Rangy Manatee

I always have a real hard time writing the first sentence of my blog.

There, that wasn't so hard now was it.

Rehearsals are dragging. We are all bored to tears of this stupid play and we haven't even performed it in front of a (gasp!) paying audience yet. I think what annoys me is that the directors, (who are lovely people and who I have a great deal of respect for) often don't seem to quite know what to do with us. Today, pretty much the only thing we did was run through the play once. And badly at that. It's only 45 minutes long, we were all in at 10.30 and I left at 17.30. One run through, a few notes and a LOT of pissing around. What frustrates me more is that I do have a talent for writing/directing funny things. Without trying to sound like a prick, I've done it before and I watch a lot of comedy and I think I generally know what is funny. But what our directors keep doing is saying things like 'go away together and see if you can come up with a funnier way of doing this scene, some one liners or something.' This is to a bunch of actors who just want a script. They don't necessarily know what's funny! Give them good material and tell them how it can be funny and they'll be sorted.

They then asked me to try to 'funny-up' the first dull scene, so I took a pen to it, spent half an hour and thought of some ideas which they liked. But I could have done it for the whole damn play if only they'd asked me!

It's just frustrating because I can't offer to help like that. I'm not the director and I'm not the writer, but it's difficult to bite one's lip when the directors tell the group that 'we've (i.e. the directors) come up with some ways of improving the first scene, making it funnier'. But I did of course keep schtum, and I realise that it wouldn't have helped anything if they had said 'Danny improved the first scene'. But obviously there's a sense of wanting the credit where it's due!

In other news, fundraiser is on tomorrow night (Saturday). Any pleasant, non-heckling readers are welcome to come along to a night I'm organising to fundraise this play. I have standup comics, sketches, songs, and hopefully a bar til 12 where we can dance around to my music collection if we feel like it. It's at the Cumberland Arms, doors at 7.30 and £3 entry. Oh, and I'm doing a fair bit too to make everyone else seem a bit better. Should be lovely. Watch this space.

PS count the number of ! in this blog. It's too many for a sensible man.