Saturday, March 22, 2008
Hollywood dreams. Last night I dreamed I was a famous actress and I was presenting an award at the Oscars. At soundcheck (rehearsal? whatever they call it) we practised taking a mic on a long cord and walking from backstage to the podium. I don't know why the Oscars were organised in this slipshod fashion in my dream. A few times I realised my mic cord was too short and didn't reach the podium, so this had to be adjusted.
A particularly vivid part of this dream was the wings of the stage. I think the same wings have starred in my previous dreams, and they are inspired by the theatre in which my childhood ballet concerts were staged: dark, with various abandoned ropes, switch boxes and other mysterious stage tech stuff strewn about, and velvet curtains at intervals down the stage to conceal the goings-on from the audience.
Anyway, at one point I was bored with the endless tech adjustments, so idly I lifted my mic to my lips and sang, I get up in the morning and I see your face girl..., the opening line to 'Cover Girl' by New Kids On The Block. You're looking so good everything's in place...
Then mysteriously, Donnie Wahlberg appeared on the other side of the stage with another mic, and joined in, Don't you know I would never leave your side girl / Won't you stay here with me, and be my bride? It made sense in the dream that he would just be hanging about, because he is an actor. Let's not interrogate the logic of this any more, because I certainly didn't.
More people began to come on stage now, just random actors and performers and stagehands who were around, and we started to sway in a dance routine that we all magically knew. Don't you know you're my kind, you're just what I like / Girl you're everything, don't you know you're all right / The only girl I've always needed for so long...
And then as the chorus broke out, we broke into the full energetic routine in our Oscar evening clothes and stagehand outfits. It was so fricking sweet. Oh oh-oh, she's my cover girl, oh oh-oh, oh-whoa-oh! BASS! It's all right, oh yeah it's outta sight, lemme say it's all right, AGHGHGHGHHGGHHHH!!!
My Oscar co-presenter, some distinguished male actor of the ilk of Christopher Ecclestone or Ralph Fiennes, was extremely exasperated by this undignified display. (Although now I think of it, Ralph Fiennes knows a thing or two about undignified displays.) He broke it up and with that, the rehearsal was over and I ran backstage because I realised that I wasn't wearing any makeup and my hair wasn't done.
In the dressing room with its globe-ringed mirror, Tash was doing her makeup (as if this were a ballet concert still!) I said, "Tash, can I borrow your makeup? I have to present an Oscar and I didn't even get my hair done!" I rumpled my hair despairingly in the mirror. But then I woke up and so I never found out if my makeup-free Oscar appearance made it into NW.
A particularly vivid part of this dream was the wings of the stage. I think the same wings have starred in my previous dreams, and they are inspired by the theatre in which my childhood ballet concerts were staged: dark, with various abandoned ropes, switch boxes and other mysterious stage tech stuff strewn about, and velvet curtains at intervals down the stage to conceal the goings-on from the audience.
Anyway, at one point I was bored with the endless tech adjustments, so idly I lifted my mic to my lips and sang, I get up in the morning and I see your face girl..., the opening line to 'Cover Girl' by New Kids On The Block. You're looking so good everything's in place...
Then mysteriously, Donnie Wahlberg appeared on the other side of the stage with another mic, and joined in, Don't you know I would never leave your side girl / Won't you stay here with me, and be my bride? It made sense in the dream that he would just be hanging about, because he is an actor. Let's not interrogate the logic of this any more, because I certainly didn't.
More people began to come on stage now, just random actors and performers and stagehands who were around, and we started to sway in a dance routine that we all magically knew. Don't you know you're my kind, you're just what I like / Girl you're everything, don't you know you're all right / The only girl I've always needed for so long...
And then as the chorus broke out, we broke into the full energetic routine in our Oscar evening clothes and stagehand outfits. It was so fricking sweet. Oh oh-oh, she's my cover girl, oh oh-oh, oh-whoa-oh! BASS! It's all right, oh yeah it's outta sight, lemme say it's all right, AGHGHGHGHHGGHHHH!!!
My Oscar co-presenter, some distinguished male actor of the ilk of Christopher Ecclestone or Ralph Fiennes, was extremely exasperated by this undignified display. (Although now I think of it, Ralph Fiennes knows a thing or two about undignified displays.) He broke it up and with that, the rehearsal was over and I ran backstage because I realised that I wasn't wearing any makeup and my hair wasn't done.
In the dressing room with its globe-ringed mirror, Tash was doing her makeup (as if this were a ballet concert still!) I said, "Tash, can I borrow your makeup? I have to present an Oscar and I didn't even get my hair done!" I rumpled my hair despairingly in the mirror. But then I woke up and so I never found out if my makeup-free Oscar appearance made it into NW.
