Time And Tide Melt The Snowman

Some portions of this entry have appeared elsewhere.
After slightly too much procrastination, I've managed to do some writing. Well, sort of. I've had a couple of days off. Well, sort of. Having a day off is a spectacularly rare occurrence for me, and that's not just exaggerated hyperbole or a plea for sympathy. Well, maybe the second one a little bit. But, generally speaking, it remains true that I don't usually have a full 24 hours straight in which I'm not earmarked for something. Usually, obviously, it's the full time job, but if it's not, then it's delivering workshops, or taking rehearsals, or .. well, whatever. People will spot me stumbling incoherently from one appointment to the next, smile indulgently, and tell me 'well, it's your choice ..' as if they think I actually have a choice. Seriously, if I didn't spend my 'spare' time trying to create stuff, I would probably get quite depressed.
Obviously, however, this means that the time in which I try to create stuff is severely limited. I might have to do an edit on a play within a 15 minute tea break, which isn't exactly the most conducive of environments. And anybody who thinks that they can get some writing done on the commute clearly isn't a regular on the Southern railway at 5.00pm.
Occasionally, some rock legend informs us how it only took three minutes to knock out their greatest, most famous song. They suggest a three minute pop hit took only those three minutes to create - an irritatingly perfect stream of consciousness of verses and choruses with absolutely no error or rewrite.
But three minutes of genius never takes just three minutes, does it? When singers and writers create their three minute best sellers, it takes a lot longer than 180 seconds. They've woken up - probably a fair bit later than the average cab driver or shelf stacker - worked their way through toast, newspapers, and perhaps something with a bit of bacon in it. They've ambled across town to meet whoever it is they're collaborating with, had a bit of a gossip, had lunch, strummed a few notes, knocked ideas back and forth, come up with a pretty good idea for a song (in three minutes), got distracted by Countdown, checked that the song was actually as good as they thought it was, refined it, popped down to the pub with the vague idea that they'll write it properly tomorrow.
It's about where your head is at. What space you're in. There's no way you can write your great novel if you have to spend all week selling £1 frozen meals to unimpressed customers. We all need to support ourselves, obviously, but arguably, in order to be in any way creative means having the chance to withdraw from that demand occasionally.
I'm not sure that I've known anyone who's had any success in the creative industries without having some kind of help along the way, whether it's a couple of train fares paid, or some patience regarding that month's rent. Time really is money: you have to pay for it.
We're told that George Orwell and his contemporaries managed to create great novels while working as bank clerks and the like. But they did have TB and revolutions to inspire them. Whereas my inspirations tend to be restricted to shopping in Lidl and being born in Croydon.
Right now, I'm managing to get some stuff done, although it's mainly editing. I have a short story to deliver, which is supposed to be 1,500 words. The original manuscript was around 3,000. It's gone through about six edits, each cut being more impossibly deep than the last. To quote Tarantino, it's now cut not only to the bone, but past the bone. It's been amazing that I've been able to retain any of the humour or dream-like quality of the original: it's certainly been an education experience in discovering just how much you can edit after thinking 'no, I can't possibly cut any more'. That said, I don't think I can possibly edit any more.
In addition, I'm attempting to write some sketches. As I've spoken about before, sketch comedy is something that I'm really wanting to solve: I often come away from watching / listening to sketch comedy really inspired to write my own, admittedly sometimes buoyed by the fact that what I see / hear isn't always wholly successful in its aims. Of course, then I try to write some sketches myself, and it is savagely proved to me that it's not nearly as easy as it looks. Plus, what I'm trying to write is topical sketch comedy, which is almost Da Vinci Code like in my (lack of) ability to crack. After staring at a blank screen for two hours, I finally come up with a halfway decent idea, only to discover, after a quick sweep of NewsBiscuit or DailyMash, that someone else has got to the gag before I have, and done it better.
But I won't give up. I still have six minutes spare in March, I'm fine.

Ticket prices for the musical Elf - opening in London this Christmas - have been released, and the average price is around £250. Per ticket. So if you're the sort of family so beloved of detergent adverts - two parents, two kids - it will cost you around a thousand pounds just to get in through the door. And that's assuming that you live in the doorway of the theatre, and so have no travel costs to consider.
It is, obviously, too much for a family ticket to a Christmas musical that presumably lasts less than three hours. On average, a trip for the same family to Disneyland Paris for two days costs almost half that. And that includes a couple of rooms and breakfast. A 1k ticket price puts a lot of pressure on the creative team. I'm not sure that I'd want to be the writer(s) on that show. The expectations for the musical will be so significant, so huge, that it's reasonably unlikely that anyone sitting in the stalls are going to be truly blown away by what they see. Particularly if they already know that they're going to have to be hitch-hiking for the journey home.
Clearly the production will want to be awe-inspiring and magical. It's a Christmas-based show performed during the Christmas period, inspired by a genuine modern classic, and it's a fair bet that their fake snow will cost as much as the entire annual budget of many regional theatres. And while it's true that you can produce a lot of magical glitter for very little, audiences are arguably ever more demanding.
I don't get up to London theatre as much as I'd like to, simply because it's already too expensive for me. My budget dictates that as soon as we get past £25, maybe £35 a seat, I'm probably going to turn around and make my excuses. My excuses largely being that as much as I'd like to see Miss Saigon, I'd also like to eat this week. But here's the thing: £35 a ticket (for the cheap seats) isn't of itself overpriced. Obviously, many London theatres are around a thousand seats or more, and so even if each ticket is just £5, that will be (hang on - where's my calculator) five thousand pounds coming through the box office. And yet. That's not a clear five thousand for the theatre: each actor has to be paid Equity rates, as does every stage manager, costume fitter, sound and light operators, riggers, set designers, writers, musicians, ushers, and the many others on each production that I'm failing to list here. As much as I can't really afford any ticket over £40, I also am impressed that any major London production is able to let tickets go for anything less. I suppose we can thank the 'early adopters' - those people who do pay full whack for a show, allowing the rest of us to get a ticket for much less. Although if you do get a £10 ticket on the front seat, it is considered polite to keep your mouth shut about it, just on the off-chance that you're sitting next to a family of four that don't know how they're getting home tonight.

Calm Before The Storms

Taking advantage of the fact that I still have a couple of days off in order to get some writing down. Some of this is pure admin – answering emails, sorting out rehearsals and the like for the next bunch of Cast Iron Theatre performances – but a fair amount is to do with actual, ‘real’ writing. I always get in this sort of mood after I come back from visiting the Edinburgh fringe. Now that I’m back down south, I’m back on a normal civilian timetable, with no real understanding or appreciation of what my friends up in Scotland are still going through. And these people are performers – they were beginning to get more than a bit stir crazy when I left almost a week ago. They’ve been doing shows on a daily basis – sometimes twice daily, sometimes three times a day .. and I still think to myself that this is the sort of business that I want to get involved in? I am probably a glutton for punishment.

One of the things I’ve been working on this morning is an old novel that I managed to dig up. Well, I say novel. That’s probably a reasonably generous term. I hacked it out in under a month during a Nanowrimo – the annual event that gets you to commit to writing down 50,000 words in thirty days. At that, at least, I succeeded – with less than a minute to spare before the deadline, with aching typing hands on an unresponsive laptop, in between sets at a comedy gig I was appearing at that night. And in all fairness, despite my self-effacing dismissal of it, it’s not actually terrible. Well, obviously, it’s awful: it was hacked out in thirty days by someone who was making up the story as they went along while holding down a fulltime job, teaching acting classes, and directing plays. But, in real terms (and accepting all the above), it hangs together reasonably well as at least a first draft, or more accurately what might be called Draft Zero. Never to be shown to anyone, ever. To be honest, I have seen completed novels thrown up (now there’s a Freudian slip) onto the kindle that did not read as well as my incoherent hackery.

As well as doing the edit on that novel (because, actually, it might be worth salvaging once it has undergone a rewrite or twelve), I am completing some short stories, and a kid’s play for next summer. This is, in some ways, the part of the year that I love the most – when I have more than two consecutive hours in which to write. Right now, my mind is reasonably clear and not at all deranged: I can see how it’s possible to get the next draft of the novel finished by next month, the children’s play drafted by the end of the year, and a bunch of short stories bundled together by January. But that’s basically because I have time at the moment. I should acknowledge that I have exactly this conversation with myself around this time of year, every single year. Like a Tinder date with someone with a great profile pic who reveals themselves to be a bit racist, it’s initially thrilling, but ultimately disappointing. Because it’s a fair bet that – once again – once next week rolls into view, my timetable will be so packed that I won’t have enough space in my head to concentrate on as much writing stuff as I’d like to at any one point. How people who have not only a full time job, but also families cope, I’ve no idea.

I’m also managing to read a bit at the moment. While up at Edinburgh, we saw (amongst others) Bridget Christie and Robin Ince, both of whom were signing copies of their books. I’m a sucker for a book signing. Not necessarily because it’s a chance to meet the author (although that’s clearly part of it), but I somewhat over-romantically like the idea of putting the money directly into writer’s pocket., more or less. I’m loving A Book For Her, which is sort of like a stand up’s memoir mixed with the book Half The Sky (which is where I first read about the charity The Girl Generation), which is smart, funny, and makes me wish I’d caught shows like A Ant live. Robin Ince’s book is a collection of short horror stories written by various comedians. It opens with a pair of brilliantly nasty stories – one by Reece Shearsmith, and a genuinely upsetting one by Sara Pascoe. Again, it’s something that’s compelling me to get the hell on with my own collection. Not that it’s just frustrated writers like me that struggle under the yoke of procrastination. I was amused / not amused to catch an old episode of Mock The Week on Dave (where else?) where the stand up comic Ed Byrne provided a question for the answer ‘Four Years’ with the enquiry ‘How long have I been “writing” my sit-com?’ The wry and bitter grin he gave suggested that he wasn’t exactly joking.

Some Self Imposed Rules For Reviewing

I know quite a few people who are professional stand ups, actors, writers and directors. Occasionally, they are all of those, and more. What unites a great many of them is their shared hatred of reviewers. If it’s not hatred, then it’s a sense of bored dismissal, an agreement that reviewers generally don’t know what the hell they’re talking about. Their dislike includes the reviewers who actually like them, and give them positive write-ups, which seems at least fair. Another thing that all these performers share is the knowledge that I myself am an occasional reviewer, which as you might imagine, comes up reasonably rarely in conversation, presumably in a failed attempt to avoid any awkwardness.

What then, is the point of a reviewer? Or perhaps more crucially, what is the point of being a reviewer? Is it just to see shows for free? Absolutely not (Obviously it is that a little bit). Is it a misplaced confidence in the importance of your own opinion and voice? Ditto, and (ditto). For me, it’s increasingly about my own learning. I myself am an actor, director, writer (at least that’s what I tell myself), and it’s fascinating to see what other people are doing with the same ideas that I’m working on in any given year. Plus, it’s just interesting to have a conversation about whatever it is you’ve just seen. It doesn’t even matter that, in the whirlwind of the internet, not many people are going to listen. Let’s be honest: that’s how usual conversations work, too.

There are certainly different types of reviewers, ones that are funny, ones that are incoherent, ones that simply retell the plot of what they see, and ones that are desperate to show off how much they know. I’m still trying to work out what kind of reviewer I want to be, and I suspect that up until now I’ve been all of those things. Well, perhaps not the first one. What I think a reviewer has no choice about is that they have to be interesting to read. That’s all a review is, after all: a collection of words in the same space. And as such, the only purpose – the only point – is to have those words read. So they may as well be at least not boring.

To that end, I try to impose upon myself certain rules when writing a review. These rules do not (and should not) apply to every single reviewer, and indeed I’m pretty sure I’ve failed at a couple of these rules in more than a few reviews, particularly when it’s the middle of the fringe festival and I’m trying to write six reviews in half as many hours and my thesaurus has given up trying to give me alternatives for ‘compelling’. But as self-imposed rules go, I think they’re pretty sound, and I share them with you now in the interests of making myself a better writer, and possibly filling up another blog entry.

·         Say Something Nice. I think it’s extraordinarily rare that you’ll sit through something that doesn’t have something to recommend it. It may be a production that has somehow missed the central message of its own script, but there may be a supporting actress that is always magnetic to watch. I’m not saying that you have to lie – after all, there are potentially audience members who are reading your review in order to sway their decision as to where to go tonight, and it won’t do anyone any favours if you say only good things when it’s actually a pretty shoddy production – but if you can’t find something positive to say (even if it’s a piece of backhanded hackery like ‘I liked what they were trying to achieve’), then you’re probably in the wrong job. Your parents managed the old ‘well, the set was impressive’ lie at your first production of Jocasta Baby Killer, so you can find something nice to say about the LX design. Oh, and by the way: when I say that you might be sitting through a bad production – do sit through it. Until the end. Yes, I know audiences say that life is too short for bad theatre, and if you leave early you might get hold of the good bratwursts before the stall sells out, but they have the excuse of being the public, and the public are expected to be rude. If you’re reviewing – for a newspaper, or for an online blog read only by you – you stay until the bows. It’s the only way to write an accurate review.

·         Say Something Quotable.  This gets at the heart of what the point of a reviewer is, I think. Your words are your stock in trade, even if you’re an unpaid freelance. I have read plenty of beautifully written reviews, full of fulsome praise, excitedly claiming the show as the best thing the reviewer has seen … but the review itself is useless. Because of the way that the sentences are structured, there’s nothing that the media team can cut and paste to use on posters. And, despite what you may think, most groups are wary of editing quotes from reviews to make more sense in shorter form. That doesn’t mean that it doesn’t happen, however. It still has to be true, however. You need to tread a very fine line between being nice and quotable, and just hacking out a line that’s so relentlessly positive that you know it’s going to be used on the poster. Just remember, if it’s on the poster, your name is attached to it.

·         Say Something Funny (Or Interesting). I have problems with this, I admit. Despite that, I think it’s the most important of my own self-imposed rules. Local press are notoriously bad at filling up most of their word count with a bland synopsis of the plot. That’s not a review: that’s a bland synopsis of the plot. What I try to do in my reviews (and probably increasingly fail at, the deeper into a month long fringe I get) is to have a discussion. There are plenty of reviewers who are excellent at reporting what happened on stage, or how successful the costume choices were, and on occasion, I will be one of those reviewers. But I also like to be a bit chatty in my reviews, veer off subject slightly (as much as my editor will allow me), and discuss my own, personal reaction to what I’ve seen. I don’t mean that I’ll use the word ‘I’ in my reviews (the reviewer is the least interesting aspect of their own review), but I like to treat the reviews as an extension of the types of conversations I imagine audience members to be having on the way out of a show. At the most extreme end of this rule is benign arrogance: I would like to think that one day, some readers are reading my reviews for my voice, regardless of what show I’m reviewing.

·         Say Something Helpful. This is probably the most contentious of my self-imposed rules and certainly the one that I do the least. It again hits back at the heart of what the point of being a reviewer is. Is it liking the sound of your own voice? Or is it being some sort of half-assed dramaturg? Those two possibilities, I admit, are not exactly alien to one another. There is certainly some kind of arrogance in anybody – a reviewer, an audience member, an uninvited harasser on twitter – telling you that you ‘should have done it like this’ Presumably the stand up, the writer, the actors company, whatever – has spent several months making their show the best it can be. The last thing they need is some hack (who hasn’t spent several months making their show the best it can be) coming in and giving their unwarranted opinion. And yet. If there is an aspect of the show that frustrates you – pace, a sexist script, or a confusing ending, for instance, then I think it’s appropriate to discuss that in your review. After all, it is entirely possible that you are absolutely correct in your judgement, and if that’s the case, it’s only fair on both the audiences, and more importantly, the performers, that you bring it to light. If you’re wrong, then fair enough, all the other reviews will highlight that, and you will be ostracised as you deserve. But if you are correct, it may well be that your review is the first time they’ve had a problem that has been nagging them all through production defined, and your critique may be the thing that jumpstarts them from a mediocre show to a great one. And you will have helped, perhaps. Just remember point one. Say something nice.

·         Don’t Say What It’s About. I hate spoilers. I have a whole essay to bore you with another time about spoilers. It’s cheap, nasty and lazy. Essentially, by giving away parts of the plot – particularly the surprising and exciting bits – you are highlighting that you don’t actually know what to write about, that you don’t have an opinion. When you give away plot points in your review, you are filling up your word count by basically cutting and pasting the good work that someone else has done, and passing it off as your own. This is very cheap writing. I understand that some reviewers want to show off that they’ve ‘got it’, or that they have understood the more obscure references (I myself have sailed perilously close to this more than once), or indeed to communicate to the performer that they laughed (or cried) in all the right places. I understand also that it’s challenging to talk about a show that you’ve really loved (or hated) without discussing what’s happened onstage. But, not to labour the point too much, if you are telling me what the story is, then you are not discussing the production. If you are telling me the plot (Prince’s dad gets killed, he fails to do anything about it for three hours), then you are not telling me anything that I couldn’t read in a script, or probably in the company’s own flyer. I recognise that you don’t want your review to be too opaque or obscure, but if you can’t write five hundred words without giving away the ending or blowing all the best jokes, then perhaps reviewing isn’t for you.

So. Those are the rules that I attempt to impose upon myself in each review. As I’ve indicated, I more than occasionally fail. But I do try. It’s important to remember that reviews are not disposable and throwaway, despite what my performer friends might say and hope. It’s important to remember that the reviews one writes will actually be read by at least one person. And as such, there’s a certain responsibility. Now, that’s a rather portentous and pretentious line on which to end, but it has the ring of truth to it. Reviewing isn’t just about the sound of your own voice and seeing lots of shows for free. (I’ve already told you it is, a bit.)

All of Us Are In The Gutter ...

Up at the Edinburgh Fringe, star ratings are everything. At least, that’s what we keep being told in opinion pieces like this one. Obviously, they’re useful to plaster on the promotional material when indecisive potential audiences are drowning in flyers on the Royal Mile or panicking outside the Half Price Hut. The problem is, of course, that nobody nowadays seems to listen to – or even have basic respect for – any star rating below four. Which makes the whole thing nonsensical.

 

In all honesty, there’s nothing essentially wrong with star ratings, it’s just that absolutely nobody – with no exceptions whatsoever – knows how to employ them. Three star ratings are now a badge of dishonour, and there isn’t a theatre company who would feel happy using them in its press. This, clearly, is just a little bit silly: it suggests that the absolute baseline of credibility is four stars and above, ignoring anything below. That means we ignore almost 75% of the possible opinion. That’s like saying that nobody under the age of fifty is worth listening to. Yes, I’m well aware that some of you have no problem with that. But we’re missing out here. The very existence of three stars at the end of a review should indicate something of value. Three stars worth of value, in fact. Hell, you don’t even get three stars on your badge in McDonald’s without seriously impressing the management.

 

Let’s look at things in reverse order. Five stars is the easiest to discuss, since, like standing in a line at for a show at the fringe that doesn’t have relatives of members of the company in it, it’s simply near-impossible to achieve. Five stars should be indicative of the very best of someone’s career: literally, it can’t get any better than this. That being said, we’ve all been guilty of throwing away five stars when we probably shouldn’t have. Even I have to confess doing so when overtired, distracted by a pretty face in a supporting role, and jacked up on far too many Tangtastics.

 

Following that then, is Four Stars. Four Stars is what we should be calling unmissable, what a few too many of us actually think is a five star rating. These are the shows that we excitedly tweet about on the way out, of the venue, the ones that we recommend to our friends when the show tours locally. But they are still not five stars. A four star show is merely excellent. Excellent is something to be proud of. What’s happened, of course, is that in recent years, we have got ourselves trapped in a ‘X Factor’ mentality – apparently, things have to be life changingly brilliant, or grimly awful. We’ve become embarrassed by thinking anything in between. We are now bewilderingly shy of being able to rave about something that we find wonderful while at the same time acknowledging that it needs improvement.

 

If all the above is true (cough: it is), this means that Three Stars is not, as we have tricked ourselves into believing, mundane and invisible, a rating to be embarrassed by. No, three stars is – or, in my not so humble opinion, should be – simply a very good show. As I’ve argued before, in any other industry you have to work damn hard to get three stars. Soldiers returning from battle are continually baffled by the amount of young dance troupes petulantly rejecting their three stars at the fringe.

 

If we accept that a three star rating is actually a hard-won compliment rather than a dismissal, then two and one star ratings can begin to make a lot more sense. A two star rating is for a show that is essentially sound, but fatally or near-fatally flawed by a couple of bad choices: perhaps the lead is horrifically miscast, or the dialogue is overwritten. What those two stars tell you however (or, should tell you, in this alternate universe I’ve just made up), particularly in an environment as volatile and cauldron-bubbly as the fringe, is that although this show has some way to go before improvement, it is still worth your time: the company deserves your attention and feedback so that they can continue to grow.

 

Which leaves us with the one star review. In this version of the world, a one star review would be exactly what it should sound like: a show with at least some merit. Yes, a one star show would be undeniably poor. It might be incoherent, or the jokes would be indistinguishable from the twitter feed of that old school friend you keep meaning to delete – but that one star would suggest that there was at least one saving grace: intelligent direction, perhaps, attempting to throw light on a half-baked script, or a clever set design.

 

I understand completely that I’m a lone voice. The star ratings aren’t going anywhere anytime soon unless you write – as I indeed do – for a site like FringeReview, which has adopted a policy of ‘if you can’t beat them, then refuse point blank to join them’, and has eschewed star ratings altogether. Equally, for those sites and publications that are still using star ratings, companies are only ever going to be interested in ratings of four and five, which, as I’ve pointlessly argued is insane. So it’s down to us to argue more eloquently in our reviews. Now, I’ve been known to dismiss myself as an online hack, but what I’m hacking still has some merit. Well, if not merit, certainly weight. Reviews are at their best when they are a discussion, the development of the reviewer’s own reaction to whatever it is they have seen in the theatre. It’s not good that we can have our arguments and thoughts reduced down into what is essentially a very unimaginative line of emojis. If star ratings are like a reviewer’s version of Schrödinger’s Cat – simultaneously meaningless and vital – then what we write below the line needs to be carefully considered. Lest we forget, the reviewers themselves can now punished (or rewarded) with star-style ratings, via sites like FringePig. A few more of those plastered over reviewer’s profiles could do more to change the ratings system than anything else ..

Wednesday 5th August 2015

Have finally managed to select the six plays we are going to be producing for Cast Iron VI, and it was a tough process. Not only choosing the six plays, but the six directors, and various casts. A lot of it ends up about being sheer, mundane logistics: having some very talented actors (or directors, or writers) to work with, but a certain actor not quite fitting a certain role (or being far too suitable for pretty much every role). Plus, one of the major headaches - that I have given myself - is that I don't hold auditions at Cast Iron. While it is still a relatively small and manageable group, I like to run it as a benign dictatorship - assigning directors to the plays and casts that I have chosen for them. It's a massive trust exercise on the parts of those directors and actors, an exercise that they have for the most part embraced whole-heartedly. My main reason for doing it this way is so that I, as artistic director / curator / whatever, still maintain some control over the evening - so that, for instance, we don't have an evening of plays that are all about relationship break-ups, or twist endings (unless, of course, we were intentionally having that theme for the evening).

 

One of the other major reasons that I dictate these terms is to get people - including myself - to operate outside the comfort zone. In small theatre groups - particularly the kinds of ones that students set up after college, for instance - it's very easy, very understandable, and very desirable to work with the same people again and again. You get to know each other's rhythms, ways of working, and will have a short-hand in the way you communicate with one another. More important, it's nurturing: within that group, you will be supported, and validated. I've been lucky enough in the groups that I've worked with - particularly the New Venture Theatre - to be allowed a good deal of artistic freedom to try out ideas and concepts that I just know that other companies would have been a lot more nervous with.

 

But theatre groups tend to - as well as nurturing you - nurture their own audiences, as well. So I might tell myself that I'm being all clever and risky and trying out new things, but the simple fact is that if I already have a built in audience that reasonably likes the kind of things I do anyway, and indeed is likely to buy a ticket for the September show regardless of who's producing it because they're loyal to the theatre, it could well be true that I'm not actually learning anything about my craft.

 

And it's worth pointing out the odd little window I'm operating in here. Trying to produce original theatre, or at the very least, interesting productions of existing texts, and not calling it am-dram. Oh, yes, I know, many am-dram groups proudly announce that what they are producing is at professional level - and more than occasionally, they happen to be justified in that bold claim. But I'm not sure I can kid myself too much. I have  a full-time job, and a couple of other jobs that occupy the weekends. Any writing that I do often gets done in lunch breaks, or on the commute home. And that's ignoring the fact that in other times I'm either acting or directing. So I don't get much time to write. And that's when my brain is actually functioning enough to do that - I'm not often able to do the lovely writer thing of hammering out a few pages, daydreaming about it for a bit, then ripping it all up and starting again. Frankly, it's impressive that I manage to write anything coherent. And, if I might allow myself a quick burst of pride, what I've produced over the last couple of years is a damn sight more than coherent. Despite all that, I actually feel lazy when it comes to my writing output - I could write a helluva lot more.

 

But that odd little window straddling professional ideals while operating within am-dram (no time, no money) constraints can indeed be productive, forcing you to be ever more creative with less. I consider the Cast Iron nights to be 'calling cards' for those who want to use them as such: inviting agents to see their work - either as actor, writer or director. I've been humbled by the people - usually writers - who have told me that Cast Iron has given them the platform (or courage) to finally get around to writing, and how delighted they've been to see their work produced onstage, something that they didn't think they ever would have an avenue for otherwise. Now, I can hear the wincing of a thousand professional writers, worried that this means below-par stuff is getting produced, but I don't accept that. As many writers know, nothing is more effective in getting STUFF FINISHED than some kind of deadline, and I know that I personally have produced more work in the last two years than if I didn't have this (admittedly self-created) avenue to write for.

 

The whole non-audition thing can create its own challenges, however. I get emails from very impressive people who I simply don't know how to use, who I can match them with. They're clearly great, and brilliant, and capable and everything, but it's good to have a sense of chemistry of the person (which, of course, is one of the main reasons for actually having an audition). Normally, we're able to solve this when they come along to one of the drop-in sessions at Iron Clad Improv, or if they're really terrified / uninterested in that kind of thing, we usually try to sort out a quick, informal chat which is normally enough to tell me where (I think) people would be best suited.

 

So, yes: we have selected the plays, the casts, and the directors. It has been a very difficult selection process this time round, with lots of juggling and moving stuff around. We've emailed those people already, and they start rehearsals in the next couple of weeks. In the meantime, I'm preparing for a few days at the Edinburgh Fringe ..