I have spent many an hour rolling up and down the spine – mine and others – and even more rolling along the floor. It took two weeks to perfect the art of walking at one sixty fourth of the average walking speed – an art I have learned best not to practice on the tube during rush hour. I am the flame, the tree, the microbe. I have touched my fellow course mates in places a third date wouldn’t warrant.
We roam the corridors like an army, each one in black – you can never have enough black – all armed with a bamboo stick, a yoga mat and an energy drink. The cafeteria is not allowed to sell any dairy or refined sugar. This is of little worry when the majority of your lunch breaks are spent in the local pub – that is, if your director remembers to give you one at all.
But Central obviously has good intentions to improve our level of wellbeing, and at first I am excited to see a Friday massage class appear on my timetable. But I soon realise that a drama school “Friday massage” involves walking on backs, a lot of walking on backs. At 5”1 and 95lbs it is hardly desirable to have a 6”3 male standing on my poor spine, however “But oh” it may be.
I spent my secondary school years as an over-achiever with a scholarship and yet I am struggling to inhabit the mentality of a lemon. Our library closes at five and we write one single essay per year. That said, I have never been so over worked or so mentally drained; turns out it is easier to write an essay then prepare a cheetah for animal studies – who would have thought? My classwork involves running until I collapse, hardening my shell, being constantly criticised, constantly exposing and stripping away all that makes me – well me, and through all this somehow realising how grateful I am to be one of those special few. But I take comfort in the thought that however much they push me, however stupid the task, however futile – be it nudity or bin bag or the classic sour lemon – to know I am one step closer to becoming an approved performing monkey. Well, let’s just say it makes the bin bag cum leotard worth it.
