By diggidy... that went well!

Not the full house that I hoped for, but we almost hit the audience number I had expected. We covered our costs, made a little extra, but most importantly we had a really good time.

At least I did, I can't speak for the rest of the cast! :D

The lighting was simple but effective, and the audience were really with us, laughing in all the right places, and cheering at the end, and going "eeew" at the gross bits.

Awesome.

Scarborough next after a weird 13 day break which sucks, but we couldn't get a nice venue to take us next weekend!

For the first time in... I don't know how long I slept after 9:30am!

Today I plan to do nothing, that's right, you heard me... NOTHING to do with the theatre company. I intend to tidy the house, maybe go for a walk, cook some good food, play on my Playstation, generally do anything but theatre stuff!

In theatre news... that's it! The rehearsals are over! Done! Finished! Shakers is brilliant, really tight, smooth and well-rehearsed, whereas Bouncers has proven a little more... what's a good word here?

"Random"? No... "Creative"? No...

Ah yes... "Totally bat shit crazy."

It's hilariously funny, utterly filthy, and quite mental, just a little bit unpredictable in some places. I won't lie, we could have used another two or three days rehearsal time due to the hiccuppy start, but I feel good about where both shows are. Our first gig is one week today, and if people actually show up to see it, it'll be a blinder!

Copyright on this show proves to be a tricky one. Once we had determined that we would have to apply / send cheque for every show, rather than pay one large amount at the end of the tour, we attempted to make the payment for our first two shows. This is proving rather tricky. No application form has arrived yet. No emails have received answers, and our carrier puffins came back looking slightly aware of humans and had a disturbed look in their eyes.

SO... that's it! No, wait... there are also a load of press releases and photos at the website -

Right! I'm off to potato that couch...

And so the first week of rehearsals draw to a close, and jolly fun it was!

I won't lie. This is pant wetting fear I have right here. Oh yes. There's so much pressure on us to pull this off it's almost unreal. We need to do this, and do this well so...

1 - The last seven months weren't a total waste of time and energy and... seven months.
2 - The Arts Council recognise how truly awesome we are, and fund us.
3 - Potential sponsors see we're more than an "idea".
4 - We can make some darn pesky cash money.
5 - We can live the dream, baby.

Shakers has overtaken Bouncers in terms of the amount of work done, probably because Bouncers seems to gain a choreographed sequence every hour, including the now legendary "Gay Cowboy Dance" and our scarily convincing lady-dancing! (Especially mine I was told - not sure if I should be proud or worried.)

The whole "Ooooh you're a theatre company you must have money falling out of your arse" way of thinking continues. Venues are charging a fair old bit of the moolah, one so much we had to cancel. 60 seats, and they wanted £100 off us! A venue we're playing with 170 seat is only charging us £14 more than that! MENTAL!

We're trying to convince the copyright owners of Bouncers and Shakers to allow us to pay the copyright fees after we finish the tour. This isn't because we're cheap, well, not JUST because we're cheap, but mainly because it would mean a lot less work for us and them. But it seems we're going to have to apply and send a cheque off for every show we do. We don't mind, but it's going to make a lot more work for somebody down in London. I just thought it would be more practical for us all, and easier for them, but apparently "they don't ever do things like that".

Which is odd, really. Three weeks ago I was told it shouldn't be a problem, and that they do it all the time. Pretty severe change of policy there methinks!

Myself and Alistair have bounced a lot of ideas for Dracula off each other in the 70 mile trip to Scarborough each day. Ideas involving red silks, wigs, trapeze swings and castings. Things are also looking up on the Castle Museum frontas well - I'm just waiting for a phone call or email to set up a face to face meeting!

So... I'm sunburnt, still full of last nights BBQ, I get a slight lie in tomorrow (bed past 8am? Get in!) before zoomingback to Scarborough to construct the bar room set for Shakers!

But now... I'm off to play GTA : San Andreas until I can't keep my eyes open.

Today was the first day of the rehearsals, and to be totally honest... it went a hell of a lot better than it could!

The day started early for us, as we had to load up the car, pick up Alistair, and then trundle the 60 mile trip to the rehearsal room in Scarborough. The sun was shining, the air was crisp and clear, and my car was gliding along peacefully.

Then the phone rang, and I was told by the voice on the end that one of the actors that I cast in Shakers wasn't going to be able to do the show. They had very, very good reasons for not doing the show, but I still felt my underpants fill with the terror.

We got to Scarborough, and unloaded all the gear into the room, and then set about the task of recasting at very, very short notice. I'd left all the CV's in Selby as I didn't think for a second that we would need them! After a few texts, phone calls, and much pacing, one of the other actors in Shakers declared that her sister was training in theatre at a nearby college, so one phone call later and she was on the way.

However... one of the actors cast in Bouncers hadn't shown up now. Fear gripped my balls like some ice cold skeletal hand. However a swift phone call discovered he was on the way, just a few Monday morning problems had held us up.

So on we went! Long chats about where we hope to head, introductions were made, apologies about the crazy, hairy start were made by me (I looked at Alistair and truly believed he was in shock, and was going to go home at any minute...) and then we read Shakers for the first time!

After lunch we read Bouncers, and I was stunned at how short it is. Shakers is marginally longer, and I'm sure that once we pad it out with the dancing, the rapping, and the general shindiggery, it will be longer and require some cutting!

After a brief session of flicking through some music tracks and deciding that some cheesy 80's Grand Master Flash rap was the ONLY way to open Bouncers, we cleared up and went home... which is where I am now, tired, full of pasta, yet oddly fulfilled.

I'm looking forwards to tomorrow so much, it's filthy.