I hate the first day of rehearsals.
No, I love the first day of rehearsals, sure its the start of a new job!
Both statements are true.
The thing about your first day on the new gig is that its a serious mixture of fear and excitement. On the one hand your buzzed to be starting a new job and meeting all these new people for the first time. On the other you’re scared shitless because there’s a room full of people you don’t know;
‘Hi I’m Jamie, I’m playing whatever. How’re you?’
And that’s where the conversation ends because you don’t know the person well enough yet to have that matey witty banter. And worst of all you have to do a read through in a minute and you know everyone in the room will judge you straight away on your reading of a script which you probably haven’t read. Actually that last bit is only true if you’re me, most actors have the cop on to read the fecking play before the first day of rehearsals. Not me though. But then again not every actor has just arrived back from a week and a half long session in the Déise the day before. Priorities my good friends, priorities. So like every other first day of rehearsals I hit the road (to Clapham to start Much Ado About Nothing) with a knot in me stomach. I wasn’t too bad because I actually knew a couple of people in the show. Now that always helps! About a month before we started I read in the online edition of that most famous Waterford rag, the Munster Express, that a young actor from town was doing well in England, aw do they mean me? Not a sign! I guess I don’t qualify for the ‘Young’ bit any more. They were doing a bit on Andrew McLoughlin (Stage name Andrew Macklin). Now I remember Andrew from his days in Waterford Youth Drama cos I wrote the music for a few of the shows he was in. Grand chap, good actor and I knew he had hit the road to train in Bristol and then moved to the London and here in this article it announced that he was about to be in Sir Peter Hall’s production of Much Ado About Nothing. Well feck me so was I. Nice one, good to have another blue on board! Then, while I was still hungover at home, I got a text from Richard Stacey, the lucky fecker who got Beckett in the West End last year. He was in the show too and had seen me name on the contact list. Ah deadly! Top head this guy, I had worked with him on a show two years ago. Y’know the one that no one saw except that guy that recognised me at the call centre. Now apart from being an all round nice guy, he’s a classy actor, so it was well excellent to be working with him again. So that was deadly that I knew a couple of heads on the first day, surely that would make the ordeal easier. Again, not a sign. First days are bad enough on their own.
They’re even worse when there’s a film crew in the room as well.
The South Bank show were doing a special for Peter Hall’s 75th birthday and we had been forewarned that there would be cameras in the room on the first day. But Jesus, it was like these guys were filming a summer blockbuster with all the gear they had in the room. Now I may be exaggerating but I tell ya, it really seemed like the case at the time. The first half hour, which is always the ‘meet and greet’, was now spent ducking the cameras. I do want to do more telly, but this was not the right time! But I got caught. I was over talking about old times with el Stacey when I saw Sir Peter making a beeline for me to say hello. The minute he got to me and shook the hand I had a camera in me face and a boom mic over me head. He was very nice and welcoming and said he hoped I was in good voice. And to that I replied:
‘Oh yes. I’m grand, I’ve been back singing in Ireland for the past week sure.’
I’m some pleb. It was some lie because I wasn’t singing I was drinking and it was just a fucking cat thing to say anyway. Where was me trademark witty retorts? Nowhere to be seen! Of course this may now be broadcast to the nation in November. The funny thing is, as much as I don’t want my spastic mumblings to be seen on TV I would get paid if it was shown. Ah well, no one I know watches the South Bank show anyway, just give me the cash! The cameras then stayed for the day which was excruciating. We sat down to do the read through and they set themselves up around us. It didn’t turn out to be a read through in the end as all the way through Sir Peter would stop us and give notes on the delivery of the text. The worst thing ever happened then. One of the actresses was reading her speech from act one and she was stopped, given notes and asked to do it again, and again, and again. He was adamant about how she should speak the lines. Now this is grand and normal practice but the minute Sir Peter started giving her notes the cameras swooped in. There was one on him, another on her and a mic over her head. Time seemed to slow down while all this was happening and we all started to feel a bit queasy and just thankful it wasn’t us. But fair fucks to her she weathered it and didn’t leave it get to her and really just got on with it every time he stopped her. Brave brave lady. Funny thing is I thought she was delivering it really well in the first place. Shows what I know I guess. When they got to my first bit (all 10 lines of it) I tried it in me best RP but got a bit stuck on the ‘TH’s. Of course this doesn’t exist in the Déise accent, they all become a hard ‘T’ or a ‘D’. So my line, which was;
Note this before my notes
There’s not a note of mine that’s worth the noting.
when you cross Rice bridge becomes:
Note dis before my notes,
Dere’s not a note of mine dat’s wurt de notin’ ........ boy
So its a sound that me mouth just isn’t used to making and I used to get killed for it in drama school. So Sir Peter suggests that I do it in my own accent. That’s cool so, but I’m a bit annoyed as I’m pretty good at accents but that just made me seem like a pleb. Shite on it anyway.
The following day the cameras were gone thank god, but the read through was still going on. We got to the part of the play with the comedy Watchmen, and I was giving my watchman as well as my Balthazar. I lashed into those lines with real vigour, and in me best Congress Place accent. Afterwards Sir Peter commented that he liked the Irish accent for the Watchman so would I mind doing Balthazar in RP? Good stuff. I was getting a chance to redeem me English accent so. Sound. Actually he really really liked the Irish accent, so much so he asked the rest of the people in that scene to affect an Irish brogue. Now I’m not saying I was influential but I was an influence (although of course there was another blaa in the room, Mr. Macklin). The Irish had invaded the world of Will Shakespeare. Actually accents are nothing new to the bard, sure I did Midsummer Night’s Dream as if I worked in Kervick’s, but still I was pleased that I had made some little mark in the rehearsal room.
Now lads I have to state this for it really is the case; I had a really small bit to do in this show, and that beacame all too apparent when we did the two day read through. I sat there agog at some of the other actors (because there was some serious heads in that room let me tell ya.) but really had fuck all to say for meself. Needless to say I was hankering for more lines.
I got more lines.
This happened in two instances. One good, one bad. As always, good news first. When I got this gig I knew it was small and the main reason for the part of Balthazar was to sing one of Shakespeare’s more well known songs, ‘Hey Nonny Nonny’, sing along if you know it. When I browsed through the script before the audition I found that there was another song in the show. Ah that must be for me then. Well not nessecarily, because the lines before it belong to the Claudio part, and the song is attributed to no one so it looks like it should be Claudio singing it. So we came to that bit in the read through, this was the moment of reckoning. Did I have another song? It would have made the job a bit sweeter if I did. As fate would have it I was sitting beside Claudio at that time. I had highlighted all my lines in the script except for that song because I didn’t want to tempt fate. I glanced across the table to find that he had highlighted his lines AND the song. Ah well, he must know something I don’t. I resigned meself to the fate of only having one song. Not a sign. As we got to that bit, Claudio said his lines and just as he was about to speak the song Sir Peter did proclaim;
‘And now we have a song from that well-known Irish tenor.’
Now the well-known and tenor bit was inaccurate but that fact that he said Irish and was pointing at me left me in little doubt that I was gonna be belting out that comeallye in the show. Nice one, the little bit I was doing all of a sudden had more bits. Then the bad instance happened. As I said, as well as playing Balthazar the singer I was also contracted to play one of the comedy watchmen, and these boys had lines. Grand. There was two Watchmen with lines, ingeniously called Watchman 1 and Watchman 2, and No. 1 had more to say than the other. Of course I was hoping that I’d get the meatier bit, but as it transpired it was given to someone else. No hassle. I had my bit and was happy with me lot (and two songs). But that wasn’t the end of it. After the first read through we sat down to read it again and just before we got to the Watch bit I saw sir Peter having a chat with Watchman 1 and telling him that, in the first scene at least he had to give his lines to one of the older actors. Gutting. Now it had shag all to do with anything he was doing because this guy is a class actor, but Don Pedro Hall wanted a more senior gent doing that bit. And that’s how shitty this business can be, you have feck all to do in a show and you find that they can even take that feck all away from ya. At least he had the lines in the second watch scene. Well no, he didn’t. When we got to that scene Sir Peter pointed at me and told me to say those lines. Aw fuck. But what do you do? Its not like you can tell the director that you think the other fella should do it. I felt like a bastard but it wasn’t my fault. But I still didn’t stand up to Sir Peter. How could I.
The part was shitty but the real reason I was in that room and had waited a brain numbing, call centre working age to do this job was to work with Peter Hall. Let me tell you, you knew you were in the presence of a legend in that room. I sat there (not saying anything because I had fuck all to say) and took it all in. Now I’ve done Shakespeare before, I mean I was feckin nominated for best young classical actor, but in that room I realised I didn’t have a clue. After a couple of days he sat us down and gave us a lecture on how to deliver Shakespearean text and this was from the boy who wrote the book on it (no seriously he did ‘Shakespeare’s Advice to the Players’ by Peter Hall, available at all good bookshops). I realised in that couple of hours that I had really just busked it and got lucky the last time I did a classical play. Now it was all laid bare and it made a lot of sense to me because he described it in musical terms, the rhythm of the verse, how at a line ending you should pause ever so minutely, like taking the foot off the sustain pedal when playing the piano. Lovely. It was an acting lesson I was getting paid for. Sound!
So after all the waiting it had finally begun and within the first week I had gotten more lines, another song, learned how to speak the Shakespeare, and made a whole scene feckin Irish. As they always say;
‘There’s no such thing as small parts, only small players.’
Too right boy.
Friday, September 16, 2005
Sunday, September 04, 2005
29. JIMMY THREE JOBS
(crap ones that is)
Here follows a tale of shite jobs that may astound you. Or probably not.
The end was in sight, there was a light at the end of the tunnel and my three months of unemployment were about to become merely a horrible memory for Much Ado was in sight!!!
About feckin time!
God what a wait. Jesus the pain of working in that crappy call centre every day. I was really pulling me hair out with that shit job, you'd have to do at least 45 hours a week to make any kind of decent money. Every Wednesday I'd give in the hours I wanted for the following week, y'know like signing away me life and then you have to call back on the Friday and find out what you actually got. So I'd put in for 45 hours which meant I'd get £292.50 (a far cry from the west end let me tell ya!!) but of course I'd ring on Friday only to be told that I was only working 16 hours the following week!!! £104!!!! Jesus me rent is feckin £117 a week how the hell could I survive? And then they would just ring you and cancel shifts left right and centre. I earned £50 one week. I was at me wits end. Christ I might be homeless by the time Much Ado arrives. I tried everything to get a new job including sending CVs around all the West End theatres to see if I could get some stage crew work (there was no way I was going back to front of house!), but no one called back. But I got lucky towards the end, well as lucky as you can get with crap jobs. I got a call from my most honourable friend Haruka Kuroda to say that they badly needed someone for the day at the office she was working. What kind of office pray tell?
Market research.
No but hang on, this time it wasn't about Aloe Vera scrub, it was about films. Grand. This was one of the companies who organise and run test screenings for the big movie studios along with lots of other audience research activities. I went in that first day and did a bit at the computer for them and then they started ringing with more work and it was money for jam let me tell ya! All I had to do was go to screenings in different parts of London and hand out all the questionnaires at the end of the movie (which of course I got to watch as well) and then I'd have to go to the office and input all the data from the questionnaires the following day (which is known in that business as coding dontchaknow). It wasn't brain surgery but it was light years better than the fucking call centre! Among other things I got to see a new and very crap Sean Bean horror movie and a very rough cut of the new Herbie film in which they hadn't finished all the special effects yet so it was a bit of a mess. I also got to read what the general population thought of these films. And they'd come up with some weird and wonderful answers on the questionnaires. Me favourite went thus:
Q.3: What was your favourite part of 'Herbie: Fully Loaded'?
A: Lindsay Lohan, man she was looking fine.
Q.4: What was your least favourite part of 'Herbie: Fully Loaded'?
A: When Lindsay Lohan was kissing that bloke, because it wasn't me!
Now while that doesn't seem too mad to read, you might think different if I told you the answers were from an 11 year old boy! My they do grow up quick these days. But seriously it was really great to get out of the soul destroying atmosphere of the call centre and the money was good. The coding and the handing out of leaflets were boring but feck it it wasn't for much longer as Much Ado was on the way. Ah sure hold on though what am I thinking? New job coming up? Surely there's something important to do before I start. Of course!! A trip back to Congress Place for a feed of Bulmers, Blaas and craic! It had to be done, when I start rehearsals on the 16th of May I wouldn't be able to go home until at least the 27th of August. Fuck that! I'll be getting withdrawals. So I prayed to the gods of ryanair.com and got meself a cheapo flight to Caaahhhrrrkkk to bring me home for nearly 2 weeks. Lovely, although I had a serious dose of the Déise one weekend when the ruler of Red Kettle Ben Hennessy and the other good singer from Waterford called Jamie, the chap of the Murphys, came over for the weekend. Now it might have been just a serious session as (Brian) Dots and (Keith) Dunph joined us for some scoops but we were sitting in a pub when Jamie announces that he and his lack (Tish who's sitting beside him) had gotten engaged the night before. Then mayhem broke loose and after muchos champagne and singing songs in Laurence Olivier's old dressing room, the night ended with me and Jamie eile trying to open the lock on the fridge in the bar in their hotel, Brian Dots falling asleep on the night bus home and waking in the arse end of South London (or possibly Kent) and Ben Hen wandering around Bexleyheath at 6 in the morning trying to find his sister in law's. Oh classy we. I won't even go into the following evening's jollity but suffice it to say I nearly got the P45 off me lack!! It was cool though because we were all celebrating something; Dots had just got a gig at the Royal National Theatre, Dunph had just been cast in a film, Ben's wife was about to pop a child, Jamie had the fáinne on the finger and I was off to work with Peter Hall. Go on the Déise boys.
So I relaxed with three weeks to go knowing I was going home which meant that the end of the crap job syndrome was coming even sooner.
Or so I thought.
The week before I was to head Irelandwards I was booked for a few days work with the film research crowd. Grand that'll give me a few shekels to party in Waterford with. Nah. It got cancelled. The big boys in LA rang and cancelled the screening so all me work was gone!! Shit. That is not good at all. No work a week before I go home, no large bottles for me then!!! I hopped on the phone to Turns (the crowd that ruined me life with the call centre job on the first place) and they had some work for the following week. Give me it so, I'm desperate. What is it? Research. Ah right more of that. Well not exactly. It was to knock on peoples doors on behalf of Islington council and ask them two questions about their phone line with regards to digital TV.
Ah shite.
All right it wasn't selling door to door or anything too taxing but the doors we had to knock on were in big blocks of council flats. I feared for me life let me tell ya. Feck it just grin and bear it and take the money and run. But fuck me talk about how the other half lives. Now I'm being very unfair in saying that because not all of the residents were knackers, but a lot of them were smelly and obviously out of their box on drugs and still in their pyjamas at 5 in the evening. That said I knocked on the door of some very nice people whose flats looked very nice indeed. They were the flats with the bars on their doors though! I reassured meself that it was ok to do this because no one knows me. Then, on one of the days, I stopped a lady just before she went into her flat and I had already done the questionnaire with her the previous day, but before she went she says to me:
'Were you working at Regent's Park a couple of years ago?'
I'd been recognised. This was a weird thing because I supposed she had seen me in one of the shows at the park, which is cool because I had some nice parts in the Shakespeare's that year, but here I was with a clipboard in me hand playing knockadolly for 8 pound an hour. Not very showbiz (or thinking about the amount of out of work actors its actually VERY showbiz). Well at least it made me look good in front of the other resting actors doing the job with me, so I decided to take it as a good thing that she recognised me and spake thus;
'Yeah that's right, I'm going back there again this summer actually. I'm only doing this inbetween y'know. Did you see Two Gentlemen of Verona or the dream?'
'Oh no I didn't see you in anything, my daughter did her work experience there two years ago and she recognised you that's all.'
Well that brought me down a peg or two. Ha ha. On the last day we don't knock on every door as there's another guy in the same building who's trying to sell phones door to door, so we start getting threatened when we call. Feck that for a laugh! This is exactly the kind of shite job that only actors will do but no one wants to get a slap in the head. So we head off to a cafe and waste a couple of paid hours. And thankfully that's the end of the worst job ever. But that was a funny week as at the start of it the phone went and twas not the agent but the shithead call centre begging me to do some hours that week. Now to hell with them because they had fucked me about so much over the past load of weeks, but I was going back home and the more money I had the more fun it would be so I agreed to do a day for them. And so I went in and did feck all for the day, I really took the piss just sitting there and not calling anyone, it was me last day there ever, I promised meself that. The phone went a second time that week (again not the agent) from the film research company this time asking me would I go to Chester to do exit polls on Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Exit polls are when you hand out questionnaires to audience members before they go in to see a movie which has just opened and you hope they fill them in and you collect them at the end. Easy gig, but chester is oop north of England and the cinema was in a retail park in the middle of nowhere, so I'd have to catch a train on the saturday at 8am get there by 12 meet 4 local plebs who were to help me and stay at the cinema 'til 11.30pm then stay at a hotel, get the train back to London the following morning and sit in the office for the day coding all the answers! Not so easy gig after all. But they were paying me £180 with all food, travel and accomodation paid for ..... I'm your man! While it was a bit like pulling teeth and the 4 plebs were indeed plebs, the hotel was a swish 4-star jobby with a deadly breakfast and at the end of the day the money was grand and much needed.
So I came to the end of a long and arduous 3 months of 'resting', which I might say is a bullshit term. Actors who are out of work are 'unemployed actors'. Simple as. It's the shite time and the search is still on for the perfect inbetween job. I certainly haven't found it yet. It was the longest time I'd been been out of work since the original famine after drama school. Rough time, but that's the business. You end up wishing your life away waiting to start the next gig. Of course for all me giving out the gas thing is in the final week of me prison sentence I actually did 3 different crap jobs. Mad. But it was worth it because the trip home was the business. The same mad craic as usual, with many a morning waking up on a couch in Morley terrace after missing 'The People Beneath the Stairs' and many an evening buckled over laughing at the tall tales of the liar de paoir. Best ever though was visiting the new lap dancing club on the hill of Ballybricken. 'The Thrill on the Hill' has a new meaning thanks to the arrival of Whispers and its eastern European lovelies. The night we went up there the bouncer on the door stopped us and said:
'Now lads before you go in I have to tell ye a few rules.'
Then he pointed at Q.
'Except for you boy, you've heard them enough times already.'
Some unreal, It had only been open about a week and a half and the bouncers knew him already. Good man. Inside it was grand but I just couldn't get it out of me head that I was sitting in a lapdancing club in the Déise! Some buzz. But all good things that have to come to an end indeed do come to an end. As always I hate leaving home, that strange twinge in me stomach as I cross the bridge or pass Ballnaneise. If the work was there I'd stay there. Ah well. This time though it wasn't nearly as bad as the previous couple of times.
I was finally starting rehearsals for Much Ado on the Monday.
It was worth the wait.
Here follows a tale of shite jobs that may astound you. Or probably not.
The end was in sight, there was a light at the end of the tunnel and my three months of unemployment were about to become merely a horrible memory for Much Ado was in sight!!!
About feckin time!
God what a wait. Jesus the pain of working in that crappy call centre every day. I was really pulling me hair out with that shit job, you'd have to do at least 45 hours a week to make any kind of decent money. Every Wednesday I'd give in the hours I wanted for the following week, y'know like signing away me life and then you have to call back on the Friday and find out what you actually got. So I'd put in for 45 hours which meant I'd get £292.50 (a far cry from the west end let me tell ya!!) but of course I'd ring on Friday only to be told that I was only working 16 hours the following week!!! £104!!!! Jesus me rent is feckin £117 a week how the hell could I survive? And then they would just ring you and cancel shifts left right and centre. I earned £50 one week. I was at me wits end. Christ I might be homeless by the time Much Ado arrives. I tried everything to get a new job including sending CVs around all the West End theatres to see if I could get some stage crew work (there was no way I was going back to front of house!), but no one called back. But I got lucky towards the end, well as lucky as you can get with crap jobs. I got a call from my most honourable friend Haruka Kuroda to say that they badly needed someone for the day at the office she was working. What kind of office pray tell?
Market research.
No but hang on, this time it wasn't about Aloe Vera scrub, it was about films. Grand. This was one of the companies who organise and run test screenings for the big movie studios along with lots of other audience research activities. I went in that first day and did a bit at the computer for them and then they started ringing with more work and it was money for jam let me tell ya! All I had to do was go to screenings in different parts of London and hand out all the questionnaires at the end of the movie (which of course I got to watch as well) and then I'd have to go to the office and input all the data from the questionnaires the following day (which is known in that business as coding dontchaknow). It wasn't brain surgery but it was light years better than the fucking call centre! Among other things I got to see a new and very crap Sean Bean horror movie and a very rough cut of the new Herbie film in which they hadn't finished all the special effects yet so it was a bit of a mess. I also got to read what the general population thought of these films. And they'd come up with some weird and wonderful answers on the questionnaires. Me favourite went thus:
Q.3: What was your favourite part of 'Herbie: Fully Loaded'?
A: Lindsay Lohan, man she was looking fine.
Q.4: What was your least favourite part of 'Herbie: Fully Loaded'?
A: When Lindsay Lohan was kissing that bloke, because it wasn't me!
Now while that doesn't seem too mad to read, you might think different if I told you the answers were from an 11 year old boy! My they do grow up quick these days. But seriously it was really great to get out of the soul destroying atmosphere of the call centre and the money was good. The coding and the handing out of leaflets were boring but feck it it wasn't for much longer as Much Ado was on the way. Ah sure hold on though what am I thinking? New job coming up? Surely there's something important to do before I start. Of course!! A trip back to Congress Place for a feed of Bulmers, Blaas and craic! It had to be done, when I start rehearsals on the 16th of May I wouldn't be able to go home until at least the 27th of August. Fuck that! I'll be getting withdrawals. So I prayed to the gods of ryanair.com and got meself a cheapo flight to Caaahhhrrrkkk to bring me home for nearly 2 weeks. Lovely, although I had a serious dose of the Déise one weekend when the ruler of Red Kettle Ben Hennessy and the other good singer from Waterford called Jamie, the chap of the Murphys, came over for the weekend. Now it might have been just a serious session as (Brian) Dots and (Keith) Dunph joined us for some scoops but we were sitting in a pub when Jamie announces that he and his lack (Tish who's sitting beside him) had gotten engaged the night before. Then mayhem broke loose and after muchos champagne and singing songs in Laurence Olivier's old dressing room, the night ended with me and Jamie eile trying to open the lock on the fridge in the bar in their hotel, Brian Dots falling asleep on the night bus home and waking in the arse end of South London (or possibly Kent) and Ben Hen wandering around Bexleyheath at 6 in the morning trying to find his sister in law's. Oh classy we. I won't even go into the following evening's jollity but suffice it to say I nearly got the P45 off me lack!! It was cool though because we were all celebrating something; Dots had just got a gig at the Royal National Theatre, Dunph had just been cast in a film, Ben's wife was about to pop a child, Jamie had the fáinne on the finger and I was off to work with Peter Hall. Go on the Déise boys.
So I relaxed with three weeks to go knowing I was going home which meant that the end of the crap job syndrome was coming even sooner.
Or so I thought.
The week before I was to head Irelandwards I was booked for a few days work with the film research crowd. Grand that'll give me a few shekels to party in Waterford with. Nah. It got cancelled. The big boys in LA rang and cancelled the screening so all me work was gone!! Shit. That is not good at all. No work a week before I go home, no large bottles for me then!!! I hopped on the phone to Turns (the crowd that ruined me life with the call centre job on the first place) and they had some work for the following week. Give me it so, I'm desperate. What is it? Research. Ah right more of that. Well not exactly. It was to knock on peoples doors on behalf of Islington council and ask them two questions about their phone line with regards to digital TV.
Ah shite.
All right it wasn't selling door to door or anything too taxing but the doors we had to knock on were in big blocks of council flats. I feared for me life let me tell ya. Feck it just grin and bear it and take the money and run. But fuck me talk about how the other half lives. Now I'm being very unfair in saying that because not all of the residents were knackers, but a lot of them were smelly and obviously out of their box on drugs and still in their pyjamas at 5 in the evening. That said I knocked on the door of some very nice people whose flats looked very nice indeed. They were the flats with the bars on their doors though! I reassured meself that it was ok to do this because no one knows me. Then, on one of the days, I stopped a lady just before she went into her flat and I had already done the questionnaire with her the previous day, but before she went she says to me:
'Were you working at Regent's Park a couple of years ago?'
I'd been recognised. This was a weird thing because I supposed she had seen me in one of the shows at the park, which is cool because I had some nice parts in the Shakespeare's that year, but here I was with a clipboard in me hand playing knockadolly for 8 pound an hour. Not very showbiz (or thinking about the amount of out of work actors its actually VERY showbiz). Well at least it made me look good in front of the other resting actors doing the job with me, so I decided to take it as a good thing that she recognised me and spake thus;
'Yeah that's right, I'm going back there again this summer actually. I'm only doing this inbetween y'know. Did you see Two Gentlemen of Verona or the dream?'
'Oh no I didn't see you in anything, my daughter did her work experience there two years ago and she recognised you that's all.'
Well that brought me down a peg or two. Ha ha. On the last day we don't knock on every door as there's another guy in the same building who's trying to sell phones door to door, so we start getting threatened when we call. Feck that for a laugh! This is exactly the kind of shite job that only actors will do but no one wants to get a slap in the head. So we head off to a cafe and waste a couple of paid hours. And thankfully that's the end of the worst job ever. But that was a funny week as at the start of it the phone went and twas not the agent but the shithead call centre begging me to do some hours that week. Now to hell with them because they had fucked me about so much over the past load of weeks, but I was going back home and the more money I had the more fun it would be so I agreed to do a day for them. And so I went in and did feck all for the day, I really took the piss just sitting there and not calling anyone, it was me last day there ever, I promised meself that. The phone went a second time that week (again not the agent) from the film research company this time asking me would I go to Chester to do exit polls on Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Exit polls are when you hand out questionnaires to audience members before they go in to see a movie which has just opened and you hope they fill them in and you collect them at the end. Easy gig, but chester is oop north of England and the cinema was in a retail park in the middle of nowhere, so I'd have to catch a train on the saturday at 8am get there by 12 meet 4 local plebs who were to help me and stay at the cinema 'til 11.30pm then stay at a hotel, get the train back to London the following morning and sit in the office for the day coding all the answers! Not so easy gig after all. But they were paying me £180 with all food, travel and accomodation paid for ..... I'm your man! While it was a bit like pulling teeth and the 4 plebs were indeed plebs, the hotel was a swish 4-star jobby with a deadly breakfast and at the end of the day the money was grand and much needed.
So I came to the end of a long and arduous 3 months of 'resting', which I might say is a bullshit term. Actors who are out of work are 'unemployed actors'. Simple as. It's the shite time and the search is still on for the perfect inbetween job. I certainly haven't found it yet. It was the longest time I'd been been out of work since the original famine after drama school. Rough time, but that's the business. You end up wishing your life away waiting to start the next gig. Of course for all me giving out the gas thing is in the final week of me prison sentence I actually did 3 different crap jobs. Mad. But it was worth it because the trip home was the business. The same mad craic as usual, with many a morning waking up on a couch in Morley terrace after missing 'The People Beneath the Stairs' and many an evening buckled over laughing at the tall tales of the liar de paoir. Best ever though was visiting the new lap dancing club on the hill of Ballybricken. 'The Thrill on the Hill' has a new meaning thanks to the arrival of Whispers and its eastern European lovelies. The night we went up there the bouncer on the door stopped us and said:
'Now lads before you go in I have to tell ye a few rules.'
Then he pointed at Q.
'Except for you boy, you've heard them enough times already.'
Some unreal, It had only been open about a week and a half and the bouncers knew him already. Good man. Inside it was grand but I just couldn't get it out of me head that I was sitting in a lapdancing club in the Déise! Some buzz. But all good things that have to come to an end indeed do come to an end. As always I hate leaving home, that strange twinge in me stomach as I cross the bridge or pass Ballnaneise. If the work was there I'd stay there. Ah well. This time though it wasn't nearly as bad as the previous couple of times.
I was finally starting rehearsals for Much Ado on the Monday.
It was worth the wait.
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