Which is more or less the truth. I had intended to rehearse Juliet and the Nurse today, but Juliet was sick, so that was that. With no Juliet and Romeo still away for a few days more. There is very little I can do.
It remains the case that nothing else is being asked of me by SPA at the moment, and since there is very little to do in Dhangadhi, I had very little to occupy my time. So I spent the majority of the day in my room, reading and writing. When Aparna arrived at college, I did venture out to meet with her, to have a brief discussion about other elements of the production – the set, technical issues, etc. But actually this only served to deepen my gloom, as it seems we are very strapped for cash. And even the one asect that I thought had finally been fixed, the dates of the production, are not so, with the danger that they might clash with exams for the undergrad students – not many of them, but pretty vital, all the same. Apparently, these dates have just been released, and she will report back when she knows them. But I have decided I just have to focus on those things I can control – the acting (which as I said yesterday I am very pleased about), and leave other matters, such as budget, production issues, publicity, tickets, etc, to others. When I am working with the students, I am enjoying it enormously, but when I allow myself to get dragged down by organisational matters, well… Witness my mood swing between yesterday and today. I ought to have learned my lesson from my experience at Edinburgh all those years ago, when I made myself ill.
Aparna and I went on for dinner at Bell’s Café, where we were joined by the MD of another Dhangadhi school (which she also does some work for – busy woman). I am to visit there tomorrow to talk to the students, which will at least fill my day a little more.
