The diary of the new girl.

It is our first week of public performances, and we all feel match fit – raring to go. We are ready to see where the laughs land or need work, figure out the acoustics with a full house, and get the full show rhythmically into our bodies.

Monday is Waggy’s birthday, we head for a big breakfast in Chicago (I’m talking eggs and hash and toast and pancakes big) then board the coolest looking train I’ve ever seen to head back to South Bend. A zoom with the professors for this weeks workshops, and we all plan a little bit before meeting in the Lobby to drive Waggy to a surprise destination (a fun games bar). Where we were met by Scott, Matthew and Cate and ordered tacos, pizzas, beers. The man running the music bingo that night recognised Sam, Anna, Cate and I from our incredible karaoke performances the previous week, and persuades us to join in the bingo. A faction of us break away to play pool, and the night ends with a basket ball toss competition (Waggy, the birthday boy, wins with 37 points in 45 seconds).

Tuesday is the start of workshops and we have our tech in the afternoon. Anna and Sam (tech 1 & 2), superbly set up and plot the whole show with Scott, Brian and Kadie-Sue. The rest of us arrive to cue-to-cue the show, run the storm in the new lighting state, go over some musical bits and finally, exhausted but satisfied, meet in the lobby to line run the whole play before stumbling to our rooms at 11pm ish.

We were all proud of our first public show on Wednesday, well paced, well received and well enjoyed by us – we felt like we were still figuring out some moments, but overall 5 happy actors readied themselves for the rest of the week. Thursday’s show was a bit slower, Michael mentioned the dreaded ‘second show syndrome’ and we were all being careful to not get complacent, putting clarity as a top priority, but as Anna wisely reminded us all – we need to trust the work we have done on clarity throughout this whole process and pick up the pace, a note that we all put into practise on Friday, and the show runs at a lick. Now we’re getting into the groove, we’re all sad to be leading South Bend; this feels like home now, but also excited to take our show to more places, and meet more people, tell our story to new audiences & to continue to play.