That play wot we did.

Date: 30/07/11
Author: Peter

Yesterday: At half three in the afternoon I found myself standing outside Balham station, being stared at by an angry looking young man sucking nervously from a cigarette. After a second glance up I realised the man was in fact our producer, Matt Lavender.

‘Alright?’

‘Yeah, bit nervous about the whole play thing to be honest….’

‘Mmm, same. Pub?’

And so, we went to the pub.
Good old pub.

The pub happened to be ‘The Bedford’, where we were due to perform our play ‘Killing Bill Gates’ in just a few hours. We took our over priced diet cokes (not beer. We’re professional innit) and took a seat out front, to wait for the others.

Ten minutes passed before the Chuckle Brothers stumbled up to us arguing about a missing Oyster card whilst juggling several bags and a large flip-chart. Turns out, the Laurel and Hardy standing before us were actually Chris and Lloyd.

Joining us at the table, it wasn’t long before Josh and Tom also appeared, and an hour or so later, Sam and Sophie.

Thursday had seen me getting my head pretty much shaved by a grumpy Romanian hairdresser, who decided to rant at me about how his home country was far superior to nearby(?) Croatia. I’d also made the mistake of, when asked why I wanted my hair so short, blurting ‘I’m an actor, it’s for a part!’, which earned me a disapproving series of angry glances from the heavily tattooed football-lad types waiting behind me. Along with a dodgy nights sleep it all resulted in me looking like a crackhead, just in time for our first proper performance in front of, well, strangers. It was probably also the reason Matt frowned at me outside the Tube....

We watched MJ Hibbitt’s show ‘Moonhorse’, which was a pretty good laugh (You can read about that here), and then decided to sit outside Sainsbury’s and nervously discuss a variety of random subjects, including a remake of ‘Trainspotting’ featuring Star Wars characters (‘We all knew it was Chewey’s baby….’). It’d be a good adaption, believe me.

Then, at 9pm, we were on.

If I’m honest, I don’t really remember the actual performance. A mixture of nerves and adrenalin took care of that, but I remember a fairly busy room, laughter, and feeling a collective buzz from the group of us afterwards.

Hopefully it went well. I guess we’ll find out if/when we get a review.

I’d like to quickly thank the rest of the cast and crew, as well as everyone we knew who came to see us (My old housemate Crosby and his girlfriend Nyah, Craig Batty, Ema and Dom, and my uncle Rob, who I wasn’t expecting to see there at all!)

And so, to Edinburgh!

Cheers!