I normally warm up pretty obsessively. For Othello I was usually first in, gradually getting my shit together with the luxury of time and space. Tonight though the schedule didn’t allow it and there was nowhere to go. There were so many of us, and the Wanamaker is a tiny space front and back.
I warm up fully because I know my own body use in the moment. I need to be in my body when I’m working from the start because in the immediacy I’ll do something big and physical that makes sense at the time but if I’m not warm I’ll go home with a sore neck.
My neck hurts. It’s a gurning injury. And it is entirely because I wasn’t warm. I was out on the South Bank half an hour before the show. Lovely evening but I have to remember that the habits I’ve arrived at come from experience.
We are visitors in the Wanamaker. We do not have the infrastructure of SHOW. We were still rehearsing when I would have been warming up. And then I needed a coffee and a bit of air and to see Lou.
—
With a good pack of audience it felt very intimate there, and they could give a little and make it feel like a lot. Lou was there for the first half, prearranged with her exit back to Brighton. I really felt the lack of her sort of team on our side. I appreciate from her how much laundry happens while everyone else is in the pub. Someone with a bucket at the end of the show would have been a tonic. I came off stage and my shirt was an oil slick. Close packed audience and candles plus unwarmed Al gurning through Toby largely unidentifiable thank fuck as there’s no programme.
I’ve taken the shirt home. It needs to be handled with tongs. I’ve put it in the machine. Now I have to stay up until it is finished. I’ll run a bath to see if my neck stops hurting with warmth. And then a matinee tomorrow and if I hang my shirt by a window before bed hopefully it’ll be a bit less wet than it was when I peeled it off.
A delightful day. All the staff at the Wanamaker were lovely. This is a capitalism hire for them so they don’t necessarily have high hopes for us as people – the fact we’re a booking from poshyposh school likely makes it hard for them to not expect what you’d expect if you were told two dozen old Harrovians were about to happen to you.
I hope and trust we did ok with the venue. One more show tomorrow. Hopefully my shirt will be dry in time. It couldn’t be any more wet than it was when I put it in the machine.
