Theatrical tradition dictates that once your show is done, you should have some kind of massive emotional slump to tide you over the next few weeks. That, or another job to start straight away, which you can rub in the rest of the casts' faces to help them be all the slumpier.
Not me! I had neither. Hot on the heels of the almighty last night, I had a hideous early start and a fifteen-hour travel day, with my family reunion at the far end. Not much of a respecter of theatrical tradition in that regard. More of an edgy rebel with my own dramatic agenda, I like to think. Like Stringfellow Hawke in tights.
Not that I don't have my own traditions. I'd been on tenterhooks all week, dreading the travel day. Mostly dreading the inevitable bit that happens every time I arrange my own transport, the bit where I have to call V and explain which country I'm calling from and how late I'll be. On the way over to the UK, for example, I merrily went to the wrong Gothenburg airport (City not Landvetter, neither my ticket nor the website specified which was correct and I guessed wrong) and had to get a very expensive, very fast taxi at the last minute.
This time, I lose my passport.
After lots of goodbyes at the aftershow do, I went back to my digs to finish packing and make sure I had everything ready to go. For most of the next hour, instead of getting as much sleep as possible, I instead ran round Keswick in the rain. I rummaged in the glove compartment of my hire car. I alarmed everyone at the theatre by going through the bins in the dressing room and hunting under the party tables. I went back and forth over a midnight back alley, searching the muddy floor with the only light to hand - the dim red LED on my doorkeys - like a crap one-man forensics unit.
All to no avail, because my passport is inside my laptop bag, safely tucked inside an inner pocket. Where I stashed it earlier after picking up the hire car, so that I wouldn't lose it. Top work, Hogg.
After this, I can't sleep properly, I'm far too adrenalised. So the fifteen hour travel day begins with two hours of sleep, then a rainy, three-hour drive to Edinburgh. Then there's a blur of travel lounges and parched, air-conditioning on a pair of airbuses down to first Heathrow, then Landvetter. Sweaty and unshowered, I feel almost like I'm melting into the overheated malls I have to wait in. My skin is the same temperature as the chairs, I don't want to be here, it's expensive and aggravating. But there's nothing to do but wait out the transition, floating rootlessly between countries.
Then Gothenburg, at last. It's much colder here, snowy even. I like the cold. I know where I am in the cold. Indoors in a jumper, if possible. Dragging my now-broken suitcase (the pulling handle refuses to emerge from its sheath) through the frozen slush and cobbles of Haga seems to take about a hundred years.
But at the end of it is V and F, standing in the open door of home, warm light behind them.
I've been longing for and slightly dreading this moment, seeing F again. I know where I am with V, generally speaking, but I don't really know how F is going to react or how I'll react to her reaction. Tears? Hiding from the stranger? Ignoring to punish me for being away?
I needn't have worried. A quick double-take, then she smiles just as much as V, and laughs and laughs and laughs as I tuck her up in bed and sing her Litte Katt.
Good to be back. Very good.
Tuesday, January 21, 2014
Monday, January 20, 2014
Farewell and Adieu
Top Five Keswick Moments from the last three months: -
1. Before the show, I like to go for a short walk round the edge of the lake. I've not managed to do this much, it's been raining too hard or it's been too dark in the evenings. But this afternoon, it's stayed dry and the afternoon show starts at 1330, so I follow my favourite path past the caravan site and down to the woods on the isthmus not far from the theatre.
The path back to the theatre, when I reach it, is totally flooded.
Not the first time this has happened, I should have seen it coming. Warmup starts in twenty minutes, so if I turn back I'll have to run. The flood covers a dead straight stretch of path through a small patch of boggy woodland, and it doesn't look too deep. Plus there's a good, hot shower in our dressing room, a mere five minutes away. So I take my shoes off, roll my jeans up and step in.
Half way along the 150m of path, the dark, freezing, murky water is about a metre deep. I'm holding my shoes over my head with one hand, holding the hem of my coat up with the other and hoping I don't wander over the edge of the path into the invisible bogs on either side of me. My jeans legs have unrolled and are sodden to the crotch. Nobody knows I'm here.
Even then, it's not until I start having to use my thighs to shunt a heavily water-logged plank bristling with nails out of my way that I actually start questioning the safety of my actions.
Five minutes later, however, I'm striding into the theatre foyer barefoot, leaving a trail of muddy water behind me and happy as Larry. The shock of the water has even temprarily rid me of the stiffness in my knee joints, perhaps because I can't feel them anymore. Foolhardy? Or pioneering? Whichever, I know I'd rather drown unnoticed in a metre of pitch black ice water than have to jog anywhere, so this is nothing but profit as far as I'm concerned.
2. Skyping with F and V. F is shufflings round and round the edge of the coffee table, holding a stuffed seal and her comb. The comb makes a good drumstick too, she's banging the tabletop as she walks.
"That's your comb!" I tell her. "Have you got a comb? Does it make a good noise?" I then ask, in the bewilderingly numbskulled way that parents converse with their kids.
F pauses, looks at me, looks at the comb, looks at me again rather pityingly, and then starts combing her hair. V says she's never done this before, which is brilliant - I've caught one of her 'my first' moments during Skype - but it does cross my mind that it might be 'my first sarcastic rebuttal to daddy'.
3. We do a rehearsed reading at the theatre. It's a play that thoroughly demonstrates the writer's knowledge of the subject, the life of Arthur Ransome, whilst carefully avoiding anything that might be mistaken for drama.
After the reading, the audience gets an opportunity for a Q&A session with the author. The audience is mostly made up of local Ransome enthusiasts, a hearty and be-tweedened breed. There isn't much in the way of a Q&A as a result - like the playwright, they just want to show off how much they know about the author. Questions like "have you heard that recording he made for the BBC? Because I have and it's really quite wonderful" are generally answered by other members of the audience with statements like "I've got the one about fish!"
That isn't my favourite bit, though. That goes to the old lady who is outraged that the playwright has based two very minor characters (if that's not too strong a word for a pair of hollow and contrived plot devices) in his work on real life people. And here's the shock horror - the real life people don't hold the same opinions as the fictional characters! O The Humanity!
Once she's worked through the gut-wrenching queasiness that this authorial liberty has engendered in her, she goes on to ask if, in a full production of the play, the writer would consider putting in a narrator. His job, she suggests, would be to explain who the characters are and where the scene takes place. Much in the manner, one imagines, that costumes or a set might do in a more traditional staging than our rehearsed reading, which has naturally taken place with us all in everyday clothes, sat round a table.
This is as close to (badly needed) criticism of the play as we get. We all go and sit in a pub afterwards, and I'm not quite sure whether what I'm spluttering with is repressed rage at idiocy or hilarity at same. Whatever it is is extreme enough to be memorable, at any rate.
4. It's raining (of course) but I've gone kayaking on the lake. It's very still down here, although the low clouds, shredded and torn where they've been dragged across the top of Cat Bells, are swiftly moving overhead. The rain is hard enough that the entire flat surface of of the water is alive with millions of silver beads. These are rebound drops from where the raindrops hit, balanced on the surface tension for half a second or so. It's lovely.
(4b. Later that afternoon, wandering round one of the islands on the lake. Nancy, most intrepid of the cast explorers, walks quite hard into an unsuspecting branch. As the Chinese observe, there is nothing so funny as seeing your neighbour fall off a roof; luckily I am well repaid for my mirth when brushing past a branch causes an entire tree's worth of water droplets to leap into the neck of my coat a few minutes later.)
5. Last night at the theatre, and the audience have been encouraged to come dressed as pirates. We're mustering on top of the set, in beginners, already feeling a bit of an adrenaline spike at the prospect of the final show. Before the curtain comes up, the house lights dim, and the full house all go "ooooo!" like schoolkids. And then, because they're pirates after all, correct this to "aaarrrrrr" instead.
It's an amazing last show, for all sorts of reasons. Mostly from the colossal support from the crowd, who whoop and cheer as though we're rock stars. The show ends with the Swallows and Amazons tearfully bidding each other farewell, and there's not much acting required as its our last show together. Three curtain bounces and a massive standing ovation later, we're done, it's all over and this wonderful collaboration is finished.
Best company I've ever been a part of*, most fun I've ever had in a Christmas show, most professional use of egg shakers - this has swept the board in my own personal Oscars.
*with a tiny apologetic acknowledgement to other, previous company members who might be reading this. To be fair, you were all shit.
1. Before the show, I like to go for a short walk round the edge of the lake. I've not managed to do this much, it's been raining too hard or it's been too dark in the evenings. But this afternoon, it's stayed dry and the afternoon show starts at 1330, so I follow my favourite path past the caravan site and down to the woods on the isthmus not far from the theatre.
The path back to the theatre, when I reach it, is totally flooded.
Not the first time this has happened, I should have seen it coming. Warmup starts in twenty minutes, so if I turn back I'll have to run. The flood covers a dead straight stretch of path through a small patch of boggy woodland, and it doesn't look too deep. Plus there's a good, hot shower in our dressing room, a mere five minutes away. So I take my shoes off, roll my jeans up and step in.
Half way along the 150m of path, the dark, freezing, murky water is about a metre deep. I'm holding my shoes over my head with one hand, holding the hem of my coat up with the other and hoping I don't wander over the edge of the path into the invisible bogs on either side of me. My jeans legs have unrolled and are sodden to the crotch. Nobody knows I'm here.
Even then, it's not until I start having to use my thighs to shunt a heavily water-logged plank bristling with nails out of my way that I actually start questioning the safety of my actions.
Five minutes later, however, I'm striding into the theatre foyer barefoot, leaving a trail of muddy water behind me and happy as Larry. The shock of the water has even temprarily rid me of the stiffness in my knee joints, perhaps because I can't feel them anymore. Foolhardy? Or pioneering? Whichever, I know I'd rather drown unnoticed in a metre of pitch black ice water than have to jog anywhere, so this is nothing but profit as far as I'm concerned.
2. Skyping with F and V. F is shufflings round and round the edge of the coffee table, holding a stuffed seal and her comb. The comb makes a good drumstick too, she's banging the tabletop as she walks.
"That's your comb!" I tell her. "Have you got a comb? Does it make a good noise?" I then ask, in the bewilderingly numbskulled way that parents converse with their kids.
F pauses, looks at me, looks at the comb, looks at me again rather pityingly, and then starts combing her hair. V says she's never done this before, which is brilliant - I've caught one of her 'my first' moments during Skype - but it does cross my mind that it might be 'my first sarcastic rebuttal to daddy'.
3. We do a rehearsed reading at the theatre. It's a play that thoroughly demonstrates the writer's knowledge of the subject, the life of Arthur Ransome, whilst carefully avoiding anything that might be mistaken for drama.
After the reading, the audience gets an opportunity for a Q&A session with the author. The audience is mostly made up of local Ransome enthusiasts, a hearty and be-tweedened breed. There isn't much in the way of a Q&A as a result - like the playwright, they just want to show off how much they know about the author. Questions like "have you heard that recording he made for the BBC? Because I have and it's really quite wonderful" are generally answered by other members of the audience with statements like "I've got the one about fish!"
That isn't my favourite bit, though. That goes to the old lady who is outraged that the playwright has based two very minor characters (if that's not too strong a word for a pair of hollow and contrived plot devices) in his work on real life people. And here's the shock horror - the real life people don't hold the same opinions as the fictional characters! O The Humanity!
Once she's worked through the gut-wrenching queasiness that this authorial liberty has engendered in her, she goes on to ask if, in a full production of the play, the writer would consider putting in a narrator. His job, she suggests, would be to explain who the characters are and where the scene takes place. Much in the manner, one imagines, that costumes or a set might do in a more traditional staging than our rehearsed reading, which has naturally taken place with us all in everyday clothes, sat round a table.
This is as close to (badly needed) criticism of the play as we get. We all go and sit in a pub afterwards, and I'm not quite sure whether what I'm spluttering with is repressed rage at idiocy or hilarity at same. Whatever it is is extreme enough to be memorable, at any rate.
4. It's raining (of course) but I've gone kayaking on the lake. It's very still down here, although the low clouds, shredded and torn where they've been dragged across the top of Cat Bells, are swiftly moving overhead. The rain is hard enough that the entire flat surface of of the water is alive with millions of silver beads. These are rebound drops from where the raindrops hit, balanced on the surface tension for half a second or so. It's lovely.
(4b. Later that afternoon, wandering round one of the islands on the lake. Nancy, most intrepid of the cast explorers, walks quite hard into an unsuspecting branch. As the Chinese observe, there is nothing so funny as seeing your neighbour fall off a roof; luckily I am well repaid for my mirth when brushing past a branch causes an entire tree's worth of water droplets to leap into the neck of my coat a few minutes later.)
5. Last night at the theatre, and the audience have been encouraged to come dressed as pirates. We're mustering on top of the set, in beginners, already feeling a bit of an adrenaline spike at the prospect of the final show. Before the curtain comes up, the house lights dim, and the full house all go "ooooo!" like schoolkids. And then, because they're pirates after all, correct this to "aaarrrrrr" instead.
It's an amazing last show, for all sorts of reasons. Mostly from the colossal support from the crowd, who whoop and cheer as though we're rock stars. The show ends with the Swallows and Amazons tearfully bidding each other farewell, and there's not much acting required as its our last show together. Three curtain bounces and a massive standing ovation later, we're done, it's all over and this wonderful collaboration is finished.
Best company I've ever been a part of*, most fun I've ever had in a Christmas show, most professional use of egg shakers - this has swept the board in my own personal Oscars.
*with a tiny apologetic acknowledgement to other, previous company members who might be reading this. To be fair, you were all shit.
Monday, January 6, 2014
Resolution
It feels like years since I last wrote anything. It feels, actually, like years since I last did anything other than rush up and down the attic stairs of our set, singing and yelling enthusiastically. I'm not saying this to set up a lame joke about the fact the year has turned since my last post (unusually). Just that I've fallen into a slightly exhausted routine this fortnight, and it's nice to see the other side of it.
Our last ten show week finished on Saturday. By the end of that, after a non-stop Christmas, I was walking like a half-cut pensioner, hobbling arthritically round the backstage areas of the theatre. On stage, there was the strange perception that the entire show was happening to someone else. "I can't possibly do this next dance," I'd be thinking. "None of my joints function that way any more. Oh look, it's happening anyway! How funny."
The human knee is a singularly wretched piece of anatomical design. By all accounts, it's manufactured to last you about twenty-five years of hard use, then leave you abandoned in a field as the youth of today bound energetically after whatever their generation are passing off as elk these days. My own pair have clearly reached retirement age. Either that, or someone has lined them with the polystyrene packing beads I hear creaking on every step. In keeping with Cameron's Britain, of course, their pension will always be a few years ahead of them, linked to some impossibly-climbing curve of performance-related pay.
Same with my voice. If my legs are on their last legs, my voice is virtually that of a horse (I told you it was unusual for me not to be setting up lame jokes). At odd moments in the songs, it cuts out, or changes octave unpredictably. We sing a lot of the numbers straight out, so I'm often looking straight at some dimly-seen audience member as this happens. I do my best to brazen through this, but I have to fight the impulse to wince apologetically. No! Never apologise! That's conventional theatre wisdom. Nobody knows you screwed up until you apologise.
This is not true of other actors, of course, who know perfectly well when you've trampled their lines, feet or feelings in the course of the gradual, exhausted collapse you're now turning in for a performance. Always apologise then. Assuming you've even noticed you've made a mistake, I'm not sure I always do.
Two short weeks to go, then home. I am steeled and ready for this, bring it on. Even the eels are silent.
Three days off, almost! That's been much needed. All I've done is eat a single copious meal each day and then skype home between burpy naps. F is huge, roaming freely round her poor tired mother, bashing duplo blocks together or performing what look like complex engineering checks on the undercarriage of her electronic rideable Disney jumbo jet. She shouts "hey! ha ha ha ha hey ha hey ha ha" when I come online, and waves cheerfully. V is back to work after a short Christmas break and already having to steel herself against the routine of missed sleep, unavailable babysitters and stroppily rejected food.
My mum visited last month, to help with babysitting, and raised a parental eyebrow at the bottled foods we've been feeding F. Meh - I'm sure I would have raised an eyebrow myself, before being confronted with the practical realities of feeding F. Probably quietly and away from whoever I was raising the eyebrows at, but well, that's not how close family tend to raise their eyebrows at one another. Eyebrows are more usually raised in the manner of close-quarter assault weaponry where I come from - with lethal intent and scant regard for collateral damage.
Since Christmas, F, who was entirely happy eating her mushy lasagnes and slottgryta, has apparently decided Farmor might have had a point. Once you've had pork fillet with creme fraiche, prawn omelette and prinskorv from the the Julbord, fresh broccoli and tiramisu ice cream, suddenly a warm bowl of soggy orange pasta just isn't going to cut it.
This is good news in terms of her growing up and eating healthily, of course. I don't for a second regret having used bottled food - she's big and robust, has gained weight very healthily all through what is now almost her first full year, and aced every test the midwives have thrown at her. So despite the naggings of my middle-class conscience, I think the stuff she's been eating has been healthy and good for her, especially fleshed out with fruit and milk. Still, despite the low inward moanings of my innate laziness, I'm looking forward to getting home and cooking for her so she can try new things. If nothing else, I'm certainly good at flabby pasta and neon stews.
F spent this afternoon's skype call kissing the screen and trying to lift the iPad to see if I was actually secretly behind it all along. I need to go home now.
Our last ten show week finished on Saturday. By the end of that, after a non-stop Christmas, I was walking like a half-cut pensioner, hobbling arthritically round the backstage areas of the theatre. On stage, there was the strange perception that the entire show was happening to someone else. "I can't possibly do this next dance," I'd be thinking. "None of my joints function that way any more. Oh look, it's happening anyway! How funny."
The human knee is a singularly wretched piece of anatomical design. By all accounts, it's manufactured to last you about twenty-five years of hard use, then leave you abandoned in a field as the youth of today bound energetically after whatever their generation are passing off as elk these days. My own pair have clearly reached retirement age. Either that, or someone has lined them with the polystyrene packing beads I hear creaking on every step. In keeping with Cameron's Britain, of course, their pension will always be a few years ahead of them, linked to some impossibly-climbing curve of performance-related pay.
Same with my voice. If my legs are on their last legs, my voice is virtually that of a horse (I told you it was unusual for me not to be setting up lame jokes). At odd moments in the songs, it cuts out, or changes octave unpredictably. We sing a lot of the numbers straight out, so I'm often looking straight at some dimly-seen audience member as this happens. I do my best to brazen through this, but I have to fight the impulse to wince apologetically. No! Never apologise! That's conventional theatre wisdom. Nobody knows you screwed up until you apologise.
This is not true of other actors, of course, who know perfectly well when you've trampled their lines, feet or feelings in the course of the gradual, exhausted collapse you're now turning in for a performance. Always apologise then. Assuming you've even noticed you've made a mistake, I'm not sure I always do.
Two short weeks to go, then home. I am steeled and ready for this, bring it on. Even the eels are silent.
-
Three days off, almost! That's been much needed. All I've done is eat a single copious meal each day and then skype home between burpy naps. F is huge, roaming freely round her poor tired mother, bashing duplo blocks together or performing what look like complex engineering checks on the undercarriage of her electronic rideable Disney jumbo jet. She shouts "hey! ha ha ha ha hey ha hey ha ha" when I come online, and waves cheerfully. V is back to work after a short Christmas break and already having to steel herself against the routine of missed sleep, unavailable babysitters and stroppily rejected food.
My mum visited last month, to help with babysitting, and raised a parental eyebrow at the bottled foods we've been feeding F. Meh - I'm sure I would have raised an eyebrow myself, before being confronted with the practical realities of feeding F. Probably quietly and away from whoever I was raising the eyebrows at, but well, that's not how close family tend to raise their eyebrows at one another. Eyebrows are more usually raised in the manner of close-quarter assault weaponry where I come from - with lethal intent and scant regard for collateral damage.
Since Christmas, F, who was entirely happy eating her mushy lasagnes and slottgryta, has apparently decided Farmor might have had a point. Once you've had pork fillet with creme fraiche, prawn omelette and prinskorv from the the Julbord, fresh broccoli and tiramisu ice cream, suddenly a warm bowl of soggy orange pasta just isn't going to cut it.
This is good news in terms of her growing up and eating healthily, of course. I don't for a second regret having used bottled food - she's big and robust, has gained weight very healthily all through what is now almost her first full year, and aced every test the midwives have thrown at her. So despite the naggings of my middle-class conscience, I think the stuff she's been eating has been healthy and good for her, especially fleshed out with fruit and milk. Still, despite the low inward moanings of my innate laziness, I'm looking forward to getting home and cooking for her so she can try new things. If nothing else, I'm certainly good at flabby pasta and neon stews.
-
F spent this afternoon's skype call kissing the screen and trying to lift the iPad to see if I was actually secretly behind it all along. I need to go home now.
Saturday, December 21, 2013
Again with the eels
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.
"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.
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.
-
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)