Tommy Collison

I’m excited! :D

I want 1pm on Saturday to be now, dang it!

Not only will I be starting my 2 week Easter holidays, which rock in themselves, but the specific time refers to when I’ll be starting my weekly class with CentreStage. If you didn’t read about it over the weekend, we’re putting on an end-of-year show in May, which I got a part in. I play Mr. Mushnik in “Little Shop of Horrors”, which heads to UCH on May 20th.

I love acting. I used to want to be an actor when I was all grow’d up, but reality soon caught up with up with me and I realized the impracticality of my meagre dream. Now I’ve got my sights on more manageable career choices, like a journalist or a blogging/online lecturer (not college, Mulley-style training stuff. As a matter of fact, my Mum’s company organizes training courses. They should go into business. Mullison inc. anyone?)

Getting back to the title, (musn’t meander, that’s what rivers do!)  even if I’ve given it up as a career choice, I still adore it as a pass-time, and I’m sure in 2020, when I’m deep in a training course on why we should be blogging, I’ll still be including anecdotes on that time when I was 14 and I starred in a production of Little Shop of Horrors…*

The part I love about these sorta shows (although I’ve never been in one in an acting/singing/speaking role. I’ve been a chorus guy though!) is the rehearsals. Those (warning: here be Thespian-speak) grueling six-hour long periods where you say the same line over again until you nail it, and then it’s time for line # 2. Those periods where you end up speaking with a Russian/Cockney/whatever accent for 6 months after the show finishes.

(Hang on, that wasn’t thespian speak! OK people, false alarm. Break for lunch for 15 and we’ll come back and try Scene 15 act 2 again…)

Back last July I did a 1 week course with the same people, where I ended up playing a psychopathic doctor, which was awesome. But my favourite part of that whole week was the hours spent shut up in a room with my two cast members that we spent messing around, trying on funny accents, making some great friendships, and maybe just maybe, if we get time, practicing our lines… :)

* How this links in with why we should be blogging, you figure out..!