LOLLIPIP
LOLLIPIP. Lots Of Lovely Little Interesting People In Plays.
It's been a part of my life for seven years. A huge part. It's strange that it hasn't been given a proper name until now, but it's a name that suits us exactly
We've been to the National Theatre together, performed on the Olivier Stage and we really fucking earned our place there. We spent the Summer in this whirlwind of intense rehearsals, dance practices, insane exercising with skipping ropes. We could spend days talking, just talking with each other. About silly things, jokes, funny stories. But about serious things too, politics, religion, sexuality and about respect for everyone. This was where so many of my secrets, of my worries came out. To people I trusted. Because you knew you could. It seems cliche but trust really is everything in the theatre. And I didn't get it before this. I just couldn't until I felt what I do for these people. We were in time, we would sit, stand, walk, run in time without any prompting, without being able to see everyone in the group. We just knew and trusted.
Some of the cast talking before the show at the Hampstead Theatre...we did "Heartbreak Beautiful" in three theatres: The Churchill, The Hampstead and The National.
The curtain call at the National. Over 1000 people came to watch that day. The writer has just joined us on stage after our bow sequence, to The Feist's song "1234", we're all on a massive high as he talks to the audience about our performance.
Jess, Vicky and Ellie in the girls' dressing room getting their fake tan on.
Elliott as "Oscar" rocking the geek chic look.
A few of us won parts in the stage show of His Dark Materials and spend a few stressful weeks working with amazing actors on our stage on a six hour long epic of a play. We became gyptian children and ghosts and kidnap victims and priests and soldiers. We got scared of the woman who played Mrs Coulter, and were drawn in by the daemon puppets, and cried backstage when Pan was taken away and when, at the end of the six hours, you return back to the beginning scene and realise what it means. It felt like we lived in a dressing room downstairs in the depths of the Churchill Theatre, talking, sleeping between shows lying next to each other, sharing ipod leads. Letting the boys wear our ghost dress costumes because they were comfy.
We performed for the last time all together in a play that just felt about US. It didn't have a script, it was devised by us, taking things we had created, ideas we cared about. It was experimental, exciting, beautiful. We spent a haunting, draining, painfully exhausting two hour session one week pouring out things that were either the happiest, saddest or worst moments of our life. So so many people chose the saddest and the worst. People who felt guilty for friend's suicides, people who'd had a baby but given them up for adoption, people from abusive families. We cried, we all cried so so hard. And held each other and linked hands and squeezed. Boys, teenage boys, all bravado and swagger, told, in brutal rawly honest terms about their grandparent's death, or their suffering with bullying at school, and cried just as hard as anyone else. It was cathartic, it was intense, it was the closest I have ever ever felt to another person in my life.
The whole of the cast after the show in the big dressing room <3
We had silly stupid awesome cast parties and sat and played spin the bottle and made kissing just this sweet platonic action of showing you cared, made it a normal fun beautiful thing that you could laugh about. And hugging. And holding people. And just making everyone feel comfortable within themselves. I wouldn't have been surprised if we'd broken out into the world's most fluffy orgy with lots of laughing and spooning each other and most likely some of Tom's ever-present grapes :)
Me sitting on Charley and Matt sitting on Ellie at one of the cast parties on Sophie and Josh's sofa
Di, Cass, Matt and I during a well earned break at the Twisted Fairytales Photoshoot. It never ceases to amuse us that Matt and I look like a straight couple and Di looks like a sexually frustrated mime.
We've come so far. At the beginning we were starting out. We came from different backgrounds for different reasons. We didn't know ourselves. But we've grown. A few of us have come out, some of us have dated, all of us have remained friends.
So as we go off to uni, or stay and try and continue the company with a new life and new members to share new experiences with, I just want to say thank you. I've had that Heartbreak Beautiful Moment.
Thank you and Good Bye.
Break a leg guys xxx
It's been a part of my life for seven years. A huge part. It's strange that it hasn't been given a proper name until now, but it's a name that suits us exactly
We've been to the National Theatre together, performed on the Olivier Stage and we really fucking earned our place there. We spent the Summer in this whirlwind of intense rehearsals, dance practices, insane exercising with skipping ropes. We could spend days talking, just talking with each other. About silly things, jokes, funny stories. But about serious things too, politics, religion, sexuality and about respect for everyone. This was where so many of my secrets, of my worries came out. To people I trusted. Because you knew you could. It seems cliche but trust really is everything in the theatre. And I didn't get it before this. I just couldn't until I felt what I do for these people. We were in time, we would sit, stand, walk, run in time without any prompting, without being able to see everyone in the group. We just knew and trusted.
Some of the cast talking before the show at the Hampstead Theatre...we did "Heartbreak Beautiful" in three theatres: The Churchill, The Hampstead and The National.
The curtain call at the National. Over 1000 people came to watch that day. The writer has just joined us on stage after our bow sequence, to The Feist's song "1234", we're all on a massive high as he talks to the audience about our performance.
Jess, Vicky and Ellie in the girls' dressing room getting their fake tan on.
Elliott as "Oscar" rocking the geek chic look.
A few of us won parts in the stage show of His Dark Materials and spend a few stressful weeks working with amazing actors on our stage on a six hour long epic of a play. We became gyptian children and ghosts and kidnap victims and priests and soldiers. We got scared of the woman who played Mrs Coulter, and were drawn in by the daemon puppets, and cried backstage when Pan was taken away and when, at the end of the six hours, you return back to the beginning scene and realise what it means. It felt like we lived in a dressing room downstairs in the depths of the Churchill Theatre, talking, sleeping between shows lying next to each other, sharing ipod leads. Letting the boys wear our ghost dress costumes because they were comfy.
We performed for the last time all together in a play that just felt about US. It didn't have a script, it was devised by us, taking things we had created, ideas we cared about. It was experimental, exciting, beautiful. We spent a haunting, draining, painfully exhausting two hour session one week pouring out things that were either the happiest, saddest or worst moments of our life. So so many people chose the saddest and the worst. People who felt guilty for friend's suicides, people who'd had a baby but given them up for adoption, people from abusive families. We cried, we all cried so so hard. And held each other and linked hands and squeezed. Boys, teenage boys, all bravado and swagger, told, in brutal rawly honest terms about their grandparent's death, or their suffering with bullying at school, and cried just as hard as anyone else. It was cathartic, it was intense, it was the closest I have ever ever felt to another person in my life.
The whole of the cast after the show in the big dressing room <3
We had silly stupid awesome cast parties and sat and played spin the bottle and made kissing just this sweet platonic action of showing you cared, made it a normal fun beautiful thing that you could laugh about. And hugging. And holding people. And just making everyone feel comfortable within themselves. I wouldn't have been surprised if we'd broken out into the world's most fluffy orgy with lots of laughing and spooning each other and most likely some of Tom's ever-present grapes :)
Me sitting on Charley and Matt sitting on Ellie at one of the cast parties on Sophie and Josh's sofa
Di, Cass, Matt and I during a well earned break at the Twisted Fairytales Photoshoot. It never ceases to amuse us that Matt and I look like a straight couple and Di looks like a sexually frustrated mime.
We've come so far. At the beginning we were starting out. We came from different backgrounds for different reasons. We didn't know ourselves. But we've grown. A few of us have come out, some of us have dated, all of us have remained friends.
So as we go off to uni, or stay and try and continue the company with a new life and new members to share new experiences with, I just want to say thank you. I've had that Heartbreak Beautiful Moment.
Thank you and Good Bye.
Break a leg guys xxx