Seeing the audience!

So tonight I will be performing the show for the last time in London and the audience will include around 30 people I know.

The theatre only holds 92 people so pretty much every third face I look at will be familiar to me! 

It's funny, people always ask me, what is it like when you have to talk to the audience? Well I'll be honest, it's strange. So much theatre is played with the audience being the "4th Wall" meaning the actors don't acknowledge they are there. I quite enjoy that. The stage is your own little world and the audience are there to watch.

The minute you break this 4th wall the audience become part of the story. I feel for the Bogus Woman this is particularly effective. By including them and sharing the story - they are drawn in and in someway even more shocked by what happens in the 80 mins of being on stage.

When it comes to looking someone in the eye and sharing a line to them - it takes a bit of getting used to. When you look at that someone and it's someone you know it adds a whole new dimension to it. It is difficult to describe but as I share parts of the play with the audience I start noticing who is there. "oh look there's X I forgot they were coming! oh they've brought Y with them, how lovely"  

I'm looking forward to tonight not just because of all the people I know in the audience but also because for me it kind of marks the end of the touring element of this journey. Yes I still have 10 shows in Keswick but it almost feels like the end! No more travelling in a van day in day out. No more one night in each theatre. We take The Bogus Woman back to where we originally found her and in exactly two weeks we finish.

I feel like crying just writing that.

Wow.