Rehearsal 7, Saturday 4th May 2002

Our first Saturday rehearsal - and the day of casting! I've had about four hours of sleep last night and I feel like the living dead.

Everyone sits around chewing their nails until David calls us into a circle. He does away with any 'Miss World' type suspense by reading through the list so quickly you can only just make note of your own part - never mind anyone else's.

The two leads go to Simon (the Mayor) and Kareena (Khlestakov). My hopes of picking up a 'Chinsky part aren't realised, but I get the Judge instead. This is a decent 'second division' part, but I'm a bit confused as to how I'm going to fit my excitable nature into the ponderous Judge - David tells me I could try something called 'acting'. Oh well, I'm game for anything.

I phone Simon, who's half-way up Snowdon, to tell him the news that will probably help him get up the other half. He's both pleased and scared. I don't blame him!

While we're still taking in the news, David asks everyone to let their hair grow until the play - including sideburns! He's hoping for that Victorian type mutton-chop look. Curses! I was going to get my hair cut yesterday, but had cancelled it to go to the theatre on David's own recommendation (ok, and because of cheap tickets). Little did I suspect that this was just a ruse to forestall my coiffeuristic intentions. Even as he talks, my hair starts to feel three times as long as it did before. And as for the sideburns - I have visions of wearing a glittery top hat and speaking in a Brummie accent. Oh, how I suffer for my art.

We spend the rest of the day working on the 'meta-play' scenario - the story around why we're performing the play in the foyer instead of the auditorium and why we keep moving the audience every time they start to look comfortable. This gives us all an opportunity to think up and develop a character who will be the actor who is playing the part in the actual play. Are you with me so far? I'll be surprised if you are, it's giving me an identity crisis just writing it.

The tiredness is hitting me now, so my mind is blank and uninspired. After a while, though, I pick up the mood of everyone else. My character starts to develop somewhat extreme stage fright, pleading with the others to read my part as well as their own - and trying to convince them that I'm having a stroke. I don't know if it will turn into a workable character, but it's good fun.

Afterwards we all go to the pub and I show round this diary to gauge reactions. No one hits me, so pretty good there then. We also meet up with a chap who's arranging some community theatre thing and I agree to go along to a meeting on Wednesday to see what's happening. Crikey, I must be on the thespian 'circuit'!

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