Hey diddly dee – an actor’s life for me

I’m performing this weekend and it makes me so happy. There are very few times in life when the real essence of me escapes the everyday shell that I wear, but when I am on stage (or in front of a camera) my life-force explodes showering over the unsuspecting audience. What I am saying is that I feel most like me and most truthful when I am pretending to be another person – weird, right?!?

Yesterday was a blissful day for me, exhausting, but blissful, rehearsing two different shows and performing Romeo and Juliet, as well as writing a blog, doing a bit of social media and taking lots of photos. I wanted to share a day in the life of me.

The day started with a bath, a blog post and lots of honey and lemon, which I drink daily to keep my throat and digestive system happy. I took advantage of the beautiful day to do a bit of yoga outside (wrapped up warm) and photographed my instayoga pose (more about instayoga in a future post, it is awesome).

The first rehearsal of the day was for STRIP, a new Verbatim play highlighting the lives of strippers. We were rehearsing in Bristol so I parked up and walked over the swing bridge for a very familiar (for me) and beautiful view over the Bristol harbour.

I met with members of the company, picked up a coffee and got ready for rehearsal:

    

 

Yesterday’s rehearsal was focused on the ensemble work, the opening and closing of the show and the transitions between scenes, which is quite hefty for me as I do summary monologues in each transition.

   

 

This is a new piece of writing so where appropriate we were editing the script and shaping the piece as we got it on its feet:

We also looked at costumes yesterday, this play is about strippers with all different personalities, so the costumes vary from fake boobs and corsets to “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle” backpacks:

 

 

 

Dollypop is an all female theatre company so we are able to have a lot of fun and deal with the stories of women at the same time:

   

Find out more about Dollypop Theatre Company, STRIP and everyone involved at:

Dollypop Facebook Page

Dollypop Twitter

I then drove across to Bath for a dress rehearsal and performance of Romeo and Juliet and I got some behind the scenes shots below. We are doing a second “warm up performance in Bath today, and then heading to Dubai in two weeks where we are performing the full show at the Madinat Theatre.