Well today was a day of firsts. First day in our new home (Picton place.) First day for our new boy Mikey playing the role of Naz. And our first ever fight call!

Now, the first rule of fight call is, you do not talk about fight call. The second rule of fight call is, you DO NOT talk about fight call. Therefore, all I will say is thank you to Roger for giving us some brilliant kick ass moves!

As I mentioned earlier we moved into our new home today. The most exciting moment (bar the thought of finally rehearsing in a room above freezing) was seeing for the first time our performance space! And boy were we not disappointed. The space is perfect for the play. It has every essence that Phil describes the flat that the action takes place in should have. However, there is still a lot of work to be done on the space, and of course while we were downstairs in the warm punching and slapping (or in some cases – straddling – you know who you are). The Theatre Delicatessen family were all hard at work, sledgehammers in hand, knocking down walls, working very hard. (Ben and I showed our appreciation at lunch leaving them a gift of a few miniature hero chocolates Debs had bought for us all…we love our Duchess, she feeds us well!)

Now that we have in a sense “blocked” the play, we are now concentrating on the “world” of the play, which has led to much more in depth discussion ranging from Child Soldiers, ghetto’s, apartheid, and much more. By the end of the day my brain was spinning, to be fair it might be just the fact that my brain had been engaged for more than two hours.

Anyway, on a more personal note, I spent Saturday with Debs (who plays my mum,) and her beautiful daughter at her flat in Bethnal Green. Now I genuinely believe the one thing you can’t fake on stage is chemistry. And usually it’s either there or it aint. And I can safely say with this cast if there is one thing for sure we do have is chemistry, which is evident purely by how much we rip the p*ss out of each other at any given moment, we play, laugh and enjoy each other’s company. Any way I digress….Firstly thank you to Debs for cooking me the best baked potato ever! And although we had lots of fun (a few hours of Wii Just Dance later – or in other words “exercise”) we had covered a lot of ground on the play, getting those lines under our belts, and really asking the questions about our characters maybe we had been avoiding. And the one thing you can’t do with Mercury Fur – is avoid it! You have to live it!

Till next time. And get buying those ticket’s people!

Chris AKA Darren. Xxx