Thursday 28th January 2016

So, where are we? This week, I managed to (finally) assign scenes and speeches to performers in Not Just The Companion - the evening that Cast Iron Theatre is presenting for International Woman's Day at the DukeBox Theatre -

- and that's quite enough words in bold font for one paragraph, thank you very much. If I haven't explained before, the idea behind Not Just The Companion is reasonably simple - there will be a group of performers, all female, delivering scenes that are traditionally, iconically, male. While we don't intend to get too political about it, and simply deliver an evening of drama and comedy that is entertaining, the night is, by the very nature of its existence, a political statement: without getting too deeply side-tracked by the figures (in this blog entry, at least) it remains true that men are far better represented on stage and screen than women. It may be too combative (while somewhat true) that all the best parts go to the boys, while generally the women have to play wives and girlfriends. That's not happening 100% of the time, but it happens often enough for it to be a real problem. It happens often enough that characters like Rey (Star Wars) and Furiosa (Mad Max) become noteworthy purely because they exist - the very fact that they are front and centre of a movie is somehow worthy of mention. In 2016, that's depressing.

Not Just The Companion isn't anywhere near a redressing of that balance, but it's at least a smudge on the ledger - a response. A reminder that 'male' does not have to be the default casting, the default character. So much so that you can take a part written for a male - sometimes specifically for a male - and have it performed by a woman, changing nothing more than gender pronouns (and on occasion, not even that much). We're very excited about what the evening will bring. At the bottom of this blog entry is a link for the facebook page for Not Just The Companion.
Staying with Cast Iron, I've been putting a lot of work this week into casting Cast Iron 7. In truth, it's not actually the seventh show we've put on, but we haven't numbered our Halloween and Christmas specials, as well as any of the other one-off shows we've curated. This Cast Iron will be part of Hove Grown, a new writing festival which will be in its first year for 2016. Many people will be delivering their own shows, workshops and plays in the festival, which is brilliant, beautiful and bountiful .. and means that a lot of the supremely talented people I had intended to cast in Cast Iron 7 simply aren't available. It has meant that I've had to switch a few things and scripts around, and some plays are going to get shunted to the next Cast Iron (which, in all honesty, probably will be called Cast Iron 8), but it has meant that the casting process this time round has taken a little longer than I'd expected. Frankly however, it's a nice problem to have.
Finally, Iron Clad Improv is having a real burst of energy at the moment - still really welcoming to nervous newcomers, but also genuinely challenging. We're talking a lot this month about leaving your ego at the door, dropping the jokes, and increasing the generosity for your fellow performers. Each Sunday between 7 and 9 is a revelation, and I consider myself lucky to share a learning environment with such hungry students*
*hungry for knowledge, not for food. That would be upsetting.
https://www.facebook.com/NotJustTheCompanion/?fref=ts

In A Galaxy Far Far Away, In Three Years Time ..

As you might have heard, and indeed maybe even care, the Star Wars franchise has been sold to the Disney corporation, and almost immediately, plans for a further trilogy (or at least, an Episode VII) have been announced. Reaction from fanboys seems to be mixed, ranging from concern that the Death Star will now be run by the House Of Mouse - until very recently, they hadn't done The Muppets any favours - to cautious relief (George Lucas is only on as a 'creative consultant', which is as comestic a job description as anyone could hope for). I give it a week before some kids on YouTube provide us with some decent mash-ups where Lelia is singing Belle's song from Beauty And The Beast, while The Lion King's Scar can have a go at playing Vader.

What I have noticed is that people are already saying that it will only work if Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford are brought back to reprise their iconic roles. I can't help thinking that that would be a massive mistake, and a prime example of why you should never let the fanboys write their sci-fi, outside maybe Buffy slash fiction. Which obviously I know nothing about. Any future Star Wars movie that decides to concentrate on Han Solo and the gang is missing a massive trick. If Disney pull this off, they've got a franchise to match Bond for many years to come: the Star Wars mythos has the potential to be huge, infinite, even - countless planets, worlds, and even time - now that we've had three (admittedly poor) prequels, there's nothing to say that any of these films can't be set whenever or wherever in George Lucas' universe that you want. A new Star Wars film every four years or so can tangent off in many different directions, free of the constraints of having to follow the direct passage of the Skywalker saga. True, that might mean that you'd have to lose the iconic 'crawl' at the top of each film (the bit where you get a 'story so far' type of typeface), but that would be a small price to pay for the chance of creating a modern fairy story world of infinite adventures. And after the major bruising of Episodes 1, 2 and 3, it's a chance for fanboys to fall in love with Star Wars again.

I'm not the most rabid Star Wars fan in the world (I've only seen the movies), but I am aware that there's already a great deal of TV series and cartoons that already deal with the adventures of a multitude of characters and adventures that have nothing to do with the crew of the Falcon. I imagine that it's this approach that will serve the Disney Star Wars movies best. There's a chance, then, that each Star Wars movie can have an entirely different approach, director, location - and even cast. By sheer coincidence, about a hour before I heard the news, I was remembering that the trailer for Episode 1 attracted so much interest that it had to be shunted to after the films they were being screened with. It's great to think that - just possibly - the Star Wars films might finally be exciting again.

As long as they don't keep Jar Jar Binks.