h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I've got a part in the next play, which is a sort of comedy/drama set on a wedding day - bride's dress won't fit, best man is chasing the chief bridesmaid, parents are arguing etc. It's written and directed by a member of our group. She's written four others for the group in previous years, and has had one of them published.

I'm playing the bride . We had our first rehearsal on Monday, and it was very weird as I was still in Twelfth Night mode. How odd suddenly to be speaking contemporary English...! It was fun though, and we managed to roughly block the entire first half (not one for hanging around, this director ). We have this week off as several people are on holiday, so I'll be able to get into it before rehearsals start again.

We have to learn our lines by about three and a half weeks' time - which could be interesting as I also have to learn lines for a play we're doing down in Somerset in the middle of August. It's 'Rope' - famously made into a film by Alfred Hitchcock, and I'm playing the old lady housekeeper (the director of this one seems to see me as an old lady quite a lot - I played Miss Prism in The Importance of Being Earnest' last time.) DannyB is playing the (also old ) schoolteacher.

So it suddenly dawned on me the other day that I have to learn two plays at once over the coming month...gulp. DannyB swears he reminded me of that fact before, but I'm sure he must be lying...or I wasn't listening...hmmm, which could it be, I wonder...

Yes, I wonder...

Faster than a speeding bullet...

I can be done. I rehearsed Grease (Roger) and A Doll's House (Torvald) simultaneously at school, and more recently I had to learn a musical and an opera at the same time, though thankfully in the chorus for both. It's exhausting, but it is possible!

Walk around talking to yourself at work. It'll also reinforce the "old lady" persona. Hopefully it wont get you prematurely retired.

Ooh no, premature retirement would be great!

Yes, and I think they're different enough that I shouldn't get too confused!

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The problem comes if you have to rehearse both plays at the same time . I have reconciled my own guilt at missing rehearsals for one production while attending those for the other and vice versa. The last two weeks have been hectic with clashing rehearsals most nights. Fortunately I had mostly learnt one (Something Blue) before starting the other (Merry Widow), and the Merry Widow is a doddle for spoken lines to learn - two sentences (the songs aren't too bad either). The tricky bit with the operetta is picking up the blocking off the cuff after missing early rehearsals.

It may help if you can divide your learning to different periods (eg one on the way to work, one on the way home)

Good idea about dividing up the learning, Pimms.

Should be OK with rehearsals, as the one in Somerset is a 'turn up a few days before, rehearse, then put it on' kind of thing. I'm having a week off the other one to go down to Somerset, so the rehearsals won't clash.

Haven't posted for a while as not much has happened and I've been busy at work and home so can't hootoo much .

I've learnt the wedding play now, and am pretty secure on my lines. I never used to look at them once plays started, but I found with Twelfth Night (because it meant so much to me and I didn't want to bugger it up) that just running them through quickly every day solidified them even more and I had no problems whatsoever. So that's my plan for the next four and a bit weeks (gosh, we've got AGES to go!).

We ran the play through for the first time last night to see what would happen. It wasn't bad at all, apart from a couple of people who are paraphrasing so badly that what they say bears very little resemblance to the actual script. One person in particular is really putting me off - I'm thinking 'umm, was that my cue?' so I can't really get into those scenes at all. Hope they improve, as it's getting a bit annoying.

We've got a wedding dress - £20 off Ebay!! It fits perfectly, which wasn't expected, and it's not bad at all - certainly better than I'd expected. Unfortunately, I don't get to be in the publicity pics for the papers as they can only be taken on a certain day (in between getting other costumes and the newspaper reporter needing them) and that's when we're down in Somerset for Rope. So the girl who's playing one of the statues will have to be me, which I'm a bit about.

I've more or less learnt Rope too, though that's been easier as I don't have many lines (unlike DannyB who has great huge chunks of rather dull and pious speech to plough through). Just can't work out why all my lines start with 'Well' (as do lots of DannyB's lines - rather poor writing).

I'm looking forward to going down there though - hope the weather is OK and it'll be a fun week.

Well done on the line learning (whoops - started with 'Well' ) How is the director reacting to the ad-libbing? Mind you with four whole weeks to go I'd be pretty relaxed about it. I make a point after experiencing specific missed cues from someone else to mention the difficulty it causes me, so they are aware of what I need as a cue to respond to their line.

"the girl who is playing one of the statues" - Must be a bit keen to be in a play if she is willing to play part of the set - or do they come to life?

Director pointed it out quite...well, pointedly last night so hopefully the culprit will have gone away and looked at the lines again. Trouble with paraphrasing is that they end up thinking they know the lines because they can keep talking, and it seems like that to other people (unless it's your cue that's going awry). This usually includes the director but as this time the director is also the author they're not so likely to get away with it.

My thinking is that if you don't learn the lines properly and you start to paraphrase, you're just going to keep paraphrasing because you're not practising the lines you should be practising...if that makes sense. Like my old riding teacher used to say 'Practice makes perfect, but if you're not practising correctly you're making your mistakes perfect'.

Prompting is also a problem - when I prompt, I pick them up if they go wrong. Not the odd synonym, but certainly when they are as off as last night. But other people just see prompting as waiting for someone to stop speaking and look for a line. Which the paraphrasers don't tend to do...

The statues are commentators on the action - they come to life at the beginning and then reappear to talk about the characters throughout the play.

It certainly sounds like madness, but of the good kind! I hope your paraphraser stops paraphrasing - it's certainly a maddening habit!

Well, we got back from Somerset on Sunday night, having done 'Rope' on the Friday and Saturday. It went very well - surprisingly so, considering very few of the cast had bothered to look at their lines before the week began...

This caused DannyB and I a few frustrating moments, which he took in his usual calm way and I moaned and grumbled about . But it was OK in the end, despite a certain amount of paraphrasing and lack of cues.

The audience certainly seemed to enjoy it, and were transfixed during the final scene. DannyB gave a sterling performance as the ex-schoolteacher who finds out the terrible truth about the murder, and I hammed it up as the batty housekeeper. I also had to act as unofficial ASM as I had so many bloomin' props to take on and off - a bottle of champagne here, a plate of pate there, plates, salad, hats, blah blah.

It was a nice week, with lots of great , no TV and lots of reading. In fact, the best part about it was that I rediscovered all the old books I used to read as a child - loads of Enid Blytons and all the horsey books I'd forgotten about. Nostalgia heaven!

I was also resident animal wrangler, it falling to me to usher various cats and dogs out of the rehearsal rooms when they wandered in, putting a horse back into its field after it opened the gate and got out, and even wrestling with s! Well, OK, I threw a towel over a bat that was flying around madly in the corridor, and was trying to work out a way of putting it into a container to get it outside. However, my partner in the bat rescue attempt decided to pick it up with his bare hands, whereupon, of course, it bit him. So DannyB and I took him to A&E to get it checked out (he'd been drinking). As we were drove around Yeovil at 12.30 at night trying to find the hospital, in the middle of a storm with thunder and lightning, we did wonder whether we'd stepped into a horror story...

After waiting for an hour or so the doctor wiped it with an antiseptic wipe and told him to come back if he had joint pains or fever. We all kept a close eye on him for any signs of frothing at the mouth over the next couple of days...

Anyway, back to the wedding play now, and it seems to be coming together OK, judging by last night's rehearsal. I'm getting quite into it and am looking forward to getting into the theatre.

I don't think I've ever had rehearsals interrupted by animals, though I did see a performance of King Lear which featured an impromptu cameo by a labrador.

Well, we were performing in the ballroom of a stately home and they have three dogs, at least three cats and numerous bats. One of the cats used to come and sit politely on a chair to watch the rehearsals, while the dogs just bumbled about getting in the way, as dogs are wont to do .

I saw a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream a little while ago where the chap playing the Man in the Moon in the mechanicals play had a real dog - a little Westie - on a lead instead of a stuffed one, as usually happens. It was only a puppy but was good as gold. Unfortunately, merely by sitting and looking incredibly cute, it managed to steal the whole show!

So you are now sane? Learning one play at once?

No 'dramatic animal' anecdotes to offer I'm afraid

Yep, just the one play now . First performance is a week on Wednesday - !!! 'The first week of September' sounded ages away, but saying it like that, it suddenly seems very close!

Well, play starts tonight.

It had been going quite well over the last few days - our first rehearsal in the theatre was Sunday - but last nights was just pants (is there a pants smiley? Should be...). Absolutely no focus from anyone, people stopping to do off-script things, two episodes of corpsing... I was not impressed. So tonight will be the first time we'll have gone through it with no stops. Oh joy.

It makes me cross because it's a good play and could be great if people just took it seriously. I'm sure it'll be OK tonight though - the thought of an audience should scare them into focusing a bit.

Audiences aren't looking great at the moment either, which is a shame. Hopefully people will turn up on the door. Major lack of support in selling tickets from the rest of the group, which, as the group is about twice the size it was a few years ago, is pretty pathetic.

Sorry, this all sounds very pessimistic. I am enjoying it, just getting a bit sick of people joining the group to meet people and go down the pub, instead of because they want to act.