A very interesting rehearsal…

So, today is THE day before the performance exam. The day before we have to perform not just in front of our families and friends, but also the examiner, who will give us the grade which counts for 60% of our A2 Level – basically, what could be the difference between an A and a B, a B or a D and a university place or clearing! Today was Epic Rehearsal Day – from 11am till 4pm, non-stop rehearsing.

So, as you can imagine, if I was to sum up my day you’d expect me to say there was lots of remembering lines and perfecting little bits, and making sure it all flowed nicely. And sure, that happened, for about two hours. Those two hours of hard graft were swiftly followed by the most memorable event of the day.

We were introduced to face paints.

I say “Introduced” like I’ve never used or even seen them before. I have used them, quite a bit, and I love using them, I’m hoping to do a fair bit of face painting this summer actually, but today we were pretty much allowed free reign, and we were ALLOWED TO PAINT OURSELVES. And I was allowed to paint someone else too, which is always fun. It does have to be clown face paint, so I couldn’t go making people into tigers (which was a shame because tigers are my strong point when it comes to face painting!), but I still enjoyed it – I gave myself a white face, red nose and a tear under my eye, and bright red lips with a big smile (culminating in me eating a bit of face paint which I hope isn’t toxic, it certainly tasted horrible!), and I got to paint a flower and a peace sign.

However, I didn’t quite realize just how hard the face paints are to get off. I mean, it’s snazaroo so it wasn’t incredibly difficult, but it wasn’t easy either, and I now have two very white eyebrows, a white hairline and bits of white in my just-washed hair, which was great. And an orange nose, thanks to the fact that the red stuff didn’t want to wash off either – I ended up looking like someone had punched me in the nose and it had exploded, which was both funny and rather embarrassing having to wait to be picked up like that.

So, today has been memorable not because I think we made amazing progress with the rehearsing (although it did go very well and I am very excited and nervous for tomorrow!), but because I got to play with face paints. Drama A Level at it’s best.

Please ignore the toilet in the background, people at college don't seem to understand the need for toilet doors.

On Making Very Little Writing Progress.

Once again, life gets in the way of writing. In some ways, I really don’t mind – as much as I love writing, I would much rather spend a weekend with my boyfriend, as I have just done, because he means a lot to me and I want him to know how much I love him 🙂 on the other hand, some things which are either not so good, or not things I really want to think about, are also getting in the way. 

In terms of the not so good, I’ve had a lovely weekend and managed to stop myself from thinking about it for much of the time, but problems with college keep cropping up, and the most recent one is definitely the biggest I’ve encountered so far (and hopefully the biggest I actually WILL encounter considering I’ve got about 7 weeks of actual lessons left, and I don’t want anything else to happen). I’m not going to go into details about it because I don’t particularly want to think about it in too much detail, but the stress of it is not only making me ill, it’s also disrupting the writing, which isn’t a good thing. 

As for the things I’d rather not think about, it’s actually quite exciting and I’m looking forwards to it, but I’m also really nervous! Well, more anxious than nervous… I want to get it over and done with, but I really want to enjoy it and do well. It’s my drama A Level performance exam on Wednesday, and while I’m really pleased with how we’re doing – the text piece is going really well and I think I’ve got my lines sorted, and the devised piece sounds great but I’m struggling with lines a bit – I’m also really nervous, because my parents and boyfriend are coming to see it, and I really hope they enjoy it! It is distracting me from my writing, but because I’m determined to get at least a B, if not an A if I can manage it, I really want to do well, so it’s worth it! Plus, it is really fun – we’ve been doing quite a lot of rehearsals and it’s been great and really helpful.

Being Productive!

This evening, to get my mind of this afternoon’s attendance debacle, I decided to make myself useful and do something productive – and something that is productive for more people than just myself. So I set aside the writing and sorted out the script for our Drama practical exam, cutting out the bits we don’t need and adding stage directions. It was actually surprisingly fun, surprisingly easy AND it’s taken my mind off today, plus it means less work for us all in the long run, especially when it comes to learning lines.

An all around win, basically. The smile is back on my face and I am now ready to get into bed and do a little bit more on the story 🙂