End of Term Four, part IV

To continue our story once more...

Luckily, I wasn't alone - I had six other group members to support me, to keep the piece moving, to pick up my slack. Alexander in particular was my knight in shining armour that day, allowing me to burst into tears when I needed to while still gently prodding me towards productivity. I'm not sure how much we really got done that evening (I was feeling so useless that I think any progress we made may have been lost on me), but we got through it regardless, doubtless with something to show for it. I slept very well that night, both emotionally and physically exhausted.

Sunday was worlds better. I had the whole day to myself, and we were only meeting for a couple of hours in the evening. It was still a bit difficult - as the day before the performance, the heat was on and tensions were high - but we were able to set our piece, and go home and sleep safe in the knowledge that come what may, it was done. It wasn't perfect, but by God, it was done. All there was left was to perform it the following day.

To be honest, though, I still wasn't completely happy: as with all things at this school, our accomplishment of finally building a piece came with a lesson to be learned. A disappointment I had been struggling with was the fact that the piece we’d finally started to form was, well, light. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with light – I wasn’t out to make a melodrama – but was turning out to be something that could be described as “a playful romp” or “farcical delight”. And you know me, always going on about theatre’s capacity to change the world – I have to admit that I was a little disappointed that the only thing we’d really been able to come up with was something that felt so fluff, so inconsequential, so… so…. ROM-COM. (though looking at our theme, in retrospect it’s hardly a surprise.) And sometimes, watching other pieces that truly seemed to manage to tap into some form of poetry of the human condition, and to gracefully transpose it onto the stage… well, I felt a little jealous, and it made my heart twinge just a little.

But there’s poetry to be found in having fun, as well; and once I realised that there’s certainly nothing wrong with building a piece that, while it may not demand much of its audience, is full of joy and play, it was easier to give up the ghost of all my dramatic and “meaningful” ideas of what our piece could’ve been. Because it wasn’t. And that’s ok. And that's the mindset I went into Monday night with.

And the performance itself? It went great. I nearly fell off a platform and tore down half the set at one point from sheer over-enthusiasm, but I like to think it only added to the spectacle and over-all enjoyment of the piece by the audience.

Really, the most special part of the evening for me was the fact that Simon was in the audience. For those of you who have never spoken to me and never read my blog before and live under a rock, Simon was my placement partner in Uganda - we lived and worked together for eight months, he never killed me, and he knows me as well as anyone does, I think. For all our experience-rich friendship, though, he'd only ever heard about this obsession I have with theatre; he'd never seen me act, had only heard stories about the school, and had certainly never seen me in a show (let alone one of my own devising). To have him there on Monday, then, was Huge for me. Not only did I have someone in the audience, it was Simon; and not only was he watching, he was learning the Why and the How in addition to the What of theatre for me; and not only did he see the performance, he enjoyed it!; and not only did he enjoy it, he Got It! (I'm speaking less about my piece now and more about the performances that night as a whole.) I can't tell you how good that felt, to have him see the show and start to understand what this past year's been like for me, the kind of work I've been doing, the kind of goals I'm hoping to achieve. I only wish everyone so dear to me could've been there.

Anyway. As you can imagine, the evening after the performance was an immensely enjoyable one - everyone was in high spirits and correspondingly headed to the pub, where spirits got higher. Simon and I split a falafel from up the road and hid out at a smaller pub with a select few others for the first drink or two before joining the masses around the corner. Then we wound our way home, chatting and enjoying the evening air. It was a lovely night indeed.

Can you believe that that was on the 8th of July, with still two weeks remaining of the term?! We couldn't. It was a bit difficult to get motivated for more class and presentations, but luckily the pace had slowed down enough that we were able to keep up. That next week we had our final acrobatics presentations and final classes - mostly a tying up of loose ends, and a clearing of the way to the final week of individual performances...