Not one of these things

THIS POST COMPOSED LAST MONDAY.
I have the fear.

I have the furtive fear. It’s all happening; and the sense of dread as an opening night approaches is one of those especially discomforting sensations. The script has been learned and relearned, the performance is attaining polish, the words have become so familiar that I can use whole sections of the script in my own conversation.

Nothing to do now except sit and feel the fear grow. ‘If you build it they will come’ the voice told Kevin Costner but I don’t know about that, nine times out of ten,- cats just be lyin’ to themselves. The truth of puttin’ stuff on seems to be; ‘If you build it they might come- but then again they mightn’t’. I have a small feeling of: ‘If they don’t come that would be no bad thing’.

How can I say that after a million moments of typing into computers and printing and stapling and work and rehearsal time; says you.

It was only a small feeling.

Well folks if you act in something, and you’re any good, people are going to feel your heart. If you write the thing, even if you’re not any good, people are going to feel that they can into see your mind. That is, not only the way you think, but also the way that you want people to think you think; which is much more revealing. The plainest way to put, it is in terms of the classic embarrassment dream: i.e. you go to school and realise you’ve no clothes on and everybody’s laughing. Waiting for your own show to open is like knowing in advance that that public-naked-schoolday is actually gonna happen.
This overwhelming sense of dread increases and increases and then reaches it’s zenith usually at about the exact same time that you’re supposed to be promoting the damn thing.

People want to talk about, it people want to ask about it. Can you write a few lines for the press release? Can you write a few lines for the programme? You must talk of it with confidence and charm and verve and enthusiasm. You have no choice. It must be done for this is the very business we call ‘show’.

If you’re a real idiot you might even have started a blog to record your thoughts on the subject.