Panicked about the absence of a techie, I spent some of the day desperately looking for a way to get in touch with the guy we'd used in Edinburgh. It struck me that it might make sense to find someone who knew the show to use as techie. They would only need to learn the equipment and revise the position of the cues in the action. This made increasing sense and I became more and more keen to find the guy we used in Edinburgh. The problem is that I didn't have a number for him. I didn't know his surname and I couldn't remember the name of his band. It looked increasingly impossible to locate him. I tried asking for help from the venue who employed him and gave him to us. They were, unsurprisingly, tied up with other stuff and didn't help us very much.

I was onto plan G and had taken to begging some of my team mates from the office to help. They were looking like maybes... but it was also looking like an increasing risk that I'd be nipping off stage to do the technical stuff myself. I really had absolutely no idea what I was going to do. There was an audience coming. People were out there selling tickets and I had sold maybe 60 or so in person (and I knew there were more people coming on the night)... but the show couldn't function without technical support.

Could we turn this around? It was looking like a problem.

I started having strange ideas to solve the problem. I put out feelers and reckoned that I may be able to make it work with a complete technical novice and a drama student who was originally meant to be watching the show. It was far from ideal.

However, I put all these problems to the back of my mind when we did the dress rehearsal. The dress went very well. So, if I could solve the technical problems, we had a show. Oh... and there were 3 more to do after too. This was expected to be stressful... but it was exceeding expectations.

Still, the show still seemed a long way off (it wasn't) so I kept my head. It's amazing how much you can fit into a couple of days. We had, brought the show up to speed. We'd also done a little editing of the script. We improvised a couple of scenes to "fix" some moments that never really worked on stage in Edinburgh. We put in the "Tuna Ciabatta" routine and found a "Writer's block" gag which finally worked. I accept that this will mean nothing to anyone who didn't see the show, but they meant something to us. We had something new to present in the show and we had a performance which was intended to be as good (if not better) than any we'd done before. It was an exciting time as well as stressful. Could all the loose ends come together in time?