acting up

There are a lot of festivals on these days - film festivals, book festivals, Crufts. Is that a festival? Lots of dogs in a room. Hum. I used to get taken to the Edinburgh Festival. Well, actually, I used to get taken to Edinburgh during the Festival. I was usually made to stay and guard the flat while everyone else went out and had fun. I was occasionally allowed out for the odd scraggy puppet show.

But I have a dream. I want to take a performance to Edinburgh. Nothing fancy. Just a stage and a bear. The bear would be me. I'm not expecting one of the larger venues. Not to start with. Maybe one of those spiegeltent things.

Last year's show, well, it sank without trace. Literally. My one bear show based on "Das Boot". Turned out that the biscuit tin wasn't as watertight as I'd hoped. Course she was more bothered about the biscuits - I'd left them in as ballast.

This year's plan - "Medea". Keeping it simple. Might have got a couple of the smaller toys to play the corpses of my children. Otherwise - just me, the stage and a knife.

"Can I have a knife, please?"
"No."
"I'm going to be Medea. I need it to kill my children."
"No."
"I won't really do it. I'll be using stage fluff"
"No."
"Just a small vegetable knife?"
"No."
"What about about the pointy letter opener?"
"No."
"Butter knife? No, that would look stupid. Couldn't you make me one out of cardboard? Make it all shiny and sharp looking with tin foil?"
"I'm busy. Go away. I suppose you can use this. Don't break it."

"This" is a clear plastic butter spreading spatula from Ikea. Not completely clear. It's covered in cheery green and white polka dots. She is expecting me to convey the tragedy of Corinth with a spotty kitchen implement. A blunt spotty kitchen implement. From Ikea. Even Laurence Olivier had his limits.

Guess that "Coriolanus" is out of the question too. Might have to fall back on - shudder - "I am Curiously Orange : a tribute to Sooty". But my heart won't be in it.