Tuesday, January 31, 2012

The Underground Clown Club

Evening all.

I'm back at uni, and by golly have things been moving fast!

I'll start at the very beginning.

In late 2010, myself and a friend of mine, Andy, went to see a play called Lorca Is Dead, by the rather excellent Belt Up Theatre. It was inspiring.

In early 2011, we went to see another play by Belt Up, The Boy James. This time, we started writing.

By the summer of 2011 we had a (near enough) finished play, The Ball or How to Dance. We also had a name for ourselves.

The Underground Clown Club

The name came from a doodle I did in a seminar, just after we'd started uni. However, it was also pretty apt, in that we kept the company, and the play, pretty secret until September 2011. Because by then we'd decided to put the play on.

Thanks to various wonderful people, we went away for Christmas quietly confident that, after several false starts, we would have a space to perform in in early 2012. By the time we returned to uni we still hadn't heard anything. Then on the Friday of the first week back, we had a meeting with the technical manager of the Drama department.

We walked in, and he asked us what dates we'd like.

We were expecting to have to fight our case, to prove that we would be able to pull off the performance, so when we didn't have to that threw us a little.

We walked out of that meeting, and straight to the pub.

It was as we sat, sipping cups of tea with quaking hands, that it hit us. We were doing a show in 4 weeks time. Beyond the script we had nothing prepared.

What followed was possibly the most productive weekend of my life. By Monday morning we had a cast and crew, but it couldn't stop there. We plunged into rehearsals, found music, props and set and started on publicity work.

Now the performance is a week away! Like I said, things have been moving fast.

For now though, we'll have to keep our heads down rehearse as though our lives depended on it.

See you on the other side!

For more information on The Underground Clown Club and The Ball or How to Dance, please visit our blog or Facebook page!