Rapid Write Rewind at Theatre 503

Monday night I went to the Latchmere for the first night of their week of short plays - Rapid Write Rewind. My piece Come On Eileen started the evening and it was fun to see it again after a year.  The director Tanith Lindon had been unable to get all the original cast together. The two new actors were great and as Matt Ward and Adam Diggle could have been father and son there was no difficulty in believing they were older and younger versions of the same man.  Natalie Bridge was in the original cast and was even better than the last time.  Ended the evening feeling that the piece had possibilities.  We might be able to take it further.
The night was yet another demonstration of how much talent there is out there, directors, actors, writers, all responding to an opportunity to do their best work.  And a good audience too.  From a writer's point of view having a 10/15 minute given a full performance is a whole lot better than a rehearsed reading.  They sound like a good idea but they rarely come to anything.  The actors, book in hand will do their best. It's fun but when it's over it feels as if there's nowhere left to go. You have a whole play, you know something of what works and what doesn't but no sense of how you might take it further.  Much better to have a short piece complete, polished, performed, produced.  Try something different.  Set yourself a problem and try to solve it. And not have to worry about whether your masterpiece will ever be seen again because that's not what it's there for.  You can take chances and you can learn a lot.
That was certainly the feeling I got on Monday night.  Writers moving happily out of their comfort zone.  Good one, 503. Thank you.

Stewart Lee and Max Wall.

Saw Stewart Lee's show Carpet Remnant World. Not often an anticipated experience delivers. I'd heard him speak about Jerry Springer at a theatre conference at Warwick. I'd read his book on stand up and seen his latest series on BBC 2.  All of which made me want to see him live.  It's a long time since I've seen someone so funny, so uncondescending, and so in control of the room.  He has all the skills.  He makes a point in his second book - If You'd Like a Milder Comedian - that he has no talent as an actor. Maybe. But he knows all about physicality and timing.  In some ways it reminded me of seeing Max Wall who also used to deconstruct his act.  He'd explain he was going to tell you a joke, explain its inadequacies, apologise for telling it, tell you where you'd laugh and why you'd laugh, all of which was immaculately funny, and then about half an hour later tell the joke and step back and watch disappointed as you fell about all over again.  Lee doesn't do jokes, but in their technique they have much in common.  I saw him last week and I've been smiling ever since.

The Giants in the Earth musical makes it onto film.

So we have a trailer for the musical Giants in the Earth that Matt Marks and I have been working on with Oxfordshire Theatre Company.  Please have a look, it's up on youtube.  It's on the edge of the final rehearsal draft. All we have to do is incorporate what we learned from the two weeks Arts Council funded development period we had in November and it's ready to go.  I thought it was amazing that only weeks after they'd pulled portfolio money from the company they were eager to put in eleven grand to finance our work.  An endorsement of the the piece and of Karen Simpson's work as the artistic director, and what should have been proof o the board that they wanted to fund the company on a project by project basis.
Onward and upward.  We're one step closer.  Enjoy the short video.  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWOsMNp68QU

Okay it took a while, but at last I really like Kate Bush. No pretending.

I've always liked Kate Bush in theory. I wasn't ever going to like Wuthering Heights. Not when I hated the book so much.  Not with all the other stuff I was listening to. But later. Running up that Hill. The Red Shoes.  Hey, there Micheal - something about swinging on a chair in Abbey Road?  I almost got here.  Liked that she'd recorded them, liked that they existed, but not actually, as it were, to listen to.  Admired her. Respected her talent. Just didn't listen. I tried to because I thought very highly of what I thought she might be trying to do - Hounds of Love - went back to that several times, couldn't do it.  I wanted to like Kate Bush, I really did, I was the kind of person who should like Kate Bush. Only I didn't, so I obviously wasn't.
This Christmas I bought 50 Words for Snow for my wife, and because she hadn't got it, The Director's Cut. Played them on Christmas Day out of a sense of duty.  And listened.  And heard them.
Now I don't think it's all my fault.  Everything's a matter of taste.  But I loved Snow. Then I played Director's Cut.  And I loved that too.  It' isn't all my fault.  I heard them because they are so simple. So paired down. So undramatic. So unlike Wuthering Heights perhaps? No, that's not the point.  They are so bloody good.  The songs breathe.  Her voice so subtle.  The lyrics so clean.  And not so many notes, and, alright, I'll say the unsayable, not so much screeching.  Whatever it is, I promise I will go back to the other albums and try again. And if it doesn't work?  Who cares?  50 words for Snow and The Director's Cut will do for me.  Happy Christmas Ms Bush. You (and Private Eye the First 50 Years) have made mine.

Harry Perkins - the best fictional Prime Minister we never had.

I began this year reading Chris Mullin's diaries and twelve months later I've just finished A Very British Coup his thriller about what happens when a Labour government with socialist principles gets an overwhelming majority.  It's such a good read that it would be unfair to give anything away other than what we already gather from the title  - Harry and his colleagues are never going to be allowed to succeed.
I have always wondered why men and women of integrity, ideals, and conscience ever go into politics  when they can only look forward to sliding from one frustrating compromise to another, notching up more defeats than victories.  But reading Mullin makes you glad they do. 
His thriller is amazingly prescient.  It's exciting but it's so sad because the obstacles that prevent Harry Perkins getting closer to the world he's striving for are not a million miles from those that frustrated Mullin himself.
But the message of the diaries and the novel are the same.  It may not be possible to make much of a difference, in a world that seems bent on protecting the vested interests of a few (cf Cameron walks away from Europe to protect the City which is of course in all our best interests.  As  in - Is it fuck.), a society based on freedom, equality, and justice may be out of reach, but that shouldn't stop us trying to put our small shoulders to the wheel.
A reasonable thought for the New Year.

How does an ordinary mortal get tickets to see Bruce Springsteen?

Saturday morning.  Eight fifty five.  I'm sitting in front to the computer waiting for nine o'clock. The time that tickets for next year's Bruce Springsteen concerts go on sale.  At nine o'clock I click on.  All I'm offered is two at the very very back and at the very very highest point of the South Stand at Manchester.  I try other sites. Nothing. Eventually I get a ticket for Hyde Park. Only one ticket as my wife is just over five foot and gets understandably fed up at paying good money to stare at somebody's back.  So I'm going to see Springsteen.  Not with my wife.  Not at my venue of choice.  Maybe I was just unlucky.  Hundreds of thousands of people clicked on at exactly the same moment.
Yes, but hang on a moment.  I've just been on e bay and they're log jammed with Springsteen tickets.  6 for Sunderland. 8 for Dublin. All about to change hands at huge prices. And then I went on to look for tickets generally and the sites that said they'd sell tickets on Saturday and didn't have any now suddenly have stacks of them at prices up to £1398.
Oh, and on Friday I went on the same sites and they were offering pre sale tickets - that weren't officially on sale yet - for inflated prices.
So it wasn't just bad luck or bad timing that prevents me and God knows how many others from buying tickets.
It's a huge fucking organised scam. 
This is disgraceful, but it isn't news.
The ticket agencies either have inadequate security or they collude in the process.  Because they can make even more money by allowing the bulk pre purchase of tickets that they can re sell at huge prices and take a rake off from that sale too.
I have one question and I haven't the faintest idea of the answer.
How can it be stopped?

More thoughts on Matilda and Giants in the Earth performers and the musical theatre.

Went into the Watermill today and members of the Giants cast want to know what I thought were the highlights of Matilda.  Obviously there are some bits that stand out, some excellent individual performances but for me it was the coherence from beginning to end that made the show.  Coherence of intention, quality of performance, production values. They batted all the way down the order - not a weak link.  They were a company, not a group of adult actors who worked with a different team of kids each night.  The respect they had for each other was obvious.
And that made me think about the performers we're working with this week. And to start with I have to say that I'm not used to working with actors whose background is mainly musical theatre, and also I gave up being an actor, I'd like to say because I recognised my limitations, but really it was because I hated being out of work and at that stage in my life I couldn't handle rejection.
Okay. So between them our actors, and those I worked with on the previous development weeks, have been involved in a large number of the most popular musical. 
Okay.
I do get irritated by what I see as the high level of drama that some of them bring to everyday events. Because I'm an impatient sod and I take no pride in that.
But.
And I think it's a large and mitigating but I do understand why some appear to live every moment of their lives at hyper intensity. Vulnerability. At every stage of the process they face rejection. They are too tall.  Too short. Too thin.  Not thin enough. They're the wrong size for costumes that already exist.
And.
They have to be the best.  The voice. The dancing. Every move.  Every note.  Has to be right on the money. Every time.  All the time.  Every audition  or they don't make the cut.
How do you erect the defences  to cope with that?
God knows it's tough to be an actor but to be a performer in the musical theatre...
Okay.
It's a job.  It's not coal mining. Or working on a deep sea trawler. Or being shipped out to Afghanistan with your regiment.
But, come on.  We should applaud all those who face the vulnerability of human existence in whatever way it presents itself. So chapeau! To all those who are working with us. To all those who make the cut.  And to those who don't make the cut but keep on hanging in there.  Because that's what we're all trying to do, isn't it?