Meet the family - Tuesday 8th May

We've been rehearsing for about a month now - those with speaking parts large and small...

Mine's small - I play Elizabeth, Mary's cousin and mother of John the Baptist in the Bible - and Mary's best mate/protector in this play. Today, we meet the others from the ensemble - that's what we used to call the crowd -  and we're all in it. I'm a Carpenter with a red tee shirt - bear with me - all will become clear.

There seem to be hundreds of us and we're only the Reds! There are 3 more teams like us - thank God the stage is going to be huge. Today's task is to sort out the stage after the flood. Noah's ark has to be removed and then we form into lines shuffling forward like refugees. Soldiers appear from nowhere and start barking orders.They're calling out for men and boys to be pulled from the line - there's a sudden horrific echo to me at least - of the massacres at Srebrenice and among the laughter of a large crowd of people trying to get themselves organised, I shiver.

Eventually, we mange to get to the right place with Damian marshalling us. That's him in the picture but that's obviously not me, even though she's wearing a red tee shirt cos she's a Potter and I'm a Carpenter. See? Told you it was easy. We're given a plan of the stage with its colour coded entrances and exits and squares labelled Blue 5 and Yellow 3 and the like. There are sub stage ramps and seating banks and it all makes perfect sense - to the directors at least. I need to study it.