Have you all had a happy Easter?

That was just a rhetorical question really, as I know that most of you must have had an awesome time in the Philippines (Katie), the Dominican Republic (Stacey & David), the Faeroe Islands (John), France (a group of people) Switzerland (Glyn) and Lowestoft (Ok, not as glamorous but still, Andy &V).

A few weeks back, when I first realised that so many people were travelling, I thought this Easter was going to be quite boring. Not in the spiritual, Christian sense of it of course, but just, you know… But I was wrong.

A few months back, just after Christmas, Tracy and I were asked to organize a play for Easter. We thought that surely it couldn’t be that difficult, after all when we did the Christmas Play there was so much material that we were spoilt for choice and that we should easily find something that we could do for Easter. We were a bit wrong. There are a lot of scripts around but nothing (and I mean NOTHING) seemed to be doable for us – we looked at so many different ideas (thanks by the way to everybody who kept telling us where/how/trough whom we could find more scripts or ideas) but I think we really weren’t easy to please with this.

During all this searching I too had to give in to the flue in January. And while I was at home I made the most of the excellent day time TV shows that make me proud to pay for my TV licence. I now know more about DNA Tests and why one would need to have one done than is good for me. And in all that the idea of a play was born. I will post the play in my other blog (www.anna-scribbles.blogspot.com, I'll find the fancy way of adding hyperlinks one day)– it might be the only thing to ever be posted on there but that’s OK.

So Tracy and I spend hours sitting in her car at the seafront working out how to turn this idea into something that made sense – Tomas the Disciple went from believer to Doubter to Traitor, Defender and finally back to Doubter. Poor bloke.

After hours of writing, rewriting, rephrasing and deleting we felt we had sort of stitched something together. I would just like to say that we have taken ideas from other people and the Professor was completely based on books that have actually been written by clever people who did their research, the idea to have a gardener was “stolen” from the “Glyn writes” blog.

There were several occasions were we felt that it wasn’t going to happen – when people we asked to be part all said no. But slowly it started coming together and there was a point when suddenly it wasn’t “Tracy and Anna are so excited about this and we don’t want to be the killjoy to tell them it’s rubbish” to “we are all together in this one”. It was great – great to see people coming to practise saying: I wasn’t comfortable with my lines, I thought we could change it… what if wore… how about having the chairs… and if I came in trough that door… and the lights could then… maybe if you spoke quietly…
It was so cool to see this turn into a group thing with everybody supporting everyone. It was as if everybody brought in their own knowledge about different things, like Darren giving tips on the acting, John correcting some Biblical facts that weren’t accurate, and Phill, spending hours to create our very own, very big tissue box – to make sure people could see what the Tissue Lady was doing.

And you know what amazes me most? That at the point where I felt that everybody that was involved with the play one way or another was getting excited about it I lost faith in it. Completely. All of a sudden I thought: This is never going to work. We need a big name in it because I can’t do my part so I started asking people if they could do my part, people who are known to be good with this sort of thing. I felt we needed someone to come along to our practices to try and safe what there was to safe, to tell us what to do because at the rate we were going… and anyway.. and it was only us, how did I EVER think it could work? (Un) fortunately none of the people asked could make it. And now looking back I am quite annoyed with myself because everything we needed was right there: People who weren’t involved but who still kept asking how it was going and supporting us this way. People who offered to sew all the costumes, people who gave their time and talents and worked really hard.

The day before the play I was absolutely useless because of my nerves and it was lovely to go to the cinema and just think of something else because at that time nothing could be changed anymore anyway. I was only slightly concerned about Paul – he seemed to enjoy a movie with Zac Effron in it (although he told me if I ever said that to anyone he would deny it – but we know the truth, don’t we.)

So when we finally played it out and everybody was perfect with words, cues and actions that all felt great. The congregation/audience joined in right from the beginning. It was pretty cool to walk in and have everybody clapping before I said the first word. It was awesome to see some of the shyer people really raise above their inhibitions, those who were struggling with lines to be word perfect and all our desperate last minute changes were in place as if had had millions of rehearsals. People even came from Dartford to see it 

But that didn’t make it the best Easter ever. The best Easter ever was when my Dad said to me: I’m really proud of what you did here. But I would have been really proud anyway.