Sunday 3 February 2013

I've just come to the rather startling realisation that I'm going to be directing four different things this Spring, all at the same time. Three of them will be in the Brighton Festival Fringe, and the fourth will be about a month after that. This might be what people are going on about when they accuse me of taking too much on.

The first thing is a revival - my friend Sarah Charsley wrote and performed her own script Three Kinds Of Me last year, and graciously allowed me to hinder her in the productions realisation. She's making the same mistake again for the fringe, and we're adapting the production to fit into a hour's space as per the usual demands of the festival. Three Kinds Of Me will be performed at The Warren (we just got the venue confirmed this week) and it looks to be very exciting. I'll be fascinated to see how we adapt a script that was created with one venue in mind (the NVT), and alter it significantly (but on the other hand, seemingly not at all) for a whole new venue complete with it's own dimensions and technical specs. I know that this is what professional productions have to do all the time, but I've never claimed to be in any way professional.

Speaking of the NVT, my second fringe production will be staged there, just a week after Three Kinds Of Me (which will make the production weeks of both interesting, to say the least). It's going to be an entirely improvised play, with a completely new story/play each night. It's at this point that many people react with suspicion, assuming that there must be some kind of 'cheat', or key scenes that stay the same each night. This isn't the case. The cast will rock up on stage each night with absolutely no idea of what they're going to be doing over the following hour. Now, you might argue that's largely true of some scripted plays, and I'm not going to argue with you on that score, but the fact remains that this is already one of the most terrifying productions I've been involved with, and it hasn't even started yet. And I speak as someone who's already directed Greek tragedy. There's a couple of audition dates, the first of which is this Friday (the 8th). If I get enough people along to the audition, I'm hoping to audition people together in hour long slots (you know, 7 til 8, 8 til 9, 9 til 10), so please get in touch if you're thinking about trying out for the production, and I'll let you know what's going on.

The other two productions are both with the youth theatre I work with - the PQA - and the first is a 10 minute play competition. I'll come up with more details as soon as they're confirmed, but generally, if you know any budding playwrights between the ages of 10 and 17, there's a chance for them to script a 10 minute play that will be performed by professional actors at the Old Courtroom in Brighton towards the end of the Fringe Festival. We'll also throw in a master lass with a BAFTA winning playwright to really get you kick started.

The other thing I'm working on with the youth theatre is a musical. For someone who isn't a particular musical fan (and indeed cannot sing) I find myself directing a fair amount of musicals. Well, I say musical. The last one was We Will Rock You. Which was actually great fun, although I did find myself rewriting significant amounts. Not because I'm that power hungry, but because they send you out the same version of the script no matter who you are, and they make no changes in the youth version, leaving you to edit out all the blow job gags (of which there are a fair amount). I felt that some edits were needed before I let the kids loose on it. Luckily, I don't think that there's quite as many of those sort of jokes in The Wiz. Not as far as I can remember, anyway.

Finally, I've spent this morning re-reading my latest draft of a short story called Broom Handle, a thing that I originally started last year. And, by God, it's terrible. Well, it's not terrible, but it's very clunky. The idea itself isn't too bad, and I like the characters, but it's very exposition heavy, and it takes too long to get to the point - which it currently needs to, because there's a lot to explain, otherwise the point that it's currently taking too long to get too will be - well, pointless. It's an odd read, because I can still see the potential for the finished product, but because it's currently frankly not very good, it's a bit of a dispiriting read. It would be extraordinary easy just to give up on it now as far too much effort. Luckily, however, the themes and ideas in it fit terrifyingly well into an upcoming competition with cash prize and inclusion in anthology, so that serves very well as some kind of incentive. It's probably about three drafts away from whatever version I finally send off as an entry. We'll see how it all goes ..

Moran And More

Went to see Caitlin Moran this week, at the Old Market in Hove. She's just published her new book, and is doing the whole chat/Q & A/book signing tour thing.

I met her afterward - by which I mean I lined up with everyone else to get my book signed - when we chatted very briefly, and she said flattering things. I'm reasonably convinced that she has a whole list of well rehearsed flattering things to say to people at these sorts of events, but, hell, if she's going to put the spadework in to lie so sweetly, it would be impolite not to take her at face value.

She's a great talker, effortlessly charming and engaging, and has the rare raconteur's skill of managing to spin out what could be a reasonably tissue thin story about a chance encounter on a train into a much more  more  of a brilliant anecdote. In person, she's what you hope every columnist will be in real life: someone you can just prop a bar with for a few hours, line up the G&Ts, and just natter with into the small hours. As opposed to the rest of us, who manage to pummel potentially good anecdotes into over-long bits of dirge. Which I hope to demonstrate daily, with this blog, here.

But despite the fact that Caitlin Moran is quite garrulous, she made a couple of allusions to being quite shy. This was met with some derision by her interviewer, and indeed, those members of the audience who had already read How To Be A Woman, that suggested people didn't quite believe that shyness was something that could be always listed in her top 10 of characteristics.  But to me, it made absolute sense. I think it makes sense to anyone who uses words as some kind of transaction in their career. Obviously, most of us talk from day to day in our lives, but equally obviously, for some of us, words are our currency, whether that be as a writer, an actor, or any kind of public speaker. I think it's entirely possible - and indeed, logical - for someone who spends so much of their lives performing on stage to not want to be even looked at when they're off it. Even if you're appearing behind a microphone 'as yourself', it's not really an accurate version of yourself. At least when everyone's paid nine quid to see you, and is sitting in neatly ordered rows, you know that that's a, if not falsified, then certainly rarified atmosphere. You have an 'in' - these people, you know, are here to see you. If you find yourself chatting at length at the local bar, then the chances are you'll suddenly find yourself panicking that everyone around you is simply waiting for you to shut the hell up. 

Someone who doesn't always want you to look at her when she's offstage, but is magnetic when on it, is Sarah Charsley, whose show, Three Kinds Of Me, ends tonight (and they told me I couldn't segue). It's actually sold out - the last seven tickets have gone in the past hour, as I'm writing this - and last night was extraordinary. The atmosphere in the studio at the New Venture Theatre was electric, and managed to indulge in all those cliches of a roller coaster of emotions - you'll laugh, you'll cry, etc, etc. If you manage to see it tonight, you're very lucky, at least as lucky as I have been to have been involved in the production. The mood in the bar afterward was buzzingly excited, with so many people really insistent that these shouldn't be the only performances of the show. Now, I'm fully aware that this runs the risk of tottering over into hyperbole, and that similar things are often said whenever there's a particularly good production going on, but I honestly think that there's truth in there them statements. We're beginning to think about reviving the production already, with at least the Brighton Fringe in our sights, so if your venue has a few spare performance spots, you know where to get in touch. 

(If you don't know where to get in touch - I mean here. Here is where you can get in touch. I was hoping that I didn't have to spell it out to you)

A Short Message About Acting Class

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

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

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