The Recklessness of Richards

Let's be honest, it's been an expensive year. Unexpected expenses: choosing to fly with Wizz Air which cost us over £700 to get home with a competent airline instead from France, paying over £500 to get my car fixed, paying £5,000 to buy a new car literally two weeks later. Plus, lesson cancellations when I was briefly ill, twice, and when I had to cancel two days work to be a movie star for a bit. And, of course, shows are expensive - it's only costing me £200 per show to bring a production to Brighton (£120 programme entry, £80 venue hire) but, you know, I'm bringing three shows to the festival, so £600. One is solo and I know it well, one (the one with Esther) started rehearsals proper last night, the other (with Alex, Nicole and Paul M) starts rehearsals next week. 

I'm so lucky that, when things go wrong, I can just pick up more work. I have an epic student waiting list and what seems to be a thoroughly decent reputation. My finances may have taken a bit of a beating this year, but I've have to dig in a bit, work longer hours (13 hours every Saturday, anyone?) and I'm still ticking over. That's the main reason why I turned down that full-time teaching job the other day; I love being flexible, I love being able to take on more hours if I need to. 

I think it's all okay, I love what I do despite being knackered. Rehearsals last night were great, Cara is a proper director and she's whipping us into shape. I've got a couple nice gigs this weekend, including playing a friend's wedding tomorrow. I've just been booked to perform solo shows in Bedford, Durham, Manchester, Scarborough. Alongside the teaching, writing, performing, running a theatre company, drumming, I want to do more, like more film work, or own a record label, and eventually set up Richards Towers or something. Too many ideas, not quite enough hours in the day. 

Or, I could just take on a normal job with security, and holiday pay and all that. 

Or, just stop these expensive projects and build for a future? 

Hhhhm. Not yet. He says, just accepting his Edinburgh Fringe offer...

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Departure from Stagnation Station

I had planned to start writing this in January, but, alas, I just ran out of time. Which is quite ironic because that’s the reason why I wanted to write this blog in the first place… See, I appreciate how lucky I am, I honestly do. I live in a lovely big house with my beautiful, successful wife, our perfect dog, and two cats, one of whom I like and the other I can tolerate. My creative endeavours as a drummer has seen me play in some weird and wonderful places with some mega talented folk, all over the world, with tours, radio airplay and everything else you dream of when you first learn to hit things in time, including all the non-glamorous bits, of course (but I dreamed of those, too - but who doesn't love a Ginsters slice from a garage at 2am for dinner?). In my parallel life, as a writer/performer of theatre stuff that sometimes drifts into other mediums, it's also gone rather well at times; 19 years of Edinburgh Fringes, some lovely national press, a few aw...
Read more

France

Image
Happy with the Leicester show, and continually tweaking it ahead of all the many festivals that are creeping in for later in the year, I had to shift focus completely to the other imminent new project, a more serious piece of writing (but still a comedy) that was to open in France just two weeks after the other play had just launched.  I'd been writing that at the same time as writing the two-hander I've got coming up with Esther, both very different shows and both lost me a bit of sleep. Of course, day-to-day stuff also had to take priority momentarily; teaching long hours, another blues gig at the hotel (we were pretty good that time), a guest appearance at the school where we filmed Harvey Greenfield, that sort of thing. Mostly, just dashing around and keeping people happy. But this also mostly makes me happy, despite Cambridge traffic. The film was nominated for an award in Barcelona but none of us were able to make it and we didn't win anyway, but still - it's nice...
Read more

The art of resetting

So far this year I've played a bunch of band gigs, I've written four new full shows (two of which have gone live, the other two have entered rehearsals), I've performed in France, at the Leicester Comedy Festival, a load of house previews, I've written off a car, I've bought a new one (which seems to enjoy flashing a  'check tyre pressure' light whenever it gets cold, even though the tyres are fine, I've had it for four days...), I've watched my film sellout two screenings at a film festival, I've been cast purely as an actor in another film (more on that soon) and I've taught for literally hundreds of hours.  It's still only March.  But this is exactly what I wanted to happen this year (apart from the car stuff). Fun, projects, adventure, it's all there.  But on Monday night, home from another 8 hours of teaching, I just sat on the sofa and paused for a moment.  I was knackered. Aside from the teaching, this week I've decided to ...
Read more