Day before the off.

March 24

Have been baking cakes all morning..orange polenta, banana, dried fruit bread and carrot cake....some theatre groups start with earnest character discussions, read throughs, impros and we start with a cake breakfast....all with low sugar content naturally! The actors have been on tour with no time off to relax from that and 2 years ago when we started Zero Balans it proved a lovely way to begin. Have the opening 5 page chorus section in my head which is very different form saying it will work on the stage but cant wait. Doubtless tomorrow will be a huge anti climax..someone will be sick, several will be late some will be hungover or generally feeling Monday morning is too hard to handle so feet on the ground..... feet on the ground repeat after me feet on the..

Chinua Achebe, a great African novelist, died today aged 82 . In the various obituaries there was this quote from his novel Man of the People which is quite relevant for the new play Klaem long Lada ia..maybe good for the program:

we ignore mans basic nature if we say, as some critics do, that because a man.....had risen overnight from poverty and insignificance to his present opulence he could be persuaded without much trouble to give it up again and return to his original state. A man who has just come in from the rain and dried his body and put on new clothes is more reluctant to go out again than another who has been indoors all the time. The trouble with our new nation is that none of us had been indoors long enough to be able to say 'to hell with it' We had all been in the rain together until yesterday, then a handful of us-the smart and the lucky and hardly ever the best-had scrambled for the one shelter our former rulers had left and had taken it over and barricaded themselves in. And from within they sought to persuade the rest through numerous loud speakers, that the first phase of the struggle had been won and that the next phase-the extension of the house was even more important and called for new and original tactics, it required all argument to cease and the whole people to speak with one voice and that any more dissent and argument outside the door of the shelter would subvert and bring down the whole house..'