A late review from a local paper makes specific mention of me, in very positive terms. One of those that mentions everything that they liked about the play, and then starts a new paragraph with something like 'but it is James Hogg as Roger who... etc etc'.
"There you go," one of my colleagues says, who's read this blog post. "Surely that counts as a 'towering genius of the modern stage' remark?"
No, of course not, it's made of bitey snapping eels just like all the others. What's that? Would you like a compliment, Mr Hogg? Why no! Of course not. I'd like to pick holes in it and find ways of reducing it to a meaningless statement that's really talking about the writer instead. Or feel angry that the rest of the cast haven't been singled out as well when they deserve it just as much. If not more! And goddamn it, I know Oscars are for film work, but why they hell haven't they included mine in this review?
We watched the film Hitchcock the other day. There was a very good line in that when Hitchcock bemoans the fact that the film industry never gives him any appreciation. I can't find the exact quote, sadly, but it's a great film and worth seeing. Do that rather than waiting for me to find the right webpage to lift it from. Along the lines that nobody ever comes out and says 'well done, you're really good,' in so many words.
You kind of expect that they probably did, that they did it via the medium of giving him lucrative film deals, valuable opportunities and their support and time as he experimented on new stuff. And you know, reviews and audience reactions and so on. Isn't that enough?
Yes and no. It ought to be, I know that, but that's a rational belief. We're all still beholden to that personal voice inside that can't quite believe or trust any of the external reviews, good or bad. You want it on a mark sheet, or from some kind of combination auditor/evaluator representing your family, friends, all your peers and your own internal figurehead of self-worth, whatever that may be.
And even then, it's likely only going to be valid on the day you get it. Tomorrow always has it's own doubting demons to be dealt with. Which is good, otherwise there wouldn't be a challenge worth waking up to face.
Saturday, December 21, 2013
Friday, December 20, 2013
Advent
Counting down the days.
This is something that V habitually does when one or the other of us is away. Every time we catch up on Skype, usually daily, she'll tell me how many days are left until we're back in the same place. It drives me up the wall. I prefer to shut my mind to however much of the wait is left and just get on with it. Being constantly reminded I won't see home for however many days it is gets torturous.
This time, not so much. Perhaps our habits have rubbed off on each other. Now I find I'm mentioning the countdown most days, telling her "it's only X left now", whereas she's mostly talking about the things we'll do as a family once I'm home.
F mostly talks about what a good girl she is. "Goo gl goo gl goo gl," she says a lot, when she's not saying "mamamamamamama!" (if V isn't quick enough to bring her food) or "dadadadadadadada" as she shakes the iPad around affectionately. No idea what she makes of her remote papa, I'm probably just a form of bearded teletubby to her. Beardy-Weirdy? But I get a very enthusiastic reception on skype calls, which is very heartening.
Now she can walk all the way round the edges of the coffee table by herself. And she's tall enough to reach the TV and try and change the channels. Her crawling already has a strong element of trying to stand up in it, she flexes her feet round to get them flat on the floor then sort of hunch-hop-crawls forwards. I wouldn't be at all surprised if she's walking before I'm back.
And in the run-up to Christmas, I'm okay again. Done my shopping, got gifts ready to take home, looking forward to seeing my parents and family up in Scotland for the 24th. There's only a month left here, already, it's not that long.
Home stretch. I can make this.
This is something that V habitually does when one or the other of us is away. Every time we catch up on Skype, usually daily, she'll tell me how many days are left until we're back in the same place. It drives me up the wall. I prefer to shut my mind to however much of the wait is left and just get on with it. Being constantly reminded I won't see home for however many days it is gets torturous.
This time, not so much. Perhaps our habits have rubbed off on each other. Now I find I'm mentioning the countdown most days, telling her "it's only X left now", whereas she's mostly talking about the things we'll do as a family once I'm home.
F mostly talks about what a good girl she is. "Goo gl goo gl goo gl," she says a lot, when she's not saying "mamamamamamama!" (if V isn't quick enough to bring her food) or "dadadadadadadada" as she shakes the iPad around affectionately. No idea what she makes of her remote papa, I'm probably just a form of bearded teletubby to her. Beardy-Weirdy? But I get a very enthusiastic reception on skype calls, which is very heartening.
Now she can walk all the way round the edges of the coffee table by herself. And she's tall enough to reach the TV and try and change the channels. Her crawling already has a strong element of trying to stand up in it, she flexes her feet round to get them flat on the floor then sort of hunch-hop-crawls forwards. I wouldn't be at all surprised if she's walking before I'm back.
And in the run-up to Christmas, I'm okay again. Done my shopping, got gifts ready to take home, looking forward to seeing my parents and family up in Scotland for the 24th. There's only a month left here, already, it's not that long.
Home stretch. I can make this.
Wednesday, December 18, 2013
Scenes
Lots of schools audiences. This is good. I don't think audiences quite realise how much a cast can hear and see of them sometimes. Usually as a sort of many-headed blur out in the half-dark of the auditorium. But you can often see the front few rows pretty clearly, and hear a lot of what's going on out there. It's not the cinema, you know. We can hear your asides, we're just keeping to the convention that we can't. Like the 'privacy' of curtains round a bed in a ward.
Young kids don't always get theatrical convention. They answer questions for you, or shout helpful advice. "What should I do?" Titty asks at one point, trapped in a storm with the Amazons abroad on her island.
"Hide!" shouts one kid. "Steal their boat!" shouts another. She does both, which is lucky for those kids. I guess they understand the conventions of telly or story telling, though I also wonder if they think they've given her those ideas?
"We built the harbour, made the fireplace with our own blood, sweat and tears!" sing the Amazons.
"That's gross," opines a young lady in the third row.
Someone suggested I should stab the policeman with a spear when he comes to tell us off. Ha, kids today, eh?
-
I've never done a relaxed performance before. This isn't because I'm remarkably uptight as an actor, neurotic mess though I may be. This is a performance for audience members who don't respond well to the usual restrictions. So the house lights stay on, the audience can move about and talk as much as they want and our louder special effects are muted. It's for families who can't come to standard performances for whatever reason - very young babies, children with special needs like autism (which makes theatre additionally confusing and alarming), elderly bladder limitations, that kind of thing.
Really odd, from up on stage. Someone in the auditorium echoes most of our lines back to us. We can see people wandering around from time to time (just as in school shows, where teachers ferry kids in and out of the loo all through everything). There's a strange and rather ghoulish chorus of moans and howls that comes and goes. It's hugely distracting, so we all cling desperately to our stage relationships to focus through it.
But it's very gratifying, to know you're giving a show for people who don't get to see them otherwise. We go out to meet the audience (and reassure them that we're just normal people really, or at least as near to it as theatrical types get) afterwards.
One family tells us it's the first time they've got to go to a show all together, as their young son's condition means they wouldn't be allowed in otherwise. He calls us all by our character names and plays enthusiastically with the puppets.
There's a group of old folks from a home, who all look very dazed but pleased. When I say hello and ask if they enjoyed it, one of them asks me to help her put her coat on. Is that a no? Or does she think I'm a carer? No idea, she's pleased enough to see me either way.
-
We get letters from some of the children who've seen the show, politely formulaic ones where the teacher has told them to list their favourite bits and wildly enthusiastic ones where they've drawn elaborate scenes from the play in orange felt-tip.
None of the representations of Roger has a beard. I feel this is significant in some way.
-
The Theatre Christmas Party is at the local Skiddaw Hotel. I don't drink anything, but I still dance about like a big floppy twat once the disco starts up. Facebook, I hate you preemptively.
-
Corpsing happens.
I drop a clasp knife which is about to be referred to in the subsequent scene. It bounces once, falls through a hole in the set and is gone. We can do nothing except continue, all of us desperately trying to work out what we'll do to cover this.
Stage management hand me a replacement as I squat by the wings during the next song. It's a rather incongruous stainless steel butter knife from the Green Room. Definitely not the knife we just had or what the actors on the other side of the stage are expecting to have handed to them, but at least a knife, thank God. But because I know how poor a replacement it is, I start cracking up in advance of handing it over.
"Hand me that knife you found, ship's boy," John tells me.
Roger wants to keep the knife for himself, he's pretending to have forgotten all about it. So I say "Whaaa-haa-haaat kniii-hiiiife?" in return. It's an unusual choice, as line readings go, but I think I make it feel justified.
Not as bad as Nancy's fumbled line "Titty didn't hear much dicking", a few shows previously. Not digging, then? Well, okay, I guess that's new direction. We all break upstage to unearth a treasure chest with far more urgency than usual on that cue so we can snigger in private.
"Did she just say dicking?" asks everyone on the front five rows.
Yes, audience, yes she did. Now let's all move on.
Young kids don't always get theatrical convention. They answer questions for you, or shout helpful advice. "What should I do?" Titty asks at one point, trapped in a storm with the Amazons abroad on her island.
"Hide!" shouts one kid. "Steal their boat!" shouts another. She does both, which is lucky for those kids. I guess they understand the conventions of telly or story telling, though I also wonder if they think they've given her those ideas?
"We built the harbour, made the fireplace with our own blood, sweat and tears!" sing the Amazons.
"That's gross," opines a young lady in the third row.
Someone suggested I should stab the policeman with a spear when he comes to tell us off. Ha, kids today, eh?
-
I've never done a relaxed performance before. This isn't because I'm remarkably uptight as an actor, neurotic mess though I may be. This is a performance for audience members who don't respond well to the usual restrictions. So the house lights stay on, the audience can move about and talk as much as they want and our louder special effects are muted. It's for families who can't come to standard performances for whatever reason - very young babies, children with special needs like autism (which makes theatre additionally confusing and alarming), elderly bladder limitations, that kind of thing.
Really odd, from up on stage. Someone in the auditorium echoes most of our lines back to us. We can see people wandering around from time to time (just as in school shows, where teachers ferry kids in and out of the loo all through everything). There's a strange and rather ghoulish chorus of moans and howls that comes and goes. It's hugely distracting, so we all cling desperately to our stage relationships to focus through it.
But it's very gratifying, to know you're giving a show for people who don't get to see them otherwise. We go out to meet the audience (and reassure them that we're just normal people really, or at least as near to it as theatrical types get) afterwards.
One family tells us it's the first time they've got to go to a show all together, as their young son's condition means they wouldn't be allowed in otherwise. He calls us all by our character names and plays enthusiastically with the puppets.
There's a group of old folks from a home, who all look very dazed but pleased. When I say hello and ask if they enjoyed it, one of them asks me to help her put her coat on. Is that a no? Or does she think I'm a carer? No idea, she's pleased enough to see me either way.
-
We get letters from some of the children who've seen the show, politely formulaic ones where the teacher has told them to list their favourite bits and wildly enthusiastic ones where they've drawn elaborate scenes from the play in orange felt-tip.
None of the representations of Roger has a beard. I feel this is significant in some way.
-
The Theatre Christmas Party is at the local Skiddaw Hotel. I don't drink anything, but I still dance about like a big floppy twat once the disco starts up. Facebook, I hate you preemptively.
-
Corpsing happens.
I drop a clasp knife which is about to be referred to in the subsequent scene. It bounces once, falls through a hole in the set and is gone. We can do nothing except continue, all of us desperately trying to work out what we'll do to cover this.
Stage management hand me a replacement as I squat by the wings during the next song. It's a rather incongruous stainless steel butter knife from the Green Room. Definitely not the knife we just had or what the actors on the other side of the stage are expecting to have handed to them, but at least a knife, thank God. But because I know how poor a replacement it is, I start cracking up in advance of handing it over.
"Hand me that knife you found, ship's boy," John tells me.
Roger wants to keep the knife for himself, he's pretending to have forgotten all about it. So I say "Whaaa-haa-haaat kniii-hiiiife?" in return. It's an unusual choice, as line readings go, but I think I make it feel justified.
Not as bad as Nancy's fumbled line "Titty didn't hear much dicking", a few shows previously. Not digging, then? Well, okay, I guess that's new direction. We all break upstage to unearth a treasure chest with far more urgency than usual on that cue so we can snigger in private.
"Did she just say dicking?" asks everyone on the front five rows.
Yes, audience, yes she did. Now let's all move on.
Monday, December 9, 2013
Snippets
The viking combat game I did some voice work for patched the sound in over last weekend. Like a chump, I eagerly went to the forums to look at the response. Maybe, you know, pick up some compliments.
"I'm not being funny, but, right, is this a placeholder for an actual actor? The saxons sound like they're at a tea party. How do I turn them off?" asked Aeronwen (hopefully not his real name, but you never know on forums).
This clearly serves me right. Fishing for compliments should only ever net you the eels of unpalatable truth.
Just after the show opened, the four of us playing the Swallows reconvened to examine how we were managing to steer the boat round the stage. It operates on a Flintstone Engine and handles like a wonky shopping trolley. All of us have bruised our shins, knees and coccyges whilst sailing her.
After spending half an hour sliding round the stage, it turns out that the main problems are
a) Susan and
b) Me (Roger)
If the two of us stop trying to help, the Swallow can turn more freely, stay on course for longer and crush fewer of the appendages of those pushing her.
This is good news, obviously, I can take it a bit easier on stage. More time looking excited and enjoying sailing around, less time having to get out and shunt (which was hardly helping the illusion of gliding round the lake, in all honesty).
It reminded me of one of my less proud moments in the other kind of theatre I've had in my life.
"Can I do anything?" I asked a surgical consultant of gastroenterology during a routine procedure once. I was wondering if I could get a bit of practical experience like helping clear stray blood out of the surgeon's way or pulling on a retractor. That's the kind of low-end dog work lucky house officers might get to do by way of introduction to surgery.
"Yes. Fuck off out of my way and go and finish the discharge summaries for my clinic yesterday," he said. This is the kind of low-end dog work consultants consider to contain adequate training opportunities for house officers, one of many reasons why I'm now an actor rather than a top gastroenterology surgeon. I'm still getting in the way, though.
We have two preview nights for the show. After the second, we also have a party. As I'm standing in the theatre bar, waiting in line for the excellent free curry, fresh from a bout of cheery compliments from the theatre's artistic director glowing with vicarious triumph, I realise the tannoy is playing 'There's No Business Like Show Business'. This is a happy and warm moment.
Following press night, I find I have forgotten my forum-surfing lesson. I don't usually read reviews for plays while I'm still in them, it's just asking for more eel attacks. This time I do.
The reviews are up in the Green Room, and I overhear enough snippets from the others to know they're basically kindly. The snippets make me unbearably curious. After two days of stuffing my fingers in my ears and humming loudly, I cave in, grab the sheaf of reviews and dig in.
'James Hogg has a beard and big hairy legs,' critics agree.
Even though the point of the reviews mentioning my beard-and-legs style of acting is to point out that (remarkably) they didn't find it made me unpalatable as a seven-year-old boy, my feeble ego can't quite accept this as praise. So rather than being glad it's not 'dear god why doesn't he just fuck off and do some paperwork in a back room' as I once became accustomed to, neither is it the 'he's a towering genius of the modern stage' I'm inevitably hoping for.
Goddamn eels.
My knees hurt all the time. There is still no hot water at my digs. I tried to watch a film that contained a minute-long scene about a dad feeding ice cream to his son for the first time, and got so tearful I had to stop watching it. There is indeed no business like show business. Perhaps we should all be glad.
"I'm not being funny, but, right, is this a placeholder for an actual actor? The saxons sound like they're at a tea party. How do I turn them off?" asked Aeronwen (hopefully not his real name, but you never know on forums).
This clearly serves me right. Fishing for compliments should only ever net you the eels of unpalatable truth.
-
Just after the show opened, the four of us playing the Swallows reconvened to examine how we were managing to steer the boat round the stage. It operates on a Flintstone Engine and handles like a wonky shopping trolley. All of us have bruised our shins, knees and coccyges whilst sailing her.
After spending half an hour sliding round the stage, it turns out that the main problems are
a) Susan and
b) Me (Roger)
If the two of us stop trying to help, the Swallow can turn more freely, stay on course for longer and crush fewer of the appendages of those pushing her.
This is good news, obviously, I can take it a bit easier on stage. More time looking excited and enjoying sailing around, less time having to get out and shunt (which was hardly helping the illusion of gliding round the lake, in all honesty).
It reminded me of one of my less proud moments in the other kind of theatre I've had in my life.
"Can I do anything?" I asked a surgical consultant of gastroenterology during a routine procedure once. I was wondering if I could get a bit of practical experience like helping clear stray blood out of the surgeon's way or pulling on a retractor. That's the kind of low-end dog work lucky house officers might get to do by way of introduction to surgery.
"Yes. Fuck off out of my way and go and finish the discharge summaries for my clinic yesterday," he said. This is the kind of low-end dog work consultants consider to contain adequate training opportunities for house officers, one of many reasons why I'm now an actor rather than a top gastroenterology surgeon. I'm still getting in the way, though.
-
We have two preview nights for the show. After the second, we also have a party. As I'm standing in the theatre bar, waiting in line for the excellent free curry, fresh from a bout of cheery compliments from the theatre's artistic director glowing with vicarious triumph, I realise the tannoy is playing 'There's No Business Like Show Business'. This is a happy and warm moment.
-
The reviews are up in the Green Room, and I overhear enough snippets from the others to know they're basically kindly. The snippets make me unbearably curious. After two days of stuffing my fingers in my ears and humming loudly, I cave in, grab the sheaf of reviews and dig in.
'James Hogg has a beard and big hairy legs,' critics agree.
Even though the point of the reviews mentioning my beard-and-legs style of acting is to point out that (remarkably) they didn't find it made me unpalatable as a seven-year-old boy, my feeble ego can't quite accept this as praise. So rather than being glad it's not 'dear god why doesn't he just fuck off and do some paperwork in a back room' as I once became accustomed to, neither is it the 'he's a towering genius of the modern stage' I'm inevitably hoping for.
Goddamn eels.
-
My knees hurt all the time. There is still no hot water at my digs. I tried to watch a film that contained a minute-long scene about a dad feeding ice cream to his son for the first time, and got so tearful I had to stop watching it. There is indeed no business like show business. Perhaps we should all be glad.
-
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