“Hi Al, are you on your way to S&H?”
You know when you get the message and you aren’t expecting it? It’s not as bad as a wake-up when you are supposed to be working for money. But…
28 volunteers were on time today for Scene and Heard. 2 people were absent by prior arrangement. 2 people were LATE. One of them was me.
When that text message came in, I was lying on my bed playing Nier : Automata, which is shaping up to be a curious little debate about what classifies as sentience – a thought experiment that we are going to have to start taking seriously before long.
“I’ll be 45 minutes.”
I know the way very well. Sunday is good traffic. Bergman and I made it FAST.
The other late person was Milo. And he’s my scene partner. “You’re made for each other,” Roz joked, and we had to sight read our child playwright’s piece in front of everyone else. We were given a moment in the break to meet him and have a cold read so it wasn’t quite the first time. Just a very harried second.
“My god you guys and that piece were sensational!” says an old friend by text after. She’s being pointedly lovely, but that’s what she’s like. Nevertheless, Milo and I, the naughty late boys, have been given a delightful mischief of a play by our playwright. We can’t name him online. But he’s political and very interesting. I’ve never worked with Milo before, even though we’ve seen and enjoyed each other working. We understood each other immediately though and pinged. We will have so much fun.
All the pieces I saw were “sensational” in their own way. This is a mentoring project and young playwrights from hard backgrounds make stories to be delivered by professional actors. Occasionally very starry people get involved on the sly. It is a wonderful mentoring project and has brought me great joy and focus over the years. Now I’ve got a hard scene to learn, and I’ll be part of a crazy evening in a few weeks, up at Technis. Scene and Heard. There are some actor and crafty friends that I think ought to get involved. You know who you are. Come play.
AlBarclay 