So the final day of the festival arrives. A nice relaxed session to start the day followed by a final rehearsal before tonight. We made some changes based on what the adjudicator had been saying all week, and then ran it. All seemed pretty good, but it turned out that some people felt I was not really playing my part as well as I could. I took lots of suggestions, in particular from Mrs Plug, and tried to consider them. I have to say most of them were extremely constructive. It is so important to be able to take criticism, and it is something that I am trying to get all of the kids to take on board, and act upon. When you pour yourself into something as emotional as acting, it can sometimes be difficult to take, but it is an important skill. I have worked with lots of actors who block any kind of suggestion of change, and it can be quite the most frustrating of experiences. I hope my own strong opinions are not confused as being like this. We spent a good hour talking and disagreeing over things in the afternoon, and I resolved to change one or two bits for the performance, without them affecting anyone else. Then the time was marching on, so I got ready and off we went. Within what seemed like half an hour, we had set, and were ready to go. Sometimes when a production starts, you get a feeling that everything is good, and that happened tonight. We nailed it and I was even delighted with my own performance. It flew by and then we sat and listened to a very thorough and what seemed like positive adjudication. In particular, she seemed to like my performance, and said some lovely things. At the prize giving, we won three awards for the youngsters, and I won best actor! We also won best production and we are in the Semi Finals. All was all very surreal, and very lovely and I went to bed a rather happy, and slightly drunk person
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