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.

Thoughts On Forty

Met up at the weekend for a coffee with a couple of friends and their beautiful little girl. As you might imagine, I don't get many chances to play catch up, especially during fringe season, which is normally given over to rehearsals, planning, and panic attacks. Indeed, I think I only see these friends a few times a year, in real terms. Somewhat inevitably, the same conversational gambits come up again, largely what I'm working on at the moment, how is my actual day-job work, who I'm (not) seeing at the moment, yadda yadda yadda. 

This time, however, there was a (almost) new one. 'So', I was asked / reminded / warned. 'You're forty next month?' I allowed that this was true. I don't particularly have a problem with getting older (let's face it, I was born at the age of 38), but I do feel pretty awkward about attempting to do anything to do with my birthday. I'm totally fine with celebrating other people's birthdays, obviously. In that case, I'm absolutely fine, if invited, with rocking up to whatever venue and helping celebrate a friends birthday. But when it comes to my own, I'm a lot more anxious. I'm inordinately convinced that if I attempted to organise some kind of birthday bash, then it would be on the very date that everybody I knew had other plans. I know, I know how self defeatist that sounds, but it shouldn't. I'm not fishing for a 'aww' here, I'm simply denoting the banal possibility that everybody's calenders wouldn't quite match up. And then of course I'd feel needy and fishing for a 'aww'. Which would be a terrible way to celebrate your birthday. It also feels - from my side of the table, at least - overly arrogant. Well, no, not arrogant, but you know what I mean: 'Hello, come celebrate knowing me. And the fact that I haven't died yet.' It just seems all so tiresome. I figure if you've known me for a while, you probably (vaguely) know when my birthday is without me reminding you, as indeed proved to be the case with this couple at the weekend. I generally feel awkward about reminding people about my birthday (somehow, I feel the only natural response is 'and?'). If you don't know, or indeed care, then that's perfectly fine and acceptable. That's at least honest. It's why I even dislike the birthday greetings on a facebook wall - tons of people, who previously had no idea that it was your birthday, see someone else say 'happy birthday' on your wall, and then do the same - three seconds of typing, and duty done. It doesn't really mean anything, does it? I'd genuinely much rather someone entirely forgot, and then, apropos of nothing six months later, suddenly asked 'oh, did I miss your birthday?' That, to me, is honestly more meaningful. I'm being serious. I feel so (out of proportion, admittedly) seriously about this that I ended up disabling the wall function on my facebook account after, in my first year on facebook, being confused that so many people were, for the first time, wishing me a happy birthday. I'd previously been pretty confident that they didn't give a damn. 

God, that sounds bitter, doesn't it? It's not meant to, seriously. I'm just allowing the possibility that perhaps my (and indeed your) birthday isn't exactly important to anybody other than your closest friends and family at any given time, and I'd much rather not worry people's timetables with mine. I'm acutely aware that I've probably gone a bit too far in the wrong direction: in recent years, I've passed a reasonable amount of birthdays with absolutely no comment and little regret. So, why this blog entry, which is a clearly an ill disguised plea for someone else to kick me up the rear to actually get something done? Well, of course, it's the 40 thing. Bloody milestone birthdays. They put an undue amount of pressure on you to try and mark the occasion in some way. Last year, the birthday coincided with the last night of a production I was directing, 'Medea', so I was able to smuggle in some kind of celebration without feeling the pressure that it was all about 'me', but actually about the last night of the show. This year, however, I've got no such beard. It's already giving me a slight headache. And I haven't even had a birthday drink yet. 

Fear Of Peers

Good, but strenuous, rehearsal tonight. I don't think I was communicating my intentions or wants as a director particularly well, which meant that my cast (of one woman) spent a lot of time feeling her way in the dark, trying to work out what I was on about. Not literally feeling her way in the dark, of course. I'm not like Werner Herzog. Although, that might be a good warm up exercise for another time.

The other thing that was interesting for me was that while I was directing my leading lady (Sarah), we were visited by my last leading lady (Sarah). It shouldn't rattle me. But it did, slightly. Whilst we get on well, and while I think she enjoyed her time on Medea, I was very aware that she herself is a director, and one who speaks with straight-to-the-point clarity, whereas I can sometimes be guilty of chatting around a subject in order to get to the point, rather than taking a direct route. Both ways have their value, but it's easy to get very self conscious.

We all know of, and in some cases, have worked with poor directors ( I've noticed that I started that sentence with 'we', somehow assuming that anyone reading this blog is definitely involved in some way with theatre. While that's certainly very likely, it's by no means guaranteed.) These are the directors who passively offer no opinion (or, indeed, direction), or at the other end of the scale, stamp their opinion on absolutely every aspect of the production, meaning anything about the actual script is pulverised. I would give examples, but that would mean, you know, giving examples.

I like to think that I'm a pretty good director. I talk slightly too much in the early stages, but in context, I think it's a forgivable sin. Interestingly, even now I can feel myself channelling a director I used to know almost twenty years ago, when I worked at a theatre in South London: CYTO, or the Croydon Youth Theatre Organisation. I can't ever remember him sitting down to direct, he was almost always on his feet. Quite a few directors do direct from a seated position, and insomuch as I've thought about it at all, it's always disquieted me somewhat. Certainly, I've never felt comfortable staying seated while directing. Maybe it's nervous energy; and that's certainly how I remember this director from twenty years ago, right down to the habit of clicking the fingers on both hands while trying to get his head around a concept or narrative problem. In recent years, I've begun to wonder if I've imagined, or invented that tic. It doesn't really matter, I suppose, even if I seem to have adopted that tic for myself.

So, most of the time, I think I've got a pretty good handle on what it is to be a director. I've got a certain style and approach that I return to, but that gets altered and shifted depending on what the project is. A knockabout farce with just four people is going to have different demands than a drug survival play with twenty five young people all aged under 18. But that's the thing, I know all that. But, if someone I know and respect is in the room, I suddenly feel like a fool and an idiot. Well, more so than usual. I feel like an amateur, like a snake oil salesman who's one paragraph away from being unmasked as the liar everyone has suspected him of being.

It's ridiculous, of course: both the women in the room have elected to work with me on a number of occasions, and both have asked my advice on creative and artistic matters. I have to be logical about this: they wouldn't do that just to be nice (actually, if we're going to be logical, it's entirely within the realms of possibility that they'd collaborate with me 'just to be nice', but that gets a bit too Truman Show and oddly egotistical to make a great deal of sense, so I have to put my faith in my lack of faith.)

In last nights rehearsal, I began talking about the image of Russian Dolls (you see how I talk around something rather than getting straight to the point?), and it's just occurred to me now that that's how the rehearsal itself felt - while was looking in on Sarah (my actor), hoping to guide and support her, I felt Sarah (my previous actor) looking in on me, offering guidance and support. Didn't always stop me feeling like I was being exposed as an idiot who didn't know what he was talking about. I don't know why I was worried: I achieve that quite well enough by writing this blog.

A Short Message About Acting Class

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

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

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

Long, long rehearsals at the moment for Medea, and with every day, a change, whether it be in designing the light, the set, or, however implausibly, the cast. Despite the panics and concerns, I still remain very confident about the end product. I have a great cast and crew, a collection of people who are sensitive and emphatic to the needs of each other and are aways supportive. There have been a good few times, I don't mind admitting (well, come on, it's not like anyone's really reading this yet) that I haven't really known what the solution was to a particular problem scene. But I've always felt comfortable that my cast were able (and confident) to wait patiently while I sorted through a few possibilties, some of them clearly insane and unworkable, and at least a few that I doggedly stuck with for more than a few rehearsals, before coming up with the solution that worked. Which, in more than a few cases, was the idea that one of the cast had gently suggested in the first place.

Anyway, we're hurtling toward production week, and the first night is on 16th - just over a week away. Last time I checked, the last night had already sold out, and the Tuesday was down to just one ticket left. You can check up on the current sales here: http://www.ticketsource.co.uk/newventuretheatre. There's at least a chance that we might be able to release extra tickets closer to the time, but no promises.

All of which means that I didn't get much of a chance to see a great deal of the Brighton Festivals this year, which is a real shame - at the very least, I wanted to check out the new pop-up venue The Warren, which by all accounts was a lovely edfringe type place, and of course ended up winning a Latest7 award for best venue. In fact, the main thing I saw over the fringe was a production of 'Antigone', in which the audience mainly consisted of cast members of Medea having something of a busman's holiday. While it had merit, I found that I much preferred a production from years ago, back in Croydon, directed by Richard Vincent, and featuring Holly Sullivan in the title role. I'd love to tell you that my bias was just that - bias, blended in with a healthy degree of nostaglia, but I think the earlier production really was the better one. Although one of my clearest memories of that production was my mother in the audience, panicking throughout the evening that I'd been beaten up. Somehow, she hadn't cottoned onto the fact that I was playing a blind seer, and the dark patches around my eyes were simply stage make-up, and not massive facial bruising.

In the meantime (as if I have meantime right now) I'm writing a ten minute play for the Brighton And Hove Arts Council for their 'People's Day' in mid-July (the day, in fact, that the Olympic Torch is carried through Brighton). It'll start rehearsing as soon as we get out of Medea - so, only for a week or two - and will be performed somewhere near Pavillion Gardens in Brighton on July 14th. If you have any interest in being involved as an actor, please get in touch. It will be a very quick turnaround - a few rehearsals on a few eveinings, and then one single performance. I've already had some interested parties get in touch, and while I sort out the actual characters, etc, it'll be good to know if there's any other interest from elsewhere.

More Books Than I'll Ever Read #1: Medea

In the last month or so, I've had to buy about three more bookcases. Almost an entire wall of a not unsizeable room in my flat is now covered with heavily stacked book shelves.

I've lost count of exactly how many books I have, although I will concede that there might be a few doubles there. What is now very likely is that I own more books than I will ever have the chance to read before I die, even of one of those books has within its pages the secret of time travel and enables me to keep jumping back a few years to keep up to date. However, over the next number of .... days? Months? Years? .... I am going to attempt to upload a photo of each book I own, tell a story behind it, and, of course, an admission as to whether I've read it or not, and why. So, clearly, I'm not only a hoarder, but someone who feels the need to clutter up the Internet with my clutter.

This first book, Medea, I have actually read. Not only that, I've read it several times, and made loads of notes over it. This is because I'm directing it for the NVT Brighton in June.

It's a good translaton, by Tom Paulin (of Late Review), and the cast seem to be having fun with it. The inside pages are all scrawled over with lots of notes and ideas that presumably made some sense to me at some point. What's particularly fun is how often I've scrawled a question mark at random moments in the text.

However, as this is my first entry on the subject of books (and those ones I'll never read) I feel I should point out that I don't normally write in my books. For play scripts, it's fairly expected (you can now guess the date of a script mainly due to the absence of a highlighter marker), but with most other books, with the exception of text books, I suppose, it's considered something of a no-no. Presumably it's looked upon as some kind of graffiti. However, there have been times when I've picked up a second hand copy of something or other, only to discover that someone before me has doodled notes in the margins.

It's almost always pleasantly conversational, and has led me to muse that had I ever met the person who had made the notes, we would have probably gotten on quite well (it's clear that we have at least had similar taste in books).

If books are a form of telepathy, with the writer speaking across time and space to the reader, then the notes in the margin are the chatty friend who always has something to say.