The Diary of the New Girl.

Pardon? Week 5? Are you having a laugh? 10 minutes ago it was day one, and now we’re in the final week of London rehearsals? Bile rises in my stomach at this thought as I cycle the treacherous roads in south London, a tube strike meaning road rage is at an all time high this week. This rehearsal process is reminding me a lot of marathon training – we are all in need of a lot of sleep, food, caffeine, we’re mentally and physically tired but also gaining strength, stamina and working our imagination, craft & voices like muscles. It’s hard but it’s worth it, we’re about to enter race season.

Monday sees us run the first half in the morning and the second half in the afternoon, we note down moments that need work and individually note things we need to remember to remember (where a prop is place, perhaps – or if a line was slightly in the wrong order, who’s hat is that? Etc). It’s looking in an alright shape and on Tuesday we work through all these gnarly bits, smoothing them out. By Wednesday we’re ready for our first showing to the associate directors, but Waggy helpfully reminds us all that this is a showing of where we are at, and not a final, polished version of the thing. I exhale slightly.

We did do the showing but, to be honest, I can’t really remember what happened as I was so full of adrenaline and cortisol my brain has mostly blocked it out. It happened – that much is certain. A lot of our feedback was positive, and the main note was that because we have done so much work on clarity and sense of the story, we now have the opportunity to release all of that, trust that the work is done, mess it all up a bit, make it weirder, wilder, let go of the reigns and enjoy it. We can do that. We head to the Brixton brewery and enjoy beers, crisps & pizza, desperate to switch off but totally unable to. We get told off by the people behind the bar for playing our ukulele’s and practising some songs. They obviously didn’t realise it was a group of THEATRICAL GENIUSES at work. 

Packing the suitcase and trying to get it under 23kgs was arguably harder than dissecting act 4. We’ve somehow managed it though and head home at the end of the week to pack our own suitcases, say goodbye to our family & friends & try to sleep a little. 

So, here I am, sitting on our American Airlines flight, about to take off, typing up the last few sentences of this weeks blog. We met at Heathrow Terminal 3 and hugged dramatically like true luvvies. Waggy, Anna & Michael kindly take some of my clothes from my suitcase as I am * gulp * 5kgs over the maximum weight. My shoddy packing skills revealing that this is, in fact, my first rodeo. We whisk through security, spray perfume all over ourselves in duty free and head straight for a fry up, coffees and an airport pint. I keep feeling embarrassed at how excited I am but the gang reassure me being “cool” is overrated, and what’s the point in life if you can’t feel joy, right? In next weeks blog I’ll let you know at what point in the 7 hours 30 minutes flight the excitement leaves my body and is replaced by boredom, but in reality, looking at the movie selection, that’s unlikely to happen. Fasten your seatbelts, we’re ready for take off.