Mr and Mrs kindly request the pleasure of your company...!

I'm in a play tonight, Lavender Wedding, at the West End Centre, Aldershot (hereafter known as The Westy!) We had the dress rehearsal last night and all went pretty well - I certainly performed better than I expected!

I've been a member of the OWZAT theatre company for 7 months now and I'm really enjoying it - good fun, good people! We're a small troupe, usually never more than between 9 and 11 of us at any one time, so it wasn't too scary for me to join in. I was given a bit of a baptism of fire - The groups' leader and one of my best friends, Bekki, asked me to fill in after she had to pull out of the role she was playing in the 'alternative' Christmas production, Supermarket Sleep. I literally (and I don't use that word often) had one dress rehearsal, then I was in front of an audience! Luckily I have many years of experience of treading the Westy boards and the part wasn't too demanding so it wasn't really daunting in any way - the worst part was joining in with a close-knit group at such a late stage in the show. Fortunately for me, OWZAT are a very sweet group of friends and I had already met four of them before (Hash, Alison and Bekki's sister, Emma.) The other problem was that I was very out of practice; my previous theatre company - the STC (Studio Theatre Company) - having split a few years ago. I've been doing a bit of street theatre and walkabout performances since, usually with Healey, but that's a whole different ball game! OWZAT's plays are improv-based - so no script and the play writes itself as we go along. Fun but very challenging!

Anyway, the curtain goes up at 8pm so if you find yourself in Aldershot which nothing better to do, feel free to drop by. And the best bit? The audience is 'private - by invitation' so there's no ticket required. In other words, it's free!!!