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

Sunday 7th June 2015

We're about a week and a half away from our next Cast Iron theatre night, where we put on six or more short plays from local writers. They're usually brand new writing, or very new writing. We had a bit of a challenge this time round, because the dates of the last Cast Iron had to get bumped a bit, and then we had the Brighton Fringe swarm into view, which means that we've had less time (and less actors and directors) to play with: basically, we're having to do about six weeks of rehearsals in roughly 12 days. It's obviously a bit stressful, but everyone seems like they're coping. You'll be able to see for yourself in the middle of June.

 

It was pointed out to me that one of the reasons that I set up Cast Iron was for purely selfish reasons - in other words, to get my own stuff on stage. And that this was something I'd entirely failed to do: in the first year of Cast Iron, I had only put up one play for performance - which ended up getting a lovely review in the local paper. All the rest of the time, I hadn't taken advantage of the situation that I had set up for myself, and had let other local writers get all their stuff on stage. Which of course is lovely and the whole point of the thing, but if I'm not even nepotistic enough to exploit the fact that it's me who decides what scripts get through and which don't, then I really am missing a whole bundle of tricks.

 

So I am attempting to get a bit more galvanised with the works in progress. There's some pretty good stuff cluttering up some old laptops and the like, and stacks of paper that need to be re-edited, saved for prosperity, or simply burned. Perhaps the latter in some cases. Having a new laptop is a Godsend. When I was writing Four Play and The Snow Queen, both (different) laptops had a habit of freezing at annoyingly productive times, and getting stuck on a single punctuation mark. Considering I was writing these things pretty much in my lunch breaks, it's a wonder I got anything finished at all.

 

Time will always be the enemy it seems. One job that I have delayed on thus far is getting round to people to tell them (if they have indeed asked for feedback) why their scripts haven't made it through to this round of Cast Iron. Mostly it's benign reasoning - in other words, it's not because the writing is actively poor. It's more to do with the fact, sometimes, that we don't currently have access to the very specific type of actor that the script is indicating, or that the text is written to be somewhat more cinematic than a fringe studio theatre can provide. In this regard, running a short play night is teaching me almost as much about writing plays as actually writing them.

 

Tonight, we return Iron Clad Improv back to the DukeBox Theatre. We were at the Cricketers during the Fringe, but it will be lovely to get back to our spiritual home (three years old this year!). I've been doing lots of reading up with exciting new text books - including a UCB Improvisation manual, which is proving fascinating. The sessions start at 7.00pm every Sunday, and the theatre is at the back of the Iron Duke pub. In the meantime, I'm also running acting classes at the New Venture Theatre every Monday in June. At the moment, we're looking at script work, and the different ways to approach a text.

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). 

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 ..