The Whole Lanyards

This week seems to have been one for breaking things. There was the back door to my bedroom, which leads onto a balcony, on which the lock has suddenly snapped (indirectly a result of the four or five days of almost relentless rain we had earlier), and then my phone froze, with no hope of a way out. It seems the smarter a 'smart' phone is, the more likely that it's actually quite stupid; when I was young (alright, two years ago), 99% of problems with your phone could be fixed eventually by simply taking the battery out and putting it in again. But now, since the battery is often irremovable from the casing of the phone, you're kinda screwed. The third thing that might have got broken this week is possibly my ribs. Hm, seems that I should really have put that one in at the top of the list.

It wasn't exactly an event that I could fill into a form that started with the question 'have you had an accident that wasn't your fault', but then it wasn't something that I really saw coming. I'm always losing my keys, so I have them attached to a lanyard. I didn't know that the big strappy things that ID cards and the like were called lanyards, but I suppose they had to have a more elegant name than 'big strappy things'. I've managed to build up a reasonable collection of them, since I get one attached to a press pass every time I'm reviewing up in Edinburgh for the fringe festival. It's the closest I feel to importance all year.

It was this lanyard that was dangling out of my pocket as I was cycling home on Wednesday. You might be able to see what's coming next, even if I didn't, or, indeed, the cars that were directly following me. The big strappy thing dropped, hung, and then wrapped itself against my front wheel. It was like a particularly cheaply made instalment in a Final Destination movie. The bike very suddenly stopped. I suffered no such impediment until roughly three seconds later, when I smashed into the road. The car behind me, luckily a sensible driver, was able to stop in time (quite remarkable when you think about it, since the cyclist in front of him didn't even do anything like braking, they simply .. stopped. It must have been like watching someone slam into an invisible wall). The driver got out, and helped me retrieve all my stuff, and get it off the road. He also asked me if I was ok, sounding just about as shocked as I felt. I didn't sound shocked at all, but this was largely due to all speech having been winded out of me.

I continued down to the train station (just before I got there, I heard some kid from the school where I work shouting abuse at me, presumably unaware that I'd just escaped death. I like to think that he would have stuck to his morals, and still continued to throw names in the direction of my bloodied, twitching corpse), and eventually got home. After a bit of a sleepless night, I struggled (literally, the pain was getting quite bad) into work, but by the time I arrived, I'd realised that work was going to be very difficult, so after a convoluted series of conversations, I was able to get myself to Accident & Emergency.

Where ... they were able to do almost nothing. That's the thing with ribs, it seems. They don't even x-ray anymore, because it won't actually change what they do afterwards, which, essentially, is not a very great deal. So, there's every chance that I could currently be walking around with a cracked rib, which certainly is something to follow the fake dislocated shoulder I had last month. In all reality, it's reasonably likely that the ribs are simply very bruised, (it doesn't seem that they are actually broken, since they're not, you know, letting air out of my lungs or anything like that), but the pain is still quite often terrific. But only when I move. Apart from that, it's fine.

Odd was the inescapable guilt I still had about having to take time off from work. I wonder what I would consider an appropriate reason to take some time off work. Decapitation, perhaps, or maybe just the loss of a lesser limb. The staff at the hospital were all fantastic, and another reason why I'm always so pro-NHS. We hear a lot of negative stuff about our health service (thank you, Mr Lansley), but at the very least, when I go to them in pain to hear that there's not actually anything they can do, it's a relief that I'm not having to spend two hundred quid for the privilege.

The Times They Are Achanging

Trying to cobble an article together for an upcoming competition. I don't really do articles, since that usually demands that I try to sound like I know what I'm talking about. So, usually, I stick to fiction: plays, stories, and the like. Recently, however, I've done a few reviews and opinion pieces, mainly for stage, TV and film. Presumably, that's one of the reasons for keeping up with this blog: trying to exercise a writing muscle, with the hope that for every 100 blogs I write, there might be at least one that I can hack apart and re-use.

The article that I'm attempting to put together at the moment comes from old material, but I'm not precisely sure where. At times it reads like a spec piece for the Guardian, whereas at others it sounds more like a bit of stand-up. Therefore, the latter, while perhaps funny enough for a topic on stand-up, just sounds clunky on paper. This has happened often before: an idea, well-written and well paced, simply doesn't work in whatever format you've decided to place it. I could write exactly the same story as a short piece of fiction, a radio play, and a half hour spot on TV, and all three would demand entirely different narrative techniques. Now, no doubt this is old news to anyone who's been writing professionally for a while, but it's still something I'm finding my way around. I'm still at the point when I'm ploughing through a story, not able to work out why a reasonably simple but clever idea isn't working. It usually takes me a while to work out that I'm simply writing it in the wrong format. By which I don't mean the wrong version of Microsoft Word.

The thing I'm trying to get this article finished for is the 2012 Prolitzer Peize, which is a significantly more open door affair than the Pulitzer Prize (and unless I can lip-read Andrew Mitchell, I don't think that's coming anywhere near me soon). This morning, on a whim, I checked the deadline, which I knew without checking to be October 31st. However, it seems that the deadline with checking is thirty days earlier - less than a week away. The good news is that I've already got more than half of the word count written. The bad news, of course, is that it isn't all about the word count. In the current version of the article, which is an opinion piece, I state quite emphatically my opinion. I do it at the top of the article. I also do it at the end. And, for good measure, I find space and time to do it a couple of times within the body of the text itself. As an opinion piece, it's certainly not short of opinion. However, in terms of witty and erudite words to back up the opinion, it's currently backing bash fully away from any semblance of coherence. However, it's a good writing exercise, and as ever, it's useful to have a deadline looming to sharpen the senses. Whether I get anywhere with the entry or not, I'll post the resulting article up here in a few weeks.

Last night's Acting Class at the New Venture Theatre was great fun, possibly the breeziest and loveliest class of the term so far. There was a reasonable amount of improv interspersed with everything else, and while the NVT classes are more Acting technique-directed than the upcoming improv drop ins at the DukeBox Theatre will be, the vibe promised great things for Iron Clad Improv come October.

The wind and rain seem to have tailed off a bit (touch wood), which is about time, since I have a Ghostwalk tonight. As ever, it passes by the Northern Lights bar in Brighton's Lanes. Normally, I wouldn't mention this, bit I'm aware that a friend is having birthday drinks in that bar tonight, and I'll be passing through, telling ghost stories while she's there, despite the fact that she (still) hasn't come along on the walk. This means that she will be getting at least one ghost story for free. I have decided that she can have this as her birthday present.

Making A Song And Dance

Still doing very well with rehearsals for Three Kinds Of Me (although I had to shout a bit yesterday, something I've not really had to do as a director in about twenty years; luckily and thankfully my ire was not directed at my actor). We're reasonably ahead of where I thought we might be at this point, which is a blessed relief. It's one of the most challenging experiences I've had as a director, made all the more intense because of the singular nature of the piece (it being a one woman show). I have every intention of keeping things as simple as possible (people who have been in a show of mine before will be scoffing right about now), but it may be that there are certain moments in the play that need a certain push, or light shining on whatever that moment happens to be about. That's the danger, however: I can't simply - for example - stick a bit of sad music on to make sure the audience knows that they're meant to be feeling sad. I know that sort of thing happens often - particularly in film and TV - but it should be serving as an embellishment to the main story, not as a replacement for it. Otherwise, frankly, I'm not doing my job properly. What's interesting is how much I'm having to feel my way as we go along. To a certain extent, that's true of any production, whether as director or actor (or, occasionally, even as writer), but the text is such a subtle and elusive one (the lead character has had a massive emotional upheaval, but the play itself is about her recovery), that I'm constantly discovering new things about it. The practical upshoot of all that loveliness, however, is that my production manager and crew get increasingly frustrated the longer I don't fight the show's elusiveness, and haven't yet made absolutely firm decisions regarding set and props.

The other thing to be careful about with regard to music (I am listening to a fair bit at the moment, to see what pieces can/should be used for 3KM), is that I'm absolutely selecting music based on what I feel is right for the show, as opposed to what my personal tastes are at the moment. Having said that, the two can dovetail: about fifteen years ago, I'd been asked to direct a show - again, a piece of new writing, again, a piece about tension, fragility and loneliness - there must be something about me that makes people feel I have something to say about that stuff (Probably best not to dwell too much on that train of thought). For the music between scene changes (there were a surprising amount of scene changes, which switched location quite often), I played some music, most of which happened to be different tracks from an album I was listening to at the time. Of course, some of the reason behind that was simply that I liked the album (it was I, Megaphone by Imogen Heap), but also because it happened to suit the narrative of the play very well. There's at least a chance that I might use something by Imogen Heap again this time around. But everything will require a lot more listens first.

The pub theatre where I'm going to be running my improv workshops from the end of October got its name today. As its a theatre at the back of the Iron Duke pub (in Hove), it's going to be called, simply, the DukeBox Theatre, which I think is fun and quirky. They're beginning to get an online presence via all the usual forums like facebook and twitter, so have a look out for them; it would be great to get their opening season off to a flying start.

Til then, I'm still running drop in acting classes at the New Venture Theatre, still about making mistakes, and starting all over. Tonight's session, my fourth class in this series (although you can drop in at any point) will start looking at script work. There's been some great responses from class members in the past month, so it promises to be a great night. It's £5 a session, unless you're a NVT member, in which case it's only £2.50. If its your very first session, then it's absolutely free of charge.

Goodbye, Ponds: Top 5 Doctor Who Farewells

So, it’s goodbye to the Ponds in this week’s The Angels Take Manhattan – But what other farewells have there been in history of Doctor Who? Which are the best? What’s the worst? And why do the companions who travel with Colin Baker end up with hairy loud misogynists?


5) Rose Tyler (Doomsday, 2006)

Massively diluted due to subsequent returns and being married off to a human Doctor on a wet beach, the emotional impact of England’s Rose Tyler being dragged into an (allegedly) inescapable other dimension was shocking and unpredictable, not least because it flew directly in the face of David Tennant’s solve-everything-attitude incarnation of the Doctor. It was a glorious end for Billie Piper, who only a few years previously, had been dismissed by fans as ‘stunt casting’.


4) Jo Grant (The Green Death, 1973)

Forget the revisionist viewings of whether or not Pertwee’s Doc is being side-lined romantically for a younger, hippier, and more human model, this departure scene sticks with the lonely Time Lord, rather than the departing companion played by Katy Manning, as we witness the Doctor hesitating outside the pub before driving on; a stark reminder that even if these people are his friends, their lives move swiftly on without him. Of course, the scene is given added poignancy when you consider the classic Barry Letts production team was dismantling.

3) Sarah Jane Smith (The Hand Of Fear, 1976)

The archetypal tacked-on, bundled-out-of-the-TARDIS scene, but also the template of how to do such a scene absolutely correctly. Elisabeth Sladen plays the scene as if she’s never given any consideration to the possibility that her travels with The Doctor might end - even in the story that’s just happened, on present-day Earth, she doesn’t take time to catch up with friends. That belief was likely to have been shared by the millions of fans who adored her. Her unexpected return to the series thirty years later was one of the show’s emotional high-points.

2) Adric (Earthshock, 1982)

Infamously, not the most popular of companions, but it’s that simple fact that makes Adric’s noble sacrifice all the more affecting. It’s in a story that begins with Matthew Waterhouse’s character bickering with the rest of the TARDIS crew about the lack of respect he’s afforded, and that he’s side-lined in favour of comparatively less intelligent companions – a sort of proto-Sheldon Cooper. He’s even responsible for saving the Doctor in his absence – via the use of his gold-edged award in the shape of a star. One thinks that even now, the Doctor carries the gilt of Adric’s death but, like the closing credits of this story, in silence.

1) Susan Foreman (The Dalek Invasion Of Earth, 1965)

It’s the very first departure of a series regular, and as such, is milked for everything it’s got. There’s David’s awkward flirting as he realises that Susan’s loyalties lie with her grandfather (witness Ian being completely oblivious to the situation, and Barbra almost having to forcibly drag him away to give the couple a bit of privacy), and William Hartnell’s subtle bit of business as he darts into the TARDIS – it’s clear that he’s decided to leave Susan behind long before David brings it up. And, of course, there’s the Doctor’s final speech to his grand-daughter, a almost-coda for the series, certainly iconic enough to serve as a prologue to the 20th anniversary adventure, The Five Doctors: “One day, I shall come back. Yes, I shall come back. Until then, there must be no regrets, no tears, no anxieties. Just go forward in all your beliefs and prove to me that I am not mistaken in mine …. “

And The Worst :

Perpugillium Brown (Mindwarp, 1986)

Oh, we know. In a fair world, this would easily be the best, by a country light-year – it’s a shocking, violent, and cruel. Surprisingly, it’s even casual and unfeeling (as far as villain Kiv is concerned, Peri is just a body – perhaps reflecting some dad’s views) and it strikes home as the murder of a well-loved companion – made all the more unbearable because the Doctor might’ve been able to help if the Valeyard hadn’t dragged him off to the Trial Of A Timelord. We’re pretty sure it’s the way Nicola Bryant would’ve wanted to go. But then, a few episodes later, the OXO mum arrives to kiss it all better in a clumsy bit of retro fitting that even Bobby Ewing wouldn’t have dared come out of the shower for. It makes about as much sense as Melanie Bush suddenly deciding that she wants to stay on a ice-cube planet with an intergalactic Del Boy. Which, admittedly, also happened.

It's All In The Timing

Today, I had an idea for a column. Nothing important or even intelligent, just a bit of fluff, a bit of filler, but it promised to be a mildly diverting read, the sort of thing you click on while wasting time on the internet. I write the occasional review and column for a website called CultBox, and this seemed an ideal place to send my bit of writing to.

It took about a hour, and was a fairly smooth bit of writing, presenting very few problems or challenges, bar a few checks of dates and spellings. After tidying up the prose a bit, I sent it off.

Less than a hour later, I got the inevitable reply: someone had already pitched, written, and sent a similar article. Very similar, in fact, apparently making many of the same points I'd made in my article. The only difference, really, was that they'd got there first. You see, kids, this is what happens when you don't send a speculative querying email first.

Obviously, I'll be reading with interest to see what I think if the article that beat me to the post, but overall, I'm reasonably ambivalent about the while thing. Despite having written things, on and off, for about twenty years or more, I feel like its only really now that I'm really getting to grips - nearly - with the various disciplines of being a writer. I'm not exactly saying that I've been lazy (not out loud, anyway), but I suspect that even earlier this year I would've had that idea for the column, written half of it in my head, not actually written any of it in real life, and missed the chance to get in published. I'm aware that I missed the chance anyway, but you get the point. It wasn't so much about acting on the idea more quickly, but having the idea itself more quickly.

Although someone else 'got my gig', I don't regret the time I spent writing the piece. It's quite some time away from anyone ever pays me for anything I write, and indeed, everything I read suggests that I'll spend at least a year or so having stuff published with absolutely no expectation of remuneration. But, the idea is that it's all good practice, and in any case, it's entirely likely that I'll be able to use the article (or some version of it) in the future, and adds to the mythical portfolio that may well help me get that first gig.

Well, that's the idea, anyway.

Laugh It Up

This week, I got the confirmation on the series of improv drop-in classes I'm going to be holding, starting later this year. They're going to be every Sunday evening, 7-9, at the Iron Duke in Hove. As we speak, a fringe style theatre is being built there, and it's set to have a launch/opening night in a couple of weeks time.

It's been a couple of years now since I was regularly involved in improv, and the time feels right to get back in the saddle again, particularly as I'm going to be directing the improvised play in May as part of the Brighton Festival Fringe. It may well be a contributory factor that I don't really intend to be a participant, just a workshop leader.

I use improv a lot as a director, and it also forms the bulk of what I do in the drop in classes at the New Venture Theatre, but I'm hoping that the drop ins at the Iron Duke will be somewhat different. The classes at the NVT are exactly that - classes, meaning that there's an expectation that all manner of things might be covered for all manner of 'levels'. The drop ins at the Duke are likely to take a significantly more relaxed tone - more game playing, occasionally more emphasis on the 'fun'. Which is not to say that there won't often be a serious side to proceedings. They will be workshops that will change and evolve according to the needs and wants of those that turn up to them week after week.

The first workshop won't be until towards the end of October (the Sunday before Halloween), since I have Three Kinds Of Me to direct before that, but there's already been a pleasing amount of interest shown already. I'll stick the details up on the website pretty soon, but the basics are: Iron Duke, Hove, Sundays, 7-9, £5.

As I mentioned yesterday, we're about halfway through the text for Three Kinds Of Me. One of the most impressive things this week has been the laughing. There's a sequence in the play that requires Sarah to laugh - slightly hysterically - at events that are beyond her control. We were both mildly concerned about the scene, since actors having to laugh notoriously don't convince: it's painfully obvious to everyone that you're doing a fake laugh. I'm particularly bad at this kind of thing. My laugh sounds fake, even when it's genuine. I have this odd thing of phonetically laughing, actually vocalising the 'ha-ha-ha-ha!'. I'm not entirely sure why, although any cast I've ever worked with always knows when I'm in the audience. When Sarah and I were discussing how she would approach her fake laugh, our solution was simple: if it didn't convince, we'd just cut the laugh, or re-write the line. After all, Sarah's the writer, so it wasn't as if we would have to worry about worrying the copyright holders. As it turned out, it wasn't an issue: Sarah's fake laugh is remarkably convincing (so much so, that at first I thought she was corpsing. Of course, the possible upshoot of all this is that Sarah occasionally reads this blog, and if she reads that I've spoken well of her fake laugh, it's at least possible that she'll get overly self conscious, and end up doing a fake fake laugh after all.

Tonight is this weeks Ghostwalk, which as ever meets outside the Druids Head in Brighton at 7.30. (£8 unless you're reasonably young or reasonably old) . There's quite a few in the next few weeks, as we get closer to Halloween (plus, a special 9.00 walk on the night of Halloween itself) and the list of dates can be found on the website. Last weeks Ghostwalk was particularly fun, with a good sized crowd who were really in the mood for a good time. If you're free, come along. You've been saying you will for, like, ages.

I'm fully aware that today's blog seems to be mainly an advert for upcoming features, much like before the trailers in a 1970s cinema. I did write another blog (about spoilers), but it seems like that might be a good piece to send off for the Prolitzer (not the Pulitzer, I think that's somewhat out of my league). Whether the spoilers piece ends up on the Prolitzer website or not, I'll post it up here eventually.

Half Way Mark

Lovely rehearsal for Three Kinds Of Me tonight, which, as I was saying earlier, is just a month away. It's in very good shape. Tonight, we ran through the first half of the play, which is roughly forty minutes. I think once we get the tone and pace right, mess around a bit with sound fx and music, it will probably still come in around the forty mark. Already it's pacy enough to feel quicker.

We had a small audience in tonight, made up of our technical crew, which definitely helps with things like tone, and with blocking (we're performing it to three sides, and not just because of the title of the play). As a director, you can often become overwhelmed by the whole business of problem solving, and trying to get the whole thing to make sense. In that regard, I have every chance of becoming something of a control freak, but it's absolutely vital to have a fresh pair of eyes on the thing that you could possibly be becoming overly familiar with. It also gives you the elbow room and strength of mind not to be too concerned if there's a couple of scenes that you haven't quite solved yet. There was a sequence tonight that I was somewhat concerned about, but after being able to talk about it out loud for less than thirty seconds, we were able to spot that the solution was easy, accessible, and actually added another layer to the play. I love it when that happens.

There's not another rehearsal for Three Kinds now until Sunday, although the New Venture Theatre are having their AGM on Saturday, which is followed by a Social, a chance to meet members new and old (or just ageing). It promises to be a good night, which somewhat surprisingly, I'll be free for.

In other news, I have other news. About a new series of Improv Classes starting up next month, but I'll talk about that in the next blog, as well as the series of short stories that, contrary to every expectation I had, I appear to have a very good chance of actually finishing ...

Take A Joke. Just Don't Tweet It.

So, the other day, I responded to a tweet from Mock The Week. They were asking for gags, specifically Unlikely Complaints To A TV Channel. By the time I saw the tweet, it was about twenty hours old, but I threw a gag or two their way anyway, confident in the assumption that whatever I came up with would've been done already.

Initially, I tried to do a joke about Mock The Week itself, and it's notoriously low number of female comedians on the panel, but I couldn't see how to do it without coming across as overly combative. Not under 140 characters, anyway. I briefly considered some joke about Frankie Boyle being trapped in a car crash, but it just sounded like I wanted Frankie Boyle to be in a car crash (not actually true), and anyway, the man hasn't even been on the show for about three years.

In the end, then, I went for the second most obvious gag: suggesting that it was annoying that there was no TV channel to watch old episodes of Mock The Week. A weak joke, I know, but the only one that occurred to me at the time. After a couple of hours, however, Mock The Week re-tweeted the joke. It must have been a slow night.

It occurred to me then, of course, that a lot more people would now see my tweet than would normally be the case if it had just turned up in the feeds of my 'followers'. I assumed that the worst that would happen would be that a few thousand people would see my joke, tut, think 'that's not funny', and go about their day. Perhaps a few of them would feel compelled to tweet me personally to tell me that my joke was not in any way amusing. Or maybe I was being too hard on myself: maybe one or two people would actually find the gag at least mildly amusing. What I didn't expect, however, is what actually happened.

Over the next few hours, I got a reasonable amount of unreasonable tweets. Some derisive (you could say mocking), some actually angry. But all of them linked by a common thread: they all seemed to genuinely believe that I hadn't heard of the TV channel Dave. Even though that was the point of the joke.

I tried to remain open-minded about it all. Possibly, as naivety was the foundation of my joke, perhaps my respondents were playing along in the same spirit: pretending to honestly believe that I was hunting furiously for year old repeats of MTW, but didn't know about Dave. But the tweets were too bitchy, too teasing, too ready to take the mick. Even the ones who were nice clearly thought that I was being sincere, including the lovely lady who pointed out that the previous weeks episode often appeared on YouTube (but, as she pointed out, in two parts). I guess I was just startled that so many viewers of Mock The Week were unable to understand what a joke was. (insert your own punchline).

In other news, there's now about four weeks to go until the performances of Three Kinds Of Me. In an ideal world, we'd be rehearsing every day of the next month. As it is, time and constraints limit us to a few evenings and some Sunday afternoons. We have a kind of technical meeting tonight, where our lighting & sound designers and operators are going to want to joe exactly what it is I want. And I, like the most annoying and unprofessional director ever, am going to have to declare that as yet, I'm not entirely sure. I'm very lucky in that I have a designer that can be both pedantic and patient (usually, you have to settle for one or the other, and the combination of both is a startlingly valuable commodity), and who can usually decipher what ill-formed (and ill-conceived) ideas I'm struggling to come up with. We're halfway through the play now (in terms of pages rehearsed), and I'm hopeful that we will pick up pace even further in the next week or so, giving us a comfortable amount of time to run the whole thing over a few times. Anyway, that's the plan. As I've mentioned, it'll be on next month at the New Venture Theatre in Bedford Place, Hove, and tickets (already selling) can be booked via http://www.ticketsource.co.uk/newventuretheatre/ .

Heading To Hedda

Hoping to get up to see the Old Vic production of Hedda Gabler soon. It won't be that easy, as I have a very full schedule over the next few weeks, what with rehearsals for Three Kinds Of Me, extra Ghostwalks (October being the month of Halloween) and, of course, the NVT Acting Classes (two down, four to go). But I don't see nearly enough London theatre, and I want to start remedying that. Two factors contribute to me wanting to see this particular production - the first being that lastminute.com have this 'theatre fortnight' deal going on at the moment, so that some tickets are just fifteen quid. Since my usual excuse for not going to see more theatre is that it's priced well out of my range (as long as I'm going to remain adamant that I'm not going to sell a kidney, or anything), that's obviously a compelling argument, even if the tickets turn out to be shunted behind a pillar.

The second factor is that I was in a production of Hedda Gabler myself this year, and it's always interesting to see how different companies interpret the same show, even if it is, literally, a different interpretation, by which I mean a different translation. I know that I read through several different versions of Medea before choosing the Tom Paulin one to direct, a move that my cast and audiences certainly appreciated.

I think that Hedda is a deceptively difficult show to put on, and to pull off. It can be a bit of an old warhorse of a text for am-dram companies to pull out of the bag, and I know from various conversations that some audiences find it difficult to get a handle on why (and indeed if) its relevant today. I suspect that people can get hung up on the belief that it's a play about class. Obviously, that's a major factor, but I think it's significantly more visceral than that, that it can be a very relevant, vital, and indeed a more sensual and sexy play that its sometimes dusty reputation suggests. Hell, it's a play about blistering frustration, clearly it should be delivered with all the energy of a powderkeg set to blow.

But as well as all that, it seems that modern audiences (and actors and directors, come to that) are only coming across the startling idea that Hedda Gabler can at times be funny. It's possible that this was one reason behind the casting of Sheridan Smith in the title role. Now, I'm not suggesting that the producers are expecting the fanbase of Two Pints Of Larger And A Packet Of Crisps to rock up to the Old Vic, although obviously that's the ideal when you cast someone from a popular show, and it can't hurt.

I'm not really aware of Sheridan Smith's work outside Two Pints, and so I was one of those who noted with interest her arrival as one of the most iconic female characters in drama, wondering briefly if it really was stunt casting. Somehow, I'd forgotten that, with a very few exceptions, that if an actor has made it to the main cast of a major television series, then it's very likely that they've done a great deal of varied work elsewhere before the avearge audience member has heard of them. You think of another Smith: Matt, who to many seemed far too young and far too inexperienced to be cast as Doctor Who, but had aleady been around impressing for a good few years previously.

Smith (Sheridan, not Matt) seems to be doing a great deal of spadework this year to ensure that Two Pints is but a footnote on her career, which is great, since it was very easily a role that could have seen her typecast for decades.

Three Kinds Of Rehearsal

A night off tonight. Earlier this week, we'd become terrifyingly aware of the concept of four weeks being actually quite a short amount of time. With that in mind, we went through diaries and plugged up any spare night going with an extra rehearsal. Turns out that there's not a great many spare nights between now and curtain up. Not that we're using a curtain, but you get the idea.

We had booked in a rehearsal for tonight, but we pulled it - giving ourselves a chance to gird our loins before things really kick in, and anyway, I suspect that Sarah's boyfriend would quite appreicate actually seeing her before Halloween. Because between now and then, the rehearsals get quite intense.

One of the reasons the rehearsals are now getting a bit intense (apart from the subject matter) is the method of rehearsal we're using. We're doing something called 'actioning', which is something I've tended to avoid as an actor. Very roughly speaking, you endow every single line - every one - with a seperate 'action', a word that describes what your intention is within that line alone. It doesn't have to be (and possibly sometimes shouldn't be) in the context of the lines that surrond it on either side. In terms of performance, it can make for something of a jolting, even unrealistic narrative, which is possibly why I've previously always been a little wary of it. In this sense, I suspect it's more of a director's tool than that of the actors, if only because it makes the director's life easier - they can simply engineer their actor to be in a particular place/postion/mood at a particular time.

Of course, the key word there is 'tool' - it's not the end, but a means to an end. Something I've become very aware of while directing Three Kinds Of Me is that while I might generally be the same kind of director whatever project I work on, I'll employ very different tools depending on what the show is - a one woman show about mental health, for instance, or a big cast Shakespeare. I've known a couple of directors who operate in exactly the same way no matter what they're directing - knockabout farce, or mid-80s AIDS drama. One director, in particular, I remember saying absolutely nothing in any rehearsals, but would spend the first five minutes of the following rehearsal passing around little notes (no bigger than a Rizla) before another wordless rehearsal. Incidentally, I seem to remember that my only note said something like 'Speak slower, speak louder'. To be fair, I'll concede he had a point.

Because we're doing this 'actioning', the intial bout of rehearsals are going slower than I'd expected - not too slow, but certainly not as quick as I'd first planned (to give you and idea, I'd hoped to do five pages on Tuesday. We didn't quite manage one). It means everything is very textured and toned, and as the subsequent rehearsals follow each other, our 'muscle memory' will kick in, and we'll start speaking in a shorthand. It's one of the most endlessly interesting projects I've had the pleasure to work on, and I'm looking forward to continuing the journey.

By the way, tickets went on sale this week, which means that we haven't just imagined it, or anything, and the play will actually happen. I think I mentioned before that it's a very limited run, (only two nights) and tickets are already selling. Pop along to the new venture theatre ticket page to relieve yourself of a few quid for the pleasure of a great one woman show.

Mind The Gap

Found myself in a conversation last night about that thing where you entirely misread something. You know, you glance at a newspaper headline, or see a poster, and you think 'No! Wait, that can't be right ...' before looking back at the not-so offending words, and working out that, no, that can't be right, and what you thought was a mildly offensive comment outside your local church was just a reference about your ship coming in to dock.

Occasionally, the mis-read can make you think that you've seen words that, on further investigation, look nothing like the words you thought they were. But, sometimes, you can see where the connect was. I mentioned that every time I'm at the train station, I get briefly confused by a sign above the locked up bikes that says 'bicycle facilities'. For some reason, I keep reading it as 'bicycle fatalities'. As my friend pointed out, that's the sort of thing that tends to happen in a Final Destination movie when fate is attempting to give a heads up to the next victim that death is gearing up to dispatch them in a violent, grisly, and bizarrely amusing manner.

So, anyway, this morning I was cycling on my way to the train station with the future portending poster. I turned right. Well, I did, and my handlebars did, but my front wheel decided that this would be an ideal time to investigate all the possibilities that Left had to offer. The traffic on all sides was fairly singularly adamant that right was the way to go, but my handlebars, clearly offended at my wheel's new found independence, decided to now see if going in the opposite direction was an option. I've always wanted a folding bike, but I've not wanted the bike I'm already riding to become one while I'm travelling with morning traffic. It was like Transformers, if filmed by the Children's Film Foundation.

All this happened in a matter of seconds, and was somewhat unexpected. Well, I say unexpected. I clearly wasn't paying enough attention to the sign at the train station.

Another Short Note About Acting Class

Had another Acting Class at the NVT tonight, which went well, and got a lot of good responses. However, all I could focus on was the faces of those that appeared not to be getting a kick out of it.

It's the same as when I'm doing stand up, or the GhostWalk. It doesn't matter if everyone's having a good time, my attention is drawn, briar patch like, to the individual who seems not to be having quite as good a time as everyone else. It's a stupid logic, of course: it's not possible for everyone to be enjoying it all at the same level as everyone else. But the perfectionist performer (or tutor) in me refuses to accept this logic. From conversations with other performers, and reading memoirs and the like, I know it's an universal problem: that one person who has cracked less smiles than everyone else becomes both your target and your albatross.

In a way, what made it complicated tonight was a lack of complication: in tonight's workshop we were looking at moments of 'nothing's'. It's all too easy for many actors to fill up their time on stage with lots of 'business', for instance huffing and puffing and constantly looking at their watch to signal to the audience that they're waiting for someone or something that's late, in a way that they simply wouldn't do in real life. Of course, we feel the need to communicate something to a watching audience, but we don't often have the courage to do 'nothing': but the problem challenges those who aren't even on stage - even as audience members, it seems we need instant gratification, to have our stories told to us, almost spoonfed, without making too much effort ourselves. This shouldn't be the case: audiences are not passive, they become part of the piece. They themselves have to engage, whatever is on stage, we bring our own experience and baggage to it, and write our own stories on the scene, until dialogue and action tells us otherwise.

Of course, I'm talking about all of this reacting to just a couple of members of the class who seemed not to be having as good a time as I thought they should have had. It's the same sort of pep talk any performer has to give themselves when a gig hasn't gone as perfectly as s/he feels that it should've.

But here's something that I honestly think is worth considering: the possibly that those couple of people might be entirely correct. You're an extraordinarily complacent performer or workshop leader if you think that your way is the best way. If someone disagrees, their opinion is worthy of merit, even if they are indeed only one.

Of course, you can tie yourself up on knots trying to please all of the people all of the time: it's a fools errand. Ignoring the fact that I've just managed to crowbar three cliches into two sentences, it's my job to do the best again, while always acknowledging that the job could be done even better.

At the end of my workshops, I end with a line which I picked up when I first starred learning improv, at drop-in classes with The Maydays. The idea is that if, during the class, you witnessed something that you liked or enjoyed, then you go up to the person involved, and you tell them so. That's not the important bit, though. The important bit is for whoever you're delivering your compliment to. It's vitally important that when someone takes the time to tell you how much they liked what you did, that you accept what they're saying at face value: you don't attempt to qualify or quantify what you did, or refer to the twenty other things you did tht weren't quite as good, or admit that the great thing your flatterer is referring to was actually a mistake ... You simply breath in, accept the compliment, and say nothing other than, 'thank you'.

Well, you'd be proud. As the class ended, and I fretted about those people I hadn't really been able to communicate my ideas to, as I morosely wondered if this weeks workshop had worked as well as last weeks, I had a few of the people come up to me, thanking me for the workshop, saying that they'd enjoyed it, and that they'd be back next week. It wasn't easy, but I did it: I breathed in. I accepted the compliment, and I said thank you.

Thank you.

Drawing A Blank

I'm running a series of Acting Classes at the NVT at the moment, and the second one is tonight (Monday). The main umbrella theme of this series of classes is giving people the licence to make mistakes, to get things wrong, to go for broke, actually break things, and start all over.

Because that's the great fear that a lot of us have about acting, that there's a 'right' and a 'wrong' way to do it, and if you get it wrong, everyone around you is going to call you on it, and maybe even point and laugh. And people pointing and laughing is almost never good for the ego. In my acting classes, and also in the improv workshops I occasionally run, I subscribe fully to the idea that was thrust upon me when I first started learning improv, and I now deliver towards anyone in my classes: you can't get this wrong.

Of course, as a tutor or workshop leader, you might just be making a rod for your own back when you state to your students that you can't get it wrong. What you're trying to engender, obviously, is an atmosphere of, if not exactly fearlessness, certainly a group who have the willingness not to five a damn. Of course it's true that there are always going to be performers who are less obviously skilled than others: maybe they find it more challenging to be realistic, or perhaps they can't switch off the internal joker. Maybe, simply, they're just not that charismatic onstage. Whatever the reason, the secret code of 'You can't get this wrong' will solve those problems for a surprising amount of people.

It can backfire, however. I remember running an improv workshop a while back with a noticeable number of people who were clearly a little nervous at the whole concept of turning up on stage with no plan or preconception of what they were going to do. So I spoke even more than I usually do about this whole idea of not being able to get stuff wrong ('You can try, but you still won't get it wrong'), and in addition, I put forward quite a few simplified improv games that had a limited amount of outcomes. Much like a magician forcing an audience member's hand, if the nervous actors in the class only had a limited amount of choices available to them, then it was much less likely that they'd be able to get things 'wrong'.

That was the theory, anyway. There was one particular chap in the class who wasn't in any way nervous. And he made every attempt to systematically sabotage the acting class. He'd rehearse a scene with a partner, and then when sharing it with the rest of the class, he'd riff in an entirely different direction, leaving his poor acting partner nonplussed and confused. During a warm up exercise, which involved the group passing a long broom handle to one another in a circle, he snatched the stick off someone, and twirled it around himself, screaming like a samurai. After each incident, he would fix me with a baleful gaze, and, smiling softly, would say: 'well, you did say we couldn't get it wrong'.

Tonight's Acting Class will mostly be about the removal of choice. It's something that began to get discussed towards the end of last week's class: if, as an actor (or indeed, writer, or whatever) you are given access to a blank canvas, and told you can do whatever you want, chances are your mind will soon be as blank as that canvas. But if you're told that your story can only feature women, and has to be set before 1930, and most involve a secret revealed, well, chances are that your problem solving mind will already be hard at work creating a dialogue. Well, that's the theory, anyway. If you're in Brighton tonight, you may want to put the theory to the test.

In other news, I went to see Total Recall last night. There have been countless poor reviews, so I was able to go in with low expectations. These expectations were largely met. At the top of the film, when the various studio idents appear, the words 'Original Film' appeared, which, considering it was a remake, an' all, seemed a tad unfortunate. Turned out it was the wittiest moment in the movie, even if it didn't intend to be.

I'll Get Around To It

Something odd happened with my Facebook last night. I'm not sure why, but each time I left a comment, or updated my status, the little image that appeared next to whatever I'd written - in theory, my profile pic - showed an image of a different woman. The first picture was that of Ariana Huffington (of the Huffington Post, obviously), and I wondered initially if something had got into my system meaning that anyone that I was friends with, or whose pages I subscribed to, would now show as my profile picture.

It didn't seem to be the case, though, as the picture changed each time I refreshed the page, and the next few people I didn't recognise at all, but they all seemed to be the kinds of photos that you occasionally get on an unsolicited follower on twitter; the kind that follows 95,3977 other people, has never tweeted, has a disturbing sounding web address, and a photo where they're pouting from behind a tangle of tousled hair. And I don't actually know anyone like that. Well, no more than six.

Clearly something had infected my Facebook profile, but it was odd that all the images being touted as me were all female. I've never before picked up a virus from a variety of different women (oh, please; you should be ashamed of yourselves) and I didn't really know what to do. Well, actually, I did; I reacted to this problem in the way that I react to rather too many: I didn't really do anything, in the assumption that everything would probably sort itself out. You'd be surprised how often this is successful. Although if you've received a email from me in the last 24 hours claiming that I've got video footage of you doing something obscene, I'd imagine you can probably dismiss and delete it without too much concern about your personal liberty.

I guess there's one major reason why I put off doing anything about those things sent to try me, and it's the old demon procrastination. There are many theories as to why people procrastinate, but it does seem to be deeply ingrained into a great many of us. It's one of the reasons why I'm writing this blog; so that my writing becomes more habit than chore. I missed writing yesterday's blog simply because I couldn't think of a damn thing to talk about; and even just that single one-day pause was a real scattering of tacks in the road: it became stupidly difficult to get the groove going again to begin writing today's entry.

In order to further combat this continual threat of artistic lethargy, in November, I'm going to be taking part in NaNoWriMo. This is an annual event, which takes place each November, in which thousands of people across the world who don't know any better attempt to hack out an entire novel in a month (the name stands for National Novel Writing Month, see?). The main logic behind this is that many people who consider themselves writers speak at great length about this book that they're going to write, while never actually writing it, because life, jobs, family and love gets in the way. But of course, they'll always be in the way, and NaNoWriMo serves as a catalyst to actually stop coming up with excuses and get the damn thing done.

There are two particularly brilliant conceits with the success of NaNoWriMo, one somewhat unavoidable, but the second ingenious. The first simply comes from the fact that everyone is attempting to write a novel in a month; the same month. No matter that such an undertaking is insane, it combats the usual problem that most writers have to deal with at some point, insomuch that writing is a particularly solitary activity, there's not really anyone else around to feel your pain. In November, however, there are potentially millions of people online, all cheerfully ready to acknowledge that their efforts are worse than yours.

Which brings us to the second point of success: it's written into the rules of NaNoWriMo that you should consider it unimportant how good your novel is. This is one competition where quantity truly is more important that quality: all that matters is that you get those 50,000 words down in some sort of coherent narrative order. The polishing, detailing - many authors would say the actual hard work of the real writing - can come after November, once you've got past that first, almost always insurmountable hurdle of actually getting a story written. For a serial procrastinator like me, it means that all the usual excuses and logical reasons of why I don't get round to findings hong such and such a play, or completing that 20 minutes of stand up, have been ruthlessly swept away. There are no excuses to not write: you simply write.

I should point out, I have tried NaNoWriMo before, about four years ago. I lasted one day, and 600 words.

I'll let you know if I do any better this time round.

Icecream Sunday

A day off today. I'm not used to days off. I mean, obviously, I've just come off a few weeks holiday, but that's different. It's been a reasonable whack of time since I last had a regular, weekly day off. The two weekend acting classes that I run were combined into one easily manageable Saturday session, freeing up my Sundays. It means I'll take quite a hit on my monthly pay, so I'm going to have to spend less on things like, I don't know, fresh fruit and vegetables, but on balance, it's probably a bearable sacrifice to make for my mental health. And it's not as if I eat a great many fresh fruit and vegetables anyway.

So far, despite my all new work ethic, I haven't done a great deal with my day off, but I'm going to call that a good thing, since it's my, you know, day off. I've had to prepare for tonight's PPM (Pre-Production Meeting) for Three Kinds Of Me, and sort out what I'm doing in tomorrow night's Acting Class, but that's been fairly low impact, all things considered. Actually, all things considered, I probably wouldn't have found them to be such a low impact duo of tasks if today hadn't been a day off. That's the thing with wall to wall, relentless seven day week work .. Your mind (and emotions) aren't given enough breathing space to do anything,

I even found myself on the beach this afternoon. Only the second or third time this year, which is criminal, considering how close I live. I've been physically down there quite often, but normally only as a passage to get from the flat to town, very rarely as a destination. I think my boredom threshold is very low. It always seems like a grand idea, like the sort of thing I should be doing: sitting on the beach, reading a paperback, but quite often I'm getting twitchy after only ten minutes. I did ok today then; I was down there for about two hours. It helped that I went for a bit of a swim in the sea.

Now, I haven't swum in the sea for a couple of years. Again, criminal because the beach is only blah blah blah, but time and circumstance always seems to drive it away from me. Nevertheless, I'd decided quite early this week that I was going to commit to swimming in the sea on my new found day off. Once I'd checked the weather forecast, I knew there was no escape. It would be stupid not to. Once I'd done enough avoidance tactics of reading stuff on my kindle (it's true, you know, it really is easy to read in direct sunlight), I finally managed to get myself into the sea. Now, bear in mind this is the first time in about two years that I've been in the water, so I spent about two minutes doing a sort of paddle thing as I contemplated just how cold the water might be. As I did this, I was aware that was surrounded by loads of kids who clearly had no problem whatsoever with how could it was. So I (literally) took the plunge. And that's another truth often told: it's ok once you get your hair wet.

And it was actually quite lovely. I swam out further than I expected, not quite far enough to experience an Open Water moment, but far enough to almost lose the sounds of the crowd on the beach. The sound of the brass band on the bandstand did manage to float over. Another solitary swimmer splashed by. And suddenly, without warning and unbidden, an idea for a sequence for the novel that I hope to hack out during NaNoWriMo came to mind. Turns out I was working after all.

Bye Bye Baby, Sci-Fi

A couple of hundred words today on 'Broom Handle'. Not many, but they feel like important words, because I'm starting on the actual background details of the story, the whys and wherefores of the world I've created, rather than the narrative and plot. There's a problem, though: this story is sci-fi. And sci-fi sucks.

The thing is, I don't actually like sci-fi all that much. I mean, to watch, in film and TV, then great, but I've rarely come across sci-fi book (or speculative fiction, as it's increasingly being called) that I've really been blown over by. Of course, you could argue that that's simply because I'm not looking hard enough, and that would be largely true. I've not read any Phillip K Dick, for instance, and very little Ray Bradbury (although it was a collection of Bradbury short stories that first inspired this story). No Asimov, no Arthur C Clarke, very little John Wyndham (which I really should rectify at some point). I seem, rather, to have gotten trapped in reading, or trying to read, very poor sci-fi, stories that spend far too much time setting up this strange new world that's entirely normal to its inhabitants, but needs to be described in exposition heavy detail to the audience. I remember going to a couple of writers groups in Worthing, when I still lived there. Authors were invited to read extracts from whatever they were working on. On one particular session, a chap spent forty minutes describing in loving detail a post apocalyptic world in which women ruled, and men didn't wear the trousers. He wasn't talking figuratively. He literally meant that all the menfolk were banned from wearing anything below the waist. In the end, the person running the evening had to guide him off the stage.

It's not always like that, I should point out. I only managed two writers groups in Worthing, but at the second, the mood was somewhat grim. Everyone who had read had exhubrent confidence that was in direct inverse proportion to the talent that they displayed. More tension filled the room as everyone realised that no matter how much they hated everyone else's work, it was still better than anything they could produce. Eventually, an overly serious looking teenage girl stood up. She told us she was going to read us her poem. The room tensed even more; poetry is challenging enough even when it's in a book that you bought yourself. Then, as a final aperitif, she informed us that it was about her best friend who had died in a car crash a few months before. The tension felt quivering enough to snap: most of the stuff already read that night had been between mediocre and terrible, but it hadn't been introduced with the baggage of a dead best friend. She began to speak. It was, of course, beautiful. Simple, elegant, unfussy. Just a regretful goodbye to a young woman who had died far too soon. Somehow, she kept her composure throughout. The same couldn't be said of her audience.

Partially it was because that grieving teenager was a skilled writer, tapping into simple emotions and reactions, that brought out the best in her words, but it's also true that there's something about sci-fi that seems to bring out the worst in people, full of exposition and explanation by characters who don't need to explain the universe they live in, because they live in it. It's what I'm struggling with slightly in Broom Handle: there's a few details I need to explain, but I don't want to go overboard; just because we, the readers, don't know what's going on, doesn't mean that the characters are in the dark as well. That said, I'm a great fan of trusting an audience's intelligence: even if they don't exactly know what's going on, they're quite happy to play catch up. For instance, George Orwell's 1984 drops you right into another world without explanation from, literally, the first sentence, and trusts that you'll work out what's going on. It's about finding the balance.

Broom Handle is only a short story, of course - it's probably going to come in at about 4000 words - but I'm fond of it already because it's really the first story where I've had the initial idea, and actually managed to get it down on paper, before it fell apart like a badly mixed cake (or, indeed, like an ill-chosen metaphor). Quite often, I'll come across the first three pages of a story that I began writing some years previously. And the first three pages are pretty good. And the only ones that have been written. And here's the crunch: I have absolutely no idea what to do with the story. The white heat of the initial idea has long since faded, leaving only a dull, uninspired blank.

This blog, of course, helps. Obviously, it gets in the way (I'm writing this paragraph when I could be writing the opening paragraph of my next story), but I find that it's begun to focus me, if only to remind me that jotting down a few words in the evening could easily be a few hundred. And not be that much of a chore.

Fear Of Peers

Good, but strenuous, rehearsal tonight. I don't think I was communicating my intentions or wants as a director particularly well, which meant that my cast (of one woman) spent a lot of time feeling her way in the dark, trying to work out what I was on about. Not literally feeling her way in the dark, of course. I'm not like Werner Herzog. Although, that might be a good warm up exercise for another time.

The other thing that was interesting for me was that while I was directing my leading lady (Sarah), we were visited by my last leading lady (Sarah). It shouldn't rattle me. But it did, slightly. Whilst we get on well, and while I think she enjoyed her time on Medea, I was very aware that she herself is a director, and one who speaks with straight-to-the-point clarity, whereas I can sometimes be guilty of chatting around a subject in order to get to the point, rather than taking a direct route. Both ways have their value, but it's easy to get very self conscious.

We all know of, and in some cases, have worked with poor directors ( I've noticed that I started that sentence with 'we', somehow assuming that anyone reading this blog is definitely involved in some way with theatre. While that's certainly very likely, it's by no means guaranteed.) These are the directors who passively offer no opinion (or, indeed, direction), or at the other end of the scale, stamp their opinion on absolutely every aspect of the production, meaning anything about the actual script is pulverised. I would give examples, but that would mean, you know, giving examples.

I like to think that I'm a pretty good director. I talk slightly too much in the early stages, but in context, I think it's a forgivable sin. Interestingly, even now I can feel myself channelling a director I used to know almost twenty years ago, when I worked at a theatre in South London: CYTO, or the Croydon Youth Theatre Organisation. I can't ever remember him sitting down to direct, he was almost always on his feet. Quite a few directors do direct from a seated position, and insomuch as I've thought about it at all, it's always disquieted me somewhat. Certainly, I've never felt comfortable staying seated while directing. Maybe it's nervous energy; and that's certainly how I remember this director from twenty years ago, right down to the habit of clicking the fingers on both hands while trying to get his head around a concept or narrative problem. In recent years, I've begun to wonder if I've imagined, or invented that tic. It doesn't really matter, I suppose, even if I seem to have adopted that tic for myself.

So, most of the time, I think I've got a pretty good handle on what it is to be a director. I've got a certain style and approach that I return to, but that gets altered and shifted depending on what the project is. A knockabout farce with just four people is going to have different demands than a drug survival play with twenty five young people all aged under 18. But that's the thing, I know all that. But, if someone I know and respect is in the room, I suddenly feel like a fool and an idiot. Well, more so than usual. I feel like an amateur, like a snake oil salesman who's one paragraph away from being unmasked as the liar everyone has suspected him of being.

It's ridiculous, of course: both the women in the room have elected to work with me on a number of occasions, and both have asked my advice on creative and artistic matters. I have to be logical about this: they wouldn't do that just to be nice (actually, if we're going to be logical, it's entirely within the realms of possibility that they'd collaborate with me 'just to be nice', but that gets a bit too Truman Show and oddly egotistical to make a great deal of sense, so I have to put my faith in my lack of faith.)

In last nights rehearsal, I began talking about the image of Russian Dolls (you see how I talk around something rather than getting straight to the point?), and it's just occurred to me now that that's how the rehearsal itself felt - while was looking in on Sarah (my actor), hoping to guide and support her, I felt Sarah (my previous actor) looking in on me, offering guidance and support. Didn't always stop me feeling like I was being exposed as an idiot who didn't know what he was talking about. I don't know why I was worried: I achieve that quite well enough by writing this blog.

The Sound Of Deadlines As They Woosh By

So, I failed. Utterly. I had meant to complete at least 500 words for the short stories I'm working on at the moment, particularly as I'd missed my vague daily target of 1,000 on the previous two days. But, no luck: 500 might not seem a great deal, but the trick is to have them make some sort of coherent sense. Now, you may think that such concerns about coherence haven't previously constrained me before (such as in the writing of these blogs, for instance), but I feel compelled to make the occasional effort.

However, at the end of last night, I couldn't even manage the 500, ironically because I'd been entering that day's blog entry. Ironic because one of the main purposes in my keeping up to date with the blog is to ensure that I don't get too rusty with the writing. But I've decided not to feel too guilty about missing last nights writing session (although if the same happens tonight, then we have a problem). If I was going to beat myself up about the fact that I'd missed a night's writing (alright, three) then it would be very easy to get despondent, and go three weeks without bothering to flip open the pc. Better to keep the momentum going, even if you stray from the path for a couple of days. I imagine it's a bit like attitudes to giving up smoking. Now, I myself have never smoked, so I've never had to go through the whole trial of giving up, or trying to, but it seems to be that the problem is all contained within those two words, 'giving up'. There's not much wriggle room there; you're either a smoker, or you're not. You either still smoke, or you've managed to give up. So, when someone who is trying to give up has a faltering moment, and has 'just one' cigarette, then it's too easy to think that they've dropped from having 'given up', back to being a smoker. I've often thought that instead of 'giving up', we should try the phrase 'pausing'. Everyone's allowed to pause. And it means there 's no pressure: if you successfully 'pause' smoking for a good long while - say, three years - and you happen to take a puff of someone else's fag on new years eve, then no-one can judge you, it's not like you've fallen off the wagon; it's not like you now give up giving up, and go back to smoking 20 a day.

All of which is a tortuous way of saying that, despite the fact that I haven't written a great deal over the past couple of days, I'm not going to panic about it too much. Although, to be fair, you can only go so long, not writing, and still call yourself a writer. But I'd rather not get back into the groove of going too long without writing again. Too easy to let things go fallow, let the ideas wither into dull nothingness.

There are things to get in the way, however: there's another rehearsal for Three Kinds Of Me tonight, and both Thursday and Friday are taken up with Ghostwalks, which are beginning to have a different feel to them as the nights get darker.

What Have You Done Lately?

Great rehearsal tonight, for Three Kinds Of Me. There's been something of a gear change, and it's to do with moving into a different space. Whereas before, we were rehearsing in a flat, we're now in the building of the theatre itself, and that puts a whole different mentality on the process. It's like we're here to actually work. Rather than, you know, drink tea and eat HobNobs (it's just occurred to me that those biscuits could easily be the punch line to an obscure gag about Quatermass, but since Quatermass itself is reasonably obscure, it's probably left well alone).

Acting, and directing, and certainly writing, are amongst the most labour intensive duties for the least demonstrable booty as an end result. I imagine most artistic endeavours are. I suppose that's why the producers of Hollywood films get such a bad reputation. They just don't get it. They have to make sure nobody's wasting the studio's money, make sure no-one's going off in some weird, unpredictable manner. But that's just the point. Rehearsing, and creating a show, can absolutely be weird and unpredictable. And there's not really a great deal of value in putting the brakes on that. Having said all that, however, I'm glad I don't have a gang if Hollywood producers breathing down my neck*, because I know that the work Sarah and I did tonight was productive, constructive, and effective, but if I was compelled to put into a chart exactly how much ground we've covered, script wise, tonight: it would be a single half page. Perhaps not even that much.

But that's part of the process. Digging a little here, scratching at a bit of paint there, applying a bit of pressure to see what bends, and what simply snaps. It's a genuine pleasure when a rehearsal goes well, it means you're discovering the play again anew with each new re-read. Two lines of dialogue that seem confusing are actually the solution to each other.

Actually, the thing about lines of dialogue is intriguing. As a director on this show, I'm directing the writer, who's appearing in her own show. As such, then, conversations about meaning and nuance surface often. After all, it's not often you, as director, get a chance to speak with the person who created your script. I worry, though, because as director, needing to tell the story, I'll sometimes want to shift a line to the middle of a sequence rather than at the start, or cut a word altogether. Sarah's very accommodating, and takes on all my suggestions with good grace and positivity, but I have to repeatedly reassure myself that I've got my directors head on, not my writers. There are few things more egotistical than a writer-director. I should know; I am one. I suspect I'd make a very poor copy/proof reader: rather than checking what my client had written, I'd probably be trying to change the ending.

Talking of endings, in the end, I recall what Harold Pinter said about directing his own work. Like a lot of stories associated with Pinter, it's possibly made up, but that doesn't necessarily stop it being true. Apparently, Pinter was saying that there was a difference between what he, Pinter (the director) needed to achieve with a script, and what he, Pinter (the playwright) had originally intended. The two don't always match up, or at the very least they don't quite hold hands. The trick is to deliver the truth of the script while not feeling a slave to it.

With that in mind, I should really get back to my own writing. I haven't written anything for two days. Partially it's because I'm back at work, but that's a poor excuse: and if it isn't, then it will end up being an excuse for at least the next seven weeks, and that's bad. I'm hoping to get back on track with a thousand words. A thousand words a day - even between work and rehearsals - isn't a bad average to aim for. On those days that I do manage a thousand, I'm working well enough to produce at least five hundred more. I'm not saying that those 1,500 will necessarily be any good, but at the early stages, that's not really the point. And anyway, those days that I manage to hit above the target should make up for the days that I struggle to produce even 400. Or, judging by yesterday, none whatsoever.

Hopefully not tonight, though. It's a bit too late to reasonably think I'll actually manage a full thousand words, but as we hit midnight, I'll settle for half that in cash.

Wish me luck ..


*I'm afraid I don't know at this time what the collective term for a group of Hollywood producers is. A purse of producers? A sequel? A despondency ?

A Short Message About Acting Class

Reasonably successful Acting Class at the NVT tonight. I say reasonably because it's always difficult to tell. The classes are purely 'drop in', meaning that they always cater for all levels of practitioner and performer - the most confident actor, and the most nervous beginner. Add to that mix the fact that some people will want to play the same improv games again and again, while others will want to progress further and further, and you have a great deal of variables to contend with, looking around at a room of faces, unable to decipher they are pale from fear, lethargy, or the British summer.

So, all that said, it was a pretty good workshop, with lots of good responses and ideas from the fairly large group of NVT members we had tonight. I tried not to rely too heavily on improv this time around, partially because I'll be doing a series of NVT improv workshops in January (and hopefully some elsewhere in Hove later this year), but also because I want to see if there's anything else I'm capable of. I'm not sure what's going on there: I don't consider myself particularly confident in many aspects of my life, but when it comes to theatre - whether it's as an actor, writer or director (most often as director) I'm not very skilled at being complacent. I'm fully aware that that sounds like a 'humblebrag' - it's not meant to. Partially because I'm not always sure how successful I am pushing past my comfort zone, but also because it almost always makes me sick: with the last three three things I've directed, I've woken up in the middle of the night, wanting to run away from it all, wondering why on
Earth I ever suggested it in the first place. I include the third of the productions in this list, despite it won't even happen until May next year.

Actually, that's not entirely true. The three productions I'm talking about were 'my' productions - 'Four Play', 'Medea', and the as yet untitled play in next years Brighton Festival Fringe - but I didn't include 'Three Kinds Of Me', which I haven't (yet) ran away from, , possibly because I was invited to direct it (as opposed to asking to do so), although, thinking about it, that should probably put even more pressure on me. Perhaps I won't think about it quite so much.

Comfort Zone

Preparing for the first in a new series of Acting Classes that kick off tonight at the NVT (New Venture Theatre), and they're something of a new direction for me. Usually, my emphasis in these classes has been improvisation, partially because that's where I've had a great amount of experience in the past few years, but also because I've discovered that a reasonable amount of people have a fear of what they consider 'proper' acting - all that business with scripts, and learning lines, and suchlike.

Of course, just as many people have a fear of improv - this idea that you could be mad enough to walk onto a space - in front of people who are watching (and, in your mind at least, judging) you with absolutely no idea of what you're going to say next. For some of us, that's very liberating - at at the core of what we consider acting to be,whether there's a learned script involved or not - the simple idea of not going in with too many pre-conceived ideas, and remembering the joy of actually listening to the other people on stage. Done well, it doesn't matter if you have no idea what to do next: if you simply listen, then all you need to do is to react honestly to what the other person or people are doing on stage - it works as a wonderful cheat, since you'll never really have to think too hard about what to do next.

Doing workshops, ironically, is how I first became involved with the NVT. Ironic because I was somewhat scared of joining for a couple of years. Like, I suspect, far too many people, my acting degree resulted in one, single emphatic thing: the fact that I did no form of acting whatsoever for about seven years. I was living in Worthing at the time, and if there was a thriving theatrical scene in that town, I wasn't aware of it. There was in Brighton, though, and I began to take an interest - firstly via the excellent drop-in improv workshops held weekly by the Maydays (that's how that interest started), but then, eventually, a returning hankering to start acting again. I also knew that I wanted to revive a thing that I'd written at college (an early, half-hour version of Four Play), but I also knew that I couldn't simply rock up to a local theatre company and ask to direct my own script.

There were two theatre groups that took my interest - the Brighton Little Theatre, and the NVT. I circled them both, for quite some time - the fact that I hadn't acted for a while had knocked my confidence somewhat. The NVT held its regular Monday night classes as a way of easing in the less confident, but somehow even that felt too scary. It's always different when you're on the outside, looking in. I'd convinced myself that I wasn't good enough (whereas for the past four years, I've been working very hard at convincing everyone else that I'm not good enough).

Around this time, however, I was holding theatre workshops myself, for young actors. It was this that prompted a friend of mine to ask if I'd ever considered holding workshops for adults. I tend to say yes to offers like this when asked (whereas I don't tend to be very good at creating those offers for myself), and that was essentially how, despite the fact that I didn't feel brave enough to attend a theatre workshop at the NVT, I found myself actually running them for a while. Odd how things work out.

And so, that's who tonight's workshop - and the ones that follow over the next five weeks - are for. People like me, who don't feel that confident with their drama skills, who often feel that they've got nothing new to bring to the table. This is a fear that's shared by experienced and obviously talented performers as well as those who've never delivered a line of script in their lives - in fact, I'm becoming increasingly convinced that the more you learn about acting - it can appear that you know less and less.

So, that's the aim of these workshops, then: stick with me, and by the end, you won't know a damn thing.

I Think They Call It Grazing

A reasonable amount of writing today, although if I had an editor, they probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference. My attention span seems to be slim for a writer. I've got about ten short stories on the go at the moment - which is great, it can be tough enough to come up with just one idea - but since one of my biggest problems (or do we still call it challenge these days?) as a writer is to actually finish the darn things, this can be something of a worry.

What I do then, is either a delaying tatic, or the best way forward, depending on what your view is. I spend a couple of hours on one story, and as I feel my interest begin to wane, or if there's a currently unsolvable problem that's about to demolish me, I jump ship to another story. I can't shake the feeling that this feels distinctly amatuerish, except for the fact that it seems to work. I certainly get more writing actualy done this way, rather than attempting the almost-always-failing method of re-working one page in an effort to get it exactly 'perfect' - whatever perfect means. I seem to work in this way even when I'm working on a single project - for instance, when I was writing 'Four Play', I intially wrote various keys scenes or jokes, then began to fill in gaps between them, before finally shifting them around, deleting them, re-writing, ignoring massive plot holes, writing the two scenes to bridge the plot holes, which would normally suggest only one logical thing between the two , write that .. and then, finally, have something approximating a coherent script. It probably isn't the most time-effective way to write, but it seems to have worked so far for me.

I'm a little concerned about work taking hours and mental agilty from me when I return next week, although it's true that for the first time in a year, I won't be working seven days a week. What is nice, however, is the messages of encouragement friends send regarding my writing, asking to see works in progress/finished stories. It's remarkably energising, and it's at least partially why I've been making an attempt to keep up this blog: while I'm painfully aware that there are few things more dull than a writer talking about writing (there's a fair chance that if they're talking to you about the novel that they're working on, that novel will never be completed), I use this blog to speak loudly and clearly to the three or four people who are actually reading it as a way of painting myself into a corner: if I have enough people asking me how the play/story/whatever is going on, there may be enough personal embarassment actor at stake to goad me into actually finishing the damn thing.

For the record, there are two projects (as a writer) that I'm working on at the moment: a re-write of 'Four Play', that I expect to take until at least the end of the year (which probably means that any new production won't be until at least well into the latter part of 2013), and a collection of short stories. As for the latter, I have no idea if short stories are fashionable at the moment or not - whatever I read on the subject seems to have conflicting views. But in any case, short stories seem to have a disipline all of their own - and the possibilty that they're about 150,000 words more likely to be finished.

In At The Deep End

Finally managed to go for a swim yesterday for the first time this year, which considering there's two swimming pools in easy distance, and I've got the English Channel at the bottom of my road, is pretty much unforgivable. I managed to do it in the end simply because I'm very aware that I'm in my last couple of days off from work right now, but also because of the damage I did to my shoulder earlier in the week. I thought, in some vague way, that swimming would do my shoulder some good.

So far, that seems to be the case, as my shoulder hurts significantly less this morning that it has all week. It wasn't always thus, though: while swimming, I was very weak on my right side, and wincing manfully (or something) as it was too painful to do a full stroke on the right hand side. I've never been a strong swimmer in any case, having never really learned to swim properly: as a kid, I just got into the water and largely suceeded at not drowning. Water seemed to be the great leveller, as I seem to remember the tough kids being surprisingly inept in the pool. But, as I say, I never had 'proper' swimming lessons, meaning that even when I have full use of all my limbs, I always end up being convinced that the onlooking lifeguards aren't there to potentially save my life; but more to sneer at my pathetic attempts to look like I can swim. But hopefully, I'll be able to take the start suggested by yesterday, and begin to swim more regularly.

However, next week is where things start really to kick in. On Monday is the first acting class of the new season at the New Venture Theatre, led by myself (I'll chat more about the details of that in the next blog), and for three nights of the next six weeks, I'll be working on a one-woman show, Three Kinds Of Me, which will be produced in early October. Right now, that seems like a reasonably long time away. I'm sure my opinion on how much time I have will drastically alter very soon. I'm still working on a couple of short stories, and expect to have a significant demand on my time in all of November, which I'll tell you about closer to the time.

And tonight, I have an extra Ghostwalk, this one being at the same time as Brighton Pride. I have no idea how that's going to go yet - the streets are likely to be somewhat busy because of everyone being, well, proud, but I'm not convinced that a lot of them will actualy make it out to the Walk. And, anyway, a lot of our core audience - kids - won't be dragged away from the living room tonight. For tonight, Doctor Who starts its 50th anniversary season. I'm very glad I live in the era of the iplayer ..