Wednesday 22 May 2013

My back started to give in today. A viscious twinge, that actually stopped me in my tracks on my way to work. For a moment, I almost had to double over. That hasn't happened for a while - in fact, the last time was when I was in the later stages of rehearsals for Medea last year, when, for about twenty minutes, I had to give my director notes from a sitting position, almost unmoving. But here's the thing. There's an app called TimeHop, which sends you a message occasionally to remind you of what you were doing (or at least, what you put as your status update) on this day a year, or two or three years ago. I just got today's text, and it turns out the last time my back locked up was exactly this day last year. Of course, it could have something to do with the last minute stresses of directing, but Medea wasn't until the end of June - almost a month away. The fact that my back twinged on the same day, a year apart - before I'd make enough of a connection for it to be psychosamatic - is a bit odd, really. I'd happily declare it as an entirely meaningless coincidence, but I've seen enough films to know that it must be a glitch in the system. Any minute now, I'm going to wake up. That feels appropiate, actually, since right now, I just feel half asleep.

Rehearsals continue to go well for A Beginning, A Muddle And An End, and we continue to learn stuff about improvisation even in this last week of rehearsals. (Oh, yes - it's the last week of rehearsal: you should really be getting your tickets right about now - https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/search/searchEventDetails.asp?sid=&returnPage=promoter&event_id=35283 ). Much of it is reaffirming what we already know, like the fact that we've got a pretty unique - and very challenging - set up in terms of the long form improv that we're attempting. Most troupes (read: sane troupes) will have a cast of four, maybe five. Sometimes just two. Occasionally even one. A show with nine - count 'em, nine - performers, all jostling for stage and story time, is a great testament to each improvisers skill and generosity. When I consider that a couple of them had rarely (or never) improvised before, it's genuinely breathtaking.

I've already known this for a while, but I won't be directing next year, or at least I don't expect to. It's a process that takes up a shocking amount of time, and I've not been able to see anything in the last three Brighton Fringes by sheer dint of being busy with my own productions. I'll always be greatful to the New Venture Theatre for allowing me to indulge some simply manic and entirely risky ideas. When people - management commitees, fellow directors and writers, and indeed the actors that you are responsible for - give you their trust, it's an empowering thing. Not just for you as the director, but also for the person giving the trust. I'm not saying as a director that you're always right - or even often right - but when someone has faith that you want the best, then - even if you both make a couple of mistakes along the way - you get to the best a helluva lot quicker.

Wednesday 15th May 3013

Riiiight. It’s that point of the fringe. That bit when I’m very aware that I’m pretty much sleep walking, I haven’t eaten a decent hot meal in days, and I haven’t properly seen the inside of my flat more longer than eight minutes at a time, tops, either side of what we might generously call ‘sleep’. It’s my own fault, of course. I bring it on myself. And I’ve only got one project going on at the moment. The original plan, you might remember, was to have four different things going on at the same time. That’s FOUR. For various reasons, three of those have been pushed back. No, forward. Hang on, surely it’s forward? You go forward in time, don’t you? So if you delay something, it can only happen further away in the future. But bringing stuff forward means doing it sooner? Whatever, you know what I mean. 

All three of the other projects were bumped due that old friend ‘circumstances beyond our control’. In other words, not down to me. If I had a say, I, uh, very likely wouldn’t have said anything, and I’d still be working on four different productions while juggling a full time job, weekends of running workshops, while committing to a full blown Crunchie and Crusha milkshake habit. I’m barely awake and coherent as it is with just the one project, I’d hate to see how I’d be (not) coping if everything had gone to plan. 

It’s all gravy, though: Beginning Muddle End is going well, while still terrifying. Tickets are beginning to sell even though there’s still a couple of weeks to go to the off. This is the first time that Brighton Fringe has done the full four weeks of May, and that will doubtless have some kind of effect of ticket sales as we hit week 4 (the week that we go up in). As yet, that effect is unpredictable – audiences might be exhausted and penniless, but equally, there’s always a significant number of audiences that circle the fringe for a week or so before finally leaping in and making their choices. Anyway, the link on the NVT website is here: 

https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/search/searchEventDetails.asp?sid=&returnPage=promoter&event_id=35283

Last night’s rehearsal was lovely. I find (for me personally, at least) that a great deal of improv is learning, and then re-learning, the same thing over and over again. The same motif, but re-applied with all the other knowledge you’ve picked up inbetween. As a loose and easy-to-argue contentious point, I’d argue that most short form improv exercises are essentially the same rules, the same game, just with different bodywork. A Mini Metro and a Jaguar are undoubtedly very different experiences to drive, but essentially the same rules apply equally when you’re behind the wheel of either. In improv, no matter how scary or unfamiliar the new game or technique appears to you, if you follow the same basic rules you picked up in improv nursery: Listen, Say Yes, Commit, then it’s almost impossible to go wrong. 

Almost. 

Because even those simple rules can get a bit fuzzy. Recently in Sunday night workshops, I’ve attempted to shave it down to a simple instruction – Be Generous – but even that doesn’t really work if you haven’t already put a few miles on the improv clock. Let’s face it, if everyone on stage is busy being oh-so-generous, then not a great deal else happens on stage.  So it is required that on occasion, you have to put in a hell of a lot of effort into remembering what the apparently simple instructions actually mean. It’s very likely that at your first improv class, you were told to ‘listen’. And, sure, you get that. Everybody gets that. Listening is good, listening is important. And once you get told to listen for the third, tenth, and 100^th time, you know the score, you understand: yeah, yeah, listen. By that time, of course, you only hear the instruction, you don’t interact and engage with it: ironically, you’ve stopped listening. 

With that in mind, last night’s rehearsal was mostly about re-setting some simple map markers. Being told to drive is no good to anyone if you haven’t already taken a bucket load of lessons, the tests, swerved to avoid that damn chicken and hit a few geese (uh, maybe not that last one). But once you’ve put in all that spadework, then you can go forward with just that one word: drive – and all the hard work is wrapped up within that neat little package. And so it is that with the collected tools and proud battle scars of more than a few weeks of improv bootcamp under their belts that the Beginning Muddle End cast can set out into a rehearsal with what are actually complicated notes pared down to simple, single words. Words like Why, Now, How and Shh. All of which are surprisingly complicated concepts that deserve a weekend workshop of their own. 

I’ve been very aware in recent weeks that as long as you’re simply listening and responding (this links in with Shh) that the story will very much look after itself, and by proxy, you and the audience. All you need to do is respond honestly (this links in with the Why). I was considering making the qualification that clearly it’s different for prose – books, novels and the like – because those things generally have to be planned to within an inch of their lives. But that’s not precisely true. I mean, it’s true that a good novel these days probably spent some of its life (half an afternoon, at least) as a half-assed spreadsheet, but that doesn’t mean that the story itself isn’t simply responding to the very simple needs of its own narrative. If you just listen and respond, you can end up telling a story that is seemingly complicated and dense. Take the seven volume Harry Potter saga, for instance. There’s lots of stuff going on there: vast empires fall, kids go through puberty. And pretty much everything in between, including Helena Bonham Carter doing Goth-babe. No, wait, that was just the movies. Where was I? Anyway. The point is – spoiler alert – that not a great deal of complicated stuff happens in the books. The way JK Rowling delivers it is complex, sure, but that’s only because the characters have no idea what’s going on, shrouded as they are in smoke and mirrors. But the central spine of the story is: terrorist fails to assassinate possibly important kid who is saved first by his mother’s love, and then by the love of some guy who pointlessly loved kid’s mum. And that’s it. That, alone, is the story. The plot – horcruxes and suchlike, is only just so much sprinkle. And, in fact, all the sprinkle – the awful Dursleys, Hermione’s cleverness, the blinkered Ministry Of Magic – only exist as a honest and vital reaction to further the meat of the central story, or as a piece of misdirection so that you don’t notice significant plot points being seeded in the first three books. The last two books are largely about resolving everything that’s already been set up: while there are surprises and new information in book seven, it’s all been there since the first novel. Again, for something that seems so twisty turny, everything in those thousands of pages is vital, honest, elegant, and above all, simple. Even the big reveal – the literal reveal – at the end of Wizard Of Oz – tells us that things aren’t nearly as complicated as they might appear. And, if we want to read the film in a particular way, the ending has been set firmly in place before we ever leave Kansas. 

At some point, I’ll talk further about what I actually mean by Why, Now, How and Shh. But, like all the best improv rules (and some particularly nasty quicksands) the rules are constantly shifting. Not changing. But shifting. And who knows what’s buried down here?

Monday 13th May 2013

I've only seen one thing in the Brighton Fringe this year, and it might well be the only thing. The trade off is pretty good, since that one thing is excellent - Bitch Boxer (coming back to the fringe at the end of the month), but I'm acutely aware that it's about the third fringe in a year that I haven't been able to see anything. Time just vanishes. Of course, at this time of the year, I'm normally working on my own production, which, even if I feel like I'm not attending to it as well as I should, chews up all spare time and energy with the full force of a particularly nasty patch of quicksand. I've already decided that I won't be directing anything next year, at least not in the fringe. It seems to consume a vast amount of energy and emotion for something that I do outside the day job, in the evenings, where it's bundled up roughly and inefficiently, bursting at the seams. See, I have no idea what that's meant to mean. You can see I'm tired. 

However, we're on the home stretch now. This is the final couple of weeks of rehearsal (if rehearsal is an accurate description, which it isn't) for A Beginning, A Muddle, And An End. Up until now, my crew has consisted pretty much entirely of me. This is nobody's fault but mine - it's down to me to get hold of a production manager, lighting designer and the like, but I haven't been able to find the time to get anybody - because a good deal of my time outside rehearsals has been taken up with the sorts of things a production manager might take care of .. you can see how it can become a effortlessly self-repeating circle. Luckily, I've managed to bless myself with a new production manager just this weekend (nothing like leaving it to the last minute), and hopefully that will stave off the otherwise certain event horizon in which I wonder why things haven't been done in the production, before realising that I've somehow expected everyone else to read my mind. And, yes, I'm aware that professional directors with a full production team are guilty of this trait as well, without ever thinking that it is actually a guilty trait. 

By the way, my cast are doing nearly impossible things. Not actually impossible things, because that would be, well, you know. But nearly impossible things. It's a cast of nine performers, all sharing the space with each other, each having to boldly tear off a strip and sail down a narrative that is - quite simply - made up as they go along - while, at the same time, bending to the need of the other performer - to eight other performers, who will doubtless each have at least six different ideas as to where they think the story might be going. I'm learning as much as I ever did about the craft of improvisation. It occurred to me this week that the very first thing I did for the New Venture Theatre was a long improvisation performance, although I'm not precisely sure that I ever referred to it as such in the time that we did it. Somewhat surprisingly, I'm not even entirely sure that I even knew that it was long form. Certainly, in that performance, which only had about five days of prep, and then - thrown in at the deep end - things seemed a helluva lot easier. This time, it seems like a much bigger mountain, and that time, I was one of the performers (I'm staying off stage this time, for various reasons, which I might chat about on a later blog entry). 

I suspect that at least part of the reason why I find the long form so overwhelming this time round - even if I'm not in it - is because last time round, I was going in blind. I really didn't have any idea what the hell was going on. And naivete is a significantly underrated state of grace: if you don't know that a thing is impossible, or at least smucking difficult, then you're much more likely to wade in with much less concern about the cuts and bruises you might earn before the experience is over. That time, I was simply reacting, responding - not overly concerned about creating a coherent narrative, just reacting honestly to what the hell was going on. As anyone who's done more than one session of improv - long or short form - will attest, that's a great place to be in, improv. You can be too intelligent in improv, and your imagination, your smarts, aren't always your friend. 

Quite often, improvisers, experienced or first timers, will get concerned that their story doesn't really make sense, that it's meandering with no sense of direction, floating off into the wind. And, yes, of course that can happen, but lots of times - I'd say almost eight, even nine times out of ten, concentrating on making the plot clearer, giving it the ol' three act story arc treatment - is not going to do anyone any favours. It will always look false. It will always sound false and forced, dry rusty brakes screaming in protest. We panic that what we say has to be vital, and important - particularly if it's the first scene (the first line) in the play. But it doesn't. I'm pretty sure that most of Pinter's first lines are, on the paper, pretty banal. It's the attitude behind them that give them the import (and allow them to be re-evaluated after the fact). We don't talk in exposition, and whilst it's true that stories (plays, improv, films, whatever) are not exactly real life, there's no reason to speak in exposition there, either. Just because it's wise to only say what's needed on stage, and not to babble, it doesn't follow that every single thing spoken has to have the motive of story behind it. This is a complicated idea, much more complicated than I have the intelligence to voice here, because it might suggest that you're allowed to say things that have no purpose, which isn't the case at all. But neither should you be declaring that it's your plan to take over the world with a cabal of syphilis infected monkey rabbits. Even if - especially if - it's clear that your character's main aim is to take over the world with a cabal of syphilis infected monkey rabbits. It's like the acting advice that's most famously attributed to Michael Caine in Educating Rita: just because your character is drunk, doesn't mean that they want everyone to know it. As a performer, you say everything with a purpose. But your character does not have to mean everything they say. 

Which (sort of) brings us back to simply reacting, responding. If the only thing your characters are discussing is making tea, then there's an attitude behind that. Maybe one person is always making the damn tea, and resents that fact. Maybe the other character never makes the tea because they're convinced they are terrible at it. Why? Maybe they think they suck at everything. Is the other character, and more importantly, the other performer, aware of that? Do they (the performer) ask why - at least in their head? How do they react to this new found piece of information? It's this that drives the plot along. As improvisers, we don't really have to worry about plotting out a perfect plot that. In real terms, that's not improvisation, because we're laying down a safe path through the woods to follow. If we simply react, and respond, and throw out - gift out - our responses with verve and energy - then the story will look after us. Story is an awesomely strong beast that simply requires feeding and a loose leash. It doesn't need to be told where to go; it will smash us on the head, go through our pockets, steal our change, and gallop away down the road, laughing loudly. All we need to do is hold onto the leash, tight. 

And listen. 

Wednesday 8 May 2013

I'm no good with bikes. I'm so no good with them that I buy a couple a year. Repairs are beyond my skill, energy, and usually time, so I generally just buy a cheap old bike (£30 or thereabouts) ride it til it falls apart - which happens in an absolutely literal sense more often than you might think - and buy the next cheap one. You might think it ends up being false economy, but generally I'm in the plus column, although it does seem that the next bike always falls to bits at a point when I really don't have the time to start walking to work again. Not including the train part of my journey, the walking bit of each day is nearly two hours. It can be a massive exhaustion throughout the course of a week, not really leaving any time for things like food, and sometimes sleep.

Anyway, last month, I paid slightly more for a bike. It was still second hand, but I was certainly shelling out a bit more than usual. Generally speaking, it was worth it: it was clearly a bit of an expensive bike in its previous life, and much, much lighter than any of my previous bikes. Much lighter than all of my previous bikes, all together, in fact. That being the case, it's a much smoother ride, and much more pleasant to use. Well, it was. I had to get it repaired last week because of brake problems, etc. It wasn't a particularly expensive repair, but still one that I could ill afford. And this week: the pedals have started dropping off. The problem is that the nut of each pedal has become completely smooth on the inside, meaning that the threads have entirely gone. There's no purchase, no grip. So I ended up walking home (well, to rehearsal) tonight. It's very annoying, particularly as I don;'t see it getting repaired until next month. That's next month, for crying out loud. 

I think what annoys me most about the pedals is that it's a simple thing, designed to do only one thing, incapable of doing that one thing. A single function item that fails at that function. How disappointed its parents must be. I get annoyed by this sort of low achiever quite often. I have to wear cuff links each week for the Ghost Walk, and I find them annoying out of all proportion. But at least with cuff links, they are clearly quite awkward items in the first place, as the job of putting them on would be made much easier if you just had an extra hand. It's the other things that exist in spite of their obvious design faults that really annoy the hell out of me. Chief amongst them is the tray on the back of seats in Southern Railway trains. Who the hell decided that they had to have that awful, squealing metal against metal shriek when you pull them down? Or indeed, up? Because these things are designed. They go on drawing boards and the like. There's very likely some kind of prototype mocked up, so that the client can see what their money is being spent on. At no point, did nobody raise a hand, no matter how shyly, and suggest that perhaps passengers didn't actually want the sound of hell accompanying their journey home? The trays on the trains wouldn't have survived one week of The Apprentice. 

Which suggests only one, somewhat sinister option. That it's all deliberate. That these things really are sent to try us. That everything is designed with the specific intention of keeping us in a constant state of annoyance and tension. This would explain a great deal. Like the Daily Mail, for instance, and Jeremy Kyle.

Thoughts On Forty

Met up at the weekend for a coffee with a couple of friends and their beautiful little girl. As you might imagine, I don't get many chances to play catch up, especially during fringe season, which is normally given over to rehearsals, planning, and panic attacks. Indeed, I think I only see these friends a few times a year, in real terms. Somewhat inevitably, the same conversational gambits come up again, largely what I'm working on at the moment, how is my actual day-job work, who I'm (not) seeing at the moment, yadda yadda yadda. 

This time, however, there was a (almost) new one. 'So', I was asked / reminded / warned. 'You're forty next month?' I allowed that this was true. I don't particularly have a problem with getting older (let's face it, I was born at the age of 38), but I do feel pretty awkward about attempting to do anything to do with my birthday. I'm totally fine with celebrating other people's birthdays, obviously. In that case, I'm absolutely fine, if invited, with rocking up to whatever venue and helping celebrate a friends birthday. But when it comes to my own, I'm a lot more anxious. I'm inordinately convinced that if I attempted to organise some kind of birthday bash, then it would be on the very date that everybody I knew had other plans. I know, I know how self defeatist that sounds, but it shouldn't. I'm not fishing for a 'aww' here, I'm simply denoting the banal possibility that everybody's calenders wouldn't quite match up. And then of course I'd feel needy and fishing for a 'aww'. Which would be a terrible way to celebrate your birthday. It also feels - from my side of the table, at least - overly arrogant. Well, no, not arrogant, but you know what I mean: 'Hello, come celebrate knowing me. And the fact that I haven't died yet.' It just seems all so tiresome. I figure if you've known me for a while, you probably (vaguely) know when my birthday is without me reminding you, as indeed proved to be the case with this couple at the weekend. I generally feel awkward about reminding people about my birthday (somehow, I feel the only natural response is 'and?'). If you don't know, or indeed care, then that's perfectly fine and acceptable. That's at least honest. It's why I even dislike the birthday greetings on a facebook wall - tons of people, who previously had no idea that it was your birthday, see someone else say 'happy birthday' on your wall, and then do the same - three seconds of typing, and duty done. It doesn't really mean anything, does it? I'd genuinely much rather someone entirely forgot, and then, apropos of nothing six months later, suddenly asked 'oh, did I miss your birthday?' That, to me, is honestly more meaningful. I'm being serious. I feel so (out of proportion, admittedly) seriously about this that I ended up disabling the wall function on my facebook account after, in my first year on facebook, being confused that so many people were, for the first time, wishing me a happy birthday. I'd previously been pretty confident that they didn't give a damn. 

God, that sounds bitter, doesn't it? It's not meant to, seriously. I'm just allowing the possibility that perhaps my (and indeed your) birthday isn't exactly important to anybody other than your closest friends and family at any given time, and I'd much rather not worry people's timetables with mine. I'm acutely aware that I've probably gone a bit too far in the wrong direction: in recent years, I've passed a reasonable amount of birthdays with absolutely no comment and little regret. So, why this blog entry, which is a clearly an ill disguised plea for someone else to kick me up the rear to actually get something done? Well, of course, it's the 40 thing. Bloody milestone birthdays. They put an undue amount of pressure on you to try and mark the occasion in some way. Last year, the birthday coincided with the last night of a production I was directing, 'Medea', so I was able to smuggle in some kind of celebration without feeling the pressure that it was all about 'me', but actually about the last night of the show. This year, however, I've got no such beard. It's already giving me a slight headache. And I haven't even had a birthday drink yet. 

Monday 6th May 2013

In the final few weeks of rehearsals for my Brighton Fringe show, 'A Beginning, A Muddle, And An End'. Well, I say my show, but it really belongs to the cast. Whatever happens now, it's a really remarkable achievement from everybody involved. Embarking on an entirely improvised, narrative play is a pretty big ask at the best of times, but when you consider that a couple of my actors hadn't really done any improvisation of any description before embarking on this production, the work that they're doing is genuinely brilliant. 

Not that it's any easier for improvisers who have had a lot of experience. In fact, it can be even more difficult, because it's so easy to get stuck into one particular 'method' of improvisation, simply because you know that that works, or indeed because that's the 'right' way to do a scene. Which is ironic, really, because that's almost the opposite of improvisation, since, in theory, you're not leaving yourself open to new untried methods of telling a story. So I'm grateful to my cast for continually throwing themselves into the dark, and seeing where the story leads them. It shows a humbling amount of faith, if not in myself as the person who claims to know what the hell he is doing as director, then certainly in each other as fellow performers. In each rehearsal, watching, and working with these improvisers who, in some cases, are learning certain improvisational techniques for the first time, I find that I too am learning more and more about improv. 

The DukeBox Theatre has a full programme during the Brighton Fringe, so I debated for a while about whether or not I should give Iron Clad Improv a break for the month of May. It's still a relatively young group, though, so I decided that I wanted to keep the momentum going, although there was always a risk that the numbers would drop slightly in a new location. I'm glad I did keep it going, however, because although it is true that the numbers dipped slightly on our first Sunday over in Hanover, it was a great session, and bodes well for the rest of the month. 

I keep meaning to upload a couple of essays and reviews on classic and nu-Who (Doctor Who, in other words) before this season ends, as there's a couple of theories that I'd like to put forward before they become proved / disproved onscreen. I have an odd little theory that links The Great Intelligence (the current Big Bad) to stories dating as far back as the very first season. I may be reading too much into things that have been (or indeed haven't been) seen onscreen, but then again Steven Moffat is a fiendish little showrunner. Hope to get those reviews / theories uploaded before the end of the week. 

Another thing I need to try and get done as soon as possible is a couple more short stories. There's a competition coming up for entries for ghost stories, and I happen to have a couple of ideas that would suit well. I've now got this long list, in date order, of upcoming competitions, which is very useful for focusing the mind. Nothing like a deadline or two for galvanising the procrastinating writer. There's a couple of other reasons too. Firstly (and probably most important), it means I actually have a reason to finish that story before getting distracted by that other shiny story. The excellent Chuck Wendig puts it very well, suggesting that you shouldn't cheat on your first idea by messing around with the new, sexy idea. Be faithful to the first one. Put the effort in. For someone like me, whose hard drive is littered with a hundred and six unfinished ideas, this advice is invaluable. 

Perversely, however, the other reason to actually finish these stories (or ideas, or whatever) is in order to come up with new ones. As writers, we're often concerned that we're going to run out of ideas, that the well is going to run dry. But I'm increasingly not convinced that's quite the case. Actually, we need to use up those ideas, chew them up, spit them out, make way for the new stuff. Which will come. Otherwise, we're just screwing around with the same old stuff, pushing our peas around the plate, becoming ever more bored with the lack of flavour, and losing the energy to come up with something new. 

Well, that's what I think today, anyway. Tomorrow, it'll probably be something about a gluten free diet, and women who wear too much kohl on their eyes. (I have no idea).