Me to Play

Today's full cast rehearsal was attended by about half the cast. Of the 15, about half were drama students I'd never met before - they seem sound enough.

It's a little unclear how we're all getting to the dratted community centre where the performance is scheduled on Thursday. In fact, most of us don't know exactly where it is.

Though with luck the final version of the script - with cuts and rearrangements made tonight - should be ready by then.
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The 100th british soldier has been killed in Iraq. A few months ago, the Portsmouth left agreed to gather for a service and wreath placing when that happened. So tomorrow that's what we're doing.

A quiet, dignified discharge of duty that I for one have no desire to perform. But I suppose that's part of what 'duty' means.
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A line from a film has been running through my mind all day - "It's a headless blunder operating under the illusion of a master plan."

The line is from 'Cube' - a reincarnation of Theatre of the Absurd for a generation of video game players. Low budget, minimal sets and broad characterisation, just like the original absurdist plays.

And with exactly the same unhelpful political subtext: The world is incomprehensible, hostile, and unbeatable. You can't fight it, you can't understand it, and you can't change it. You can only hope to survive it.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the absursist playwrights immensely. Samuel Beckett is still one of my favourite writers. I'm just aware that the message of the genre is a dead end.

In philosophy it's called Irrationalism, in politics it's Fatalism, and in ordinary parlance it's Defeatism. It's also a suspiciously convenient justification for giving up or selling out, as well as demonstrably false.

The trouble is, it's exactly how I feel at the moment. Left politics, with its token gestures like laying a wreath, constant stream of misfires like Galloway and Respect, and oddly self-regarding exercises like this play I'm in, feels like a headless blunder. And Marxism, with its infinitely flexible dialectical method, resembles the illusion of a master plan.

But then, I always feel like that, at this time of year.