So, all in all things could have been a lot worse yesterday... both shows happened and the first audience of Ink got treated to a very pacey rendition of the piece. Actually quite excellent. I mean, it's not that there weren't a few hiccoughs... the lights going down before the last two lines of the play probably wasn't exactly what I'd foreseen... but, you know what? We coped. Hells yes.
After that, my body jumped the Fringe schedule ever so slightly and had it's first breakdown at the beginning of week one instead of the start of week two. One minute I was eating a slightly dry sandwich in a restaurant, the next minute I was sobbing into the staler chips. It's not that the people I was having dinner with were uncomfortable, I think it genuinely was that they all suddenly realised they'd needed to go to the loo since we got there. Either way, a bottle of wine and some strawberry laces later and I was feeling like a prize moron. What kind of coping strategy for pressure and fear is weeping?
"Hello Creator of all things, I'm ready for my fight or flight instinct now."
"Ah, yes, Laura... now, we've got something special or you... you're kind of like a test pilot."
"Exciting! What am I getting? Am I getting claws so that I can gouge out the eyes of my attacker? Am I going to have a fearsome roar to scare off everything in a 2 mile radius? Will I be 9 feet tall when provoked, with muscles that bulge fearsomely through the cotton of my feminine sweater?"
"Right, not exactly... what's going to happen is, whenever you're scared - or tired, grumpy, angry, hungry, surprised, disappointed, in love, happy, excited, frustrated - your eyes are going to fill up with water!"
"Oh... cool, can I shoot the water out of eyes and dissolve whatever is annoying me?"
"No, what it's going to do is leak down your face and make everything a bit puffy. You won't be able to speak while this is happening - by all means try but it'll come out like a series of honks. Is that OK?"
"Well, I don't really feel in a position to argue... so is this fight or flight then? Can I run away while this is happening?"
"No, you're going to want to put your head on someone's lap when this happens. It's not really fight or flight - it's more, sort of, try and induce sympathy using dampness."
So, all in all I'm not very impressed with myself today. It helps a bit that Edinburgh is soaked through today so everyone looks like they've been voluntarily waterboarded by a member of Footlights - I don't stand out very much. I'm solving my issue by going for breakfast with Yoda.
Yoda is my comedy chum who is much more successful and funny than I am and so he is very pleasant about patting me on the head a lot and telling me it'll all be fine. For all I know he's just a total sadist who's just enjoying watching the comedy career swallow another naive young soul... but I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on the basis that he is a master of punning. Who can stay mad at someone with a one-liner about cheese greeting habits?
I hope today's lesson involves something about how to market the ability to spontaneously dissolve into orifice leaking in any given situation.
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