TEARS FROM THE MOON

Chapter 11.

The last night of the play The Secret Smile, was a lot more emotional than I had ever anticipated as it was strange to think that we were all now going our separate ways, for the time being at least.
When a play as finished its run, it can be a time when new faces replace the old as people invariably move on.

Our flat mate Beth was one of these.

On the morning of my meeting with Alan in the tearoom, Beth had been going to a meeting of her own. Not with the particular movie star that I had first thought, but with a movie star nonetheless.
This one actually had his very own theatre company on Leicester Square and was very renowned and highly respected throughout the film and theatre world.
A lot more, I would probably gather, than Alan Rickman himself was!

Beth had been unusually quiet, on her return that afternoon, as I scrabbled hurriedly to hide the script under the sofa as she walked into the flat, bitterly complaining about how cold it had become.
She then announced that she was going for a shower, which enabled me to read a bit more of the script, before she flounced back into the living room again, stating that she was meeting with Marcus and Hugo for some pre- end of the play drinks at some swanky night club somewhere.

She half hertedly asked me if I would care to join them to which I politely declined. Noticing the sheer delight on her face at my refusal, left me in little doubt that she would have been dreadfully disappointed if I had said that I'd love to come.
But nothing could be further from the truth.
I really wanted to finish reading this script but somehow didn't want to tell my flatmates or anyone, come to that, anything about it.
I wished it be private for a little while longer and truly felt that it was something just for me to digest on my own for the moment.
Something that I, alone should do without any intrusion from so called friends or influences.

Delving back into it again, after Beth had left once more, I began to believe that Alan was right.
It was a very demanding role indeed with a lot of very emotional and quite difficult scenes.

I sucked my breath in with horror when I read through the dramatic confrontation between the once best friends and how Christina's Father asked her to choose between them both.
Then how her love interest tried in vain to set her up with his own son, so that he was able to still see her, although not able to be with her and how it tore them both apart.

But the real page turner though, came with the erotic sexual encounters between the nieve Christina and the much older, more experienced Jonathan Saunders that were described in such graphic detail.
It damn near made me blush!

I swallowed hard.
I knew that I would be required to recreate this and to the best of my ability too.

I had put my hand over the paper as not to be any more distracted as I then began to give it a great deal of thought.
Of course I could do this.
It was only acting after all.
But then my stomach twisted.
Because I would not be acting this.
I was like Christina.
I had no experience.

None whatsoever.

Holding the glass of wine, tightly in my hand at the after play party, reliving the realisation and enormity of this whole undertaking had suddenly filled me with absolute terror.
This film was so much more demanding than I would ever have imagined it to be.
The storyline was a real roller coaster of events and emotions that would appeal to an extremely large audience.
But was I really up for this.

I took a large sip of the wine and smiled politely at Jayne who was holding court with me and a few others who were gathered together, but to be honest, I had not heard a word that anyone had said........so wrapped up in my own thoughts and feelings of dread that I was in a total world of my own.