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.