Another month and another play completed at Market Harborough Theatre. The Drama Society put on A Bunch of Amateurs last week to sold out houses. Excellent stuff. I played a very small role as a paparazzi, mainly to make noise and add colour to the performance. It was good fun. Not a lot of responsibility and I got to muck around a bit back stage. And all of the crew and cast, again, could not have been more lovely. Everyone was welcoming and we all had a blast. With some interesting chats had in the bar afterwards. Met some more lovely people and we got some great audience reactions. Win, win.
On the Saturday morning of our last two shows, I was once again rehearsing Bull. We took this little one act play to the Festival at The Little Theatre in Leicester on Sunday and so we needed a refresher. It’s been a pain to remember lines for a play that’s essentially done whilst doing another, but it wasn’t too bad. I only had two stated lines in Amateurs so not too taxing to keep it all in my head. I’ve never competed in a Festival before so it was a new experience for me. It certainly was a long day even with coming home in the middle for some food, a nap and another shower.
I didn’t feel too human in the morning, but the crew got the set in and up into the theatre. We had our stated tech rehearsal of thirty minutes (everything is timed and you lose points if you go over). This went well and we managed to get everything done that we needed to, as well as a cheeky bit of rehearsing and voice work to ensure we would be heard in this bigger theatre. Taking a show to a different theatre when you only have a very short time to acclimatise to the space can be very intimidating. When you tour, you would get time during the day to set up and have a quick run through at your leisure to ensure everyone was comfortable, but with six different performances on stage that day, we were limited for time.
When I got back to the theatre, we had our allotted ten minutes of set preparation where everything needs to be set up and ready to go. We were lucky that we were the first of the evening performances as we got to set the stage and then had an hour to run through lines and get changed. Onto the performance. The crowd was not very big, but members of MHDS had kindly made the journey to Leicester to support us and it was great to know that we had some friendly supportive faces in the audience. Blowing our own trumpets a little, I thought the performance was one of the best we have done. All of the cast rose to the occasion and we really showed what we were capable of. When we finished, we changed and watched the last two performances from two of the other groups, before the adjudication.
Finally the moment came for us to hear whether we had made it through the quarter final and onto the semi final. I had spied a few trophies earlier, waiting in the wings, so I knew there would be shiny things to be handed out and who does not like shiny things? I am delighted to report that our director Hazel Cook was nominated for best director, our cast mate Simon Palmer was nominated for best actor and our sound engineer Amanda Priestley was nominated for best sound. All three just missed out on a trophy but excellent work to be one of the top three in their categories over six performances. Our cast mate Sarah Parker was nominated for best actress and only went and bloody won! Very well deserved. And so onto the runners up and winners of the festival. Both runner up and winner would progress so if we got either, we were through to the next round.
The runners up were announced and it was not us. I was not worried though. We had been nominated in four categories, winning one of them, and so it was obvious to me that the adjudicator thought our performance was great, however I understand the want to share the prizes round to encourage all to keep trying and come back next year. The adjudicator started her announcement and with a pregnant pause before announcing the winner of the quarter final… Bull! We won baby! All of our hard work and dedication had paid off and we are now into the semi final in May held in Worcester. A tiring but good weekend. Well done to everyone involved in Bull, truly a team effort.
PS – the adjudicator described my performance as ‘deliciously arrogant.’ She’s a good judge of character.
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