A morning off. I love mornings off.
Things I like to do on my mornings off:
-Not go to the gym
-Feel relieved about deciding not to go to the gym
-Feel bad about feeling relieved about deciding not to go to the gym
-Watch trashy morning TV
-Pay my (relentlessly surprising) council tax bill
-Shave my legs
-Think deeply and carefully about the play, focussing on my role in it, the bigger picture, and how I can most effectively capitalise on the work we've done so far
Friday, 26 February 2010
Thursday, 25 February 2010
So we have our last day in rehearsal venue on friday, so we are very pleased to be going into Richmix, as Hoxton hall is....let's just say...acousticly challenging ehem.
So, yeah off we go. We have our 1st run in front of "outsiders" tomorrow. Eeeek.
Loving our videos on the website.... spot the comedy one of us thinking we're H...I...LARIOUS!
Ha. Looking forward to an audience now. We need it. It will be interesting to see whether the laughs, tears and silences are where we thought they would be. Of course every audience is different (which is my favourite thing about theatre) but there is usually a general consensus amongst them.
Reece and i have decicided that Wayne and Stacey can be like BRANGELINA or TOMKAT..... they will be called (drum roll) STAYNE....ohhh dear.
Alicia x
Ponderings...
I feel full of joy. We played ALL day today. With the play I mean. And what I mean by that specifically is that we didn’t run the play at all. Instead we worked small sections and found the details in each moment. It was so freeing and it’s exciting to be making new discoveries about Sarah and her relationship with all the other characters in the play. Today felt organic and creative and totally natural. The lines have gone to that other section of your brain, where they are so embedded that they just pop out at the moment you need them – freeing your body and mind to just respond in the moment. I felt blessed today. Blessed to be a part of this play and to be surrounded by such a creative and inspiring bunch of people. Beats getting a real job, that’s for sure.
Monday, 22 February 2010
When actors turn B-A-D.
So the seance didn't go exactly as planned.
We sat in a circle holding hands, just like it says to do in the script. And then we invoked the help of the spirits, like the script says to. Bradley's tummy rumbled. And for a while nothing else happened.
Then, violently and without warning, the table jolted. We all jumped back, knocking over chairs, spilling wine. And in the half-light we saw Sean's knee, pulsing sharply up and down. His foot was tapping with a speed and an energy that could only be described as...Thrilling.
Before we could do anything to stop him, he had jumped up from the table, landed in the middle of the living room floor and was dancing like he'd never danced before. Dancing like no-one had ever danced before. No-one that is, except...
...The King of Pop.
It dawned on us all, almost simultaneously, that Sean was channelling Michael Jackson's spirit. He was trying to tell us that he couldn't leave the in-between astral plane until he'd had one last moonwalk. So he had it. Courtesy of the Sean Verey. It was a beautiful sight to behold. And before he left we all distinctly heard a voice say: "This Is It".
Sean hasn't quite been the same since. He's insisting to Ellen the costume designer that Curtis' character would wear a glove on one hand and probably a trilby. She's resisting so far, but we all think it's only a matter of time. He's also keen that we do a Jackson-esque jig at the end of the show, "Just to round things off".
I think David's going to have a quiet word.
We sat in a circle holding hands, just like it says to do in the script. And then we invoked the help of the spirits, like the script says to. Bradley's tummy rumbled. And for a while nothing else happened.
Then, violently and without warning, the table jolted. We all jumped back, knocking over chairs, spilling wine. And in the half-light we saw Sean's knee, pulsing sharply up and down. His foot was tapping with a speed and an energy that could only be described as...Thrilling.
Before we could do anything to stop him, he had jumped up from the table, landed in the middle of the living room floor and was dancing like he'd never danced before. Dancing like no-one had ever danced before. No-one that is, except...
...The King of Pop.
It dawned on us all, almost simultaneously, that Sean was channelling Michael Jackson's spirit. He was trying to tell us that he couldn't leave the in-between astral plane until he'd had one last moonwalk. So he had it. Courtesy of the Sean Verey. It was a beautiful sight to behold. And before he left we all distinctly heard a voice say: "This Is It".
Sean hasn't quite been the same since. He's insisting to Ellen the costume designer that Curtis' character would wear a glove on one hand and probably a trilby. She's resisting so far, but we all think it's only a matter of time. He's also keen that we do a Jackson-esque jig at the end of the show, "Just to round things off".
I think David's going to have a quiet word.
Sunday, 21 February 2010
Thursday, 18 February 2010
The Cast Seance
I am tired and confused. Rehearsing is tiring and confusing.
Tomorrow, as a reward for a tiring and confusing week of rehearsal we are going to have a cast bonding session in the form of a seance.
Most of the cast don't really want a seance because seances are sort of weird and scary and you never really know what's going to happen, as well as which there's a general feeling of unease about messing with stuff you don't understand. A lot like acting, really.
FYI there's a seance scene in the play so this upcoming cast event is as much for research purposes as it is for bonding purposes. Like I said some of the actors are a little uncomfortable about having a seance "for research purposes" in case we actually contact someone, or get in touch with a bad spirit or something.
Understandably then, I'm reluctant to voice my concern that whilst we're conducting the seance in the play, ie whilst we're pretending to be holding a seance, a passing spirit or ghost might get the wrong idea and actually join in. That is to say, they might not realise that we're only acting and they might try to use us (well, actually it's me as the "psychic" they're most likely to use) to make contact or pass on some sort of message to the physical world. Kind of like celestial channel-hopping...the astral being might find him or herself (do astral beings even have genders?) accidentally tuning into to a pirate frequency. Radio Ridley. Gritty.
Jesus, imagine if it happened in the middle of an actual live performance?
Nina: Spirits, hear our cry....we come in search of Jason, brother to Curtis....Please help us oh spirits....
Silence. Nothing happens.
Nina: Please help us.....Oooooooohhhhh Jeremy!? Is Jeremy there? Is there a Jeremy in the audience tonight? Hang on hang on somethings coming through....I'm feeling someth- yes, your newly deceased wife says she loves you very much, and it's alright she doesn't mind that you've started sleeping with your secretary. She says...hang on let me just get this clear...she says everyone needs a shoulder to cry on in times of need, and anyway she'd been knobbing Peter next-door for years before she died.
Awkward silence.
Nina: And he was much better than you.
Muffled sobs from the audience. Someone leaves.
Nina: Jason! We come in search of Jason...! Brother of Curtis. etc etc.
I might use tomorrow's seance to send out a little message into the ether: no latercomers or non-physical beings, please.
Tomorrow, as a reward for a tiring and confusing week of rehearsal we are going to have a cast bonding session in the form of a seance.
Most of the cast don't really want a seance because seances are sort of weird and scary and you never really know what's going to happen, as well as which there's a general feeling of unease about messing with stuff you don't understand. A lot like acting, really.
FYI there's a seance scene in the play so this upcoming cast event is as much for research purposes as it is for bonding purposes. Like I said some of the actors are a little uncomfortable about having a seance "for research purposes" in case we actually contact someone, or get in touch with a bad spirit or something.
Understandably then, I'm reluctant to voice my concern that whilst we're conducting the seance in the play, ie whilst we're pretending to be holding a seance, a passing spirit or ghost might get the wrong idea and actually join in. That is to say, they might not realise that we're only acting and they might try to use us (well, actually it's me as the "psychic" they're most likely to use) to make contact or pass on some sort of message to the physical world. Kind of like celestial channel-hopping...the astral being might find him or herself (do astral beings even have genders?) accidentally tuning into to a pirate frequency. Radio Ridley. Gritty.
Jesus, imagine if it happened in the middle of an actual live performance?
Nina: Spirits, hear our cry....we come in search of Jason, brother to Curtis....Please help us oh spirits....
Silence. Nothing happens.
Nina: Please help us.....Oooooooohhhhh Jeremy!? Is Jeremy there? Is there a Jeremy in the audience tonight? Hang on hang on somethings coming through....I'm feeling someth- yes, your newly deceased wife says she loves you very much, and it's alright she doesn't mind that you've started sleeping with your secretary. She says...hang on let me just get this clear...she says everyone needs a shoulder to cry on in times of need, and anyway she'd been knobbing Peter next-door for years before she died.
Awkward silence.
Nina: And he was much better than you.
Muffled sobs from the audience. Someone leaves.
Nina: Jason! We come in search of Jason...! Brother of Curtis. etc etc.
I might use tomorrow's seance to send out a little message into the ether: no latercomers or non-physical beings, please.
Monday, 15 February 2010
Notes from a Director
Hi guys,
just a few words from the Moonfleece director to let you know where we're at in the rehearsal process. Things are progressing very nicely, we have worked through every scene now and everyone has a good idea of what they are trying to do in each scene. In this critical second week, we start to mould and shape the work, to make sure all aspects that effect a character come out, namely such elements as intentions, immediate circumstances, place, time, events, past history and relationships. The actors have picked up the feel of the piece very well. Now is the time they make it their own.
We had the chance today to explore one of the critical themes in the play: love. Actors bravely shared their own experiences and we had a chance to see some of these experiences performed. The way that people reacted to each other physically was facinating and helped to really inform relationships in Moonfleece. Just the way someone would sit, the eye contact they would or wouldn't make, their vocal rythms; it all spoke so much of relationships in the play. It was a nice break through and should help us move things on to the next stage.
Well, looking forward to starting again tomorrow, will be back here very soon to let you know any more progress!
David Mercatali
just a few words from the Moonfleece director to let you know where we're at in the rehearsal process. Things are progressing very nicely, we have worked through every scene now and everyone has a good idea of what they are trying to do in each scene. In this critical second week, we start to mould and shape the work, to make sure all aspects that effect a character come out, namely such elements as intentions, immediate circumstances, place, time, events, past history and relationships. The actors have picked up the feel of the piece very well. Now is the time they make it their own.
We had the chance today to explore one of the critical themes in the play: love. Actors bravely shared their own experiences and we had a chance to see some of these experiences performed. The way that people reacted to each other physically was facinating and helped to really inform relationships in Moonfleece. Just the way someone would sit, the eye contact they would or wouldn't make, their vocal rythms; it all spoke so much of relationships in the play. It was a nice break through and should help us move things on to the next stage.
Well, looking forward to starting again tomorrow, will be back here very soon to let you know any more progress!
David Mercatali
Sunday, 14 February 2010
How To Look Good Naked While Holding A Seance
Happy 1am.
I'm Sian, I'm playing Nina in Moonfleece. Nina is a horny psychic librarian in a wheelchair. We naturally have only one of these characteristics in common. So in a bid for authenticity I have been doing research into wheelchair users, psychics, and indexing systems.
Only joking. I couldn't be less interested in indexing systems.
My mum recommended watching Gok Wan's How To Look Good Naked With A Difference (HTLGNWAD), which is Gok doing what Gok does best - making women feel fantastic about themselves - but this series he's doing it with women who have a physical disability. On my mum's advice I watched the episode where he makes a woman who uses a wheelchair Look Good Naked to see if I could pick up some useful material.
The woman being made-over in this particular episode is called Tracey. One of the self-image problems that Tracey has is her insecurity about her legs. She's self-conscious about showing them because they're thin due to her muscle wasting condition. She was also embarassed about her stomach, which fell into rolls because she was always in a sitting position.
Gok and Tracey gave me a really interesting insight into the body-image of a woman in a wheelchair. Unfortunately it was singularly useless for my purposes.
The legs thing: I have not, never have had and never will have thin legs. The women in my family are genetically blessed with tree-trunks. Those babies aren't going anywhere.
The stomach thing: Gok did a really good job of making Tracey feel better about her stomach rolls by getting women in the street to show that everyone gets stomach rolls when they sit down. I checked this out for myself whilst I was sat on the sofa watching HTLGNWAD. I was not disappointed - there, as promised, were my stomach rolls. Laid out like so many hot-dog buns on a Bar-B-Q.
Gok remedied this for Tracey by putting her in corsetted underwear that sucked everything in. I don't have any corsetted underwear and I suspect the design budget does not stretch to Spanx For Nina. So whereas Tracey gets to leave the show with killer curves, I'm stuck with tree-trunks and Bar-B-Q breads.
One thing I did take away from the show: Gok pimped Tracey's ride. He gave her this beautiful brand-new Gok-ized wheelchair. I'm now inspired to customise Nina's wheels. I'm thinking go-faster-stripes, furry dice, spinning hub-caps and a spoiler. Deadly.
On to my second research topic: psychics. I searched for "Seance Books" on Amazon. Strike #1: "How to hold a Seance", by Kuriakos. (No surname, just Kuriakos. I suspect this is so that people can't hunt him down in the phone book to ask for their money back when they receive his piss-poor books in the mail. Others in the inspirational series include: "Magickal Evocation Rituals", "Angel Magick", "How to do Self-Hypnonsis", and "The Fast Road to Enlightenment WorkBook").
The blurb online promises "a very short to the point book on how to quickly and easily hold a seance anytime and anywhere...It's like getting a free psychic reading anytime you want!"
Well this sounds like exactly what I need, I thought, and merrily parted with $12.54 plus p&p.
Allow me to share the entire book with you:
Different Ways to Hold a Seance
Money
1. "Yes" or "no" questions.
2. Questions with words or sentences as answers
3. Questions with numbers as answers
Set up:
Write down your questions using the following types of questions from #1, #2 and #3 above.
How to do it:
Ask one question out loud and then two more people hold hands in a circle and allow the answer to come in through their psychic knowing, psychic hearing, psychic feeling or pscyhic seeing and then immediately record the question and answer in The Seance Writing Journal.
The above is the format for every page. The only difference being that the rest of the pages have titles like; Love; Health; Psychic Abilities; Your Past...and just in case you weren't sure what type of questions you can ask the spirits, a page (again, with exactly the same words as above) titled "Answers to Any questions you may have". And just in case you were worried about what you should use for a Seance Writing Journal, don't worry: more than half the book is made up of blank pages with "Seance Writing Journal" at the top for you to record all the reams of material you will amass from your quickie-seance.
Tune in next week for wheelchair sex and the Dewey-Decimal System.
I'm Sian, I'm playing Nina in Moonfleece. Nina is a horny psychic librarian in a wheelchair. We naturally have only one of these characteristics in common. So in a bid for authenticity I have been doing research into wheelchair users, psychics, and indexing systems.
Only joking. I couldn't be less interested in indexing systems.
My mum recommended watching Gok Wan's How To Look Good Naked With A Difference (HTLGNWAD), which is Gok doing what Gok does best - making women feel fantastic about themselves - but this series he's doing it with women who have a physical disability. On my mum's advice I watched the episode where he makes a woman who uses a wheelchair Look Good Naked to see if I could pick up some useful material.
The woman being made-over in this particular episode is called Tracey. One of the self-image problems that Tracey has is her insecurity about her legs. She's self-conscious about showing them because they're thin due to her muscle wasting condition. She was also embarassed about her stomach, which fell into rolls because she was always in a sitting position.
Gok and Tracey gave me a really interesting insight into the body-image of a woman in a wheelchair. Unfortunately it was singularly useless for my purposes.
The legs thing: I have not, never have had and never will have thin legs. The women in my family are genetically blessed with tree-trunks. Those babies aren't going anywhere.
The stomach thing: Gok did a really good job of making Tracey feel better about her stomach rolls by getting women in the street to show that everyone gets stomach rolls when they sit down. I checked this out for myself whilst I was sat on the sofa watching HTLGNWAD. I was not disappointed - there, as promised, were my stomach rolls. Laid out like so many hot-dog buns on a Bar-B-Q.
Gok remedied this for Tracey by putting her in corsetted underwear that sucked everything in. I don't have any corsetted underwear and I suspect the design budget does not stretch to Spanx For Nina. So whereas Tracey gets to leave the show with killer curves, I'm stuck with tree-trunks and Bar-B-Q breads.
One thing I did take away from the show: Gok pimped Tracey's ride. He gave her this beautiful brand-new Gok-ized wheelchair. I'm now inspired to customise Nina's wheels. I'm thinking go-faster-stripes, furry dice, spinning hub-caps and a spoiler. Deadly.
On to my second research topic: psychics. I searched for "Seance Books" on Amazon. Strike #1: "How to hold a Seance", by Kuriakos. (No surname, just Kuriakos. I suspect this is so that people can't hunt him down in the phone book to ask for their money back when they receive his piss-poor books in the mail. Others in the inspirational series include: "Magickal Evocation Rituals", "Angel Magick", "How to do Self-Hypnonsis", and "The Fast Road to Enlightenment WorkBook").
The blurb online promises "a very short to the point book on how to quickly and easily hold a seance anytime and anywhere...It's like getting a free psychic reading anytime you want!"
Well this sounds like exactly what I need, I thought, and merrily parted with $12.54 plus p&p.
Allow me to share the entire book with you:
Different Ways to Hold a Seance
Money
1. "Yes" or "no" questions.
2. Questions with words or sentences as answers
3. Questions with numbers as answers
Set up:
Write down your questions using the following types of questions from #1, #2 and #3 above.
How to do it:
Ask one question out loud and then two more people hold hands in a circle and allow the answer to come in through their psychic knowing, psychic hearing, psychic feeling or pscyhic seeing and then immediately record the question and answer in The Seance Writing Journal.
The above is the format for every page. The only difference being that the rest of the pages have titles like; Love; Health; Psychic Abilities; Your Past...and just in case you weren't sure what type of questions you can ask the spirits, a page (again, with exactly the same words as above) titled "Answers to Any questions you may have". And just in case you were worried about what you should use for a Seance Writing Journal, don't worry: more than half the book is made up of blank pages with "Seance Writing Journal" at the top for you to record all the reams of material you will amass from your quickie-seance.
Tune in next week for wheelchair sex and the Dewey-Decimal System.
Friday, 5 February 2010
Welcome to the Moonfleece blog - watch this space over the next few weeks for updates by the cast and crew, including the latest production updates and news from rehearsals.
Meanwhile, follow the links below to see what's being said about the show already...
Show attacked by the BNP!
'Watch Out For' in the Daily Mail:
'What to See' - Lyn Gardner's Guardian blog:
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