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. 

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. 

Tuesday 18th March 2014

Not long now til the deadline for our second round of submissions for Cast Iron, our semi regular night of new writing for the theatre that we've set up in Brighton - actually, at the DukeBox Theatre. I've had a couple of submissions come in during the last few days, and look forward to reading more. We're already coming to the end of rehearsals for the first batch of plays, which get performed on Saturday 5th April (there'll be a link around here at some point). Despite my best intentions, I'm in one of them, and - still - the lines aren't quite there yet, although I'll concede that they are more well learned that I think they are, if that makes any sense.

For the first night, we're premiering eight new plays, which is a pretty tall order. We've got people directing one play, appearing in another (or two others), while writing up another. In some cases, this is while holding down normal things like jobs and families, as well as rehearsing for their Brighton Fringe shows. This has clearly been a bit exhausting for everyone, not least because of trying to wrap their heads around the logistics of sorting a batch of rehearsals that people can all attend at the same time - while attending a completely different rehearsal elsewhere. 

Partially, that's the reason why the number of accepted plays this time round will be slightly less - possibly seven, probably six. That's slightly less pressure on me as the reader, but also slightly more pressure on each playwright, with literally two less spaces to fight for. In any case, the deadline is this Friday, although if people were to give me the heads up that they're still working on their final-no-honestly-it's-nearly-finished draft, then I'm sure we could find a but of elbow room over the weekend. 

The acting classes at the NVT have been going really well, ever better than I hoped. I was trying for something a little bit different with this series of classes, and was initially not quite sure if I could pull it off, since what I was trying to achieve was a little more nuanced than the classes I have previously delivered for the New Venture Theatre. But everyone seems to be getting a real kick out of it, and it's been gratifying to see performers dig deep and find new reserves within themselves. Apart from anything else, it's been humbling to see so many people come back week after week. There's a fair chance that I might redraft this series of classes as a course of workshops elsewhere for people who weren't able to make it this time round. 

I suppose the main excuse I could throw up for not having quite learned my lines for the short play night is because all my line learning facilities have been powering up for The Crucible, which is the Brighton Fringe production I'm involved with. Thankfully, the lines for that have been a bit of an easier ride (although I'm no way near to being totally signed off of the script just yet). It's a really interesting production, told in a promenade style, and will be performed in a church. I'm told that tickets are already beginning to sell, despite the fringe still being over a month away. It's a great cast, and that's important: a real company feel that makes rehearsals feel like really productive, fun, and pleasingly hard work. It's actually a pretty difficult atmosphere to pull off: I've been involved in a couple of shows where the grumpiness within the cast has broken out into open hositilties. Which, let's be honest, isn't the greatest way forward in a rehearsal. 

The part I'm playing is something of a challenge, if only because of my somewhat preconceived ideas, and how almost literally everyone else has played him: like many Arthur Miller male characters, he's something of a bear of man, at least figuratively, if not physically. Although the physical aspect is something I'm very aware of: I'm a reasonably slight man (although almost a foot taller if I simply stop slouching) and there's a good few cast members who are easily taller than I am. It makes me acutely aware of how I appear on stage, within the context of the play. Having said all that, both as writer and director, I've always been interested in playing against the expectation. I'm just somewhat startled to be playing it myself .... 

Thursday 13th February 2014

You know how it is. You're going through your day to day life, minding your own business, when you find, much to your surprise, that you appear to have set up a theatre company quite by accident, when you weren't really paying attention. I'm still not entirely sure quite how it happened. It's not as if I haven't already got quite enough to be getting on with, what with the improv classes happening every week, and the longform course starting next month (don't worry, the plugs will get less coy and subtle soon enough). But it seemed the right thing, and the right time for it all to happen in. 

When I say that I don't quite know how it happened (because, hell, after all, who sets up a theatre group by accident?) I'm not being faeustious. Well, not by much, anyway. I do know that I was involved, as an actor, in one of the Ten Minute Plays at the New Venture Theatre last year. I had submitted a play which didn't get accepted, and I honestly will never be able to tell you if I was piqued enough by that to start thinking about setting up an event where I - and others - would have other and more often a chance to submit work of our own. Well, regardless of what the catalyst was, and what my intentions were / are, that's exactly what happened next. It certainly seemed (to me, at least) that in Brighton, there appeared to be remarkably few events that promoted new writing in theatre. I'm sure there are a few, but it seems that they are sporadically littered throughout the year, and if that's not the case, then the attendant advertising and social networking ain't up to much. 

I'm very lucky in that I'm somewhat surrounded by a good number of passionate and talented people, a good few of whom were also in the NVT production of Ten Minute Plays. Some of them, I'd worked with in A Beginning, A Muddle, And An End (last years entirely improvised play that we produced for the Brighton Fringe), and it would appear that at least a couple of them are willing to work with me again, which is to their eternal credit. If all that sounds like a stumbling attempt at a humblebrag, well, then, I'm not going to disagree with you, but let the record also note that there are also a few people out there who have clearly decided that they'll never work with me again. 

So, somewhat on a whim, I voiced this vague concept of a probable idea that I almost had forming in my head. I'm used to that; I'm a would-be writer, I talk about the possibility of ideas annoyingly much more than the doing the hard work of actually getting those ideas on paper. What I'm less used to is the moment when a few (more than a few, in fact) like minded people voice their agreement on said idea and have questions like 'when do we start?', 'can I send in my play?' and 'cool, I'll bring the biscuits'. Actually, it may be that I'm being fanciful with the truth on that last one. What the hell. It might get me a couple of biscuits. 

So a couple of months ago, it was somewhat overwhelming to be surronded by a gang of creatives, all there for the same purpose. The concept is simple and clear. Ideally, a person will write a play, direct another, and appear in a third. Now, that won't always work, simply because sometimes a play won't get through to the acceptance stage, or someone's confidence doesn't lie in direction, or simple, base logistics (not every play will feature a cast of exactly one person, for instance). But that's the template we're working on, and so far it's working pretty well. Of course, the planning is a nightmare, since everyone has to arrange their rehearsals so they don't clash with each other - and since everyone is involved in everyone else's play, that's almost impossible - but I'm hearing good reports back. We intend that there will be batches of new writing four times a year (with perhaps an extra one thrown in as a Halloween special) and largely speaking, I'm more excited about the process than the final production. Not only is it a lovely atmosphere to meet up and work in, where the idea is that nobody's actually in compeition with each other - ideally, you'd turn up with your half-baked idea, show it around , people will either dislike it, or love it, or like the idea, but let you know that your dialogue / plotting is crappy - and it just means that if you're a nervous, new writer, you don't have to go it alone. The most gratifying part of this process so far have been the people who have taken the time to let me know how pleased they are to finally have an avenue for their writing, that they haven't before quite had the courage. If that's all I end up achieving with this accidental theatre company - well, that would seem to be a good trade. 

Sunday 30th June 2013

Spent the last couple of hours working on a play. It's only a ten minute play, but that doesn't necessarily make things any easier. With a regular play - or indeed any story, you have to hit the ground running, not spend too much time circling the plot before getting stuck in. Apparently, a hell of a lot of scripts and stories submitted to competitions and  companies have too many opening scenes where people are just meeting up over coffee, having not particularly interesting conversations about nothing in particular. You can understand why these scenes have been written - the writer has had to try and work out who these characters are, how they talk, what makes them tick. What's less clear is why such scenes survive several drafts until the final submitted version. Those scenes are the ones that get cut (or should get cut) while you get to the point of the story, in two minutes or less. 

In a ten minute play, without stating the bleeding obvious, the same applies, to the nth degree. Your statement of intent has to be - well, stated, in the first thirty seconds or so. Certainly, in the draft that I've written so far, that hasn't happened. I can understand why, and also why many authors shy away from the same in their scripts. You don't want to blow it all in the first minute - otherwise, it could be argued, where else is there for your story to go? The answer, of course, is always forward. The story may not even be about what you originally thought it was. Now, that's a startling thought for any writer - that whatever idea got them to start the actual story is in fact facile, unoriginal, and at best, merely the kickstarter to the other story that you haven't even thought of yet - but it's an important one to realise, I think. It allows you to stop being quite so precious, and to be slightly more relaxed about letting go of your ideas - adapting, adopting to change. 

The draft that I'm working on isn't even the first draft, I think. I've recently got into the frame of mind that the first bit of work you do on a story or a script doesn't have to be thought of as the first draft. This allows your inner critic to get a lot more freedom, when you finally let them off the leash. Your inner critic still gets to go wild, bitter, and - yes, critical - on your 'first' draft, but it also means that you still get to do a lot of false starts and working out of ideas before you get to that level. For me, a first draft should still be a reasonable piece of work. Sure, there's probably (at least) ten drafts to follow, but that first draft shouldn't exactly be an embarrassment to anyone, least of all its author. 

This summer, I hope to redraft an old script that just won't let go - Four Play. This is a script that has already had two productions, albeit of two very different versions of the script. The most recent version, a couple of years ago, had very positive feedback, and I have decided in a fit of entirely uncharacteristic ego, to take that feedback at face value, including the holy grail that it (the script) might have some kind of life entirely independent from me (in other words, that it might make me some money). However, in order to make that any kind of reality, the one piece of negative feedback, often and consistently repeated, has to be taken into account - that it was just too damn long. 

Now, I believe people who were in the audiences that said that, when you were actually watching the play, that it didn't seem all that long. However, I also believe those people that said that, yes, it really did seem that dam long. So, its required from me to hack out about half a hour. Not exactly an easy task, and not just because I'm a precious writer who can't bear to kill his darlings. Well, not entirely because of that. 

For those of you that don't already know, Four Play is a story set in the traditional trappings of a county house murder mystery. The twist in this play is that all four actors have to play four parts each, the costume changes getting all the more impossibly quick and frenetic. Plus, there's also four endings. I think we calculated that by the end of the night, there are more than 116 costume changes - and an equal number of exits and entrances. All of this means that any editing that I do isn't simply a matter of just cutting out that scene or this scene, since that scene or this scene is very likely in place to accommodate another actor's costume change. Having said all that, I worked out earlier this year how I could (probably) knock off twenty minutes or so from the running time. In the original (or, to be more accurate, most recent) version of the script, a murder is committed in the prologue. Then, scene two, set the following morning, introduces all the main characters, and goes about setting up their motives, red herrings, etc. Nobody knows about the murder that's already been committed. After about forty minutes, the next murder is committed, and then the pace really kicks in. I always likened it to a roller coaster that spends the first part of the journey going steeply uphill, so that when it drops, it can do so with real speed and energy. 

Finally, I worked out earlier this year that if all the characters already know that the prologue murder has been committed, then we could get to the meat of the story a helluva lot quicker. Of course, it worried me that it would be a lot more difficult to introduce all the back stories and red herrings, and also how I was going to hide the identity of the first victim - it's a big reveal in the finale because nobody's actually aware of the murder, and therefore a lot more difficult to pull off as a surprise if everyone knows that somebody has been murdered. But, I was reasonably confident that something would work itself out if I just got along to writing it. It was still going to be a bit clunky, but I figured, that's what 27th drafts are for. 

However, yesterday, I realised that there was no need for scene two to be set the following morning - that was a waste of time, and actually made the pacing a bit odd. Actually, I realised, scene two should follow pretty much continuously from scene one. It does mean, however, that the very top of the play is pretty much at the heightened level of finale  - the pace and attitude of where we come in at the very start of the play is where most plays check out. Now, that worries me for a number of reasons - it's a hell of a big ask for the audience, and an even bigger ask for the actors -and I'm not yet convinced that the story itself won't be capsized by such a move. However, starting at the end is exactly what any writing manual / workshop implores you to do. I just never expected to be considering to do it quite so literally. Whatever else, I'm convinced that many audiences will not have seen anything like that on stage before. And that's a good thing. 

Probably.  

Saturday 29 June 2013

So, this time last week (God, has it been a week already? How the hell did that happen?) I tried to organise a picnic/barbecue thing on the beach. Of course, I know, and you know, that as soon as you say those sort of things out loud, then the weather will be against you. And so it came to pass that there were pretty healthy winds all day long, which effectively (very effectively, in fact) put paid to any chances of spending time whatsoever outside. This Saturday, things are different. This Saturday, there was a full day rehearsal with the youth theatre, so it was pretty much inevitable that today would be the first day of 2013 where there would be more than two hours of uninterrupted warm sunlight (please don't message me to tell you that, actually,  you've had loads of days of brilliant sunshine: we're talking about my experience here. My experience may admittedly be significantly a lot more boring than yours, but we happen to be on my blog, and not yours. Of course, you could argue - very successfully - that the reason that you don't have a blog is precisely because your experience is less boring than mine, and I'm really not going to argue with you on that point). 

Like most people who write a blog (with the honorable exception of Richard Herring) I've let it go a bit fallow without updates this month. This is mainly because of the festival fringe production I was directing (which I really, really will chat about in more detail in a couple of posts time), but a few other things have happened in the meantime. I guess the main thing most recently was turning forty. This, in fact, was the main reason for attempting a beach picnic/barbecue type of thing. Many people have been asking me - quite intensely, in fact - if I've bothered by this milestone. They ask with such intensity, in fact, that I've begun to wonder if it isn't to facilitate their own sense of glee at a fellow human being falling apart and crumbling to dust before them than any actual concern they might have for my well-being. But the fact is, I feel like I was born at the age of forty, so getting to the actual physical age is no great hardship. Of course, traditionally, this is the point in time when a man is supposed to have a  mid-life crisis, but since I'm not exactly adverse to the idea of suddenly having a classic car and a girlfriend who's all sorts of wrong for me, I'm not exactly sure that it will be any kind of crisis at all. 

There are probably lots of things that did or didn't happen while I was far-too-busy to keep the blog updated, but the thing that springs to mind was getting to the long list for a writing competition. Now, I'm hopelessly naive about these sort of things. I wasn't even aware that there was such a thing as a long list. I know, logically, that there must be - that would make a lot more sense of the phrase 'short list', but it wasn't really something that I gave much thought. So when I originally got the email telling me that I hadn't made the short list, I took that as a standard rejection, and thought no further about it, other than to redraft the story (for what was probably about the tenth time, now). I rewrote it with the critical eye of a story that had, in fact, been rejected. I think the changes that I made were actually pretty important, and vital - indeed, how had I missed them the first nine times? - and made the story a helluva lot better. That done, I sent the story off again (to its third chance). 

I hadn't really read the rejection email until weeks later, and it was only then that I discovered that my name was on the long list. Sure, it was still a 'rejected' entry, but I wasn't exactly sure what long list actually meant, believe it or not. For a moment there, I did wonder if it was simply a list of all the stories that had been entered - literally, a long list. Turns out, not. Apparently, there was over a thousand entries, and the long list was under 100 stories. As 'rejections' go, that's pretty good odds. As I say, I have already redrafted the story and improved it. The long list (now that I actually know what that phrase means) gets announced at the end of next week. It might not be third time lucky. 

But, then again .. 

Thursday 27th June 2013

Right, where were we? The last time we spoke, I was deep in rehearsals for the completely improvised play that I'd been directing, 'A Beginning A Muddle And An End,' I'm not stopping for long here today - at least, I don't expect to be - so for now, I'll simply say that the show, for the most part, seemed to be very well received. 

Well, for the most part. There were a couple of people who clearly hated it. There were also a couple of people for whom improv wasn't exactly their thing, and the production did absolutely nothing to shake them from their beliefs. But they still found the time to hang back and vocalise their admiration for bravery of the cast who threw themselves onstage (sometimes quite literally) with no idea what the hell was going on (again, quite literally). In fact, with this particular person I'm thinking of, I might well be assuming wrongly that they didn't exactly like improv; I'm just reading that into their lack of effusive praise about the actual show. But they were at pains to praise the dedication and cajones of the cast. In many ways, it was this praise that meant more than any compliment regarding clever or funny storylines that the crew came up with. 

Oh, and there was one more section of the audience that didn't exactly warm to us. (by the way, I should point out that the show went very well. There were lots of people that were giddily excited about what the cast came up with. It's just that this particular blog post is about the less flattering elements of the audience). These people had a problem with the show not because they thought it boring, or ill-prepared, or incoherent. In fact, they thought the exact opposite. Rather too much so. In other words, they thought that our improvised show wasn't in any way improvised. 

OK, on one hand - our first reaction, indeed - was to take this as some kind of compliment: the idea that everyone was so-damn-slick that it beggared belief - literally, that it was unbelievable - that anyone could be quite that smart to come up with this stuff without some kind of process or plan. I can understand it, to some degree. As audience members, we're primed to see a structure in our stories - sometimes, literally, a three-act one (a beginning, a middle, and an end, if you will). But, since at least two of our un-believers had actually written reviews taking us to task and, in the case of the particularly bad-tempered one, pretty much accused us of breaking the trades description act, I had been advised by many to exercise my right of reply.  I had been reluctant to do this, simply because a director replying irritably to what's essentially a negative review can come across as a crate of sour grapes. But when our in-house reviewer also raised an eyebrow at the possibility that the show was made up, I was persuaded. 

I won't post my reply here just yet - I'll wait to see if it gets printed in the NVT newsletter first. But the writing of it reminded me that audiences really like to see their improv performers sweat. It can't look too easy, otherwise it just gets drenched in what is, for me at least, one of the cardinal sins of bad improv, a sin that you are capable of even if you're excellent; that of self indulgence. 

Well, more on that another time. The coffee shop I'm stealing internet from closed twenty minutes ago. 

Wednesday 22 May 2013

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

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

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

Monday 6th May 2013

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Monday 18th March 2013

Pretty good stuff going over at the rehearsals for Beginning, Muddle, End. Over the last couple of rehearsals, we've been concentrating a lot on 'Yes, And'. Talk to a hundred different improvisers, and you'll get three hundred different opinions on how to improvise. (yeah, I know the maths don't add up, but improvisers are a confusing bunch of people, you're just going to have to deal with it). But Yes And is pretty unarguable - its the idea that you literally accept, and expand on what the other actor is offering you. And it is an offer, a gift. Yes And is a great way to educate yourself into a frame of mind where you're constantly supporting your fellow actors, making them the best - the most brilliant - they could possibly be. The amount of energy and fizzy fun I'm getting from my cast is a joy to see.

What I'm becoming increasingly aware of, both in the rehearsals for BME and in the Sunday night workshops (yes, we have noticed you've not turned up yet. We weren't gonna mention it, but now that you've brought it up, maybe you wanna clear your schedule?) is something that I go on a lot about in my directing, and also in my writing. It's absolutely true of improv, too - essentially, all story telling: if you're hitting a wall, if the story isn't progressing, if you're just spinning your wheels, chucking up mud and progressing NOT AT ALL, then there's actually a damn good chance that you've already put in place the solution you're looking for. I first started being aware of this quite recently - well, about five years ago - and used to voice it to myself like some kind of fortune cookie mantra. It was a helpful crutch to lean on when I couldn't think of a damn thing to write, in any case. But here's the thing. Ever since I have voiced it, ever since I've given it the talismanic quality of a belief system - it's never failed me. Even on Sunday, both at rehearsal and at the short form drop in class (seriously, where have you been? We start, like five minutes late every week because we think that maybe you're gonna come through the door), there were moments where the scene was so close to - well, closure, but the improvisers weren't quite sure how to clamp their jaws on the tail of the story and end it there and then. But there were always certain that they were, like - this close - to that end. And it's because they'd already introduced the vital element earlier in the scene. On occasion, within the opening few lines. And of course, when there's an audience, and you manage to stitch these two apparently disparate plot points together, you will look like improvising AWE INSPIRING GENIUSES.

I had to have a guy drop out this week, because they weren't able to juggle their commitments, which is fair enough. At least, that's the story he's given me: I prefer to think that he had become increasingly uncomfortable with the raw sexual power that spilled over whenever he and I were in the same room at the same time. No, wait. It's probably the juggling commitment thing. Now, that leaves us with eight women, and one man. Also one teenaged boy, but it's the male / female ratio I want to talk about briefly. When I discussed it with a writer friend, she was concerned: wouldn't I have to get a replacement man? If it was just one man in a cast of women, wouldn't that look, well, weird? Well, possibly. Particularly as I'm eschewing one improv trick: I'm intending that each actor plays to their own gender. This will mean, at the very least, there will be eight characters who are women, and just one that is a man. That's not including the possibility that performers will play secondary characters (which is at least likely). But I want to commit to this. And the thing about just one man in the cast looking a bit odd - well, why should it? OK, I accept that it might - that, indeed, it probably will look odd - but a cast of mostly male characters, joined by a single female, wouldn't attract attention in quite the same way, save, possibly, for a side swipe that she was the 'token' female (the inference being that her role in the narrative is pointless, save for the sole purpose of having a woman on board) . For as long as I've been aware of such things, it's been cited that the population is roughly 52% women. And yet, in a narrative arc, they are considered 'other'. I'm not entirely sure why. Well, OK, I could throw a guess, but I'm not nearly intelligent or well versed enough to make the argument. I just think that this is a sweet opportunity to create a play in a field which is very heavily slanted towards male performers, which happens not to play by those rules. And I'm not expecting that the improvised plays will be in any way feminist - indeed, that's not the point. There's absolutely no reason why the stories that eight women (and one man, and one teenage boy) make up need have anything to do with inherently women's issues. I'm not naive enough to think that the gender imbalance will be invisible to the audience. But I do earnestly hope that it will ultimately be one of the least interesting things about the show.

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 ..

Sunday 13th January 2013

Well, I now know that I have absolutely no idea how search engines work. I always thought that they were un-intelligent, to use a, well, un-intelligent word. I always believed that they couldn't think for themselves, that they could only do what they were told. This appears not to be the case. Here's the thing. A couple of times a week, I post a link to the improv classes that I run in Brighton. At the moment, I've got two a week, one at the Duke Box Theatre, which is at the the back of the Iron Duke, (that's on Sunday nights, at 7.00), and another one on Mondays, which is at the New Venture Theatre.

All I do is go to the relevant website, copy the address in the address bar, and paste it into my link. Job done. Anyone seeing me advertise my wares on Facebook will click the link, and be taken to the acting class page of the NVT website. Similarly, anyone who clicks onto the link if they find it on twitter will also be taken to the same page. However, despite the fact that I use the same link wherever I paste it to, anyone that clicks the same link if they see it on LinkedIn will find themselves on the website of ... a Christian fellowship in California. I'm not sure I understand why. I mean, I get that there's different organisations on the planet with the same name (there's a New Venture Theatre in Louisiana that I occasionally think the NVT should do some kind of exchange program with, for instance), but it's a bit odd that LinkedIn actually manage to rewire and indeed rewrite the destination code of what was in the original address. I mean, how? As I said, I thought computers were essentially dumb; they couldn't do anything unless they received a direct instruction. Perhaps this is the first sign that they're about to throw over their human overlords. Skynet will achieve free will this year. Or something like that.

I'm managing to see films quite regularly this year so far. So far, I've been underwhelmed by the opportunity to see The Hobbit (and I'm getting reports back that it ain't that great), and I get the impression that Les Mis is a film I should really go to see with someone who's really going to be into it, so last night's film was The Impossible, inspired by the events of the 2004 tsunami. It's a very well made film, but I have a good few problems with it, not least that the real life family whose plight we follow are played by white actors. The family is in real life Spanish, as indeed the director, script and film is, despite the fact that it feels quite Hollywood. You'd think that since most of the talent was Spanish, they might have ignored the lure of an increased audience that McGregor and Watts will bring, and avoid the continued 'white-washing' of non causcian stories. It's certainly a film that pays respect to the victims of that disaster, but it still at times feels somewhat exploitative and 'too-soon' in a way that, for instance, United 93 did not. It certainly uses a couple of cheap tricks, like an extraordinarily cute blonde crying child, and, it seems likely, the shifting around of certain events in the survivors timeline to heighten dramatic tension towards the end of the film. It's a emotional wringer of a film, that to its credit never feels like a 'disaster movie', but it still feels like an uneasy option for your local mulitiplex (I couldn't help noticing that, once the credits had rolled, people had left their sacks of expensive popcorn, entirely untouched). The two leads are excellent, but they would probably both agree that it shouldn't be their names over the title: that honour should really go Tom Holland, who plays the part of the eldest son, at the start of the story still essentially short tempered and easily annoyed (in other words, a teenage boy), and to whom the film essentially belongs.

5 .. 4 ... 3 ... 2 ...

I'm trying to write a review of the year. I'm doing something for the NVT New Year's Eve party, and I've decided to try and do a retrospective of the last twelve months. I'm banking on most of the party goers being far too drunk by the time I get to my bit. I always think that New Year's Eve is a very odd night, anyway. For instance, last Saturday I'd come home after seeing a show, and was settling down for the night, watching the odd TV adaptation of Bag Of Bones. I'd just this week read the book, after having had it on my shelf for ten years. The edition I have was handed to me by Stephen King himself, after having signed it, at one of his very few UK appearances. But anyway, I'm getting off the subject here. That happens a lot, I'm really going to have to reel it in. I was at home, being reasonably unimpressed by Bag Of Bones, when a friend called up and got me out drinking, which ended up in a local nightclub. This almost never happens, but the reason I mention it was on that night, like most other nights, time was fluid - it got to about three in the morning without anyone really paying attention. New Year's Eve, however .. What the hell is it about New Year's Eve? Time slows to a crawl. And it doesn't matter if you're with good company. Such is the pressure about the midnight hour, that EVERYTHING becomes about the midnight hour, and you find yourself glancing at the clock, only to discover that it isn't yet nine.

Having said that, time is running out for me, and I still don't really know what it is I'm going to be talking about to tonight. I'm not even going to have a chance to think about what new year resolutions I'm going to attempt to break this month. I don't think I'm going to attempt too much in the way of resolution, since it can always get far too depressing when you stumble - or, as it's more commonly referred to, fail. I am writing more at the moment than I was at the beginning of the year, and it would be good to keep that momentum going. This is always a dangerous time in the year, because I have a job that actually does give me the full two weeks off for Christmas. (don't worry, I pay for it with my soul and hope). The problem behind that is, at this point in proceedings, I'm beginning to actually feel human again, and feel like I have time for a coffee and for a spot of writing. Which, of course, at this exact time, I do. It's when we shunt into next week (and next year) that my mood will down-shift into the grimace where it truly belongs.

Not that there isn't stuff to look forward to. There's a couple of writing deadlines looming (as I've mentioned before, there are few things more valuable to a writer than looming deadlines), and I have a double shift of improvisation workshops coming up. The Iron Clad Improv, which started up in October, begins again on January 6th at the Duke Box Theatre, and I'm doing a short series of long form improv classes at the New Venture Theatre for three Mondays, starting on the 7th.

The reason for these long form classes, apart from the actual just-having-fun aspect of them all, is for my first major project of 2013 ... For the Brighton Festival Fringe, I'm going to be producing an entirely improvised play: that's a production in which my cast, for five nights, will rock up to the stage with absolutely no script, no plot and no idea of what play they're about to put on. It could be terrible. It could be magical. Much like the next 365 days.

Happy New Year ..

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)

Music To My Ears

Earlier this week, I tuned onto Radio 2. It’s something I almost never do. I’m aware of Radio 2 as something in the background, even if it is not something that’s literally on, in the background. When I was younger, it was Radio 1, and I’m not entirely sure why, since I’ve always found it almost nail-plucking annoying. There was a time when I used to wake up to Radio 2, when it felt like being nudged to wakefulness by somebody with a freshly brewed cup of coffee (maybe it still does; I haven’t listened to it in the morning for years), but most recently, my radio has been dialled to Radio 4.

There’s something very liberating and almost empowering to discover that you don’t give enough of a damn to worry about the fact that you’re old enough to listen to Radio 4. I’m not sure exactly when the change kicked in; I’ve been listening to 4 for quite some years now – but I’m pretty sure that at some point I must have considered 4 to be outside my realm of interest, with its wall to wall talk, chatter, debate and opinion. But the fact of the matter is that I’ve never been much of a muso, and so it’s unsurprising that I never really found much of a grove going on with a radio station that just played the most popular track of the charts. And then again, fifty minutes later. Then twice more before the 6 O’clock drivetime news.

The reason I pulled up to Radio 2 this week (it was on iplayer; I wasn’t able to listen as the programme went out) was because an old friend, Louise Cookman, was featuring as a guest on http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006wr7s The Big Band Special. Now, I should acknowledge that my use of the term ‘friend’ is somewhat elastic: I didn’t really have the balls to talk to her whilst at college, which is where I first met her, spending more of my time instead with a woman who was a lot more spritely brightly Laura Ashley. This is intriguing, as the 39 year old me would always choose to spend time with someone more obviously arch and playfully cynical than the person I actually did spend my college time with. In fact, I’ve only seen Louise once since – all thanks to facebook – after what must have been pretty much a twenty year gap (and since when did any of us have lives long enough to squeeze a twenty year gap of anything into them?). It what felt like a scene straight out of a rigidly scripted Richard Curtis movie, I found her singing with a live band on a stage on the South Bank of the River Thames. She was an absolute pleasure to watch perform; and to speak with; somewhat disquietingly, I think we spoke more in the twenty minutes between sets than we did during our entire time at college. I’d like to think it’s because I’ve become less shy as I’ve gotten older, but we all know that’s not the case.

Hearing her on the Big Band programme was a glorious moment. I can’t sing at all (and have no patience for those who declare, with no patience, that ‘everyone can sing’), and am always slightly in awe of those who are particularly skilled at delivering a song. Obviously, many people can do the basics of carrying a tune (I can’t, my carrying of a tune sounds more like I’m dragging the corpse of a tune over a war-ravaged roadside as blood gluts out of its throat), but there are certain singers whose voice occasionally defy your understanding: you’re unable to work out quite how their voice can lock into place that way, that can jump, seemingly effortlessly from one sound to the next, can sound so perfect. It is, I guess, why there’s been such a rise in voice-correction software in music over the past few years. It’s an effort to create the seamless – and –makes-it-sound-so-easiness – voice that a few singers have in abundance. Hearing certain voices is to witness – and I don’t use the word lightly – a thing of beauty.

That’s pretty much how I reacted listening to the programme on Tuesday, and I’m fairly sure I would have reacted in the same way had I not had some tenuous connection to the singer. There was something very pleasing in hearing someone I know personally appear on national Radio and sing a few big band classics, even though I was mildly disappointed that she didn’t go for the obvious gag during her rendition of a song from Calamity Jane.

This sort of thing actually happens a reasonable amount, because a lot of my experience and training is in the performing arts, but because I myself haven’t had much discernible professional success. It’s always slightly startling to see someone you’ve spent time with begin to turn up on panel shows, for instance. I remember one morning waking to my alarm clock radio (which at this point was tuned to 4), and being startlingly presented with the voice of a woman I hadn’t spoken to for about ten years, talking about the major adaptation she’d just written for the London stage. Since my writing credits at that point largely consisted of a shopping list – and even that was incomplete – it was an alarm clock in more ways than one. Another friend of mine has started doing a lot of extra work, and although I’ve not yet seen him on screen, it’s very pleasing to know that at least one person I’ve acted with is actually getting paid for being on a film set.

Later tonight, we’ll be having the next rehearsal for Three Kinds Of Me, which opens this Friday. It’ll be nice to get a good crowd there, so do make sure you book your tickets as soon as you like. At the very least, it would be good to have an audience that outnumbers the cast, and as it’s a one-woman show, that shouldn’t be too much of a challenge. We’re pretty much through the worst of the technical stuff by now (although the crew may well have something to say about that statement), and it’s a show that I’m very proud of. Not necessarily because of any negible contribution I might have brought to it as director, but simply for the chance to have worked with such a talented writer and performer. Yes, I know it’s pretty much a contractual obligation to say such things about the people you work with, but I have worked with people who have made me want to drag a cheese grater over my own eyeballs. Or, even better, theirs. Those people who make working on a show a joy are to be celebrated. This could very easily have been a difficult show – Sarah is performing her own script, and I have had the audacity to tell her what her own script means – more than twice contradicting what the text itself actually says – and even if she’s felt that my instincts are entirely insane, she’s been gracious enough to indulge me, and treat me as someone who knows what the hell they’re talking about.

Also this week, I’ve been beginning to leave out flyers for the series of improvisation workshops I’ve got coming up. It’s called Iron Clad Improv (cause it’s on at the Iron Duke, d’you see?), and the first drop in is on Sunday 28th October, which suddenly doesn’t seem all that far away. From then on, it’s every Sunday, 7 – 9, and I’m genuinely looking forward to it. Of course, it doesn’t work unless actually get some punters in through the door, so do please spread the word, even if you can’t get through the door yourself. I’m obviously fretting that I’m going to be doing a lot of these improv drop-ins to which absolutely nobody turns up, so I’m having to get over my own instinctive shyness (which even though I’m even older than was when I last referred to my shyness at the start of this blog), and shout about the improv class from the rooftops. Or, at the very least, leave out brightly coloured flyers in every coffee shop the Brighton and Hove area.

Lastly, before rehearsal tonight I’m going along to the Old Market in Hove to see Caitlin Moran talk about her new book. I saw a great many people last year reading her previous book, How To Be A Woman, although – curiouser ad curiouser – none of them were women. Presumably none of them felt that they needed instructions on how to be a woman, or possibly they were all reading Fifty Shades on their kindles. It’s the second time this week I’ve been to The Old Market (I saw a show of Comic Strip at the weekend, headlined by the blistering Terry Alderton, who I’d never encountered before), which is bad, since it’s a great venue, and practically on my doorstep. There are a few times when I get exhausted and poor, but all it takes is a reminder of exactly where it is I live, and its enough to consider myself reasonably lucky



The Final Furlong

So, tonight, we hit production week on Three Kinds Of Me at the New Venture Theatre. As I’ve doubtless mentioned before, it’s only on for two nights, so you’re well advised to book your tickets up now, by clicking on the link to the New Venture Theatre.

I think I’m right in saying that it’s one of the most challenging things I’ve ever directed. Now, this might seem a bit rich, considering that I’ve already gone through directing musicals (bit of a test, since I’m about as musical as a blanket) shows with casts of kids numbering forty or more, or most recently, a Greek tragedy, and, by way of comparison, 3KM is simply me offering advice to a good friend who’s performing her own script. You’d think that, at the very least, that last fact alone would cut down on the amount of time we spent discussing what the playwright really meant. In theory, I didn’t really need to be there at all.

But Sarah has been patient enough to indulge my theories and suggestions on how to best present her text. It has, as I’ve indicated, been a surprisingly difficult process, not least because we’ve made every effort to make it as simple as possible. People who have worked with me before, upon hearing me declare that I wanted to make this production uncomplicated, were no doubt clearing space in their schedules for that inevitable moment when I finally said in a musing tone, ‘actually, I’ve just had this idea ..’ It appears that easy is not as easy as it looks.

A recurring conversation in rehearsal was what this production actually was: was it a play, or was it storytelling? It certainly lends itself to the latter, as it’s delivered in epistolary fashion, meaning that the entire narrative is packaged in smaller chunks. There’s still an over-reaching narrative arc, with a beginning, middle and an end, but just not necessarily – as you might have guessed – in that exact order. In the end (or, to be exact, quite near the start) Sarah and I agreed that it was indeed a play, rather than storytelling (Sarah has experience of both). The distinction is important, as different things come into play when you – well, get into a play, particularly in a play like this, which is largely about story-telling. Don’t worry if you’re not keeping up; I’m not sure I am.

When directing, I tend to start out from a single image that I find striking and arresting. Due to constraints of time, budget, and occasionally, simple logic, I can’t always deliver that image on stage, but that doesn’t matter – it gives me enough of a foundation to make decisions throughout the entire production, and can be a great influence on style and theme. With this production, interestingly enough, it was all about telling the story. Of course, I’m aware that every production is about telling the story, if you’re doing your job right, but since 3KM is simply about the power of one woman’s voice as she attempts to discover who she really is, I considered it vital that the production itself was as unfussy as I could make it – there could be no attempts to hide behind tricksy directorial flourishes. At least, I said all that, and then found myself concerned if we could maintain the simple elegance of a young woman standing in a black box for a hour and a half. In the end, of course, there is a sort-of compromise between the two: it really is simply a woman standing in a black box for a hour and a half (which sounds more and more like a David Blaine magic trick each time I type that), but we have introduced small little grace notes that I hope enhance, rather than distract, from what is being said on stage.

*

If you get a chance today (Monday 15th October), do try to pop along to the Google homepage, which today celebrates one of the most important comic strips of all time, Little Nemo In Slumberland. Little Nemo was not, as you might have thought, an abandoned clownfish, but rather a 1905 newspaper cartoon that filled the entire page (and this being the time when a newspaper was about the size of a reasonably sized six year old child). As time went on, newspapers discovered they could make significantly more money by hiring their space out to advertisers, but for a few glorious years, Winsor McCay’s creation tumbled Alice-like from his bed into a dream world of wonder. Nemo literally tumbled, too – from frame to frame, the fairly wordless cartoons seeming stationary as Nemo dropped out of one panel down to another. The strip was magnificently cinematic in an era when cinema was barely a flicker in a projectionist’s booth. As a sidebar, McCay is usually credited with creating the first animated character in cinema history with a distinct personality – Gertie the Dinosaur.

Little Nemo’s presence can still be very firmly felt in today’s cartoons, from ‘In The Night Kitchen’ and Alan Moore’s work, and most certainly in the Sunday cartoons of Calvin and Hobbes. The Google cartoon is a thing of gorgeousness, and certainly a good gateway into Slumberland if you’ve not yet heard of Little Nemo.

Making A Song And Dance

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

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

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

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

Laugh It Up

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Half Way Mark

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

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

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

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

Take A Joke. Just Don't Tweet It.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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