40 Dei - Wednesday April 15th

So have my pre Easter cliches borne fruit? Will a play appear out of the fog of kava and alcohol of the Easter holiday? All will be revealed today. Except it wasn’t. By 9.30 am all actors edgily assembled, bar Albert. No word from him. 3 public health students from Sydney on holiday have asked if they can watch a run through as they’ve heard about WSB on their course. Still no Albert. His mobile is off. We track him down to the maternity ward where he is sleeping at the moment as his wife and child are still there. He has a bad cold and a sore throat. Fantastic. Everyone cross he couldn’t come and tell us or ring. So instead we salvage something by doing a non SDA actor rehearsal of chorus and song to check we can cover. This has caused disputes since day 1 of WSB. Is it fair that SDA actors never have to act Fridays but actors belonging to other churches will do Sundays if necessary? No disputes this time. Danny volunteers to take over the little cameo of Jesus in one of the songs which causes great mirth as he is one of the group’s biggest rascals (Sorry, Danny, is loveable rogue better?). In fact he does it very well. And we agree that tomorrow will be the tech rehearsal so Albert doesn’t have to use his voice for 48 hours. All seems well and then we get home and the rumour that Alpha Blondy was about to hit town is proved to be true as there he is, his voice coming out of my radio on FM107. He is performing on Thursday night. I know that several actors will be desperate to go. How, you ask, did I not know that he was coming? Well you had better ask the promoters. There are no posters, nothing. Just a rumour that he is coming. It has been said before that big names in reggae and zouk music are coming and it has not happened. Anyway it all means further discussions in the morning. We’ve also blown a further hole in the budget because we have to get an electric drum kit. The seats are just too close to handle a full acoustic drum kit. And we won’t have run the play for a week and a half at least by the time we get round to it. All the ingredients for insomnia which duly ensues…but look, peter, you can do nothing about it now just close your eyes and…bloody alpha blondy, then you’ll be all fresh in the morning…bloody albert …..what if…etc etc well into the small hours while Jo snores peacefully on.