Finding Heaven on Earth
Sometimes in any good relationship you have to learn to speak with one voice. Not to add to or embellish what your partner has said, not to undermine it with additional comments, but to just let their words speak for themselves. It’s part of working as a team.
That’s exactly what I’ve decided to do this week in telling you about our recent holiday in Iceland. Richard has written about it so well on his blog that I’m simply going to post a link to it here. It sums up the week brilliantly, and he’s also added some fantastic photographs of the many he took while we were over there.Click on this link and then come back.
In times like these when all of us freelancers are finding work that little bit harder to come by, and money that little bit tighter to manage, it’s important to have things to aspire to. Ambitions, aims, desires and dreams. One of the things I’m always aiming for is the next holiday. The minute we get back from one vacation, and we tend to take about three or four a year, I can become increasingly anxious until we have the next one booked into the diary. I can relax on this occasion as we already have our summer vacation booked in Turkey. This desire to know when the next holidays coming up can also be transferred in wider terms to life.
I know that in the past few years, when things have been more comfortable and work has been easy to come by, I have become less ambitious and more unadventurous. As long as there have been a couple of jobs in the diary for the each week I’ve not really bothered to question myself as to whether they were jobs I wanted to do and what reward they would give me, other than financial. Yet the last reason I became an actor was to make money. I became an actor because acting and many of the associate activities that go with it, fulfil my soul. It’s in this department that I’ve been lazy.
At the moment I’m desperately searching for some theatre work to do at some point soon this year. I know it will not be rewarding financially and that probably in order to do it I will have to make sacrifices. That’s the nature of doing theatre in this country. It doesn’t matter whether I’m lucky enough to go off to one of the great provincial repertory theatres, or whether I do something on the London Fringe–the money I earn from either venture will not be enough to meet all my outgoings during the time of the job. Yet this has to take second place because appearing on stage every night of the week for a run of three or four weeks will satisfy my soul.
On Friday night I surprised Rich with a little party for his birthday in a restaurant in Soho. With the help of his team from work we managed to get them all there waiting for us when we arrived at the restaurant. They are a lovely bunch of people, but what was most evident was the camaraderie they all have from working together. As a freelancer this is something that we often sacrifice. I know how joyous it is to be in the dressing room or a green room with a group of actors whom one respects lights and with whom one is sharing a stage every evening. There is nothing like it. It is heaven.
So that’s my aim. To do some theatre, something that will satisfy me, as soon as possible. The very fact that I’ve now got this ambition now does seem to have shone a light into what were becoming darker corners of my life, and I think it’s important that moving forward in times that will for the foreseeable future be just that little bit harder, it is dreams, ambitions and desires that will light the way.
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