Thursday 24th December 2015

Taking advantage of the lull before the (Christmas) storm in order to prep all manner of things for 2016. I'm in the odd position of turning things down (or at the very least postponing them), which I've never had the intelligence to do before. But that doesn't mean things aren't going to be horrifically busy in the first quarter of the year. Two things will be happening in the same month (March): we have Cast Iron VII, which will be the next batch of short plays - ten minutes long or so - produced at the DukeBox Theatre in Hove. We've been doing Cast Iron Theatre for a couple of years now, and I've been overwhelmed by the support we continually get from our audiences. We're currently seeking new plays - and also actors and directors - for our next shows. The dates are still to be confirmed, but the deadline for the scripts will be in early January (ideally, everyone will have started rehearsals by mid January).
Also in March, Cast Iron Theatre is curating an event for International Woman's Day. Called Not Just The Companion, it will be an evening of women performers parts that are traditionally male. As you may already be aware, there's a huge imbalance in roles that are iconic for men, versus similar for women. This is not reflected in the number of hugely talented women both in the professional and amateur world who are simply not served by sometimes unsatisfying and / or undemanding roles. Quite often, women can be reduced to playing wives and girlfriends, without having agency of their own. Not Just The Companion is a (very) small attempt to begin to redress that balance. More details as we go along.

Nanowrimo: Coming Up For Air

As well as hacking out a couple of thousand words a day for Nanowrimo, I had also intended to keep a blog talking about what problems and story blocks I was encountering. The idea, nebulous as it may have been, was that I discussed various kinks in the story (even as no one was listening, which was at least very likely), I would be able to recognise the solutions to whatever narrative problems I was having by seeing them at one step removed, by the simple method of just talking about them.

Of course, it didn’t quite work out like that. I haven’t been able to keep a blog detailing the progress of my novel in progress, simply because it hasn’t. I did about a thousand and a half words on the first day (which was an effortful hack job) before real life got in the way, and I haven’t been able to commit any more time to the damn thing. Some of that is the same reason why many other nanowrimers (is that what we call ourselves? I haven’t checked) fall by the wayside as the month goes on – full time job, etc. Actually, I will go as far as to say (to be arrogant enough to say, in fact) that if you ever set out to complete Nanowrimo, and you didn’t have a full time job and/or a family to occupy your time, then you probably don’t deserve to be a writer. I mean, there are people I know who are hitting their targets every single day. And they have a full time job. And a family. And it’s not like they’re neglecting any of their duties, or locking themselves away with the laptop for hours on end (maybe just a hour), but the point remains, they’ve got a lot of demands on their time, and they’re still hitting their targets.

Me? Yeah, I’m way behind. We’re on Day 10, and I still haven’t reached 2,000 words. That’s pretty much fatal, especially when you consider that I’m working seven days a week, and some evenings. (why the hell are you wasting your time/word count coughing up into a blog then, I hear you ask. I can hear you ask, incidentally, because I’ve got a particularly febrile imagination that’s just starved of affirmation. Well, we’ll come to that.) In the big race to November 30^th, 50,000 words strapped under our belts, I’m quite dangerously behind. I’m like the kid that you chose last in track, and I’m doing a half-hearted jog roughly sixteen miles behind everybody else, too wheezy to ask anyone to wait. What am I saying? I’m not like that kid. I was that kid. But anyway.

It would be very easy at this point to throw in the towel, to give up. To not finish the damn thing. It would be an intelligent move, too: I’m curating an evening of short plays in December, and seeking other scripts for a thing in March. Added to that, I’m working on something for International Woman’s Day (also in March), and there’s an open air theatre script, another script for next Christmas, possibly something for the Brighton Fringe and ohgodwritingitalldownlikethat makes me realise just how many projects I’m juggling at the moment. And, it’s worth remembering that all of these things are going to result in little or no money (more often the latter). So, it would be a smart move to junk the NanoWrimo work in progress: I don’t win anything, it’s reasonably unlikely to be read by anyone anytime soon, and it’s very likely, if and when it gets finished, to be reasonably terrible. So then, the question is: what’s the point? What do I get out of it?

The short answer is, of course, not much. At least not immediately. But the real point I’ve already mentioned, albeit in a throwaway fashion. NanoWrimo gives you the purpose – the excuse, even – to finish your damn stuff. Yes, I could put all my attention on the other projects right now (and it’s not like I’m exactly ignoring them, I put some work into them every single day), but one of the major challenges of having so many creative projects on the boil with hazily defined intentions and even vaguer deadlines is that every single one of those projects becomes a distraction – the Shiny New Thing. This is the problem when a project becomes slightly too hard, when it stops being fun: maybe you finally have to do some research, or you’ve already written all the exciting sexy stuff – now you have to write all the boring, nuts and bolts expostiony stuff (and then put lots of effort into it not sounding remotely boring, or indeed expostiony). It is then obviously very easy to get distracted by the other Shiny New Thing, the piece of work which still needs the fun explosion scene to be written, the project where three hours of work don’t seem like work. The net result is that you end up with lots of work that has some fun scenes in them, but are ultimately incomplete. And here’s the kicker: those fun scenes aren’t nearly as fun as you think they are, because they won’t have the set up (and probably not the resolution) that is required to make them truly succeed. You know the set up, it’s in your head, but nobody cares about the big explosion if they don’t know about the people causing it / trying to stop it / caught in the middle of it.

So, to have an excuse to actually FINISH YOUR DAMN STUFF is a good thing. Rather than bailing on something when it becomes just a bit difficult, you are forced to commit to finishing. The deadline is arbitrary, the pressure to finish is entirely fictitious.  But you’ll know. YOU’LL KNOW. And if you’ve announced that you’re embarking on NanoWrimo, other people know, too. And that, in theory, shames you into having to complete your draft. This, I suspect, is the reason why so many ‘writers’ (speech marks intentional) can’t help talking about their work in progress at parties. Obviously a big part of it is that talking about a good idea is much more exciting that having to edit and redraft it, but I think another big pull is the belief that if you announce it to the world, you are making a verbal contract that you can’t back down from. Of course, this doesn’t actually work: people can and do back down from such verbal contracts. And that, I think, is where NanoWrimo comes into play – it makes it sort of ‘official’, and more particularly, since you only have a month to play with (and not one of those pesky thirty one day months, neither), you absolutely can’t think to yourself ‘well, it’s not going so well, I’ll do it next month’. Because next month is too late.

So, yeah. Why am I wasting time (and words) on this blog when I could be filling up a word count on the novel? Mainly it’s because I have already spent such a long time away from it. I’m not expecting this novel to be any good in its first draft (I’m not even expecting it to be readable), partially because I will be making it up as I go along (not necessarily a good idea), and partially I don’t have any genre-supports (thriller, horror, suspense) to help me bridge any gaps in storytelling. So, whenever I’m away from the computer, it’s a vast, impossible project. Too much to cope with, and it makes my mind shrivel in fear. But – and this is what I remember from the last time I did NanoWrimo, when I was away from the computer for about a week – once I was able to get back into the writing – by the simple and frankly underrated act of just putting one word after the after – the rest of the world just fell away. Once I started writing one word, the insurmountable mountain became a tarmacked road. Listen, I don’t have to worry about editing and polishing until December.

So this blog has just been a starter, reminding me that I can still put one word after the other, and they don’t even have to be particularly interesting. If I can do this, I can get stuck back into the book.

Alright, then. I’m going in.  

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.

Monday 8th June 2015

In my final year at college, studying theatre, we were told to write and direct our own play. I can’t quite remember what the criteria were, but I know that we were required to come up with at least ten minutes. In a response that was to typify the majority of my writing since, I found it difficult to keep mine from sprawling over half an hour.

That play – which would have been produced in the spring of 2001, I think – was generally well received (certainly it was very well acted). It was a murder mystery with four actors playing four parts each, and – although I didn’t get the chance to write this – the chance of four different endings. It was therefore almost inevitably called ‘Four Play’. I did consider a whole lot of other titles before going for the pun, but nothing else sold the concept quite so well. A lot of the humour of the piece was inspired by watching far too many screenings of the Tim Curry film Clue (which also had multiple endings, and a frenetic, breathless final act), the acidic humour of Mad magazine, and – now that I think about it – an experience I had on another play in a previous drama course, back in Croydon.

I was in a farce called An Italian Straw Hat, and found myself playing two fairly sizeable roles: an aging grumpy old man, and an immaculate, humourless waiter. I’d like to think that this was to explore my very obvious and significant range as an actor, but it’s more likely that there simply weren’t enough men to fill the parts. I don’t remember it as a particularly joyous production – more skewed towards bombastic performance rather than acting – which, even in a farce, is leaning towards tedium. But there was one moment where I had to leave the stage as the grumpy old man, and then return as the immaculate butler in roughly the same amount of time that it’s taken you to read that sentence.

Much of my ego obviously got a kick out of this – managing to switch between two entirely different characters, as well as a complete costume change, in under 40 seconds. In the event, I’m not entirely convinced that anybody noticed the effort I was putting in, and that includes my fellow cast members. I’ve chosen to conclude that that proves just how devastatingly impressive my character switch was. Or something.

So, anyway. All that was in my writing DNA in early 2001. In the week of the show, the course co-ordinator took me aside and mentioned that a student on another theatre course hadn’t gotten around to writing the hour long play that she was meant to for the Edinburgh Fringe that summer. Each year, a select few of the college were able to ride of coat-tails and get a show on at the fringe. Except that this girl didn’t actually have a play finished. ‘And this,’ my course co-ordinator intoned, ‘is fringe material.’ He asked if I’d be interested in taking the ‘Four Play’ up to the Edinburgh Fringe. I was, despite never having been up there, and not truly appreciating the magnitude of the offer. However, the lazy playwright got wind of this idea, and pulled out all the stops to hack out her play (which I increasingly now think was the whole point of my job offer). Her play went up to the fringe, where it was reviewed with the classic line ‘the worst thing on the fringe this year’ (which, as is the contractual obligation, they blew up to a huge size and plastered it all over their posters). ‘Four Play’, meanwhile, was liked well enough that the cast repeated it the following year (after I’d left the course) for a revival. A shaky video of that exists somewhere. I always knew that I’d want to write the play again to full length, and establish the four different endings. However, as is often the case when somebody does a drama course, I entirely avoided acting for about seven years. Once I’d moved down south, I scoped out a few local drama groups, most of which at that time had no interest in producing new work (and certainly not one from a writer they didn’t know). One of the most promising was the New Venture Theatre, and so eventually I posted my colours there. I knew that I’d still have to play the long game -  there was no way they were going to offer a directing / writing gig to someone they’d only just met – and so I had a couple of fun years as actor, and directing a short play (by Mark Wilson) for a new writing showcase. After a while, I felt able to submit my proposal for a production. I’m sure that there were probably a couple of people who raised eyebrows at the idea of a writer directing his own work (quite often a pretty strong signal of self-involved self-satisfaction) but somehow I managed to get it through the gate.

And for the second time, I was blessed with an excellent cast, and a truly amazing back stage crew. There were around 120 complete costume changes, and on some nights, it felt like half of those changes took place in the last twenty minutes. Most audience members seemed to have a great time, some said that the play clearly had a future beyond the confines of amateur theatre, and many gently pointed out that it was a bit long. On this last they were absolutely correct.

So, while it needed a pretty savage edit, even people who had criticised the length said that it didn’t really feel that long – it was just, in order to make the whole thing commercially viable, it needed a chop. This was true, and I was content to leave it alone for a while as my mind attempted to solve the problem without my interference (due to the complicated nature of the set up, it was never going to be as simple as, say, cutting the third scene – each moment was stacked on the other like a house of cards). Meanwhile, almost in passing, someone asked me if I’d heard of a thing in London called ‘The 39 Steps’. I said that I hadn’t, and the conversation drifted elsewhere.

In the five years since, I have of course heard of ‘The 39 Steps’, and I’m aware of the similarities  between that production and ‘Four Play’: both are period pieces where a limited number of actors play multiple parts. It seemed like someone had got to the joke before I did, so I was intrigued enough to check out the London show to see if ‘Four Play’ was a lost cause, or if it was entirely different.

Well. It’s not entirely different. I found myself in London recently, and had a chance to see ‘The 39 Steps’ for myself. ‘Four Play’ does indeed share a very central gag with 39 – that there are four actors (why did it have to be four?) playing lots of different parts. A lot of the joy of both plays is that they are fringe shows done big – unashamedly punching above their weight, and we can see the actors working hard just to keep up. There’s even a joke in both plays that is essentially the same, when the script ‘cheats’ with an apparent fifth cast member in order to facilitate a plot point. Understandably, I spent much of the production squirming between enjoying the show and seething with annoyance. Seems like I can still switch between personas really quickly.

I did some homework to see who had their original production first, and – perhaps surprisingly – I was actually pleased to discover that ‘The 39 Steps’ had beaten me to the punch, in their original fringe production, by about four years. I think I’d rather that than the alternative: that I’d written and produced something, and then did nothing with it for nearly ten years while someone else managed to get in first. That would have been upsetting.

And yet. Although there is clearly a lot of shared DNA, there are marked differences. 39 delights in the impossible task of creating a Hollywood movie on stage, complete with planes, trains, and car crashes. ‘Four Play’, on the other hand, gets overly complicated by getting trapped by its own form and set up: actors aren’t able to arrive on stage as one particular character until they have the opportunity to leave the stage as a previous character, and as a result there have to be additional narrative quirks to facilitate the entrances and exits, as well as some humour coming from the actors/characters forcing the others on stage into ever quicker and more difficult changes.

The humour in 39 (I would claim) is also slightly broader: they have fun with breaking the reality of the staging once or twice, and the joke I spoke about earlier, the one about the fake fifth cast member, is actually somewhat different. In ‘Four Play’, it occurs relatively early in the text, and is reasonably subtle: all actors are on stage, interrupted by a knocking on the door. They are momentarily confused before shrugging it off and continuing. We didn’t explain the gag any further (it’s the first time the play implicitly references the number of actors), and I knew each night that if the audience laughed right away, then they’d got the gag, and we had them for the rest of the night. And so it proved. In ‘The 39 Steps’, they lampshade the joke a lot more, having an actor yell out in frustration ‘This is meant to be a play for four actors!’ (again, why did they have to have four?). The audience enjoyed it, but I felt it laboured the joke. That said, it was an indication that, no matter how much ‘Four Play’ and ’39 Steps’ appear to have in common, they are actually quite different.

However, I’ve spent a lot of time since undecided if I want to be all depressed about the whole thing – throw it all away – or take comfort in the fact that there’s clearly a market for this kind of thing. Nowadays, it’s all about the money: when I was able to produce ‘Four Play’ the first time round, doing it with a local theatre group – complete with its own studio space, etc, easily saved me thousands. Now, if I was going to produce it myself, it would be beyond me. So I consider the possible thought processes of any potential producer – will they react with ’39 Steps already did this,’ or ‘if people liked 39 Steps, they’ll love this! ..’

In the end, I rather think I’ll strap myself in, complete the edits, and then hawk it around to any possible interested producers or agents. Because, after all, I rather like this script. And after all, if ’39 Steps’ really did get to my idea of four actors playing multiple parts, I can take comfort in the reality that we can’t possibly have been the first.  

Sunday 31 May 2015

Tomorrow, I start a new series of acting classes at the New Venture Theatre, for all the Mondays in June. Before, the classes have mainly been centred around improvisation and confidence in performance, but this time around, we're going to have a look at script work. There's a line that I now quote in my classes - and annoyingly, I can't actually remember who I'm stealing it from - that goes something like, the script is just the blueprint, not the final product. This is something I think a lot of us could afford to bear in mind a lot more keenly.

 

Obviously, we should have a lot of respect for the writer's words - hell, I write myself, I know how much time, effort, and low level depression I put into an average script - but I notice that a few actors and directors feel really handcuffed by a script. Sometimes, admittedly, that's the playwrights fault, when the script is too exacting in its directions, saying that an actor should exit stage left when there's no real reason for the actor to leave in that direction. I remember a good chunk of rehearsal time being sunk because two characters were meant to be having a private conversation, but another character was in earshot. That third character had no more lines, no more narrative relevance, and was clearly not meant to be on stage anymore. But the director refused to have him leave the stage, simply because there was no stage direction dictating that. They were allowing the story to get trampled over by a stray LX cue.

 

But I like the idea of a script being your starting point for a production, rather than the end game. For many that's obvious - nobody pays £70 for a West End show simply to pick up a copy of the text and read it in silence - but like many obvious things, simply re-stating it in slightly different language makes us reassess and realise it anew. Plus, if the script is any good, it can certainly put up with a little punishment. Shakespeare is particularly good at this, and it's one of the reasons why his plays still get performed 400 years later. You can rip them apart, dress them in Gulf War fatigues, and make them continually relevant to the audience watching.

 

Obviously, not everyone agrees. I remember talking with a director as they prepared to take on Romeo And Juliet. He was keen to do an entirely original, refreshing production, unlike any that had been done before. I mentioned that I'd enjoyed the 90s film version (the one with Claire Danes and Leonardo DiCaprio), at which he sniffed, and muttered: 'That's not Shakespeare.' I knew then that this was a conversation that wasn't going to last much longer, and in any case, I didn't quite understand it, coming from a man who habitually did all his Shakespeare productions in non-Elizabethan dress. If you're going to make such an absolute criticism, at least commit to it absolutely.

 

Anyway. Five acting classes at the NVT in June, all to do with fear of script, and using it as a blueprint. I've got one more Iron Clad Improv class (tonight) at the Cricketers in The Lanes, and then we're back to the DukeBox Theatre from next Sunday.

 

Writing has been going well this week, but I'm mournfully aware that I've just had a week off. Check in this time next week, and you'll see if I've kept up my word count.

 

Acting Class details here and improve drop-in details here.

Thursday 29th January 2015

I used to live near a Waitrose. And it was a Waitrose in Brighton, less than five minutes from the beach, so it was pretty bloody Waitrose. Obviously, your expectation might be that everything in Waitrose is going to be markedly more expensive than elsewhere - the Sainsburys down the road, for instance, or the Aldi. But that's not actually the case: in the main, and considering the quality, the difference in price isn't that much higher. 

By the way, a word about places like Aldi and Lidl. By now, you'll have worked out that you can get some pretty good stuff there - there's stories of Guardian readers loading up the 4x4 with cheaply priced imported meats and lobster, all under five quid. I think Aldi and Lidl are missing several tricks here. It would be a simple matter to open up a little bespoke shop, all hewn wood and exposed brickwork - somewhere in Kensington (or less than five minutes walk from Brighton beach), get a job lot of cured hams from Aldi, repackage them in wax paper , and sell it on for £8 a pop. It would be a huge success. I would say you can't have that idea, it's mine, but I'd be stunned if someone hasn't already beaten me to it. 

Anyway, Waitrose. They've always been pretty savvy about  making the customer feel important. There's doubtless a few people who will disagree with my interpretation of events, but the staff at my local Waitrose always seem pretty friendly and genuinely willing to help. A lot of this appears to be - and again, maybe some will disagree - that the staff generally seem happy to be there. This is a marked difference to many other supermarkets. 

A while back, Waitrose pulled a masterstroke, and offered free coffee to anyone who had a store loyalty card. That, and the fact you could claim a free newspaper if you were spending more than £5, meant that the shop pretty much owned you, in a very similar way to a cult. But a cult that kept you jacked up on caffeine and daily news and comment. There was a very good chance that you'd make a slight diversion from a nearer store in order to pick up a free newspaper, or, if you had only intended to pick up a tea, you would end up buying a muffin as well, as a example of your co-dependent relationship. It was fine, you both knew what you were getting into. A Fifty Shades Of Earl Grey, if you like. 

The Brighton Waitrose doesn't have a coffee shop, meaning that anyone who wants that free drink either drinks it while shopping, or takes it straight out. There's nowhere to sit down and drink. This appears not to be the case everywhere, though, because Waitrose sent out an email this morning asking (OK, stating) that customers claiming their free drink would now also buy a cake or something. This inevitably prompted an impressive slew of people babbling on twitter who ably demonstrated that they could complain, but couldn't actually read: Waitrose had to keep repeating that coffees got from a machine were still free, it was just that if you sat down in a coffee shop, you had to pay for something. This wasn't good enough for twitter customers, who, unable to see that they were screwing up a good deal by sitting for free with a coffee for six hours like a failed Hollywood screenwriter in Starbucks. ’It isn't free’, one customer sniffed. Well, maybe he sniffed. It was on twitter, it probably isn't wise to speculate too much about the bodily functions people get up to on twitter. 

I can only imagine that this is exactly what's happened: Waitrose coffee shops have been crammed by people who have claimed their free coffee and their free table and spoiling it for everyone else. This, ladies and gentlemen, is why we can't have nice things. At least the failed Hollywood screenwriter might actually pay for a coffee every four hours or so. 

At the very worst, you might think that customers would go “oh, well, free coffee was nice while it lasted, guess we're going to have to go back to the traditional methods of actually PAYING FOR STUFF and / or SHOPLIFTING now”. But, no. Like a toddler being told they have to put the action figure back on the display when leaving the toy shop, these people kicked, screamed and bawled. The last time I saw such embarrassing MINE IT'S MINE behaviour was - well, actually, back at Waitrose, on Christmas Eve, when the shop managed to annoy everyone with the controversial announcement that they were not going to reduce prices on the turkeys just before the store closed. This was met with absolute fury (I'm not kidding: fury), particularly when people were told that the turkeys were going to be donated to the homeless. This annoyed a lot of people. Especially the people holding their free coffees. 

I'll say it again. This is why we can't have nice things. 

Monday 26th January 2015

Over the past year or so, they've done quite a bit of redevelopment of Brighton train station, which frankly was pretty overdue. Train stations in England - and, I'm willing to bet, in many other countries over the world - are pretty odd places. They're meant to be the gateways of whatever city or town they're in, perhaps even representative of that town. But more often than not, you'll find that train stations quite often open out into the backs of buildings, on the edge of town. As soon as you arrive in a place, the place has turned away from you, demanding that you leave. Plus, there's been an increasing tendency recently (as there has been with the high street) to ensure that all stations look pretty much the same, with a WHSmith at the end of every siding. Seriously, I think WHSmith has only survived in business this long because people are forced to buy an overpriced bar of chocolate every time their train is delayed. It can't just be the sales of GCSE text books and misery memoirs. 

But I digress. Recently, they've been doing a lot of work at Brighton station. I think throughout the seventies and eighties, there was a lot of effort to hide the victorian structures with cheap looking metal and plastic. There then came a point where they clearly realised that the cheap looking metal and plastic looked - well, cheap. So. They've been stripping it all back, exposing the victoriana, making it look slightly more unique. They still haven't got rid of the WHSmith, they've simply relocated it, which isn't really committing to the idea. I know there are rents to be paid, and a high street business has a lot more money than the local newsagent, but I'd much prefer to see a privately owned newspaper stall at train stations than WHSmith. There's still one at Hove train station (or, at least, there was the last time I checked), and it's brilliant. In fact, I'd go further. I'm not much of a drinker, but I miss the idea of a proper old pub at each train station (not a Wetherspoons, obviously - if you have to have a Wetherspoons, you may as well do it properly and allow Burger King to sell beer). And of course, a tea room, so that Trevor Howard can spend the rush hour saving enigmatically beautiful women from being blinded. You know, like in the good old days. 

But you can't go back. Progress marches on. Technology improves. Apparently. The latest part of the improvements over at Brighton Station is to do with the ticket office. Up until now, buying a ticket mainly involved lining up with everybody else on a Monday morning, silently muttering to yourself about why none of these idiots took the time to buy a new ticket on Friday evening when there was less of a queue, refusing to accept any such criticism for yourself (you were busy that night, come on, you've got a life, right?) and waiting until one of the harried cashiers were ready for you. 

All that has now changed. Before you get to the door, there is now a monolithic steel and chrome structure, all beeps and digital read out, looking very much like the tall obelisk that terrifies the underdeveloped natives in 2001: A Space Osysdey. And so it proves with this computer at Brighton, where a crowd of bewildered commuters are now spending mornings gibbering wet-eyed and incoherent at this unexpected change to their morning regime. Now what happens, instead of lining up and taking your chances, you are prompted to take a ticket with a number on it, and wait to be called. This means that at best you feel like you're about to buy some organic ham at the deli counter at Waitrose, or at worst hoping to get a cheap flat screen telly at Argos. But with a lot less guarantee that your product is going to work.

Presumably this thing was introduced to make people's lives easier. To ensure fairness for all the passengers, so that people who rocked up late to get a ticket wouldn't simply jump the queue. But also - and I suspect this is the main draw - to ensure that passengers no longer spend their transaction time moaning and bleating about how long it takes to get served (there really is no sense of irony amongst train passengers. Occasionally no sense, full stop). In this last aim, of course, everything has failed quite spectacularly. For a start, now that everyone has a numbered ticket, there's not actually any need for them to line up. They can instead sit on any of the benches that have been provided (another result of the refurbishment of the station). But nobody can quite trust that, so everyone lines up anyway, mainly in the only doorway, meaning that everybody blocks the exit of anyone else. Plus, every second customer spends about five minutes to complain about the ineffiency of the new system, that it all seems to be taking a lot longer, and that everyone will be delayed as the ticket office has to put up with a lot of complaints (like I said, not a lot of irony). 

I do feel sorry for the staff at the ticket office who have to politely respond to each new varariation on the same complaint, and tow the party line (I suspect they secretly think its as stupid an idea as anyone else). But the deed is done, and everyone has to deal with it, at least until the monolith gets broken (I've got a fiver on mid-April). Until then, the train has left the station. 

Snow Queen, Christmas 2014 (review)

 What do you get if you cross a Victorian children's story with Narnia, 'Frozen', Hogwarts, feminist ideology and Christmas? You get 'The Snow Queen', a glorious updating of Hans Christian Andersen especially written for the New Venture Theatre by Andrew Allen. Following the seriousness of Barbarians and the witty froth of Hay Fever earlier in 2014, 'The Snow queen' offered something completely different.  It was the first production for young people for a considerable time and it employed perhaps the largest cast ever seen on a NVT stage. Twenty one actors, actresses, bird and reindeer only just accommodated themselves in the Theatre Upstairs but they had enormous fun with a musical play that transcended most of the usual categories and earned the NVT manifesto of 'community theatre'. 
Was it just for young people? Two nine year olds in our row loved every minute, and laughed and giggled all the way through. They especially liked the crow and the reindeer and they all jumped with pleasure when violent bangs scattered snow everywhere. They told me it was better than anything on TV. They would have loved to have been on stage. 
But few children would have been old enough to understand Allen's hilarious EasyJet instructions on the riverboat, or the chavvy, stroppy girl-power burglars. Neither might most nine year-olds appreciate an ornithological 'caw caw' from the crow as synonymous with 'cor' from 'cor blimey' representing an extreme enthusiasm for practically everything. Simple philosophy was demonstrated by the Flowers who believed most problems could be buried in the earth and that plants needed tending ... towards the positive. Puns flew as thick and fast as the snowflakes: I particularly enjoyed the 'fly-lingual' crow and an enormous 'ass..piration'. 
Old and young found the modern geeky Princess funny in her boots, stripey leggings and metal chainwork. Obviously, she had the fluffy dress somewhere and she married the handsome prince, but she wore the trousers - literally. 
It's a story written by a bloke but really for girls, about girls. Men don't get much of a look in: they are a reindeer, a crow, a susceptible  boy or a soppy prince. There isn't a hero among them. Even the two rather nervously inept soldiers are girls. Chelsea Newton Mountney played Gerda with a beguiling mixture of savvy innocence and naive courage. For some reason known only to her, she protects her childhood playmate Kai who is determined  on self-destruction with the Snow Queen. Matthew Swan made a brave stab at being really stupid, but he couldn't help being a charming young actor in the CS Lewis 'Edmund' role with Narnia's White Witch. I was captivated by the sinus allergies (to snow, mostly) and permanent sneezing of the Queen's courtier Kirrily Long, a genuine comedy talent and necessary foil to the icy horror of Shonali Rodrigues. It was a relief when Gerda's love melts the Snow Queen: the darkest Victorian tales needed a moral and here it was - Love Conquers All. Trolls Annique Tate-Doe, Lisa Feldman and Emma Ruggins were comedically agile, sharing the palm for feisty girl power with robbers Milly Roberts, Lisa Caira and Alanna Manwaring. The hierarchy of Spring and Summer were scene stealers, although Samantha French was especially, transatlantically, hilarious.   
Mark Green made a very fine crow (Andersen uses a Raven) with some picturesque wing flapping and a great deal of very charming enthusiasm. Cor! Jeff Moody's Reindeer was a sorrowful creature under the frozen thumb of the Snow Queen, his mobile face expressing complete gloom to great comical effect. 
The list of production team in The Snow Queen programme is almost as long as the cast, but particular mention must be made of writer/director Andrew Allen who wrote the script and nearly all the songs. Musical direction was by Alanna Manwaring and Lisa Caira, and set design by Mark Green and Isabel Aidalbery. 
Rod Lewis passionately believes in the value of amateur theatre as a community enterprise. Nothing could validate his conviction better than this production of 'The Snow Queen' with its broad appeal and enormous cast. Everyone involved must have had a terrific time, on and off stage. And the audience young and old went home melted and happy with a song  in their hearts! Cor! 

Wednesday November 5th 2014

So, here we are then: just one month until the first night  of The Snow Queen. Back in March, it was just so many scribbles on scraps of paper. Now it's a cast of twenty-five plus. I'm still slightly giddy at how it's all turned out.

Don't get me wrong; strictly speaking, it hasn't turned out yet. There's still a month to go after all, and all sorts of special effects to sort out, as well as recording the music (a chapter of accidents has meant that our original musician isn't able to provide the music for us, which, if the show wasn't already in  a pretty good place, would be feeling us with fear and panic. As it is, however, the songs have sounded pretty damn good acoustically, so I'm inclined to think that we're in a good space no matter what happens). But there's genuine chemistry between the cast, some really lovely performances, and all manner of people working behind the scenes (occasionally literally) to ensure that this will be a very special show.

On this Friday, we've arranged a photo shoot on the Brighton Pavilion ice rink (snow / ice - c'mon, we wee going to pass up an opp like that?) which really begins our countdown to the show. Early next week, we get the cast into the space, and at roughly the same time the set will begin to be built. (I keep saying to anyone who will listen that I had genuinely intended to do a show that was simply two actors, in a black box, no set. Nobody ever believes me). We're hoping to lay some tracks for the songs next week or so, and at around the same time we invite the youth theatre section of the NVT to join (making the cast numbers bubble up around the 30 mark: next time - 2 actors in a black box. Honest.)

It's all getting far too exciting, and I am in equal parts eager and terrified by what the next month will bring.

Saturday 4th October 2014

Wonderful rehearsal during the week for The Snow Queen.  We introduced a couple of the songs to the cast, all of whom seemed be on board with it from the get-go (there was even a bit of foot tapping, which is a pretty good sign). At the start of this year, I didn’t know that I was going to be writing a play, much less a Christmas play, much (even more) less one with songs in it. I have no sense of tune or rhythm, so this was a pretty hubristic move on my part. But I seem to have managed to write a decent batch of songs with most of my dignity intact – or at the very least, I’ve managed to surround myself with enough people who are able to spot the tautological errors in my lyrics and nip them in the bud before less forgiving eyes see them.

I imagine this is the same for anyone who writes a song, but there is something very humbling and actually disconcerting about listening to a group of people sing something that previously was just a collection of words on a page, wrestled from my sleep-deprived imagination. Of course, I have previously already had people perform words that I’ve written, but that’s always been prose, and –as far as I can remember – always directed by myself. There might have been an occasion that someone else has directed one of my plays, but if there is, I have managed to forget it. Whatever way you read that, it doesn’t say a great deal for my relationship with my own ego.

I guess another reason why I was so fascinated and discombulated by hearing the songs was that I hadn’t had any involvement whatsoever with the music. As I’ve indicated, with absolutely no degree of self-deprecation, but a decent dollop of actually telling the truth, I don’t have any real musical talent whatsoever. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying that the songs I’ve written are terrible (PLEASE COME TO OUR SHOW), but I can’t write a single note of music. It’s lucky then that I find myself working with two fantastic women who have been creating original music for the songs. They give my songs credit, if that makes any sense.

I suddenly realised (if I hadn’t already realised it at some other point in time, and then promptly forgotten it) that I seem to always take on projects that will frankly terrify me. I don’t say this as some kind of humble brag (well, maybe I do a bit), but more as a slightly confused observation of wonder. The fact that I’m adapting The Snow Queen, attempting to do something vaguely unique with it (of which more another time), and sticking some songs in it is ridiculous, to say the least. Good ridiculous, I hasten to add, but still. One of the (many) things that was breaking me out in cold night-sweats was the songs. Since I (and I know I’ve banged on a lot about this, but there’s a point, honest) have very little previously measured talent in that department, it was certainly a thing that, if it all stuttered and coughed up blood, could be well levelled at me as fair criticism – reaching beyond my natural limitations. But I’m not entirely sure that there’s anything wrong with that. Why play safe?

We have yet to go through all the scenes, but once we do, it’s a bit of a rollercoaster. Not that I’m trying to have a scene with a rollercoaster in it (but now that you mention it ..) I’m asking for quite a bit in the way of special effects and props (the snow alone is giving people pause), and we’re very soon going to be starting a crowd funding campaign (yeah, it had to happen eventually), and there’s an atmosphere of something very special around the corner.  Frankly, I can’t wait. 

Friday 26th September 2014

So, that's the first week of rehearsals done for The Snow Queen. And it feels like we've already got a fair bit done. I'm trying to go in softly to begin with, and have relatively few rehearsals when I call everybody. Frankly, there'll be enough time for that later in the production process. What's already so pleasing - so exciting - is the amount of charisma already bubbling off the stage. Everyone seems to be perfectly pitched opposite each other, and finding little nuanced moments that I didn't think of writing. Hell, when this year began, I didn't think I'd end up writing a musical, (or to be exact: a play with songs in it) but it's odd how things turn out sometimes. I mean, I don't have a musical bone in my body (actually, I do: it's my femur, and you can use it to drum out a mean solo on some Led Zep, but the downside for me is that I have to be either dead or an amputee), and I've managed to hack out some lyrics. Let's be honest - in a couple of cases, those lyrics are almost literally hacked out. They initially sounded clunky and and straining, and I've greedily availed myself of any help that I could in order to get them purring like an engine or a head of state on the phone to a smary Prime Minister. We've got most of the songs in some kind of working order (we're gonna have another meet about it tomorrow), and I still need to fix a couple of basic problems in certain lines (apparently, I refuse to accept that singers quite like to take a breath every 560 seconds or so), but it sounds like we are in fairly good shape. 

Newsjack came back this week. It's the open-door submission radio show that pretty much anyone can write for. I've had my eye (ear?) on it for a couple of years now, but never submitted. Actually, that's lie: I did deliver a sketch a couple of years ago, which, if I remember correctly, was a Life On Mars sketch that put Gordon Brown in the Sam Tyler role. Yes, I know. But generally I haven't tried writing anything for the show because .. well, because I'm not sure that I know how. I'm not being self-deprecating. I'm genuinely fascinated and somewhat awed by sketch writing. I don't quite k kw how it works. I love good sketch comedy, although I'll concede that the definition of good sketch comedy varies wildly from audience member to audience member. And lest we forget, Big Train (the one that usually gets mentioned in conversations like this is about 15 years old now. I find something very attractive and seductive about a good sketch. A novel is a strange and exciting journey, a stand-up is a bottle of wine with a great friend who shares much of the same opinions as you, and a sketch - a sketch is that piece of cake that makes you emit inappropriate noises when you consume it. A good sketch (for the most part) is  delightful, small, unique (I knew someone who used that phrase on their dating profile). All my favourite sketches have got from me first, a bark of laughter, then a hiss of jealousy: that idea was so clever/beautiful/simple .. It was there for the taking, for years and years .. and someone got there first. 

A friend of mine tagged me in a post this week, suggesting that I write for NJ, which is prompting enough to do something I guess (we all write a lot better if there's someone waiting over our shoulder). The fact is that I'd already tried to write a couple of one-liners , and then my Internet failed - I was trying to send emails from my phone, but my email wasn't playing fair. I'd had lots of phone time with the lovely people at EE (not Phones 4U, they weren't returning my calls for some reason) before it became apparent that I had apparently exceeded my Internet allowance. So, the readers of the slush pile at Radio 4 Extra were spared my inane ramblings for at least another week. 

I listened to the show as it aired, however, at least partially out of research: what was the house style? What exactly was the sort of joke/sketch to get through the gate? I have a sad suspicion that this is the mood that most of the listeners attend the show: not simply punters, but slightly earnest would-be writers listening stony-faced as they try and crack the code. I'm not judging: as I've said, I'm one of them. There were a pleasing amount of gags that made me laugh out loud (and at least one that made me jealous that they'd got to the joke before I did: one about Phones 4U employees and their contracts), but I'm still not really any the wiser as to what makes a good sketch. But if I can get at least one joke through the gate .. then I would consider myself at least holding the foot of the ladder. Not the first rung. That'd take some more time yet. 

Wednesday 24th September 2014

Last week was the first read thru for The Snow Queen. I only realised during the evening that a significant number of the cast were there on a lot of faith - they hadn't seen a script at audition, or even when being offered a part. (They should consider themselves lucky: some of my casts haven't seen a complete script until halfway through rehearsal. You think I'm kidding). 

It was a lovely night. Obviously, as director/writer, you're hyper-sensitive to the mood of the room, anxiously scanning the faces to gauge the reaction of everybody (particularly when they're not reading, and simply listening to others), but it seemed to me that everyone was generally positive, even allowing for my manical paranoia. The play itself seemed to whip along at a fair pace - a good sign if that's happening on the very first read thru - and no scenes sounded like they outstayed their welcome. 

A couple of lines still clanged in my ears, dialogue that just snagged like a jagged nail on a jumper (lines  like that one, for instance), but they seem to me to be easy fixes: a word here or there to get everything breezy. And it's encouraging to know that all of the actors are already finding the character within their characters - in a play like this one, even though it's not actually a pantomime, it's really important (to me at least) that each character, even those who might only be on stage for a matter of minutes, have the potential to be the absolute favourite character of some kid in the audience. 

Despite my very best intentions to keep things simple (no, honestly - don't laugh), there are still a good number of technical demands on the show, not least a number of snow effects. To their credit, the team on Snow Queen (Team Queen?) have not yet ran away screaming, and are clearly thinking hard about how to get me what I want, or at the very least a decent facsimile. It's all very humbling, and prompts in me a desire to look like I know what the hell I'm talking about. We've had a couple of rehearsals proper since then, and I'm keeping them fairly small and simple - the big rehearsals with twenty-plus (?!?) won't start really untill next month. We've got a couple of issues, like the image that's in my head for the Snow Queen's throne, and the fact that, while we have the music and lyrics written, we've just lost our best chance of someone to arrange the music. It's not that surprising, really - its quite a challenge to find someone who's prepared to give up lots and lots of hours of creativity and talent for no money whatsoever. 

Actually, scratch that - it's what the New Venture Theatre (and many other non-professional theatres up and down the country) are absolutely brilliant at. Obviously, a good few of us - such as the actors and directors - are reasonably guaranteed of some degree of praise at the end of everything. Generally speaking, people don't tend to go out of their way to praise the set. Indeed, if they do, it's usually an implicit criticism of the production. So I'm reasonably confident that we'll be able to solve our musical quandary (I must be, otherwise I wouldn't be happy talking about it on a public blog). 

Tonight's rehearsal is with Gerda and the Robber Girl, both of whom I'm rehearsing with for the first time - Gerda partially because the actress is already deep into rehearsals for another production which goes up in about a fortnight, so frankly, that tends to be her priority at the moment. I'm really looking forward to tonights session, and seeing what everyone does with the roles, particularly as I've altered the characteristics somewhat from the Hans Christian Andersen original. But then, I had to do that once or twice in the adaptation .. 

Tuesday 29th July 2014

Going through the sixth / seventh / eighth draft of The Snow Queen. I don't even know anymore; the drafts have all sort of blended into each other; fixing the problems in one as I reprint out the next, printing out the next knowing already that such and such a scene has to be swapped with another, except that there's no real way of doing that yet ... and at least three characters haven't been fully sketched out yet .. All the usual stuff that happens around this time of the rewrites. 

At the moment, I'm far too close, scaling the sheer cliff face of the script to know if it's actually any good or not (I'm going to have to have another sweep of the original Hans Christian Andersen before I do too many more rewrites, that's for certain). But on one thing alone, I appear to be in pretty good shape. Currently, I have almost all the story that I need to tell down on paper - in about half the pages that I need. This is very good news. The last script I produced clocked in at over two hours. People didn't mind too much, but they didn't mind with the qualification that, yes, it was too long. Plus, this is a kid's show. There's no way that I'm going to be able to get those kids to sit still for a hour and a half, let alone over two. I was initially slightly concerned, because as well as all the actual plot and narrative stuff I'm writing for this thing, I'm also writing songs (yeah, I know. Shush). I thought that perhaps that once I'd come up with the songs, there would be room for only the lightest and flimsiest of plots. I've been watching a lot of Disney, to see how they get away with it. Turns out there's a lot of swinging from tall buildings. 

The other thing that's been a bit of a challenge this week is the casting for our next batch of short plays - for CAST IRON 3 - in September. We always knew that we would lose some of our regular company this time round, to the likes of Edinburgh, summer holidays, and 'a life' (yeah, me neither), but it's been a particularly tough call in terms of casting and the like. I think we've almost got it sorted, but it has meant that our various casts have significantly less time to rehearse their plays. 

I Can See Clearly Now

My contact lenses finally turned up this week, almost exactly three weeks late. They come through the post, and are monthly disposoables. Annoyingly for someone like me, they get sent in batches of three months at a time, which normally means that at about week eight, I've either lost a pair, accidentally ripped a lens while taking it out, or fallen asleep with them in. Usually all three. That was certainly the (lens) case this time round. 

I normally wear glasses day-to-day, so it's not actually that much of a problem, except that I was in a play for two weeks that was set in a time when plastic, black-rimmed glasses were almost certainly not a common sight. Anyone that saw you with such a modern affectation would have attempted to have had you burned as a witch. Now, whilst it's true that the play was all about witch hunting, I'm not sure the director would have been willing to go with me on such an abstract reading of the text. 

Which presented me with a bit of a problem. Without my glasses (or lenses), I'm pretty much blind. Look up, now. You see that bit of writing that's in front of you? There. No, there. Well, alright, behind you. Work with me on this. That bit of writing. Yeah, well, without my glasses, I couldn't read it. I'm not absolutely convinced that I would be able to even see that there was writing there in the first place. 

It was frustrating. I was convinced that my acting (whatever that is) was being eroded by at least 60%, simply because I couldn't really see anyone. And most of acting is reacting, right? I couldn't see what (or, occasionally, who) I was meant to be reacting to. It was a promenade performance as well, which meant that every night I had to address a character on their arrival, despite being completely clueless as to where exactly they were arriving from. Luckily, I'm apparently not one of those people who, upon removing their glasses, has to do a comedy squint for the next two hours. Allegedly, when im not wearing my glasses, I don't look at all like a man who has lost his glasses. At least, that's what I've been told. Perhaps people are just being kind. Or, even more likely, perhaps people are just saying that to me, safe in the knowledge that I will then take off my glasses, trusting them. They can then spend any downtime pointing and jeering at me, confident that it will never rebound on them, because I will never be able to see their cruel and derisive mockery. See, that's the trouble with nice people being nice. Can't trust them. 

It was a pity, because lots of the rehearsal had gone so well. I'm not claiming that I was doing any particularly great acting during the rehearsal process (and indeed, this is not the blog entry when I get into detail about quite how much I was doubting myself), but there were a couple of times when I was able to relax and feel the sense of the scene, the emotion. There's been a lot said about how you should just relax and let the character come to you. I think that's far easier said than done, because you either don't trust the advice and build a character that, while convincing enough, is still fairly fake. Or you relax too much, don't put the effort in, and become passive, which isn't interesting to anyone. Obviously I'm over-generalising massively here, but you see the point. But there's a lot to be said for how much you can discover from your character simply by how the other characters (or, more precisely, the other actors) demonstrate their perception of you. 

This is pretty much how it was in rehearsal. I'd be floundering around, not really knowing what I was doing, then catch the eye of another character, reacting to me. And if I was open enough, responsive enough, their expression would give me everything I needed. On more than one occasion, whatever they were doing would completely blindside me, and I'd find myself overcome, not entirely sure how I was going to end up at the end of a scene. For an actor in week eight of rehearsal, that's nothing short of glorious. 

This was all down to the person opposite me. So when, in production week of all weeks, I couldn't see a damn thing, it was actually quite worrying. There were at least a couple of scenes when I was having to throw brooding glances at someone about twenty feet away. Someone who due to my near-blindness, I didn't know for a fact wasn't actually thirty feet away. And three yards to the left. Basically, I had to trust my fellow actors were looking after me, and not pointing in derision at my pathetic blindness. Which I'm almost entirely confident didn't happen. 

Wednesday 4 June 2014

Oversaw my first rehearsal for Return To Steyning last night. It's a short play by a local writer - Richard Hearn - that's going to be performed in our next 'Cast Iron' night of new writing next month at the DukeBox Theatre. Yes, that's next month: but I haven't had a chance to do any rehearsals with the cast yet, mainly because I was fully committed to another play until the middle of May. People have been asking me what I'm going to be doing with all my evenings back. Other people, people who actually know me, haven't bothered to ask. 

I was late for rehearsal. This is both highly improbable, and virtually impossible, given that the rehearsal space last night is only about six minutes away from where I live, and it's pretty much a straight line from one to the other (indeed, if you veer too much to the left, you end up in the sea). But I still managed to be late - in fact, I'd already walked past where I needed to be. By the time I eventually arrived, my cast were already deep into rehearsal. In real terms, they didn't really need me. This is both encouraging and mollifying. 

They were doing so well, in fact, that I was loathe to interrupt them. But I did anyway, because this will be a very quick turnaround of rehearsal. Normally, I like to give my actors a bit of elbow room, and not straight jacket them into a limited character that I've already decided to pen them into. I'm not always successful at that, possibly because I like the sound of my own director-y voice too much, but I was very chatty last night - hopefully more chatty than I will be at any subsequent rehearsal, partially because I'm having to abandon at least some of my high ideals as a director and give the cast fairly limited parameters to work with. My justification is the limited rehearsal time: we don't have a helluva lot of time to try things out and go down weird artistic blind alleys (which of course, are the very best kind of blind alleys to wander down). The cast understood this, and accepted my constant interruptions with great grace and intelligence. 

Haven't had a chance to do a rewrite on the next draft of the current script yet, despite the two ideas that I had to insert into the text yesterday. I have, however, managed to scribble some notes on the most recent hard copy. I always find that the more time you spend away from a WIP, the more difficult it can be to get back on board - leave it alone for more than a few days, and it feels more than overwhelming to attempt to get anywhere near the script, like it's some kind of monotholic beast. But as long as you're checking in every so often on the days that you're not able to fully commit to the writing, then you've still got a leash on the monster, and it shouldn't escape you too easily. 

Monday 2nd June 2014

Gearing up for the next lot of short form improv sessions, which start again this Sunday (the 8th), now that we've had our break during the Brighton Fringe. We're doing something ever so slightly different with this block of sessions. When you've been doing improv for a while (and it doesn't have to be a particularly long while, not really), it's somewhat easy to fall into certain 'traps' - maybe you're often going for the gag, or taking over scenes, so that everyone else on stage has to follow your lead, whether they like it or not. Or maybe it's the exact opposite - perhaps your mind goes completely blank, and you can't think of anyway to progress the scene, and so you prefer to let someone else do all the hard work. At some point, all of us have been guilty of that to some degree.

These next four workshops - over the majority of June - take this into account, with a series of drop-ins that we're calling 'Iron Clad Surgery'. The idea is that each separate session will take into account one of these challenges, and tailor the exercises accordingly, to help performers begin to sharpen the tools in their toolbox. Perhaps the best thing about this is that most of (if not all) the exercises and games we'll be using this month are still the ones that will be familiar to those who have been popping into improv over the last year or so anyway: so it's not like that the unsure or inexperienced are going to be thrown a curve ball. The drop in sessions are as open to beginners as always, it's just that the content of each workshop is going to be more heavily weighted toward whatever particular challenge we're tackling that week. Anyway, for further details, you can have a look at [embed]http://andthisisandrewallen.weebly.com/ironclad-improv.html[/embed] . 

There, you'll also see details of our upcoming long form course, which starts at the end of June.

Tonight, a few of us rocked up to the DukeBox Theatre in Hove to take a few photographs of a regular improv session (not that there's any such thing). It seems we might get an article in the local Argus at the end of the week, so it was thought a good idea to get some photos done, on the off-chance that they might end up accompanying the article. I'm not all that fond of having my photo taken, so it was a bit of an effort not to be openly grimacing in each one. This, by the way, might seem a little difficult to swallow, since - as the person who runs Iron Clad Improv - I made a concerted effort to make sure I was in each and every photograph, and more to attempt to look like I knew what I was talking about. We'll see how successful I was if any when any of the photos get published on Friday. 

In real terms, I didn't get all that much writing done today. In fact, it was close to zero. I managed to think of a single rhyme for a song that appears in Act 2 (however improbable, I am still considering sticking songs in this thing), and scrawl a few notes in the margin for Act 1, but other than that, I've produced nothing today. I'm OK with that - first day back at work after a writing holiday away, after all - but I can't afford to let this happen too many more times. It is always so easy - so seductive, even - to allow a day to go past without any writing whatsoever, and to tell yourself that that'sOK, because you'll always catch up tomorrow.

You never will. 

Sunday 1 June 2014

Had a haircut and shaved the beard off in the last couple of days, and it feels like I've lost something roughly the weight of my own head. When the beard first started growing, back in January, it was mainly down to laziness, but then I got a part in a play in which the beard seemed to quite suit, so I kept it for that. And while enough people seemed to like it, there came a time that I was pretty keen to be rid of it, particularly as I was beginning to look like Serpico by way of Jesus (the Robert Powell version, obviously, not one that actually existed). 

And now it's gone, and I look concenviably younger. Only by about three months, but hell, I'll take what I can get. It's a good enough novelty while it lasts. The thing is, I'm not usually one of these people who gets their hair cut on even a semi-regular basis. (and yes, I realise while typing that last sentence that I could simply have replaced the phrase 'one of those people' with the shorter, and more accurate, 'people'. I'm pretty sure that there have been years when I've only had to cut it once. Not such a big deal when you're bass guitar in that band in your local pub that's definitely gonna make it any day now. Really, I've never really cared about what hairstyle I'm styling. People who have known me a while will be able to readily vouch for this. Cut, grow shoulder length, cut, repeat. 

But this time, it - along with the beard - had got so long - not really all that long, in the world of long beards (can you imagine such a world?), but long enough that any hairdresser wouldn't neccessarily know what it was that I wanted, particularly as my conversational skills with hairdressers tend to not get any more detailed than 'Just a bit of a cut'. This is an opening line that's served me well since about the age of eight, although addmitedly not one that you want to be misheard if you're in Croydon and the other person has easy access to a razor.  

Because that wouldn't be quite enough this time around, I did something that I've never done before, which was to bring along a photograph of the sort of style I thought I wanted. Of course, it wasn't a photograph at all, but an image on my mobile phone. This didn't stop me feeling slightly foolish as I showed it to the hairdresser. I wanted to be very clear that I wasn't expecting or even hoping to look like the guy in the picture, who was all pretty-boy-pouty-lips and airbrushed cheekbones. I think most hairdressers know this already, but mild paranoia had set in: I half expected him to do a double take between me and my proffered mobile, and fight hard to contain his hysteria. That, and beckon a couple of his work colleagues over so that they could join in their derision. None of that happened, of course.  He just nodded, looked entirely unimpressed, and got to work. Six months of hair were clipped into a reasonably innoffensive (and a helluva lot lighter) style in under twenty minutes. OK, so I had previously been waiting there for about half a hour, but that's hardly the point. 

Maybe it's just the change in hair, the change in weather and the change in month (hello, summer), but I'm currently feeling infused (and enthused, I guess) with all manner of upcoming projects. There's a couple of performances coming up next month, plus a full length script to get done in roughly the same time. Plus, I worked out this week that some of the writing projects I've got going on will take me - and this is if I'm working non-stop, along with everything else I've got going on - til at least 2020. That's two leap years away. On the bright side, I will have probably had a haircut again by then. 

Friday 30th May 2014

I've got a To Do list that's, like, this long. A lot of it is script related, but I've also got to kick into gear with rehearsals for the next batch of Cast Iron, which will be performed in July. We've got six brand new plays by local writers that will be on stage at the DukeBox Theatre, and it's always interesting to see what the different directors and casts have done with their scripts. I haven't really had a chance to rehearse either of mine in any great detail yet, what with being in a play til the middle of May, but I'm hoping to get back on board with everything some time soon. 

In the middle of directing a production of Twelfth Night as well, which also seems to be very soon (in fact, it's literally as soon: it's on the same weekend), and that seems to be going well. It's an open air production, which is the first time I've directed such a thing, and I'm fully aware that there are about a dozen and twelve little logistical nightmares that I - well, that I'm not fully aware of yet. So it's good that I've got myself surrounded by a great team who are constantly watching my back. Not literally watching my back. That would be a bit weird. And quite niche. 

Anyway, where was I? The main thing I've been working on this morning (GOOD GOD DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT IT'S LIKE TO HAVE MORNINGS) is redrafting the longform narrative improv course we've got coming up at the DukeBox Theatre in June. We had a great one last year, and we're now revamping and streamlining it for 2014. There's lots of good stuff in it, and it's as useful for actors as it is for improvisers. Genuinely looking forward to being able to deliver it to the new group. I am now of course contractually obliged to say that thing about there only being a few places left, and you're contractually obliged to that thing where you make a 'hhmmph' sneering sound as you decide to assume that actually there's tons of places left, and then I'm contractually obliged to respond, well it depends on what you mean by 'tons', I mean, there are six places left, if that's a ton, then, yes, I guess there's a ton - 

And so on. You get the idea. 

The other major thing I need to be working on is the next draft of this play that I'm writing at the moment. I hacked out a first draft (not even a first draft, let's called it Draft Zero) earlier this week, and now I need to rip through that draft and sort out what's wrong with it. Possibly what's right with it too, but let's be honest, what's wrong with it. What I'm reminded of is the fact that when I'm at this stage (and most of the stages between now and the final draft) is that I absolutely have to be working on paper. I need to be able scribbles notes on it, ask myself questions in the margin (which are normally things like WHAT DOES THIS EVEN MEAN? and WHY IS THIS CHARACTER DOING THIS SHE DOESN'T EVEN LIKE GHERKINS) and, on many more occasions than I care to admit, literally ripping the pages apart so that I can stick that scene in between  those scenes. Then I rewrite all those changes, ideas, half-baked scenes onto the computer ... and then print them all over again. To do exactly the same thing again. At least seven times. There is probably a more productive way to write a play - and certainly one that isn't felling forests at the rate of Orcs in Lord Of The Rings, but this seems to be the way to work for me. 

That, and delaying any writing by messing around on a blog first. Obviously.  

Thursday 29th May 2014

Have just got back from being a few days writing in a converted barn in the middle of the woods, which is either the most middle-class I'll ever get, or it's the prelude to a particularly nasty movie in which my dismembered remains are discovered nailed to a wall by country folk in a ill-advised attempt to make sure that the crops don't fail again this year. Either way, it's been gorgeous. 

I've spoken before about how tough it can be to get any writing done, how it can be a challenge to get stuff down on the page when you've already done a full day at work, and there's only fifty minutes before you've got to get out for a rehearsal / performance / workshop / whatever, and that's not even taking into any account any time you might want to set aside for eating and basic social interaction. And, yes, you might want to argue that the level of time poverty I put up with is somewhat self-inflicted, and I hear y', but, rest assured - it will be an argument. I mean, I get what you'd be saying - something has to give, right? I can't be rushing from here to there, constantly spinning plates. And, yes, that's true. But I rather suspect that if I put one thing aside - directing that play, or delivering those workshops, for instance - then I would simply be feeling quite twitchy at home, wondering if I wasn't wasting my time just a little. While watching Young Sherlock Holmes for, like, the twentieth time. What? Shut up. Young Sherlock Holmes is Harry Potter for the eighties generation. The arch enemy kid is even a posh boy with blonde hair. 

What I've really enjoyed about these last couple of days is the ability, the elbow room, to be able to spend as much time not writing as actually writing. Being able to circle the story before ripping it up and changing the order of the scenes. Being suddenly inspired by a completely irrelevant idea, that's enabled me to go back and fix a previously abandoned short story still sitting on my USB. At some point, spending slightly too much time on a app that allows me to create funky book covers for the kindle editions of my short stories - short stories that I haven't actually finished yet. Just having the time to stare into space - occasionally literally stare into space (we identified two planets), while thinking of the next plot point. 

And through it all, a minor note of disquiet. The usual minor note that I get, that's always laced in my feeling of yes-I-can-do-this when my writing is going well. That warning note that reminds me that my timetable won't always be like this - from next week, it will be back to normal - an average of - what? twelve hours a day given over to the day job and commuting to and from it. Look, I'm not complaining (note: obviously I'm complaining), but it's occurred to me a couple of times this week that I should definitely ensure that I'm managing a good block of writing EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. No matter what else is going on, no matter how tired / uninspired / comprehensively untalented I feel. But, yes, I already knew that. I've already told myself that. I've probably already told myself that on this blog. 

So, yes, I'm just telling myself that again. And reminding myself that there will still be days when I don't feel like writing, when I just don't want to do it. But it's worth reminding myself that if I only have half a hour to write then - well. Then I can do what the hell I want in that half hour. And that includes not writing, and not having to feel guilty about it. 

But the main thing is: I have an entire play to write this summer. And in the past three days, I managed to hack out a fairly decent first draft. For just this moment in time - I'm feeling pretty hopeful.  

Tuesday 29th April 2014

Hurtling towards production week. At the moment, it feels like running down a very steep hill, so fast that my feet can't quite keep up with themselves. It's going to be a somewhat busy few weeks, the longest performance run I've yet been involved with, and - it's just occurred to me - the largest part I've played in a fair while. The plan is to keep myself sustained with fresh fruit and gallons of ginger tea with honey. Knowing my organisational skills, however, it's much more likely that my diet for the next month will consist mainly of lucozade and pot noodles. 

Because my bloodline is apparently under sufferance to an ancient curse which means I can't keep a bike for longer than two months without it either being stolen or falling apart, it comes as very little surprise that I have a flat tyre. This, traditionally, adds about a hour and a half to my commute per day, as I'm having to walk to and from train stations. On the walk to work this morning, I lost my cap, which I'd been meaning to use at tonight's rehearsal, as part of the costume. I'm guessing that it will be no great hardship if I can't find one that's both reasonably nice looking and big enough for my freakishly large head, but I can have some sympthay with actors who attach undue importance to an item of clothing that they've been using to inform their character. It's oddly unsettling; you almost feel that, robbed of the chance to rely on props and the like, that your acting will be exposed as the charlatans dance it really is. And even if you're not quite that self deprecating (who, me, self deprecating? No, there must be some mistake), there will always be a part of you that feels bad that the audience will never get to see the 'good', the 'original' version. 

Yes, I'm fully aware it's just a cap. 

Tonight is our first rehearsal in the space itself, which I'm fully expecting will throw us all a curve ball: we haven't ever really been able to be in an environment that in any way truly replicates the space we will actually be performing in. I'm expecting lots of wide eyes, cold sweat, and incoherent gibbering. 

I imagine that everyone else will be fine, though.