Well, now that the play is over I may be able to start thinking of something other than drama! What a week it's been, however. Last night was amazingly good, with a full capacity audience. I was on car park duties last night, which was a very cold job as the temperature plummeted to minus 2 (which felt like minus 10 for me!) but it was nice to see our regular patrons turn up - it feels like greeting family members sometimes, as they feel as though they know you so well even if you don't recognise their faces at all. After that, I helped out with the refreshment/front of house duties for the rest of the night, so didn't get to sit with the audience, but luckily we do have a monitor in the foyer so that we can at least see the play on that. It was such a good audience, too. Very responsive to the unfolding tale right from the start. That always gives the cast a boost and in turn they give a better performance, I think.
It was the night for a lot of the cast's family, too - my parents, my younger brother and my sister were there, as were my aunt and uncle, so even though I wasn't performing, I was still nervous as I wanted it to go well. Dave and Carol's family were also in last night, as were Adam's parents and sister. All reports so far are very favourable, I'm pleased to say! We will be having a week away from the adult rehearsals now and only meeting up with the Junior and Youth sections next week. I was quite emotional at the end of the night - even more so when I was presented with a Thank You card and a bottle of red wine (how did they guess???) from the cast and crew! That was such a lovely surprise, since we tend not to go in for gifts at BADS unless it's a director's first time, so I felt exceptionally appreciated. We all went out for a curry afterwards and I tried a chicken Methi for the first time, which I thoroughly enjoyed.
Having a late meal meant we didn't get to bed till gone 2am, so I slept in till about 9 this morning, then was soon out of the house to take my two entries into Hull for the Ferens Art Gallery's Open Exhibition. I managed to get parked on a meter not far from the gallery and just had a few minutes free to have a quick look around the gallery after I'd unpacked and left my entries there. I don't very often go into the centre of Hull these days, despite the fact that the Art Gallery hosts some fantastic pieces of art and various exhibitions - I sometimes get claustrophobic in anywhere vaguely museum-like and have to rush out of the building immediately so it's not something I regularly do.
However, I was so pleased to have seen one painting in particular, by an artist called Victor Newsome. I've tried to find the image online, but there's not much of his work out there. The painting was done in acrylic but what amazed me when I looked at it was the fine details of the shading. In order to create each shaded area of the painting, he'd painted tiny cross-hatches - really effective and a method I will certainly employ in one of my future paintings. The painting was of a nude submerged in a bath, although you could only see her head and chest. Her head appeared out of proportion due to the fact that it was positioned further forward from her shoulders and her hair was made up of hundreds of narrow lines of colour.
I wish I could show you the image of the painting - but if you are in the area please try and get to the Ferens and have a look yourself, it's worth it. He started his artistic career as a sculptor and studied at the Leeds School of Art. You can see some of his works online if you google his name, but not the one I saw today!
Oh, and the two paintings I entered into the Open Exhibition (which starts on Saturday 12th February and finishes on Sunday 3rd March) are "3 Wide Men And An Interloper" and "Red Rocks" - the same two paintings I had in the East Yorkshire Open Exhibition at Sewerby Hall last summer.
