why do we do it?

Four nights, and to be completely honest four completely different plays. I fully believe we got all our lines right – just different ones on different performances, and perhaps not always in the right order. But what does it matter? We got across the spirit of the piece and the audience enjoyed themselves. The question is, did we?

Before each performance the cast would gather together, hug, shake hands and wait for the director to give his rousing speech: “Keep er lit!” “Take it till them!” and two other classics that somehow escape my memory right now. We would offer support and mutual affirmations and await the call for starters. Two of the cast would make their way up to the stage while the other two would wait nervously in the dressing room.

Every night during the twenty odd minutes before we would be needed onstage we would run lines, have long periods of nervous silence and every night she would turn to me at some point and ask the same question. “Why do we do it?”

Every night my answer was the same, “Well I do it cause they were running out of actors and I never did learn how to say no with any conviction. Why are you doing it.” I can’t remember if she ever replied vocally but her expression always answered in full. And I would try to pull what I hoped was an empathetic expression of concurrence.

For various reasons this was one of the most stressful plays we have done as a group. You could perhaps attribute part of our negative conversation to nerves, but not completely. At the end of the final performance, had you asked the above question of us, I firmly believe that you would have seen the same expressions that we used in the dressing room two hours before. Granted it would have been tinged with the relief of a passable conclusion and the fatigue of adrenaline exhausted. But it would have been there.

Why do we do it? It is certainly not for public adulation, or fame or celebrity. It is hardly a career booster or CV filler. I suppose some people do it for the buzz that you get when you stand in front of an audience – but I have never been a big fan of buzzes. Perhaps there is a certain amount of camaraderie involved in the process, perhaps it is facing and overcoming a challenge. I can’t answer for the rest of the group, or anyone else who repeatedly does something they don’t really enjoy doing and can’t imagine why, but for me it is a combination.

I wonder what it is like to go to war – to stand shoulder to shoulder with your comrades as the bullets start flying. I will never know what that experience is like. But on a vastly smaller scale I remember an incident that took place, coincidentally, after a play.

It was many years ago – I was 20. It was my first proper theatrical production – Stags and Hens. I am extremely fond of that little play and can still remember my characters opening line – “Eh! Dickhead! That’s my home town you’re talking about!” or in my disastrous attempt at a Liverpool (with a hint of London) accent “Eh, dich-ed, tha’s ma ‘ome tawan your taw-hin boa!” – but I digress. All you need to know about it is that there is a relatively large cast. The wrap party was being held in a little club in Coleraine. It was empty when we arrived and we immediately occupied a little corner booth hidden from the main part of the club.
Soon after we arrived one of the guys was on his way to the bar to buy a round when a group of students arrived. They must have failed a test or run out of pot noodle or something for they were in a foul mood and desperate for a fight. When they saw our friend in his ridiculously colourful clothes the cry went up “Fag!” and they started giving him dog’s abuse.

I’m getting to the point – stay with me.

When he protested they began to shove him about oblivious to the fact that there was anyone else in the club. There were eight of them and just one of him so they fancied their chances. I can still remember the looks on their faces as we appeared from around the corner and stood behind him. Then it, as the young people like to say, all kicked off.

It was the first and only time I was involved in a mass brawl and, say it softly, I liked it. I wasn’t fighting for myself – I was fighting for the honour of one of our group. We stood together like brothers, comrades. We were individuals but we were one body. We were the musketeers. We were the invincible. We were thrown out by the bouncers – but not before we had made our point.

I am a pacifist. I want to make that abundantly clear. I do not condone violence of any kind. But the feeling I got when facing difficulty as a group – that was addictive. I wouldn’t want to do a play that was plain sailing, and I wouldn’t want to face a difficult play alone. I need the feeling that comes from facing group challenges, looking out for each other but never fully relying on each other.

That is why I did the play and why I will be practising my empathetic expression of concurrence for when we put it on in Newtownabbey in September.

welcome to the nineties

For someone with my reputation for loving gadgets and technology you may be surprised to know that I relied on dial-up internet access right up until yesterday. I may have embraced digital photo and video editing years ago, been building websites for a decade, creating flash applications et al et al… but until yesterday I was still listening to that ring tone followed by a whine and praying that it would connect so I could spend three hours downloading a 15 second youtube movie.

It was a golden time filled with hope, anticipation and ultimately disappointment. I would cross my fingers that I could connect, three attempts later and my 23kbps would fill me with joy unbounded. I would write a couple of short novels as the % download complete bar would tick slowly along; and then somewhere between the 85%-90% mark windows update would discover I needed something important and bring the whole connection to a snails pace before dropping it completely.

It took a month, some bizarre telephone conversations to Delhi (I presume), three BT engineers, three BT vans, several trips to the telephone exchange and three separate routers – but now the bad old days of dial-up are at an end. I should apologise to anyone who had an emergency telephone incident and couldn’t find an engineer to fix it for two days – they were all at my house. Nice guys they are too.

So broadband has made my life better? It has enabled me to go on the computer, complete my tasks in seconds and then log off and do something fun?

Ah, no. If only. Now I just fill that time with even more useless, inane tasks. Now I’m spending even more time online, but doing less – how does that work exactly?

always face forward

It was one of the greatest sporting finals ever. I was rooting for the eventual loser but that doesn’t cloud my judgement that it was one of the finest tennis matches of all time. The thing was, however, that I found it extremely difficult to enjoy – The stakes were so high for both players and I got so caught up in the remarkable come back that Roger Federer pulled off before finally succumbing to the power of Rafael Nadal that I stopped enjoying it someway through the fifth set. I think I may also have stopped breathing around that point.

Two days later I’m breathing again and the pain of disappointment has gone for me. I have no idea if it’s just me but that seems to be the way it often goes. I build my hopes up and the anticipation intoxicates me – then it all goes wrong and the pain is unbearable.

For a couple of days anyway – after that I get over it and look forward to the next time.

This is a fortunate thing indeed, for I feel disappointment often. Disappointment that my football team haven’t won anything in my lifetime; that my, once all conquering, rugby team have been mediocre for years; that my hockey team have forgotten how to spell ‘the play-offs’ never mind ‘the stanley cup.’ Yup, disappointment is a frequent guest at chez Mr C.

It works both ways. There is a soccer team I despise with a passion. I hate Manchester United more than I love Newcastle United – and that’s a lot. There is one major problem with hating Man Utd. They win everything. Therefore on an annual basis I have months of hoping that someone, anyone, will knock them off their perch only for them to win through again. It hurts. It hurts even more that, in Northern Ireland, I am surrounded by Man Utd fans who love nothing more than gloating and that I, in my little black and white soccer shirt, am an ideal target for gloatation. How they love to remind me that my team has a trophy shelf covered in dust while theirs has a trophy room filled with glittering bits of metal.

Luckily a few days after the season ends life has moved on and we are all looking forward to the next season when I will be hoping and praying that Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Stoke City – anybody – will win the lot and clear out that trophy room at Old Trafford.

The past is over rated – we all know it even if we don’t accept it consciously. I know there will be people snorting as they read this but deep down they know I’m right. Brush aside all the old adages about being destined to repeat our mistakes, how we can’t know where we’re going if we don’t know from whence we came, and you will see I speak the truth.

That is surely a comfort to Mr Obama. He may have just spent the last few months cat fighting with Ms Clinton but now he can forget all about it and wipe the slate clean for a whole new battle. He is nowhere near as damaged as the right-wing press love to suggest. If anything he can learn from the fight. Duck and dodge Barack, duck and dodge.

It may well be important to know about the past but in the league table of import nothing that has come before can compete with the immediateness of the present nor the anticipation of the future. Why waste time worrying about what happened yesterday when you could be putting all of that emotional energy into worry about what is going to happen tomorrow.

Take me for example. I could be concerned that I didn’t perform as well as I could have in last year’s production. Instead I’ve decided to worry that, for various reasons, I have missed all but two rehearsals for a play I will be performing in a couple of weeks.

What am I doing typing this!!!

um

Hmm. Yeah. I knew it was too good to be true. I've run out ideas. Maybe I'll leave it till I get back next week after all.