Cigars...

A couple of years ago I had a part in the J B Priestley play, When We Are Married, here in Dunedin. The three main male characters were supposed to smoke cigars at one point, though with it being a play, only one of them actually got to do so for any length of time.

I don't think they were Cohiba cigars which apparently are a mix of Cuban, Indonesian and African elements....and sound fairly classy! In fact they were the cheapest cigars our props lady could find at a local shop that would look effective and actually smell like cigars. She even managed to get the cast to smoke ones that were already opened, by rewrapping them.

Such is the life when economics preclude you using just the best...

Anyway, one night, the actor who played the main cigar-smoking character got a bit of a shock when he lighted up....his cigar started to go up in smoke in a different kind of way. It helps if you remove the cellophane wrapping. On this occasion, his fellow actor had failed to do so, and there was something of a stink on stage...in more ways than one.

Rehearsing the play

We're well into rehearsals now - three nights a week at present for those who are in any particular act.
I'd thought I was only in Acts One and Three, which meant I'd have a couple of weeks out in the middle of the rehearsals, and then one of the other cast members, who'd done the play before years ago, said, You're in the Second Act as well. We debated this a bit, because I was sure I'd checked, but of course she was right: I have a whole scene with just one other character in the middle of the Second Act. Which means more learning of lines, something I wasn't anticipating quite!
The trouble with line-learning these days is that the recording system is great still, but the playback isn't so hot.
And it doesn't help when you have (slightly drunken) lines like this:
Ah, yes. Always together...side by side....through all life's sunshine and storms....hand in hand...in good times and bad ones...with always a loving smile. [The other characters says a couple of words.] In sickness and in health....rich and poor....still together...side by side...hand in hand...through all life's sunshine and storms. At which point the other character, not surprisingly, tells him he's repeating himself!
However, it's a fun part, and certainly more enjoyable to do than the part I started out with.

And in a footnote regarding my post headed up Major Biosecurity Alert!!!, I noticed in the letters to the editor in the D Scene last week that someone else had thought using a Botany Department Masters student as a source of un-information was also a bit below the standards required of your average newspaper. The writer said that making a major headline out of a piece of non-news wasn't really doing the freebie paper any good. Hear, hear, I say!

When We Are Married

Haven't mentioned the Varsity course I'm doing on here much, I don't think. When I last wrote about it, I was still doing a week's block course called, Congregations in New Zealand. Well, that got side-swiped by the fact that I was in hospital that week (!), so I reverted to my earlier choice of an online paper called Research Methods, which actually suited me better anyway.
I've been getting along fairly well with the course, and enjoying it, but I also got asked a couple of weeks ago to do a part in a play. It was a very small part, two scenes in which I would have been on the stage for no more than about three minutes in total. Achievable, I thought.
The play is When We Are Married, by J B Priestley. It dates back to the thirties, I think, but is actually set in the late 19th century. It has a cast of fourteen, so it's a big piece actor-wise. Several of the parts are relatively small (though none of them quite so small as what I was to be doing: the local chapel minister.)
Anyway, I went to the first read-through, and did my two bits, and thought this will fit in nicely with my Varsity work. And then yesterday got a call to say that the man playing the photographer in the play had had to pull out due to unexpected work commitments, and would I take over that role?
It's still not a large part, thank goodness (though it's a lot more fun) - he's on for a couple of minutes in the first act, and then doesn't appear again until two thirds of the way through the third act. The two scenes there are a bit more involved, but still not what you'd call huge. But the rehearsal schedule turns out to be very full on. Three nights a week, and we open on the 23rd May. Crikey.
Fortunately, not being in the second act at all, I have a couple of weeks off in the middle of the schedule, but after that it's going to be a fight to get the Varsity work done.
Well, live on the edge, they say. Not quite sure if that applies here, but it feels a bit like it.