More feedback, and another funeral

Another week, another cremation.

I got feedback from NG (my trainer) on my first script. He made several useful comments, and some that I found entertaining. This was because he had criticised one or two things which were straight lifts from my mentor's scripts.

NG is a bit of an evangelical humanist, whereas I think I'm more liberal, so there are bound to be differences, but he summed it up as "not a bad stab at it", which I took to be a complement.

There was also the problem of the family for this particular script. I'm surprised that they could even agree that the bloke had died, because they couldn't agree on anything else! Still, NG's not to know that, so he made comments about "should have got more here" (none of the music had been decided when I sent the script to him, but one piece was changed on the day of the ceremony). Therefore, he doesn't know if I didn't have everything because it wasn't given, or because I'm not good at listening, getting info etc.

Generally, the feedback was useful, however, and I don't want to seem as though I'm making excuses.

So then we came to the funeral yesterday of the elderly lady. The family are lovely, and when the deceased's daughter said hello to me when they arrived, I said what I always say: "All right?"

No, she probably wasn't, as she had just arrived for the funeral of her mother.

I must teach myself simply to say "hello". It's kinda established in the language, it really shouldn't be too much of a shock.

I met one of the funeral directors yesterday, and when he shook my hand he leaned forward and said, very quietly, "welcome to the show". To me that summed it up beautifully. A good funeral is dignified and respectful theatre.

Bring on the next performance.