The Bard

After a few set backs (work), I landed the role of Camillo in Shakespeare's 'The Winter's Tale' for our first production of 2011 at the Florians Theatre in Inverness. I am surprised at how the language of the script, strange at first, now seems so normal! I can almost imagine speaking that way back in the day, when time was all you had and conversations were an art form, not an exercise in brevity as they can be nowadays. Forget the disregard for grammatical form by many urban inhabitants of the current generation and don't even get me started on text 'speak', the most appallingly lazy and impolite way of conversing since the first grunt.

The Plays

June 19th. The first play - The Great Cattle Raid, went down well. My friend Bill and his wife Bev were over from Australia and came to see the performance. Apart from missing one of the stage cues, which nobody else seemed to notice, I was surprised that I suffered from nerves not one jot. My first ever role - King Fergus of Ulster, with an Oirish accent and all! Later in the play I was Eoghan, a crow, a charioteer, a pig, a maggot, a ghost, a wolf and part of a great white bull. Being an ensemble, we all had multiple roles and of course never left the stage.
The confidence and thrill I had from that first play prompted me to attend a reading at the Florians theatre later in the month for their next play - Dad's Army. I was invited back to audition the following week and went for the role of the Colonel, which I got. What an experience! Not only did I get to work with some very talented people, but the costumes and set designs added so much to the performance. We played for five nights in September and had great reviews in the local press. I even sent a copy of the video home to Mum and Dad,who both enjoyed it. Now, acting is all I want to do!