Day thirty-nine – Enough already

Well, as you know, under the title of Filling the Void, I have been chronicling my involvement with the island community theatre group. I thought it would take a couple of days. Yesterday I was at Part 6 and not even halfway through the productions in which I’ve been involved.

Enough already. I have things to do.

Here are the rest of the shows.

The cast of That’s Nice, my one-act play

The cast of A Midsummer Night’s Dream

The cast of Robin Hood and his Merry Men, the second panto I directed (also written by Robin Bailes).

The cast of What Glorious Times They Had, which I started directing almost as soon as the panto was over.

Appearing in A Visit From Miss Prothero with my mate Charlie at the one-act play festival 2016. (There’s a good backstory to this, but I suspect I’ve already told it elsewhere.

A scene from the staged reading of Twelfth Night in July 2016.

The cast of The Laramie Project, September 2016.

Completing the great Bailes/Holmes panto trilogy: the cast of The Return of Robin Hood, November 2016

Charlie and I appearing in An Unhelpful Complication, the one-act play I wrote for the two of us, March 2017.

The cast of As You Like It, July 2017. (Laurence Lee, second from left, had never acted before. He was also the winner of the Shakespeare knock, knock joke competition in 2014, although I didn’t know him then.)

A scene from May the Farce Be with You, panto 2017.

My favourite moment from the pantos I directed.

Paul, as Will Scarlett, doing his Brian May impersonation in Robin Hood. In fact, I loved it so much I made sure he got to do it again in The Return of Robin Hood. (Nobody expected the Spanish Inquisition.)

So, what was the point of all this “filling the void” reminiscence? It was to illustrate the fact that since my first panto appearance in 2011, my involvement with the theatre group has meant that I’ve always known what was next. One production, whether I was acting or directing, rolled into another.

For the first time in six years I have no bloody idea what’s next. Ergo the sense of urgency bubbling up around the notion of trying to get myself writing again. Gulp.

For the record, Murky Waters won by one vote.