Laurie Graham

Well, we did it. Four shows, to warm and appreciative audiences, and we raised around 3500 Euro. In Andhra Pradesh where it will end up, that kind of money can really achieve something. And so, in spite of our several setbacks and my periodic beefs about the work entailed, it has turned out to be a very happy and satisfying…

  Friday morning and our show is a sell-out. The hottest ticket in town. We opened yesterday to an audience of sixty children and forty adults and they loved it. I know because they didn’t fidget or talk or start a ball game in the aisles. And on stage, hardly a glitch. Except for the moment…

Today’s lessons. 1.A false moustache is a very bad idea when you’re going down with a cold. 2. When you confiscate people’s scripts and replace them with the tough love of a dress rehearsal they step right up and do wonderful and surprising things. I actually already knew this but had forgotten.  Tomorrow is a two-show day.…

Today’s curve ball: unannounced acqua alta. Both routes to the theatre were flooded at 8.45 this morning, too slightly, apparently, to warrant sounding the siren, but badly enough to ruin a person’s Guccis and delay the start of rehearsals while people wrung out their socks. We ran the Pumpkin to Carriage transformation scene four times and it…

Set my alarm for 6am but I needn’t have bothered. I was woken by an SMS buzzing into my cell phone at 5.45. My producer was already up and finding things to worry about. A slow start, caused by the thick fog that wrapped itself around Venice before daybreak. Frank Transport, aka Frankie Fleeceham the Bailiff, had to…

A woman was asking me about our production of Cinderella which opens (and closes) next week. She was thinking of bringing her child along. She said, ‘So how are you going to turn the pumpkin into a carriage?’ I said, ‘Wait and see.’ She said, ‘No, but tell me. I really want to know.’ I said, ‘I’m using…

We got the news on Wednesday afternoon. Yes, we could still use the university’s auditorium for our show, but the price had quadrupled. This, for us, amounted to the venue being launched into outer space. It has taken us a year to raise enough money to meet the original price. Quadrupled? As well suggest we hire La Scala. The project…

Today the future of our pantomime hangs in the balance and with it more than a year of hard work. With only three weeks to go to Curtain Up a bureaucrat at Ca Foscari University, from whom we rent the auditorium, has decided that our application failed to comply with the regulations. No matter that this would be our…

I just spent the morning in Paradise. With less than a month to go till curtain up on Cinderella it was time to get our Lord Chamberlain kitted out in something suitably grandiose so off we trolled to a local costumier who has very generously helped us with previous productions. Atelier Pietro Longhi, http://www.pietrolonghi.com is my idea of…

I just worked out that this will be my thirty sixth Christmas as a proper grownup with my own kitchen and my own peccadilloes but only the second time someone else has cooked dinner. Two dinners, actually, because on December 20th my youngest daughter is heroically gathering together and feeding all those who will be scattered on…