Well ropey

I woke up this morning with a cold ricocheting through my body. It was never going to be a good day to get ill. With NYMT recalls all day and a dress rehearsal this evening, I needed to be on my A-game. Instead of this, through most of the day, I felt like someone had stuffed jay cloths in the cavities of my head and run a wheel barrow of bricks over my body. I was snorting like one of those dreadful pug dogs on the tube this morning. A hoity-toity woman kept shooting disapproving looks in my direction. I wanted to yell at her and tell her that sitting in a tube was infra dig and that she shouldn't expect too much of her fellow travellers, but then I heard myself sniffing and thought she was probably within her rights to be horrified!

I wonder if anyone's ever tried to iron a pug dog?

So today we had the first day of recalls for Brass. I had a special guest judge in the style of Sinitta off of the X Factor, except my judge was a lot more exciting and took the form of Jake Brunger from the writing partnership Jake and Pippa who wrote last year's NYMT new commission, Prodigy. Our director, Hannah, wasn't able to make today's session, so it was vital I had someone with me who could take an objective view. I have to be very careful when it comes to walking the line between my natural desire to cast the young people who did the show last time and wanting to offer new opportunities. My decision has been to wipe the slate clean and cast the show entirely based on what we see in the audition room.

Recalls are very tiring for everyone. We have two and a half hours to work with a group of just fifteen young people, so everyone gets worked incredibly hard.

I, of course, meticulously planned everything, but the best made plans always go to pot, and quite a number of the kids came to the wrong sessions, so I was scribbling names on pieces of paper all over the place. I was also trying to film everyone for Hannah, which was a nightmare because my phone kept running out of both battery and storage. So irritating. Particularly in the throes of a cold.

I went from NYMT to the Arts Theatre to the dress rehearsal of Beyond the Fence, which was as heartening as it was terrifying!

And now I'm home feeling well ropey!