So last night I found myself in the position of glamorous assistant Debbie McGee.

Well not quite. But not far off either.

Some months ago I joined a drama group which meets for workshops on a Wednesday evening in a building in the old red light district of Dublin – which was called the Monto. These workshops  usually involve focussing on a particular aspect of drama or theatre. It  involves warm-up, concentration games, acting exercises and usually ends with a short physical or dramatic performance in front of the other workshop attendees. There is usually a theme each evening Basically it involves shenanigans.

These workshops are facilitated by various practitioners of drama and they impart their knowledge to the panting masses – i.e. the attendees.

Well some weeks ago I agreed that I would co-facilitate a workshop.

Now asking me to do something over a month in advance means that it is almost guaranteed that I will agree to the request  – it is suitably far out in the future that practical considerations like my suitability for the task or role, can be ignored. I find it a struggle to decide what’s for dinner – events a month in advance are not even on my radar.

Well I agreed to co-facilitate a workshop and then before you know, it was looming.

As I am relatively new to this group, I wasn’t doing this on my own. There were two of us. My co-facilitator has been a group member for longer than I have, but like me was a novice at running the show.

It was a fairly positive experience – we did our due diligence, having met the previous evening to plan the workshop and to go through our paces. That’s when I came up with the hilarious joke that I was going to be the glamorous Debbie McGee to her Paul Daniels (the obvious difference being is that unlike Mr Daniels, my c0-facilitator is very much alive and alert).

The workshop seemed reasonably successful in that the attendees seemed to enjoy themselves and the time was usefully occupied.

It’s hard to tell with these things sometimes – if you are plagued with self doubt then you’ll never be happy with your performance, but if you are aware that your self doubt may be misleading, then it could have actually gone OK.

I have decided that it was successful. I am not sure I’d want to do it again. Part of the problem is that all the attendees last night have been there before. I don’t know why I was expecting it to be all new faces, who I could impress with my sunny disposition, joie de vivre and inspirational personality.

Oh no they were all old-timers who know me . It felt slightly surreal to be doing a workshop with people who I see on a regular basis.

No-one asked for their money back so I’m going to regard it as a success.

Now if there are angry letters to the committee then I’ll have rethink this opinion – I am a member of the commitay however, so those missives from concerned citizens will be binned.