Thursday 19 May 2011

What is this fog that has dominated the early part of my week ? This feeling of unease and upset with one of my longest and dearest friends.


I posted the other day about how Monday's rehearsal had gone, and how I had become annoyed at how things were going, how disrupted they had become.

When was it that I became so self centred and immovable, so blinkered and bloody minded ? Perhaps I have always been those things, some of them, or all of them I'm not sure. I've always had strong opinions and been singleminded, but this breakdown in communication between Helen and I is really hurting. My instinctive reaction seems to have been to be annoyed at her, and to not want to talk to her.

It's fair to say that I'm not really seeing much enjoyment in the production process for the show at this point. The last two rehearsals pretty much felt like a waste of time and an abject failure. With the opening of she show looming ever larger on the horizon, I feel very keenly that no one in the cast as dropped their scripts yet, we have not yet finished blocking out any of the scenes - and although we will do this in the next week, I am uneasy. The show is very visual, and very complicated, (it's the rod we have most definitely made for our own backs) and it will only come together when people have stopped having to carry around their scripts in rehearsals and when we have everyone in every rehearsal. 

My feels have been such that with the chaos, and probably fair to describe as anger about Monday, I have shut myself away. I really needed to close off the show part of my life whilst not actively preparing for a rehearsal as I just need to limit its effect on the rest of my life. It sounds rather selfish, but I've come to learn over the years when I am overwhelmed by events, and when I am feeling that I need to take a step back. 

You might say that's great for me, but really great for my partner in the is enterprise, Helen. There is a point, when with no intended disregard for her feelings, I have to say 'stop !'. I do not need emails, texts and voicemails telling me to contact people as soon as I can, to discuss something that is not urgent. If the theatre isn't burning down, (and even if that happens, there's nothing I'm going to be able to do about it) there just isn't anything to do with the show that's urgent enough to warrant such a dramatic badgering. 

I try, but don't very well succeed to segment the different areas of my life. When I fail more to do that, I do feel compromised. Not from a secrecy point of view, but the situations that occur where I might have a disagreement with someone in one area of my life, but if I am close to them in another part of my life, that tension translates to another entire area, and gives me no peace or rest from it. 

I am getting alerted to this kneed jerk reaction to shut people out, to close off the communication, to not go to things. It could very easily lead to me becoming increasingly isolated and alone. These are not reactions I am used to observing in myself. The amateur psychologist within warns me further that this sounds very similar to the behaviour of someone descending (for want of a better word). If I 'back off' from involvement in creative activities (either with M27 or with Beacon) then what would I do with the rest of my time, and would that be something that made me feel better, or worse ? I think worse. 

Helen and I have had a rather long, deep and emotional conversation, where we exchanged how it was that we are feeling. I can't say I got my point across in the best way I possibly could, which in itself leaves me feeling rather hollow. There was no 'battle' to win, but it most definitely feels that both of us have lost out of this situation. Helen repeatedly commenting that she feels we may both have changed so much in the last 5 years that it would not be possible for us to work together in this way in the future. By which she means we could never write and direct a show together again. I would agree, that we cannot work together again in THIS way, because the chaos and lack of organisation, and the fact that so much time has been wasted (when I think about how much time was wasted in the actual writing of the show - we started writing it in August, or September last year for crying out loud !). I can't work like that anymore, and I don't know if it was that these complications didn't occur before, or if they did, but it didn't matter. 

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