In July, when I was asked to confect ‘another Christmas entertainment’ for my community, I viewed such a distant elephant with equanimity. Like memories of the pain of childbirth, the nightmares of amateur dramatics soon fade. Besides, I’d done this many times and survived to tell the tale. All I needed was to reassemble last year’s cast and then write something for them to perform. A piece of cake.
By October I was seeing things differently. The steepness of the gradient we had to climb was becoming all too clear.
Amateur dramatics are held together by string and paperclips. There are no understudies
Very few of this year’s cast are seasoned performers. Indeed, several members of last year’s company declined to take part, some with cast iron reasons, others who found they’d be washing their hair on all relevant dates. Can it have been such a horrible experience? Should we be offering post-production counselling?
On the other hand, I had a positive glut of backstage volunteers.
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