Shout, shout, let it all out...

Emailed over the latest and almost final draft of the play to the theatre. There's never a satisfactory sense of closure with email, as the minute you press send there's the distinct possibility that, within seconds, it will get snared up in an organisation's over-zealous spam software - and with a surname like mine that happens more often than not. So I arranged to hand deliver a hard copy, like wot I imagine was the norm but a few years ago before everything started to travel down telephone lines. Passing the brown envelope containing the necessary 110 pages of A4 over to the director, the handing over of a baton if you like, was a delightful moment of relief and release. And I know it's in safe hands. Rehearsals start on Wednesday. Although I've offloaded the paperwork, I'm now getting angsty about the start of that process and, as the days click down to January 24th and the play's first appearance in front of an audience, I'll get increasingly nervous, wondering how the paying customers will react. Only then will we know if it's any good. Funny old game I've got myself into - the only time I'm truly happy is when I'm belting out the first draft, when the magical moment of stuff appearing on the page seemingly out of the ether with my fingers just being a glass on a Ouija Board-style conduit happens. The rest, my, it's bloody hard, brain-boggling, madness-inducing work. Still, it's not like a big long shift down a mine shaft so I shouldn't complain. And it's a dream come true, so I shouldn't complain. And there's a part of me that loves the pain too, so I shouldn't complain. So I won't.

The Hull Daily Mail have been very kind to me and included On A Shout rather prominently in their "What We Rate For 2008" entertainment feature, which is blinking lovely and I'm very flattered. I don't take press coverage for granted - I mean, for starters, who the fuck am I? And I didn't exactly leave the paper clutching a folio of glowing references. So it was nice to find the play leaping off the page at me. Nerve wracking too - I read "expectation is high for the Hull playwright's latest work" and emitted a "shit!" then promptly nabbed the clipping from M's mum's newspaper for filing away.