On with the show

After 'Little Shop' ended a couple of weeks ago, I have been roped in to directing the next show - "Hi-de-hi". I remember watching this 80's sitcom as a kid - I don't recall much content from the shows, but I distinctly remember the characters. From reading the play, the writers have taken bits and bobs from various episodes and made a little story out of them. I imagine it's going to feel like a number of linked sketches because of this - But I will try and make it as fun as possible to do.

Auditions are next week and i'm dreading them! I hate auditions as an actor, absolutley despise them! I never feel prepared enough and the nerves usually get to me in the end...and then you have the awful feeling when you are told you were unsuccessful! Now it's going to have to be me doing the letting down for some people!!! :s Deep down i'm still hoping that one person goes for each part and they're all fantastic so I won't have to upset anyone! Reality tells me this is unlikely!

I have also been working on a website as an information base for my 'secret' writing group, i'm using Wix, which is a flash based website builder - it's really easy...just click and drop sort of things - nothing too complicated for my newbie mind! I've finised the home page (I wonder if you can add pictures to this thing?):

Aha! so you can! I'm happy with my Insignia, but the font needs to be a little clearer...perhaps a gothic one will look better. Now all I need to do is fill it with writing! :D

Opening Night

Tonight is the opening night for our production of 'Little Shop of Horrors'. I am both excited and nervous in equal measure. Nerves is something I deeply suffer from during shows, even the thought of it now is turning my stomach! The dressing room will not have a nice odour come tonight! Upon reflection, this is probably a good sign - it shows I don't feel complacent before entering the scene, and that I still care enough about my performance to be frightened of it. Once i'm on the stage though, I tend to relax a bit - this is likely due to the adrenaline kicking in! I know my lines, my song lyrics and my dance moves (although these can also just as easily disappear with the slightest loss of concentration) and along with the great storyline of the show, i'm sure we'll all have a blast doing it!

This afternoon I have got to go searching for a gay porn magazine to swap with one of my cast members 'prop magazine' for the last night prank...LET THE GAMES BEGIN! HEYYY-OHHHH!

Motivation is the key to success

I have been thinking a lot recently about 'success'

With me, success would be recognition as a playwright and relative fame as a comedy actor. Ideas constantly dart inside my mind throughout the day as I day dream or stand having a smoke. Boredom certainly is a catalyst of creativity! My problem is, rarely does any of those ideas come into fruition - they entertain me for the time I am bored but then evaporate as quickly as they appear. On some occasions I have forced myself to write the idea down: An interesting character here or a play concept there. But these usually end up wrapped up in a small red book I keep in my bedroom drawer called "Play Ideas". This little book was created when I was in Uni and I will sometimes read through the old scraps of scribbled notes or drawings I have collected over the years - but all that comes from that is a nostalgic trip...never anything of substance!

This has led me to believe that success is truly down to 'motivation' and not necessarily 'talent'. Perhaps there is an abundance of people who truly could do a better job than their successful counterparts, but are locked in their lives through a general realization that it would require real effort to do so. Many famous actors and playwrights seem to have some amazing story from their past that inspired them into becoming what they are - rarely do we hear about an average Joe who decided one day to become a playwright and achieved instant acclaim (although this DOES happen). It seems to me that if you are at all content with your life at the moment, there is little chance of you pushing yourself to find that success.

My day-to-day life consists of going to work in an office doing the nine-to-five, going home at the end of the day and entertaining myself through TV shows, movies, messing about on the internet or video gaming. Sometimes my spare time will be taken up by rehearsals for my next show with an am-dram group or going out for some event with friends. And i'm happy with that. I'm content! I love watching old British sit-coms or the latest big budget American drama show (it's House at the moment!) and the am-dram group keeps me involved in my love for acting. This doesn't mean I never dream about success - I still feel envious pain when I hear about my acting buddies of the past performing in West End Shows or spending the day filming for something, but that's natural.

Time seems to be the key - I live by the code that you should never work more than you play, and so when I finish my day job, my free time is very much down to what I enjoy doing the most. But I am also mindful that come the day that I 'shuffle off this mortal coil' I will look at my life and be filled with regret - why didn't I never finish that play! Why didn't I go to that audition! Perhaps I should set aside one night of my free time and add a little personal work to the agenda...

Never keeping up with a blog

I seem to excel at this - I start strong and with purpose, but soon lose interest or completely forget about blogs...I don't know how some people manage to find the time to lay down their thoughts and aspirations on a regular basis - I guess you have to force yourself to 'find time' but that all sounds like too much hard work!

The other problem I have is, how embarrassed I feel when I re-read old posts...either my opinions vary greatly over the months and years between starting blogs or I havn't grasped that all important gift of writing in your true voice...to me, I always sound a little too pretentious and arrogant when I read posts back to myself after a long period of time.

With this particular blog, I am forcing myself to keep the old crap rather than starting afresh in the hope that at least if I fail to keep up this time, it might make a decent collection by the time i'm 50 or so...

LIFE UPDATE
Still working in the same office and still with the same girl - perhaps there is a deeper meaning as to why I give up on blogs so easily, nothing exciting happening! I always feel that to have a successful blog you have to be really interesting or extremely fanatical about what you are writing - this removed 90% of the general population who are either plodding on with their average lives and are 'normal' enough not to care about anything.

That definately sounds like me!

Technology Surpassing my Knowledge?

I was up early this morning, not through choice, but forced to roll out of bed at 05:30 in order to get a lift to work from my girlfriend who was going in early...I don't drive you see, so I am at the mercy of my girlfriend getting me part of the way to work so I can continue on the train...This means if she has to get up at silly o'clock in the morning, so do I! It can be terribly annoying but, such is life...

I usually head straight for work and take a small blanket in my bag, curl up on the hard carpet tiles and try and catch up on my interrupted sleep - but it's like sleeping on a plane, you never really have a comfortable slumber, you just kind of lie there with your eyes closed and try and convince yourself that you're sleeping.

This particular day though, I decided that I would take my laptop into work with me and play a couple of hours of Football Manager 2009 - the new computer game I got for Christmas. I got to work, set up my laptop and clicked the game icon...nothing...

The game is associated with an application called 'Steam' which is kind of a games network programme from which you can have running updates and download other games from. The issue was that because I was not connected to the Internet in work (I don't know the network key) it wouldn't connect to steam and was therefore stopping me from launching the game. This annoyed me tremendously...it was early in the morning, I was tired and frustrated and wanted a couple of hours of football management to relax me. But nooooo, apparently even though this game is completely designed to be played offline - you need to be connected online in order to launch it. It annoyed me more that no matter what I attempted to do, I couldn't solve the problem. I feel that I am quite knowledgeable when it comes to the Internet and technology, but this little application had beaten me and there was no way to run my game...

What kind of stupid programme stops you from playing an offline game if you have no Internet connection? This Steam programme is annoying at the best of times, taking up all my computer power for no particular reason, but it seems that I cannot run my game without it! stuff like that really bugs me and the lack of sleep did not help one bit! I ended up going down to the local coffee house and just writing a bit of a play instead, but that wasn't very productive because I was angry and tired.

I hate getting beaten by technology, but well done Steam, you got me this time! lets see how well you fare against a baseball bat!

Shakespeare the plagiarizer...

14:54....the time I began writing this piece, my new project for 2009 along with all my other projects for the new year that are bound to crumble...but I completly expect it to so it's kinda okay!

My first post should explain why I am starting this blog and reveal some loose structure behind future posts to come, but the truth is, I was searching on Google for the difference between Satsuma's and Clementines and found a blog explaining such differences (to be honest with you, I still don't know...) and I loved the idea so much I ended up here...

As much as I love and admire the anonymity of the internet, I feel comfortable enough to reveal that my name is Marco and I live in the UK, born in Wales but now live in London. I sit in an office and write blogs when I should be working...but all work and no play makes Marco go crazy!

I'm university educated and secretly believe i'm better than everyone else, although I'm extremly adept and playing the 'common man' so no-one catches on...except my girlfriend maybe, but she's an idiot...

Although this is my first blog, I still feel I should be talking about something that little others know, or at last give some sort of opinion on things as i'm sure you don't want to hear about my life anymore! So i'll give you a quick summary of my 3rd year dissertation for my Theatre Studies and Drama degree (For which I receive an E for...I was NOT happy!):

Most, if not all of Shakespeares plays are derived from the ancient theatre form of Commedia dell'Arte, and, after watching the travelling Italian performers play out the stories, he would return home and work his magic to create the plays we all know and love today. There are even rumours that Shakespeare didn't even write any of the plays, but that's for another debate altogether...
The issue with Commedia dell'Arte is that none of the performance is scripted. A simplistic guideline to the story would have been agreed and then it was up to the actors to improvise their way through to the inevitable conclusions, cramming in as many of their tricks and skills (called lazzi) as they possibly could. The improvisation meant that the troupe could change the performance to suit the local villages and towns to which they performed, mimicking local politicians and well-known figures of the community - it also meant that they would shy away from long monologues and speeches and concentrate more on the physical side of the performance. Shakespeare merely took these shows and stories and converted them to physical written works as we are familiar with today. Still, there can be no denying ole' Bill's way with words and his poetic scrawlings are as important as the stories themselves, so I still think he's a legend...

There, well...that will do for a first post methinks....

Bye!