twin rooms...kingsize + pauper bed:

"Which one did you have last night?"

• Having one day off in 6 and that you have to spend half of doing chores like laundry for the next 6 days
• Having to do a run of 11, 12 or 13 days straight without a day off
• Being in fairly consistent back and neck pain due to the strain of building the set and packing in down every day, between long car trips. Massages are a must...

Ninja fruit skills

A Lukas special

Well those are obviously offset by the joy of bringing a top quality to show to massive audiences on the daily whilst getting to practice my proffession! Aside from spending my time with these bums...seen here modelling the latest in Travelodge fashion; Season 2015: