Wonderstruck

Today is the day I realised I'm actually growing up. I am starting to open up my wings and am preparing myself to fly out in to the big wide world in a few short months. I am noticing the things I am good at, the things I have learnt and new levels of maturity in myself that I never before knew I had. I am scared beyond belief at what life after uni may bring, I am determined to never grow up and I still don't have a plan. But today at least felt like a start..

I have spent the last week working as a paid actress, touring local schools and sixth forms, performing a short piece of theatre about the options of higher education. We have had some mixed responses and some truly funny moments, one of which involved being stuck for two hours in a village where everyone seemed to know we were going and curtains twitched constantly while we tried to kill time in a place with just two closed pubs and a corner shop.

Other moments have been a bit less humorous, such as sitting in front of 100+ year tens while their head of year shouts at them until blue in the face, sends three boys out and then brings them back in the room in the middle of the performance, still shouting at them.

Regardless of the school however, everyone has been friendly, offering cups of tea, showing us to the toilet, helping us carry our set back to the car and sitting in the staff room with us for about an hour chatting and giving their life story.

So far however, today has been my favourite day.

We returned to a school we were at on Monday, a Catholic school where pupils are made to enter the room in a boy girl formation. Where they must sit in silence and can not leave a room until given permission a row at a time. The first performance we did here on Monday was not great, the entrance to the hall took too long and we ended up getting stopped around 5 minutes before the end of our performance as the next bell had gone.

Today however, was a different experience.

We arrived for 8:45 after leaving home at 7am, did our set up, some vocal warm ups and watched as the boy girl motion entered. We managed to finish the entire performance today before all but one of the tutor groups left the room. A 50 minute question and answer session then took place with some of the friendliest, funniest kids I have met. A pupil from another group came in part way through to bring us cups of tea and when the teacher said she didn't like tea she gave it to one of the students who happily sat there sipping away while we all chatted. The 50 minute Q&A, unlike Monday's, flew by. The teacher joined in, laughing and joking and taking the miccy out of the kids. I almost didn't want the session to end.

Next a group of year 11 drama students came in, we showed the first 5 minutes of the performance as a taster, answered some questions and they showed us some of their work as they have their drama exams coming up. We then sat chatting to the teacher while the group split off and rehearsed and at the end of the session we were able to give a bit of feedback and advice on some of the work we had seen.

The next part of the day involved us driving around following some very dodgy tomtom directions from the internet before returning home to Worcester to have a look on an actual computer. We then found the school, literally down the road from where I live, in completely the opposite direction to where the tomtom instructions were taking us.

The last performance itself wasn't as smooth as this mornings had been and the students didn't have much to ask in the Q&A afterwards but on their way out of the hall one girl came up to us and asked about work experience. I gave her some advice on people from the uni that she could contact about it, gave her a few e-mail addresses and took hers so that I could pass it on to a few tutors at uni.

This is what I want to do after uni, these are the people I want my acting to reach, and this is the beginning of a beautiful future.