Back to Basics

I've been back in London for over a week and am still feeling the effects of my trekking in Morocco. It was very enjoyable and I'm pleased to say that despite my age, I was one of the most energetic in the group, even arriving back first at the end of the 20 mile mountain trek (from 1,900 metres to 2,400 and back down) that completed our three day marathon.

But while my energy levels were high in Morocco, they have plummeted since my return. A stomach virus that bothered me all last Sunday, as Ricardo and I first flew to London via Madrid and then suffered the Piccadilly line home, has disappeared, but left me with an unaccustomed lethargy that still lingers, while a bruised toe, although getting better, continues to bother me. These symptoms, combined with a week's worth of emails regarding acting, my bookselling business and general catch-up with friends old and new, have prevented me from updating this blog until now.

But enough mea culpa. There has been good news, bad news and expected news on the acting front. The expected news is that I have received no follow-up to the twenty or so parts that I applied for in the week before my departure and in the week since my return. It's the usual problem - I don't get called to auditions because I don't have experience, and I can't get experience till I get called to audition. (Even when I am called to an audition - as I have been twice - I don't get the part.) But it's early days and I still have another nine months to make good on my promise to myself to get paid work within a year.

On the other hand, I did have, before I left, a promised audition with UK Actors Ltd some time in the first week of October. Off I went to Morocco, with two monologues well under my belt (Azdak in The Caucasian Chalk Circle and an early Shylock), and the text of a third (Berenger in Rhinoceros), to learn at odd moments on the trek. I arrived back prepared for action, but to find no confirmation of the audition and no reply to my email asking for an update. UK Actors claims 40 clients on Casting Call but it does not have a website and I am beginning to wonder how professional they are. I will call them on Monday and report back.

The good news is that Diane Marshall of the eponymous agency has called me in for an audition on Wednesday, so the Rhinoceros may be put to good use. I have therefore been rehearsing it, along with the other two pieces, every day while the Other Half is at work. I'm not sure how clearly my nearest neighbours - who, like us, live on the 8th floor of a tower block - can see into our living room, but if they have been watching through their net curtains, they will have been bemused by the sight of me either pulling my hair out while staring at a door or remonstrating with the bookcase on the other side of the room. I don't enjoy working with animate objects as much as with real people, whose presence helps give my performance depth, but the furniture nonetheless allows me to explore each monologue and give me a framework of movement and emotion that I can use.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday I've opted to spend £38 on a three-hour voiceover class with Cut Glass Productions. I have no idea what to expect, but the session is cheap and will, I hope, give me a better sense of how to develop my voice than the two days I spent with the London Academy last month. That brought confidence in my voice to a low, but since several of my companions on the Moroccan trek told me they liked what they heard and I'm convinced there's a voiceover artist somewhere within me, I'm ready to give myself a second chance.