The thrill of the chase.

So, the last post was a tad mooshy. I apologise if you read it while eating. I now have my business head on so that's a relief.

I am finding that there really is no off switch to this whole running-a-theatre-company malarkey. So many things to do. It's a real ride.

And, in fact, something of a rush, even when this week I have found myself almost exclusively sitting in front of the computer, building databases, writing letters, grappling with far from perfect mail merge tools and stuffing envelopes. So far so boring and adminy.

But actually, no. I have found it quite exciting (wait! come back!). You see, the reason for all this office stuff is I am trying to book a proper tour for our new show. By proper I mean one that goes to venues that are new to us, in different and far flung parts of the country, that we can't rely on simply to book us because they know us and quite like to support us. And, ultimately, venues that will pay us.

The excitement comes from the potential for success. There are hundreds of venues out there, all possibly waiting for exactly our show, and any one that might get back to me is a mini triumph that encourages me to think that, yes, we are now being looked at as an actual pro company.

This despite the fact that I am really muddling through, having never been shown how to approach venues, how much to ask for, how to negotiate. I am slow, and inefficient and need to find quicker ways to do things. I sent out nearly 100 letters at the beginning of the week, all of which have now been followed up by emails. Every one I have sent has been posted with this sneaky feeling that I'm kidding myself.

Well you know what? It's only bloody working! Two venues have been booked (these in addition to a week in London) and in the last couple of days two completely new theatres have got back to me expressing their interest. If it isn't naive of me, I reckon that any expression of interest is very likely to turn into a booking. Venues must receive countless appeals like mine, and I think they wouldn't even acknowledge receipt if they didn't want the show.

And this is also at a time when most venue programmers disappear to Edinburgh, so there are plenty more people who might get back later this month and find our show is just what they were looking for.

The optimist in me says that a success rate of just over 2% in a week is actually pretty good going, and if we are capturing the imagination of these venues, then there must be others out there who will feel the same.

This might just work, y'know.

So, are you ready?

This is the question I am being asked with increasing frequency, and understandably so. It alludes, of course, to the impending B-Day (a somewhat alarming three and a half weeks away).

The last time I remember being asked this question so often was just over eight years ago, just before I married Zoe. The answer now, as then, is frustratingly complex. There isn't a word in the English language to articulate the state of readiness for such a life-changing event as marriage or having a baby. So I will invent one, or maybe two.

How does 'Nes' sound? Or maybe 'Yeo'. The truth is that there is no amount of preparation, no class, discussion, book or course that can lead one to the conclusion that one is ready.

It's an odd sensation. It feels as though there is a universal expectation that one will reach a defining moment of readiness. Perhaps one morning I am supposed to wake up, leap out of bed with verve, strike a pose of heroic anticipation and loudly proclaim "I Am Ready" with a voice in which the listener can actually hear the capitalisation.

"Let The Baby Be Born," I should continue. "Before Now, I Was Unready. Now, I Am Fully, Unequivocally Ready!" At which point wife will oblige by punctually dropping the sprog and the heroism will continue for the next who knows how many years of blissful parenthood.

The truth is, of course, much more banal. I wake up in the morning to a wife who is a little bit bigger, a little bit less comfortable and a little bit closer to several hours of pain unimaginable to a male followed by unprecedented joy. Yet all I do is wake up and carry on with life and be thankful that, so far, there has been no cause for worry.

This doesn't answer the question, though. Mother Nature has been generous enough to give us humans nine months or so of preparation for the event, but a lifetime couldn't prepare me for what is about to happen.

I am excited, nervous, curious, hopeful, optimistic, pessimistic, realistic, deterministic, selfless and selfish. But not ready. But yes, at the same time, I Am Ready.

I am ready because people have been having children for tens of thousands of years. Because every living thing on this planet has successfully procreated irrespective of learning, culture, religion, medicine, support groups, birthing pools or Rough Guides to Pregnancy.

I am ready because having this baby now, at a time of national and international upheaval, personal uncertainty and naivety, simply does not, under any circumstance, feel anything other than right.

But mostly I am ready because I know that the mother of this child is Zoe. Whatever my own perception of my potential shortcomings as a father (and they are legion), I know and trust that our child will have the best mother it could have dreamed of. And in my muddle to try and match that pure, natural perfection, I will be looking to Zoe to show me the way.

And, of course, I have been fortunate enough to have experienced the best aspects of fatherhood from my own three Dads. I hope to distil the essence of these brilliant men and emulate the success that they have had in raising their own children.

The very fact that I am worried that I won't be a good father is, perversely, a comfort to me, as I know that it will motivate me to prove myself wrong. My life philosophy has been "I don't know if I can do this. Let's find out." and I am proud to say that, in most cases I have discovered that, in fact, I can.

I hope to continue this trend with the single biggest, most important challenge of my life.

Brace yourselves...

Fish Out Of Water

This typically characterises men at antenatal classes. Looking around the circle of about 15 pregnant women, most with their male partners, I felt a kinship with these chaps. Not that I showed it, oh no! That would have been distinctly unmale. Eye contact was kept to a minimum, and glances were generally kept to those needed to surreptitiously appraise which of these men looked more comfortable and confident than I did. A bit like the checking out that, I am told, happens in gents' toilets.

It's an odd thing. We are all there for the same reason, and presumably we have got there via the same method. But us men, of course, are notoriously bad at publicly acknowledging before strangers that such intimacy has taken place. We pretend, with our presence, that we are New Men. More in touch with our woman's needs, willing to be an active participant in all aspects of pregnancy and labour, just as we were at conception. Yet we revert to type and don't want to stand out as being either too ignorant or (perhaps worse) too knowledgeable.

So we sit quietly, noticing with subtle subtle scorn when one of our fellow males makes an accurate contribution that we would have been perfectly correct in making ourselves, thus making the rest of us look substandard. The competitiveness never abates, and neither does our squeamishness. For all our enthusiastic desire to place parts of our anatomy into various parts of someone else's anatomy, we are woefully inadequate at engaging with the human body in a mature, non-sexual way.

And then to be encouraged to join in. Oh the horror. The simple instruction to stand up to find out about good posture sent those glances darting about the room. Were we supposed to stand up? Of course, we did, because everyone else did. Are we supposed to adjust our posture? Surely we aren't experiencing the same demands on our physiology as our pregnant partners? No. We have joined them in the standing up part. They can do the standing properly part while we looking on, hopefully coming across as lamely supportive rather than voyeuristic. Some of us caught in half-hearted attempts to shift our own posture in case we are supposed to do so, but not too obviously in case we aren't.

Then comes the massage, which involves getting into a vaguely intimate position with someone who, everyone else in the room knows, we have been in far more intimate positions with before. Except these people weren't there that time (in most cases - each to his own). So it has the potential to be an embarrassing competition to see who is the best masseur. This I suppose isn't helped by the physiotherapist saying she will come around and give us marks out of ten.

Then it is over. We shuffle off in the same subdued manner in which we arrived, having watched with admiration our womenfolk engage openly and honestly with their experiences with ease. Secretly wishing we could be as forthcoming.

When all is said and done, the antenatal class was informal, informative and painless. Very glad I went, as it also gave me the opportunity for making these observations.

Men are stupid. Throw rocks at them.

London Kills Me

I know. It's been a while. The lure of a new life without the 9-to-5 had given me the false impression that I would actually have more time to do things. Like blog regularly. This hasn't been the case and I apologise.

The title of this post is part of the reason. I have, for the past three and a half weeks, been travelling up to London six days a week with our show. This four week run, which ends on Saturday, has kind of been the jewel in the crown for my new Awfully Big Adventure. The plan goes something like this:

1. Hire a decent fringe venue for a long enough run to get the attention of the movers and shakers in the theatre press.
2. Populate that venue with a tried and tested show that has already generated a profile through earlier dates.
3. Take the London fringe scene by storm with the quality of our work and earn a string of rave reviews in The Stage et al.
4. Play to packed houses every night as a result of these notices and a healthy dose of word of mouth.
5. Make a significant contribution to the company coffers to pay our actors and enhance the financial stability of the company.
6. Loudly proclaim that we have Made It.

You can see the flaws in this plan, right? I must have had the wrong specs on that day because that isn't quite how things turned out.

Now, I'm not saying the London run hasn't been a success and worth doing. Oh no. It's been incredibly worthwhile and we've learnt a lot. But London is a tougher nut to crack than even I in my usually pragmatic state had thought. Events conspire to make life difficult. Things like the climate and major sporting events. As our London host concisely expressed, we have been WWW'd - Weather, World Cup and Wimbledon.

The London theatre scene is even more crowded than I had imagined, and the first problem we had was that there were twenty other shows opening at the same time as us, all clamouring for the attention of the major theatre press. Then came weather of the sort normally to send us Brits into an apoplexy of delight. Unless you are spending the evenings wearing a monk's habit in an unventilated room and hoping that people would prefer to join you in said stuffiness rather than sit outside with a cold beer.

In the face of this adversity, I think we have actually done pretty well. We did get some big hitters in The Stage and The British Theatre Guide coming to see us, as well as some smaller online review sites. None of which slated us in the way I have seen other plays destroyed. At the same time they weren't falling over themselves to lavish praise upon us. I don't think we received a single review that would have said to readers "Go and see this if it's the only thing you do in your life." Disappointed much. But they have said some nice things about our stagecraft, which has been a major validation. Much more fulsome with praise, in actual fact, have been the audience members. We have been handing out feedback forms and have received a large number back, all overwhelmingly positive. So it seems that the general public are very open to what we are doing, whereas we have detected a certain sniffiness and closed-mindedness from the critics. Devised seems to be a dirty word, and unless the play has a proper plot and deals with some actual issues, they don't seem to find it worth their time.

Thank goodness then, for the audiences. Which as well as being generous, have been relatively healthy. As a rough estimate, our average house can been in excess of 15, which is actually pretty astonishing given the other distractions and our unknown status. With only four shows left, we have yet to cancel a show because no-one turned up (famous last words?) and the general feeling is that any house in the fringe that exceeds double figures is a good turnout. Not enough to break even, but this was always a loss-leading enterprise. Would have been nice though. In truth, our second week was the most demoralising in terms of both numbers and audience response. But we got through it and kept our chins up, and I think we can walk away with our heads held high.

So, why does London kill me?

Well, as well as the up-and-downiness of the run, I think it's the toll it has taken on my lifestyle. I had stupidly thought that a couple of hours of theatre most nights would not be a massive deal. I had failed to factor in the travel. I spent the last few weeks feeling guilty that, having had most of the daytime hours free, I haven't been as productive as I would have liked. Then I did the maths - I leave the house at about 3.30 and get back, at the earliest, at 11.30 (and often closer to 1am). That's a normal eight hour working day. Six days a week. With late nights. I started to feel less bad about having to rest more during the day. The I realised that on many occasions I have been putting in extra hours with flyering, running workshops, meetings in London and checking out future venues, plus writing proposals and successfully securing future projects for the company.

So I don't feel so bad now. I am still frustrated that I haven't been able to support (or even see) Zoe as much as I'd like. But I was beginning to feel very bad, like I was a lazy slacker wasting my time. I think I have been overly harsh on myself here, having been thrown by my routine being turned on its head. You are, of course, free to disagree and tell me to get my arse into gear.

And then there's diet. I long for a proper, sit down meal that has been properly home-cooked, and to eat it with someone. Any weight I might have sweated off has been wiped out by grabbing convenience foods when I can, at weird times of the day.

Thank goodness for Zoe, who as well as being supportive and understanding throughout, is also vying for the prize of Most Straightforward Pregnancy. We have had a tumultuous time in other ways, and I am so very thankful that neither of us have had to contend with any complications related to the other Awfully Big Adventure.

Does this post sound whiny? I hope not. It's meant to be honest, and just in case I've set the wrong tone, here we go...

When it has been less than shiny, I have reminded myself about what I could be doing instead. I am lucky. I am chasing the dream. And it isn't getting away from me.

Hey-diddley-dee. An actor's life for me...

The Sublime and the Ridiculous

If I ever needed a reminder of just how up and down this business can be, the first three dates on the tour would have served this purpose perfectly. The Flying Monk in its new incarnation has now three shows under its belt, with a performance at our 'spiritual home' and two shows as part of the Brighton Fringe Festival.

I don't need that reminder by the way, I am all too aware of how different each and every performance can be, both in terms of the dynamics on stage and the response of the audience.

What I had underestimated, perhaps, was the significance of home advantage. The very first showing of The Flying Monk, last year at The Spring, was a euphoric evening of theatrical alchemy, in which 6 underprepared and exhausted actors created magic in front of a nearly full auditorium of incredibly responsive people. I was not expecting a repeat of this, as I think that first show was one of those once in a lifetime experiences. Nonetheless, last Thursday still felt like a very satisfying evening, again with great feedback.

By contrast, Brighton was a different animal, with each performance different from the other, too. Sunday's show was in front of a pretty healthy crowd by Fringe standards, and as a cast I think we were glad that we had rehearsed for this smaller space, as there would have been chaos had we not. Even so, we were all operating on dual-brain mode, by which I mean we were both performing the show and processing the logistics of working in the small space at the same time (this is a bizarre phenomenon that most actors will be familiar with). Anyhow, the performance went pretty well all things considered, but the response from the audience was very different. Essentially they were much quieter, which made me feel that perhaps we weren't connecting with them as we should. Fortunately I could detect the odd chuckle in the right places, and I don't think we were getting negative vibes from them. In fact, the applause at the end was very gratifying and seemed to be driven by sincere appreciation which made me feel that perhaps we needn't have been so concerned.

And finally, our Brighton swan song, in which our cast of six outnumbered the audience 2:1. That is the Fringe that I remember. Although this is somewhat disheartening, I don't think it had an adverse effect on our performance. We all certainly seemed happier in the space, there were fewer tongues tripping on lines and the pace whipped along very nicely. Like the good professionals that we are, we can be secure in the knowledge that we gave those three people our all, when it can be very tempting to to take your foot off the pedal in those circumstances.

Of course, this is a very personal, subjective appraisal of the run so far. I believe we had a critic in for both of the Brighton nights, so I await with no small amount of trepidation their views on the show. I still have faith that we provide a very satisfying evening of theatre, but that faith is very fragile. We'll have to wait and see.

So this is unemployment...

It's bloody hard work! Since the bank holiday weekend that marked the end of my old life, I actually haven't stopped. The first day of true leisure, when I had nothing work related in my diary, was this Friday. That is no longer the case as I now have a meeting that may lead to a bit of proper paid work if all goes well.

I've been so busy that I haven't even had a chance to sign on. Fortunately the money side of things isn't so much of an issue in the immediate term, but certainly by July we will be feeling the pinch. But it is on my to-do list.

I am a big believer that we make our own luck, and that good things happen to those that see the opportunities and take them. I'd like to think that my experience so far is proving this theory as, potentially I am looking at having projects to work on until the end of this year, on top of the workshops and youth theatre stuff I will be doing in the summer. All of these things are dependent on the success of a series of meetings, all of which will be taking place next week, so I should have a clearer picture of what the next six months at least will look like by the end of May. Quite how much of the exciting goodness will be paying the bills is unclear, but experience is a crucial currency and should open up further opportunities.

Tomorrow is the first night of the tour, and I have to say the nerves are already kicking in (this is unusual for me, as I tend not to get nervous much these days). Even though the show is tried and tested and we have, I think, improved it since then, I feel that there is so much more at stake now. Plus my own perception of our work has possibly become distorted, due in no small measure to the raging volatility of my self-confidence. But my ego and its idiosyncrasies warrant a whole post on their own. Suffice to say that there is a world of difference between working on something as an informal project and then taking that out into the professional field. The Big Question is "Are we good enough?" Unfortunately I don't think I'll be able to find an answer to that question for a few weeks yet.

So, for now, the best I dare hope is that tomorrow's show is not a complete disaster. I don;t think it will be, and I hope the rest of the cast share that view. I'd like to think they'd tell me if they didn't.

Wish me luck...

Expectations

I'm musing on the experience of being an expectant father. "Expectant" and its linguistic kin is loaded with meanings, implying anticipation, even impatience, and can even suggest the imposing of values or standards on the thing you are expecting. I would say all possible meanings apply to this situation.
The many books and sources of advice for fathers-to-be seem to offer a consensus that this nine-month period, for men, can often be something of a limbo. They reassure you that you mustn't worry if you feel somewhat removed from what is happening to your partner. That it is, ultimately, the mother's show at this stage, and as long as you make sure you are there when needed that is about it.
So, carry on as normal then. Having played your part in conception, you are largely redundant until some approximate date in the future. Interpreting the advice in this way could easily encourage a lack of engagement with the process if one is that way inclined. But I'd like to think that most men in this position want to feel involved at every opportunity. A kinder reading of the advice might be that you should be, but don't worry if the focus of others is mostly on your partner. After all, she's the one with a human growing inside her.
My own experience has been quite serene. I would define it so far as normal life punctuated by frequent moments of epiphany. Every time I see Yummy Mummy I am reminded of the impending Life Changing Event, and I deal with this in my usual way, by taking it in my stride. Yet I'm always mindful and it's nice to have that thought in the back of your mind all the time. I have so far only had one oblivious moment, when a couple of months ago a fellow luvvie whom I see occasionally mouthed to me across a theatre the word "congratulations" only for me to reply with "what for?" In my defence, I was in work mode, surrounded by students, and I had lost track of who knew our News. There has been so much going on that the greeting could have applied to a number of things.
To bring some structure to this ramble, I'll go back to those meanings of expectant. The anticipation part is obvious, the anticipation of each new milestone: the first scan, the first time you hear the heartbeat, the first time you feel baby move. Having a baby is such a massive thing that the reality of it doesn't always sink in, so I look to these moments as another confirmation that, yes, this is actually happening. Then the impatience comes hard on the heels of anticipation, as only impatience would (it is, after all, the emotion the tail-gates all other states as though it has the most important appointment to get to so just move out of the way thank you very much). I am currently slightly envious that YM is feeling ever more regular flutters and I yearn for the moment when I too can experience something that is an unequivocal kick instead of possibly a stomach rumble. I also am really looking forward to YM getting properly BIG! Probably more so than she is, in truth. I can imagine myself vicariously wearing that bump like a badge of honour, so that everyone, even strangers, can tell that I'm going to be a Dad.
Then there is the imposing of values. I find myself wondering how much Bow (Baby On Way, for the uninitiated) is being shaped by the antenatal sensations s/he is encountering. To name a few, Bow has been in the audience while the Tiger Lillies sang about pyromania and sheep-shagging, has spent two weeks on stage with YM in a production of The Crucible, surrounded by people emoting like there's no tomorrow. And even this evening, we sat in a theatre and were at one point serenaded by a lounge-singing guinea pig that was abruptly shot dead! I can imagine Bow in his/her edge-of-consciousness wondering what the hell kind of world s/he will meet in September.
All of these moments are spread between stretches of normal life, and then of course come the epiphanies. I'm working late into the night most nights at the moment, and as I crawled into bed in the early hours one morning this week, YM was fast asleep, turned slightly towards me on her side. I placed my hand on her belly, and was suddenly overwhelmed by the magnificence, wonder, awesome scariness of this new life. It was a beautiful moment of emotion deeper than simple tears, and I can't wait to have it again.