Gareth Fordred is a founding member of the faction theatre co. In the 2012 Rep Season he is playing Malvolio in Twelfth Night, Leicester in Mary Stuart and a reveller in Miss Julie.

Uncovering The Faction #8: Code Red

‘‘blood up the walls vomit on the ceiling’

I’ll admit it – I threw a bit of a paddy today.

I was asked – by my director, how dare that power-mad tyrant? - to make a live, raucous party soundtrack, full-voiced, muffled into my elbow joint, for the eleventh time in three hours.

Of course, I’m such an insular Brit-upbringing-repressed being that throwing a ‘paddy’ is:

PADDY = lightly tutting to oneself whilst raising ones eyebrows skywards

Internal Monologue: “This is not a sonnet. This is not a soliloquy. This is not my… (cue quavering bottom lip and full-throated vibrato indignation) …LEAR!!!”

No, but this is the third rehearsal process for the third show of our three-part rep season. Oh ________ . hell and __________ . blimey. It’s only a few days until we open.

You’d think from an objective view point that having had great reviews for the first two shows, we would be safely expecting the delivery of our final Faction-baby, expertly spat out into the world with relative confidence.

No – it’s code-red status panic stations, with blood up the walls, vomit on the ceiling and sweat streaming from very orifice.*

Slight digression – I did consider writing this on my tube journey home with good ole’ graphite and papyrus, but decided against it. Conventional tube-lore wisdom would suggest against using laptops after about 8pm on trains due to the amount of potential liquid hazards (lager, coke, vomit, breast milk** , wine)—

—Digression from the digression – have just remembered something - when walking home a tad squiffy from the Northumberland Arms the other day. After a two-show day of Mary Stuart and Twelfth Night, walking through Regent’s Park station, turning a corner and being confronted with a young woman crouching in a tube station, weeing a huge puddle of urine. Her rather drunk and amused/embarrassed friend was helplessly laughing nearby. The young lady in question was simultaneously rather mortified/amused (as you would be?!) and was stammering inebriated apologies. I manfully stepped around said puddle and mumbled something British and nondescript, then scurried away, horrified and hillarified*** myself—

Back to slight digression – but decided against using pencil and paper and pulled out my trusty laptop – liquids and drunk people be damned! Although, the major deciding factor was because my wrist would probably have hurt after writing this much. Does this mean that we will someday lose these wrist writing muscles? Does this matter? Does this only matter to the kind of people this matters to? Do GCSE students nowadays**** use laptops for essay-writing in exams?

SO! Back to The Faction and the plays.

Once again – totally unsure what to give away and what not.

Miss Julie – is a world of sensuality and sensuousness, set on midsummer’s eve when the head of the household is away and rules can be…bent, I suppose. For a time. Only for a time. And their bending is only illusory.

Slight w _ .nky diversion – it is as ever a pleasure to watch your fellow ensemble members yet again pull another skin on and show you another human inside them. We are all a heartbeat away from being a very different being.

Please come and see it and have a drink after with us.

*(its actually not at all like this, but we are in blog-world, after all)

**no idea why I said breast milk, and no idea why it survived the edit. Many mammary apologies.

***not a word – probably meaning: ‘to feel hilarity’

****proper ‘old speak’, but I said ‘proper’ in an estuary way, which is cool - but ungrammatical.

-GF

The Faction’s Rep Season opens @ The New Diorama Theatre, NW1 3BF