40 Dei - from the 9th back to the 6th April!

I think this should be read from last to first.

Thursday 9th

Am in plotting the lighting cues with Beru when he receives a phone call..from his wife. She’s ready to give birth. Well, not quite, she doesn’t need a car quite yet. Three of us in the office which doubles as lighting control room are somewhat gob smacked by this as we did not know she was pregnant. ‘Er Beru don’t you want to go home?’ ‘’It’s OK.’

30 minutes later, another call. She needs to go now. He borrows my car to get her from Pango, about 20 minutes away. He’s back in an hour and a half. She’s had a baby girl. He met his elder brother taking her in a bus half way. They just made it.

Weds 8th

I abandoned the regular warm up to have time to practice bits before the run through. Really paying attention to detail and demanding military like attention with cries like ‘I’m totally serious today’ and ‘I’ve been awake since 4 o’clock thinking about this and I’m not taking any bullshit’ and corniest of all as as I scream some abuse at the church chorus, ‘ I wouldn’t bother if I thought you were rubbish.’ All only corny in retrospect and of course 100% sincere at the time.

And…it’s the best ever run through! A visiting UNESCO person who watched the second half was the second overseas person in a week to say that Albert was an incredibly convincing drunk on stage! Spectacular. But best of all was another rehearsal of bits in the afternoon. We killed a darling. There is a beautiful song in the first half, (the one I mentioned last week in conjunction with Albert’s falling trousers) but it just doesn’t work or isn’t needed where it is, so we dropped it. We use it at the curtain call though. Then, better still, I think, we turned the last scene in the first half into something much more moving and believable. So everyone is off to an extended Easter break with more clichés from me ringing in their ears:

‘Whilst we may be going happily into Easter, we have to prove we can put two good run throughs together. By itself this means nothing….’

‘Don’t forget the play for a week, look at your scripts over the break….’

‘Remember you have a really heavy schedule ahead. This is your last break before Christmas. Please don’t get trashed or get into drunken fights over Easter. Use the extra day at the end to get into the right head space ready for the weeks ahead…..’

Yeah yeah, whatever, Peter, see you Wednesday.

Tuesday 7th

And what an utter disaster it was. Jo and I have this 20 year old dispute about the creative merits of directing and writing. Sometimes it is a ritualized eyes raised to heaven kind of joke. At other times usually associated with alcohol it can lead to us sleeping in separate rooms. She gets really pissed off by my claim that directing is essentially about making sure people don’t bump into each other and today I spectacularly proved I couldn’t even do that. There is a scene where actors race in from opposite sides with washing lines that they hang up. One of the regular hangers up of the line, Joyce, was at a funeral so Joyanne stood in. Vero races in from the other side and splat! You could see it coming..a second’s hesitation and the realisation that it was going to happen and like those pavement incidents, except at speed, they both decide to avoid the other by stepping the same way and end up a heap on the floor. About sums up the whole run through. Albert was all over the place, just saying lines really and, to reiterate, who can blame him? Yet another death, which he had gone to attend before the run through. So he, or rather his girlfriend, has had a premature baby (who’s doing well, touch wood), spent two nights at the morgue with the family of the escaped prisoner who was beaten to death, and then had another death of a young lad, all in the space of a week. This lad was very popular on his home island; an electrician who mended everybody’s DVD decks and other electrical items. No one could say how he died..’body blong hem I swellap.’

So a really depressing evening at home, with Jo by now swept up in the depression too. My directing’s crap’, I say ‘No, my script is rubbish’ says she etc etc and now it all hangs on the last run though before Easter.

Monday 6th

Review summary today. Very flattering. One reviewer pointing out that a mere three episodes of our soap Love Patrol if made in Australia might devour our whole budget , which involves running clinics (that between them recorded over 10,000 clients last year), youth centres and employing over 100 people. She thought we were excellent value for money. So, stuff that in your pipes all those who think we are fat cats of the NGO world. And probably even with this glowing review and an increase in core donor funding (AusAID and NZAID) over the next 5 years, we face some tough decisions regarding employment and cutbacks.

Tomorrow is the first run through for a WEEK!!!