frogs, tagliatelle and blue cheese quiche

before we start i’m afraid this is not some sort of hideous fusion cooking trend. just, if you’ve had a little internet stumble, looking for heston’s quirky take on what a parisian tramps sick might taste like, back to google with you, and better luck next time.

no, those three things pretty much sum up everything that i now feel went wrong at aforementioned prestigious drama school (who’s evidentially going a little scatty in her old age for letting this bright young thing escape her) and give you a somewhat hideous glimpse into my head.

now, i promise not to waste your precious time ranting about how hideously unfair the world is or typing up appropriately maudlin smiths lyrics whilst crying into my keyboard. trust me, there’s only so many times you can shout ‘it’s shit, this is shit’ at random intervals across one (maybe two) evening(s) before you either get labelled with a neurological disease or your housemates put a bag over your head.

no this is post rant evaluation, which conveniently doesn’t call into question either a. my acting ability (clearly that wasn’t the problem, did i tell you i’m really very good. no really. no better than that. better… yes, that good. i know, thanks, i think it comes from my mother’s side. a young who? really, now i’m blushing….) or b. my face.

…

so, it’s the start of the big day, and as nervous yawny faces shuffle into the room we are told we will be asked to do some pretty weird things but just to, you know, go with it. now, i know all about this kind of malarky, i’ve done comedy improvisation, i’ve read improv theory books, gone to workshops and basically understood that to get by you just need to become a supped up version of the yes man. so, i tell myself, just do it, YEAH! think of no one else, focus, it’ll be fine, it’s not like your whole future depends on this and the eyes of the acting establishment are all here in the one room…

so we lunge, curl, dance, lunge once more and jog our way to warm bodies and sweaty faces when, at the top of her lungs the ‘movement’ teacher exclaims ‘now i want you to be frogs!’

what.

i mean YEAH! woo FROGS! Yeah…crouch down…do the dinosaur arm thing and…jump…kind of…more of a shuffle. do some long slow bewildered frog blinks. do they have two eyelids or is that fish? if i was a frog, i’d be pretty freaked out by all these other frogs. or would i like it? are frogs sociable? good god maybe they’d all start fucking. how do frogs mate? wouldn’t that be funny if everyone started having sex like frogs right now, what would they do? should i be looking for a fly? no, there are no flies here. blink. do a froggy face. yeah that’s probably froggy. he’s a pretty frog. i wonder if he’s going to be famous, jesus he just did a ribbit, no frog has ever ribbited, they can’t let him in, he sounded like a parody of a frog, you don’t ribbit here for fucks sake, no one ribbits. blink. i, on the other hand, am a real, slightly disconcerted, frog. and i’m going to sit here and…shuffle, in case they all start fucking or eating each other, because i’m by the door and could get out pretty quickly if need be. blink. tactical frog. blink. this is natural selection in action. jesus christ my thighs hurt.

…

essentially i sat.

and blinked.

but i like to think it was a subtle performance. nuance de toad. an intelligent representation. i like to think. so great, that’s the obligatory animal out of the way, not too awful, slightly ridiculous, but hey, i’m all about the words, the language the psychology and nuance, the…

…

‘be spaghetti!’

right. so. inanimate. brilliant. stand up straight….like spaghetti..? of course. yes.

well now we all just look like we’re fitting.

focus. spaghetti think spaghetti spiky dry spaghetti, takes about 12 minutes if you want a bit of chalky-ness inside still. 15 if it’s brown. um, no, that’d take too long, be cheap white spaghetti. slutty spaghetti. all smooth bits and no ridges. they’re all going floppy, the fitting idiots…should i..? how long are we doing this for because if we’re suddenly venturing into realism i had better pace myself…winner! last woman standing, all eyes on me, step up the tremor yep, everyone looking at me as i do my subtle spaghetti dance, i know spaghetti takes longer than that and is entirely inanimate for ages before it develops any kind of slouching, louche personality…mmm hands are a bit flat….be tagliatelle, good flat sides….and elegantly to the floor as you bend in the middle, succumbing gradually to the curve of the pan and flop…i’ve got this down, boily wibble…jerky wibble…it’s not weird, this isn’t weird because right now you’re the most convincing pasta in the room…still boiling are we? excellent. yep….still…? good, just checking….we’re brown spaghetti after all then. of course. stiillll….?

…

sooooo. i think it all went rather well. a cerebral performance. fundamentally i regret the tagliatelle, i think that might have been the decider, because in retrospect of course we all know that’s dried and cooked in nests, which i hadn’t factored in to my performance. they just weren’t ready for that kind of post post-modern, post feminist interpretation. if only they had wanted farfalle…

and the blue cheese quiche? that was lunch. sounded nice, free, but essentially absolutely foul, and tainted with the fear we may have to re-enact it’s life span once the plates had been cleared.

i hated that quiche.