2021: October

2021: snapshots from a year

October

October - The Enemy, Camper, Getting Funding

At the start of October, National Theatre of Scotland’s The Enemy went into production, first in Greenock and then opening in Dundee at the Rep.  The short roundup is great script, great director, great team, lots of good things.  The spanner in the works is that there was an event cascade which meant that lighting was consistently In Wild Trouble for much of the process, and whilst, when things when right, the art bit/how the lighting looked was great, when things went bad it was horrid!  Very eventfully horrid, sometimes in front of a live studio audience!

Photograph of The Enemy, taken by Mihaela Bodlovic

Despite the horrors in production week (which were occasional, but problematic enough that the periods in between felt like respite), there were many high points.  I’ll just mention a few here: the first is that I managed to eat healthily and walk 10,000 steps a day, most days.  This dropped off toward the end of the week (the usual cumulative 12 hour day exhaustion) but was still only the second full production I’ve ever done with good food habits, and the first with an exercise habit.  Salads and walks at lunch time increased my energy levels across the week, which is ironic given that my old approach of overeating, and being tired and sedentary, during production was all about trying to conserve my energy levels across those gruelling 12 hour days.  Turns out that less  food, and more exercise is what works for me.  

Photograph of The Enemy, taken by Mihaela Bodlovic

In the midst of The Hard Bit on The Enemy, I opened up Twitter one coffee break to find this, from Daniel Bye.  

I don’t suppose any of us truly know the effect we have on other people, but I can tell you that reading those words about myself, that day, made a difference to how I was that week, and as a result, made a difference to the lighting department and the show, too.

Once the show had pressed, my partner and I, and KaylaDog, had a long weekend in a camper van by the sea.  This was a birthday present for A, postponed from March (as we were still slowly emerging from lockdown at that point).  There were stars and waves and Scotland’s beauty to spend time with.  There were campfires and hot tea and listening to the sound of the rain on the roof.

A week later, and I was in a pretty low place despite the camper van R&R.  Those in theatre (and elsewhere, I am sure) will be familiar with the exhaustion and bad brain stuff that comes from an exhaustion+show being hard+impact on your art combo.  And then, at the end of that week, I heard from Creative Scotland that I’d got the funding for the first part of These Are Our Neighbours.  More on that in the November entry, but for now, just feel that smile on my face when the email came through.