Thoughts from a Teenage Bedroom

So I can think of very little else at the moment but Spring Awakening. I love it. How did I not discover this properly before? It’s just so good! The music is absolutely incredible, the story and the characters are astoundingly moving, and it’s an all round Tremendous Spectacle (a phrase I really want to use more in conversation). And tonight I got to thinking why.

It’s set in 1890s Germany, but it’s so accessible because it’s just an extreme truth – one that is still true for us today. And why are we going to love doing this? Because we relate to it. We are the right age to understand exactly what we’re singing, and we’ve felt the emotions we’ll be trying to play. Don’t get me wrong, it’s gonna be difficult. This is extremes of the emotions in extreme situations. But I think we’ll do it because we can draw on our own experiences, however tame they are in comparison.

It’s January – it’s exam time. And coursework time. And last minute uni or drama school application panic time. And trying so hard to work out what we want to do and who we want to be and getting enough work experience and also keeping our personal hobbies going whilst trying to juggle A Levels and a social life, and trying to do all this despite my mother shouting at me because I’ve left debris from this hurricane all over the house, which seems completely trivial in light of the actual hurricane. I’m not in a relationship at the moment, but that’s another thing that brings great paintballs of emotion and hormones to our lives.

There are days when we just feel trapped and snowed under. We have far too much to do and not enough time to do it and we clearly should have started earlier. There are days when we love life and believe that it will be alright and we decide that we don’t care.

And I think that’s exactly what Spring Awakening is about. And that’s why it’s so clever. The modern music is so easy to get into and explode these emotions through, so that even when our characters are dealing with things we’ve never been through, actually we have got an emotional base to draw from. I’ve always thought this sort of thing works best for the Youth Company – that’s what made Private Peaceful mean so much to me: we were all the same age as these boys who were going off to fight in the war, despite what you often see in films about it. And when you think about it that way you realise that they were all people as rich in personality and experience as every one of us were. They stop being just names on a memorial.

That’s one thing that this Company has brought me. I’ve made friends with such a variety of people unlike I have ever been exposed to anywhere else. And actually, we all have quite a lot in common – our love of acting being an obvious example. And the more I’ve got to know them, the more I’ve realised that everyone has a story. Absolutely everyone has something. And so does everyone you pass on the street. And everyone you see in the back of a news report on telly. And everyone who exists. And has ever existed. And that is mind-boggling.

So I’m looking forward to exploring the richness of Spring Awakening as much as I can – I don’t care what you say about concentrating on my A Levels. This is important to. And what’s more, it’s FUN!

We haven't even had our first rehearsal yet, but I already want to share this with you too. Book your tickets!

New Year's Eve

I woke up at about 11:30 – so far the most indisputable proof that my body clock no longer recognises mornings. Going back to sixth form will be fun. I had a sort of brunch containing mostly chocolate that my family received in various Christmas exchanges and then decided to ditch the revision and other work on my ‘to do’ list and make cupcakes instead. Gingerbread ones. Oh Yes.

I enjoy baking, and since my mum gave me a book of about 8 million cake recipies for my birthday last year I have an endless supply of new things to try. The thing is, though, that it always seems to take all day (especially when you wake up just before noon). There’s so much mixing and dividing and combining and whisking, but mostly there’s a lot of waiting. Waiting for them to cook, waiting years for them to cool so you can mix up the icing and then wait for it to dry. And you can’t really do much in this waiting time because you have to pop back every few minutes to check on them. This is largely how I’ve honed my procrastination skills.

Anyway, eventually they were done and I got them and my other stuff together to go round to a friend’s for a girly New Year’s night in. This is the makings of a tradition as, though we didn’t actually meet for New Year, around this time last year the same small group of us got together and had a similar gathering. This time we invented cocktails, sung loudly and played a truth game involving such questions as ‘What was your personal highlight of 2011?’, ‘What would you do if you met Keith Lemon down a dark alley?’ and ‘Which member of YTC is most like a cheesecake?’.

At some point we also left some extremely wonderful voicemail messages for people who did not pick up their phones, including ‘If you’re hairy and you know it, clap your hands’ etc. and a round of What’s The Name of the ****ing Game; and with the one person who did pick up, we had a brilliantly confusing conversation beginning in gangsta speekz innit.

It was almost midnight at this point, so we whacked on the telly, took ‘before and after’ pictures, let off streamers, and sung ‘Auld Lang Syne’ without knowing any of the words. You know, traditional New Year stuff. The mood calmed down a bit, and we played Never Have I Ever, which was extremely tame with this particular group of us, and then decided to watch the Lion King at about two in the morning, as you do. We didn’t quite make it to the end though, we just collapsed into bed after trying to cast our friends in it.

We woke up the next morning feeling surprisingly well, and had a delicious picnic breakfast of crumpets, tea, and orange juice, lazed around for a bit, said goodbye to each other, and eventually went home (or to work, but that’s not my story). When I got home the rest of my family had decided to go for a walk around the broads and then to the cinema, and I joined them. I sort of had to, but I wanted to as well.

It was surprisingly busy around that lake (I know technically it’s not a lake, but I’m gonna call it a lake because it sounds better than ‘around that broad’) with everyone apparently like us taking a New Year’s walk to make themselves feel better for having eaten so much over Christmas. There was one part of the path that was closed due to flooding, so we had to walk uphill to a slightly higher path for a bit. At first this was a bit annoying as it took us further away from the beautiful lake we came to walk around, but then I realised that it was just as beautiful next to the canal-ey-type-thing it took us next to. The view of the trees and the few houses and the church in the distance was a lot clearer from there too.

Eventually we got back to the beginning again and fed the menagerie of ducks, swans, and geese with the bread mum had brought. I’m not sure how I feel about the idea of feeding the ducks, because these birds, the swans in particular, were clearly used to it and were getting greedy, but it’s the sort of thing that’s fun no matter how old you are. We then went to the cinema and all sat in a fairly empty theatre to watch ‘Puss in Boots’, because it was something we could all watch. The four of us all going to the cinema together is something that doesn’t often happen, but it was nice.

On the way home I realised that I’d spent the beginning of 2012 exactly the way I wanted to spend the rest of it: with my friends and my family doing things that make me laugh and feel better, remembering the good times and the bad times we’ve had together, and looking forward to what’s ahead of us. I realised that even though we might not quite be able to go the way we think we want to, a diversion along the way might lead us to higher ground which is, in its own way, perhaps more beautiful.

Disillusioned

I realise that so far this blog has been neglected. I want to do more thoughts from places style videos, but at the moment the lack of a camera is being a pain. And I should be working, I guess. So for now, there's this:
 

So, it’s the end of the year again. And I think it’s been a good one. As always, it’s had its fair share of ups and downs, but in the end I find myself once again sitting in the car on the way back from Lancashire after a Christmas family gathering and looking forward to a New Year’s gathering with the YTC girls. So not that much has changed, then.

The difference for me about this Christmas is that it just didn’t feel as magical. It’s been nice, sure, really nice to have an excuse to see everyone and eat far too much and forget that I REALLY ought to be revising for my exams or something. And I don’t think it’s just me either – I think we’re at a bit of an odd stage when we’re not kids anymore, but we haven’t left home yet so it isn’t an event just to see your family.

We’re also all pretty skint most of the time, even those of us who have jobs, so Christmas shopping has been interesting, on top of the general ‘Christmas-really-snuck-up-on-me-this-year’ type timekeeping. There are lots of people in my life at the moment who I feel so close to, and this last year has only strengthened that, and I want to give them something nice. But even though homemade presents are nicer than bought ones anyway, there seems to have been no time for them at all. We’ve all been stressing about UCAS and exams and auditions and coursework and seeing our friends who are back for the holidays. 

And really, that’s my feeling about life generally at the moment. Just not quite as magical as it should be. The things we do now matter, and that’s a lot of pressure when we’ve barely scraped together a vague idea of what we actually want to do. As I say, I’m so close to a lot of people, so much so that they feel like my family. At the moment, I can’t imagine not seeing them or at least keeping in touch – more than a week seems ridiculous at the moment – but, in a rather pessimistic way, I kind of think it will probably change. There might be people that fall off the radar, just because of the distance between us, or the time. I really don’t want that to happen. It’d be like losing a limb.

I guess I’m a bit disillusioned with ‘the point of it all’ really. We are at a pivotal changing point in our lives. I turn 18 next year for a start. It’s got to the point where you can count how much of things you have left. I don’t like that. This time next year things will have changed. I just hope I’m ok with that.

Return to the Deep

This video comes to you an entire week after it was filmed, since my camera decided to record in a strange format and it took me a while to work out how to make everything work properly. I decided to do a vlogbrothers-style thoughts-from-places-esque vlog, since even holding up the camera in public felt embarassing. I also discovered during the making of this that my voice features much more of my father's New Zealand-ness than I thought...

But here it is: thoughts on my post-exams return to sixth form.

Lady of the Flies

I woke up at 7 o’clock, which seemed painfully early to me since, it being half term, I hadn’t woken up before 9 in a while. When I was looking vaguely passable as alive, I jumped in the car and picked up two friends – both confusingly named Beth – who my mum had thankfully offered to drive, along with me, to the train station.

That train station brought back memories for me of extremely early mornings when we used to go and drop off my dad when he worked away in York, although now there are barriers preventing you from waving through the windows of trains and watching them pull out of the platform.

This particular morning though, it was considerably later (although still too early for my liking) and so the station was filled with commuters and school groups going to Cornwall on Art Trips. The Beths and I got on the 9:30 train, it being inexplicably half of the ridiculous price of the previous one and began our chug to London. On the way we ate delicious cookies for breakfast and drank healthy water; we managed to have both hysteria at our mouthing to songs from RENT and deep conversations about Universities and Drama Schools and the stupendous amount of money needed to go to them.

We eventually arrived at Liverpool Street Station, though we wouldn’t know what a surprisingly beautiful day it was until about an hour later when we emerged from Regent’s Park. This might have been just as well though, as we would never have otherwise seen the extremely famous you-know-that-guy-Ron-turns-into-at-the-ministry-in-the-seventh-film person in the lift. We were tremendously excited by this, and I was doubly excited by my new ability to tweet about it from my spangly new phone.

We decided to chill out in the park for a couple of hours and walked past the very posh houses on North Park Corner into a truly beautiful patch of green in the middle of the capital. It is huge, and manages to contain a rose garden, a river-slash-lakey-thing complete with ducks and a bridge, deckchairs, and a café which provided us with delicious but expensive chips. It also contains its Open Air Theatre, which was our eventual goal and our reason for travelling to London. Our very lovely and infuriatingly talented friend had landed himself a role in Lord of the Flies there. Of course, missing him a lot and being intensely proud, we had to go and see it.

It was a good production, I very much enjoyed it, although having not taken Liam’s advice to buy some sunscreen it was FAR TOO HOT and I have some very lovely tan lines to prove it. The set was incredible, and led us to much speculation on where on earth they got half a plane from... and all of those exploded bags.

After the show, we waited in the mercifully cool shade just outside the theatre to hug and squeal congratulations at the wonderful Sam, and we were promptly invited to join him and the cast for a meal at Pizza Express before their call for the evening performance. We stutteringly accepted. On the way a group of Japanese tourists spotted that this was the cast and grasped this photo opportunity with them. That was as strange for them as it was for me and the Beths, and we proudly stood back from our ‘famous’ companions, slipping into the plural when explaining to a couple of passers-by that our friends were in the cast.

As we caught up with Sam we were also surprised to learn how old the cast was, given that they were convincingly playing children ten years younger than they actually were. They were all very nice people, and I felt extremely sophisticated sipping my pink lemonade while we chatted and ate. By far their best quality was financial, in that half of them were with Orange so it being Wednesday we split the cost of the 2 for 1 pizzas and came off surprisingly well (which was just as well, since also in our purses were small orange-edged pieces of card worth 50 quid each).

As is always the case, time flew by and we soon had to leave: them for the theatre, us for the tube station, so we congratulated Sam again and watched him walk away with his fellow actors. We weren’t quite finished with them though, as when we walked into the station we were confronted with a very large picture of the very same boys. That was one of those surreal moments for me that I’ve since replayed over and over in my head, all the while with a smile on my face. It reminded me how fast things can change: one moment you can be laughing with someone at your local theatre, the next watching them on a West End stage; you can be walking through a crowd of businessmen on an industrial underground platform, and emerge into the plush greens of a lackadaisical park; you can laugh and sing like typical teenagers, and moments later have deep conversations about the future.

I was proud to stand next to my Sam when we took our bows a mere two months ago, and I am proud to see him go so far. From all of us, good luck with the rest of the run. We hope one day to see your name in lights.