So, day three of NoMoPabloOmo (though technically it is now day four - though not in anywhere west of me yet).
Today was spent in the Nevis Centre in Fort William avoiding looking at the stage. The stage there looks HUGE and I spent the entire morning doing anything and everything I could think of to avoid actually erecting the set I had built to fill it. This included laying carpets,erecting small thrust stages that were twice as big as I had been led to believe, eating too many disgusting but addictive marshmallow snowball thingies off the techie food table and generally fannying about.
There was no way on earth that what I had made flat-packed in Ballachulish village hall was going to fill the space. It was going to be a humiliating failure I just knew it. Like the tiny Stonehenge in Spinal Tap, only flat. Finally, sometime in the afternoon, I gave up and dragged all the parts up onto the stage and with a help from Andy and a couple of other guys screwed it all together flat on the ground and then, with a few other people helping, lifted it up into place. Much to my surprise and relief it didn't fall to bits. The relief was short lived because in my anxiety to get the thing up I had forgotten to organize any way of keeping it up when (if it ever) it got there. A few moments frantic running around followed as we improvised some bracing so we didn't have to have people standing behind it holding it up for the whole run. Then we got to have a look at it completed for the first time. First thing Ilona said was "It's bigger that I thought it was going to be - is it too big, do you think?"
Andy and Ilona make Ross and Paul walk
about being Very Scottish on stage while
they contemplate the relative bigness of
a cardboard mountain.
Today was spent in the Nevis Centre in Fort William avoiding looking at the stage. The stage there looks HUGE and I spent the entire morning doing anything and everything I could think of to avoid actually erecting the set I had built to fill it. This included laying carpets,erecting small thrust stages that were twice as big as I had been led to believe, eating too many disgusting but addictive marshmallow snowball thingies off the techie food table and generally fannying about.
There was no way on earth that what I had made flat-packed in Ballachulish village hall was going to fill the space. It was going to be a humiliating failure I just knew it. Like the tiny Stonehenge in Spinal Tap, only flat. Finally, sometime in the afternoon, I gave up and dragged all the parts up onto the stage and with a help from Andy and a couple of other guys screwed it all together flat on the ground and then, with a few other people helping, lifted it up into place. Much to my surprise and relief it didn't fall to bits. The relief was short lived because in my anxiety to get the thing up I had forgotten to organize any way of keeping it up when (if it ever) it got there. A few moments frantic running around followed as we improvised some bracing so we didn't have to have people standing behind it holding it up for the whole run. Then we got to have a look at it completed for the first time. First thing Ilona said was "It's bigger that I thought it was going to be - is it too big, do you think?"
Andy and Ilona make Ross and Paul walk
about being Very Scottish on stage while
they contemplate the relative bigness of
a cardboard mountain.
Other highlights of the day (you may want to skip this next paragraph Ilona) include Paul (Sound engineer and heroically conciousness and love struck Redcoat) mentioning, in passing, that he really aught to start learning his lines. I responded by launching into one of the speeches I had learned yesterday.
That's great." he said, "Where does that come?"
"I'm not sure," I said, "but I know I'm saying it to you."
"Really?"
"Really."
"I have to read the script again. Don't I?"
And I have to stop mangling a line in the middle of a speech I give just towards the end of the play - just before the massacre scenes. Finally, with the order to kill everyone in sight in my grubby little mitt, my character launches into a impassioned rant about what a rotten lot of murdering thieving bastards the MacDonalds of Glencoe really were and how they had raided his family lands the year before. Somehow the line keeps coming out as "They burned all the cattle and stole our houses!" A surreal image which might distract ever so slightly from the tragedy that follows.
"Take that you cattle burning bastard and where's my Winnebago?"
That's great." he said, "Where does that come?"
"I'm not sure," I said, "but I know I'm saying it to you."
"Really?"
"Really."
"I have to read the script again. Don't I?"
And I have to stop mangling a line in the middle of a speech I give just towards the end of the play - just before the massacre scenes. Finally, with the order to kill everyone in sight in my grubby little mitt, my character launches into a impassioned rant about what a rotten lot of murdering thieving bastards the MacDonalds of Glencoe really were and how they had raided his family lands the year before. Somehow the line keeps coming out as "They burned all the cattle and stole our houses!" A surreal image which might distract ever so slightly from the tragedy that follows.
"Take that you cattle burning bastard and where's my Winnebago?"
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