Last minute. panic

I have developed the familiar Fringe company managers “rabbit in headlights” look.  Even waking at 5 in the morning (unheard of in calmer times) my eyes spring wide open with fear painted deep inside them. If your eyes are truly the window to your soul then my eyes are currently a window to van hire, accommodation bookings and press packs. For day and night, that is all that consumes me. I have taken to reassuring myself quite regularly (twice a day) that the flats I’ve hired are definitely dated for 2011.  (They were this afternoon). But even that doesn’t assuage my fears…what if the demon ghost of theatre companies past hacks into my computer and changes the booking? What if the venue turns out to have a stage 5 feet by 5 feet and not 5 meters by 5 meters? The humiliation and pain of realising the lovingly crafted set won’t even make it past the loading bay is too much to bear. The music’s on the laptop, backed up on the time machine (only Apple can persuade you that a hard drive is in fact an invention of significant scientific breakthrough) and I’m considering burning it in triplicate to sets of granite incrusted plutonium CD’s. However this is just reckless paranoia. I mean, the train tickets are definitely for tomorrow and last night (when I checked) there were enough for the whole cast.

Feel free to drop into Zoo Roxy at 5:15 and see if we have a set on a stage that’s big enough and a cast that don’t look like they’re sleeping rough.