Moooo

What beautiful weather for the start of the weekend. Brian made breakfast, which was already a win on the day. Then it was about striking out with Siwan into the English countryside in order to make sense of lots of stuff.

Lou is costuming a show right now and might have use for some costume I have in store. I haven’t even worked out the economy of this yet – it needs to be housed first, sorted second, catalogued third. But Lou gets to jump the gun cos she’s Lou.

I’ve had to say “yes” to a shift in how I go about things. I’ve got many pulls on my attention. There’s some glorious potential acting work on the horizon. There’s also an old client who is trying to get away with paying us in spiders over the Christmas period. They owe us for a job completed a long time ago where I flew someone over from New Orleans. They wouldn’t have come if the job didn’t pay their air fare, the job doesn’t match what they want to pay going forward, they are trying to race us to the bottom here as they allegedly have someone who is charging less. They requested the meeting though. They know we provide an excellent service. It’s sad as this has been a few decades, on and off, but perhaps it’s time to move on. If they don’t value us we can’t value them. I might be sad about it but I’m more just a bit annoyed. Event acting responds to confident craft. Uncut actors will either do too much or too little and both behaviours are egregious to the client. You only learn by doing, we all fuck up sometimes. Don’t act at people, but be self determined. We know this gig and space so well, but they tried to hardball us to fuckedyspit money because they think that 15 days of guaranteed evening(!) employment over the busiest period for an entertainer is somehow tempting enough for us to clear our diaries.

Anyway. It has been a good day today. More tomorrow. I’m off to bed as I’ve got an exam tomorrow and I honestly can’t remember most of this stuff. I’ll sort the corporate thing out. The fact they are holding out on payment for completed work because they want to drive us down – that is almost enough on its own to make me want to walk away forever. Which is sad, but I know my worth these days. And it feels like they don’t. “There’s a skill in this event acting, you know, to judge things right.” “I know, both of my parents are actors,” I get. So either the person I’m talking to thinks their parents are worthless, or they had AmDram parents who just want to be seen and will pay to do it. Either way, yuk.