It's a Dog's Life

 "I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by", Douglas Adams is famously quoted as saying. As I write this longhand on the beach (unless I absolutely have to do something, as soon as it's sunny I prioritise being outside - sorry, it is the UK!) I dread to think how long it's been since my last entry. All I know is it's been a while [actually, now I'm typing this, I now know exactly how long and I am horrified last entry was April - April ffs!] and it's become a 'thing'. So much so that I just need to pick a subject and go with it before I get so constipated with words that the backlog become so huge, it's impossible to pass. It is also my priority task for this month and if it doesn't get done, I can only quench my thirst for two full days with water. That is the forfeit; no tea, no coffee, no OJ (I seldom drink OJ anyway so don't even know why I've included that) and absolutely no wine (however much I whine!) As it happens, I have quite a lot to talk about this time around - I have seen some fabulous shows for a start. But I don't think I've done a post regarding my procrastination for a while and I guess this entry will go under that heading. 

Firstly to give it a bit of context, I realised some months back that the show I was allegedly going to do about Charlotte Charke just wasn't going to happen. Sitting down with that damn book was like pulling teeth. However, it seems to me that anything I identify as actively wanting to do, quickly goes into the pulling teeth category, which makes me feel really quite despairing. I realised that the 'elephant in the room' is in fact - da-da-dah - my procrastination. That's the show right there. Plus, it's something that everyone can relate to, at least to some degree (although they might not win prizes for it like me) and I would like something good and creative to come out of it, since it causes me so much self-annoyance and grief. I have also realised that despite not being a conventional, run of the mill-type person, when it comes to doing these things, I suddenly become super 'proper' and linear in my approach, trying to be all conscientious about it and quickly get stuck in a rut, where I don't progress any further. The bit I already have which is practically 'stage ready' is the 'Twelve Step Procrastination Busting Programme' from last year's workshop (you can read the entry about it here) where I force-feed myself marzipan through a gimp mask as a self-punishment. To help me with this I am having coaching sessions with one of the managers at work, who's thankfully quite happy to focus on my creative stuff outside of my 'civvy job' and also Simon who I worked with in London on Geo Goynes. The funny thing is, he does for me what I know I can do for others (seeing possibilities, the bigger-picture, generating material) but have real issues doing for myself, so I am very fortunate. Obviously my procrastination isn't a made-up problem, so weeks can go by where nothing's done. My procrastination is mostly fear-in-disguise, masquerading as laziness, so the idea of actually performing it to people who will be paying is terrifying! 

Anyway, I had a great coaching session last Tuesday, where Lou, my coach, said she was going to do a visualisation exercise with me. She'd not done it before, she said, so if it didn't go well, it'd only be about an hour of my time wasted. "Don't worry", I said, "I'm great at visualisation". Then she asked me to point to where my past is spatially, my present and my future. Then she asked me to picture my future, i.e. where I am and what I'm actually doing. Immediately, I just said I couldn't do it. I don't know why (although I sort of do - fear) but I find it so hard to picture my future - it's so murky. Also, I think I've become so 'good' at being in the present (and there's lots of mindfulness stuff about 'being in the now') and not raking back over miserable bits of my past and not engaging with my future, that I just sort of shut down. For a moment I could see Lou struggling with what on earth she was going to do with me - neither of us were expecting this! Then she changed tack and asked me to visualise something that represented my present. I'm used to doing this - years ago I bought a book about using visualisation to examine aspects of your life and solve problems and although part of me tends to scoff at these things, thinking it's 'hippy-dippy' shit, and I never (or haven't yet) read all of it - I utilised some of the exercises on 'this or that' problems or to examine how I felt about something and I found it to be incredibly powerful. Straight away came an image of a yellow Labrador chasing its tail. The book says not to dismiss an image but to work with what comes up. Immediately this seemed fitting. 

The dog's name was Harold and he was persistently chasing his tail because he had fleas, but had become very attached to them, because frustrating as they were, that's all he knew and they provided a distraction and he invited distraction, so as not to think about things too much, because he was scared (Sound like me? Much?! Cough, splutter!).Then we looked at Harold's environment and what he would have to do to let go of his fleas:

Harold's owners were out all day and he was bored and scared. Eventually Harold agreed to give up his fleas for a period of two weeks. They would be placed in an old fashioned film canister for this time, after which he would have the option of having them back. After this though, they would die off through lack of blood and it would be too late to go back, because even if he got another set of fleas they would be a different eco-system. 

The first week without his fleas, Harold became very withdrawn and depressed, sitting with his yellow head on his paws in his basket, looking very forlorn indeed. He just didn't know what to do with himself. Realising he couldn't remain like this, after the first week, Harold began to explore his environment - sniffing everything, building up a rich picture of his home, getting his nose everywhere, until he saw outside and started to feel a different sort of an itch - one to go out there, into the garden. Outside he had a kennel where he could retire if it rained, but could also feel the sun on his fur and hear the birds and the hum of the bees. Soon he became aware of a crack in the fence and was suddenly really afraid. He knew what was behind there, because he'd been taken there as a pup to the duck pond that lay beyond the strip of woods in front of the house, and the ducks and the geese had attacked him when he bounded over to play. 

Harold withdrew back to his kennel and stayed there a while, gathering up his strength and his energy. he started digging through the fence. It wasn't easy and it took him several days, which allowed him time to get used to the idea. When he finally managed to break through, he went out on little excursions - short ones at first, where the strangeness of his new environment made him run back in terror, yelping before gathering up the courage to go further afield. Once day, Harold was ready to go back to the duck pond. The first time, all the horrid feelings came back; he felt out of his depth and he didn't stay long. But he went back and back again. The duck and the geese, spotting him, came up hissing in his face, but he stood his ground and they backed off. After several visits passed and the unfamiliar became familiar, he realised that he had as much right to be there as the ducks and the geese and felt very at home there. So much so, he took new dwellings in a lovely shady tree house in the woods overlooking the pond, with a patio in front where he could sun himself as he surveyed his surroundings. 

In his new home, Harold started to express himself creatively, realising there was an audience who were interested in his quirky take on life (the universe and everything). He started to feel an urge to perform these pieces and was now growing in confidence so this was no problem for him, as Harold had found his bark. Harold was by now creatively fulfilled and much happier in himself, he could sit and be still and contemplate but was still young at heart and could bound around with the best of them and had lots of energy. He began to crave some female company. In time Harold met a lovely bitch who lived on a barge and who shared his oblique view on life. They enjoyed each other's company very much, sniffing along the banks of the canals, the woods and of course the duck pond. If Harold was to be offered back his fleas, he would give a derisive snort. He was half the dog then as he is now and it's hard to believe he was so scared of the possibilities of life that he actually invited fleas to bite him, to keep him in a perpetual present. Now Harold's present to himself, is himself. 

The End.

(mostly controlled) Panic on the Streets of London

So, my stint with Geo Goynes in London finished - ooh nearly a month ago now - and yes it has taken me this long to get to writing about it (which reminds me, I really must do a 'procrastination post' very soon!) partly because...

1. I've been busy
2. when I've not been busy, my time's been taken up with procrastinating (quelle surprise)
3. lots to say - but don't know where to begin
   and..
4. I've been 'unmasked', by no other than the Geo Goynes team themselves - eek!

My thin veneer of a 'disguise' was seen through immediately! To be honest, I'm not surprised in the least, I had thought initially that being incognito would give me more freedom to write what I want without impunity but very quickly realised this wasn't the case at all. If anything I was more constrained with the effort of changing the names of productions or people so for a while now I haven't bothered. I'm a-coming out of that closet. 

That's great on one level, but now I know that Root Experience (aka the Geo Goynes production company) might well read it, I feel strangely self-concious and thumb-tied! I guess this would be worse if I had anything 'mean' to say about them, but I don't - they were brilliant to work with - hurrah! This was a complicated production and there were lots of things that could go awry both from a technological perspective and given that we were working closely with participants. So it could be very stressful at times; however I always felt Simon and Jess were in control and did not heap any further stress on us than necessary - quite the opposite in fact, we were protected from it where possible and were always treated with respect and trusted to do our jobs. This might read as obvious stuff, and so it should be - but sadly in my experience this has often not been the case, so it's darned refreshing to work with people who are serious about what they do, trust their actors and are organised and respectful! Right, that's quite enough gushing for one post (winky face).

I really enjoyed the rehearsal process  - or more accurately the devising process - it great to be involved in creating the narrative in which our characters would inhabit. Without giving too much away (because it is still a work in progress which has most definitely 'got legs'), it's set five years in the future where such a thing as 'quantum technology' exists that enables corporations to predict an individual's future. There's a heinous news broadcasting corporation Prospects Live (think The Daily Mail) who has access to this future prediction technology and are regularly ruining people's lives according to what their future selves are alleged to have done (or will do). Our characters are heading up a gorilla organisation with the purpose of bringing down Prospects Live by working with a hacker to get a virus on to their mainframe which would destroy their future prediction programme. This is with the help of other shadowy people (i.e. the participants) who have also seen their lives unravelled as a result of their broadcasts. 

There were three of us 'team leaders' who each would have a number of audience members/participants who we would lead on an adventure, solving clues, having clandestine meetings with hackers, honey-trapping Prospects Live employees, tailing others whilst avoiding deadly agents and Prospect Live security staff. Our stories would run concurrently, so we would often run into one and another providing an extra frisson of danger as we'd primed the participants that anyone with a headpiece was likely to be an enemy agent. It was fast-paced, fun, crazy and at times ridiculous with over-zealous actors acting as security staff and actual security staff who witnessing what looked like the theft of a laptop frogmarched one team-leader and his troupe of participants back to the theatre. Impressively he did not break character at all and managed to convey to his team that he was only pretending to the security staff (who blatantly refused to read the prepared leaflet explanation) it was theatre as ruse to deceive them. To be fair, some of what was going on as part of this experience would look really bad to security, so they were only doing their job; but to have approached every potential interested party individually would have been a logistical and no-doubt very expensive nightmare. I myself (despite explaining what we were doing to the security man at my base in a derelict street of houses and him seemingly happy at my explanation) had the same security guard turn up in the middle of my spiel, every night, and giving me a hard time about what I was doing there and necessitating me having to act my socks off declaring him to be a Prospects Live agent. 

Actually, talking of acting, us team members agreed that it was 30% acting and 70% project management. I have to say it wasn't the most subtle and nuanced piece of acting I've ever done, and many times I felt I was channelling the spirit of Doc Brown in The Back To The Future Trilogy ("we have to get our hands on that virus - we must not fail!"). That said, it was amazing for thinking on your feet, confidence and ability to deal with problems as they arose - not least my special-needs (dis)ability of getting lost! 

The first couple of performances felt like a stressful nightmare with all manner of things (mostly technical) going wrong. It's such a complicated piece of immersive theatre and taking place on the streets on Victoria with Joe-public (and Joe-security guards) and all that entails all around us, there was loads that could go belly-up. That said, the last two performances I started really feeling in my element and it was brilliant. We had some really excellent feedback and I'm sure as it evolves, us as actors will also be able to access more subtlety and authenticity in our performances. I really look forward to Geo Goynes touring in the hopefully not-too-distant future and I predict that it will be good! 

Twelve Angry Men

Last Friday I went to see Twelve Angry Men at The Garrick Theatre on Charing Cross Road. Twelve Angry Men is a classic film and one of my all-time favourites so I was really looking forward to the stage version, starring Martin Shaw. I was not disappointed. I had managed to book some rather good seats so was able to see the actorizing up pretty close and personal for a change - especially important for a production like this when it's about the subtle nuances of the interchanges between the jurors. 

This really was a treat which I could enjoy from several different perspectives; firstly as I mentioned I love the film, secondly how it was staged and thirdly from an actorly perspective - it's a simple story - a jury deliberating over a guilty verdict and a man's life, so the quality of the acting really shines through. Plus as time goes on, the claustrophobic  aspect becomes heightened. The first five or ten minutes I actually wondered if I had seats too close to the stage as some of the actors were upstaged by those in front (twelve actors on stage at anyone time is unusual!) but actually it was beautifully set with really nice positioning with didn't seem too 'stagey'. 

The characters and the script was kept really close to the film, so it was easy to compare and contrast how the acting translated to the stage, the main exception that I noticed being the very end which was subtly different. I actually thought here that the film was more powerful but I acknowledge that this would have been impossible to translate effectively on the stage, not being able to do 'close-ups' and all. Anyway, loved it, it made up for some pants theatre I'd seen just the day before, and I'd whole heartedly say go see it, but sadly I think it might be coming to the end of its run. 

A Rich Person's Game?

I sometimes joke to people that I left the teaching profession to become an actor because I wanted a more secure career path with reliable and regular pay. Since I am quite deadpan with my delivery, most people do a slight double take before realising that I'm being ironic. One one person really didn't get it and half an hour later was still shaking her head at my apparent stupidity, despite me laying it on with a trowel by shrugging my shoulders in mock bewilderment and gurning for all the world's worth.

So unless you're super lucky, it's pretty much a given that the chances of you being well off as an actor are pretty slim. Given these are lean times and the fact that acting jobs are scarse, and that even big companies are used to getting performers for free or for a token fee, by the use of the magic words: 'viral ad', what used to be lucrative work for jobbing actors has not so much dried up but become much less lucrative. I was taught by one of the infamous milk-tray ad men. He told me that he was paid in the region of 80K in the early '80's to be in one ad. I wouldn't know how much that 'should' be now with inflation but I imagine that they would be paid far, far less today.

It is no wonder then that so many of today's young actors come from well-off priviledged backgrounds. Talented as the Cumberbatch's and Eddie Redmayne's of this world undoubtedly are, where are the working class new actors? Without rich parents to bankroll them they are noticable by their absence. It's not just in acting even. It seems that all industries; music, entertainment - politics - I've even heard of internships where the successful applicants have to pay them for the priveledge! 

Anyways, this is a rather long introduction to me saying that I have auditioned for and accepted an acting job, which I'm very excited about. It's in London, it's a piece of 'immersive theatre' and 'urban digital gaming' for want of better terms, called The Rise And Fall Of Geo Goynes, which will take place at St James Theatre in London, Victoria in March. I did not know at the time of auditioning that it wasn't paid work, fortunately however, unlike many other companies or directors I've worked with, who've promised the moon on a stick and delivered a big fat nothing, I know these guys are serious as I was involved in their early R&D test workshops when they were developing ideas and themes for their project. Root Experience, the company has also produced many other interesting pieces of interactive theatre as you can see from their website. They've also collaborated with Blast Theory whose work I love. So this is not paid (in fact it will cost me by the time I've factored in loss of earnings from my 'civvy' job and the travel is going to be quite a bit), but they will be touring it later in the year, and then I am assured, it will be paid, and then I will be in prime position!

A friend said the other day when I told him about this that acting's a hobby. I didn't quite know how to respond. I don't want it to be 'just a hobby'. I'm not rich and to practise it properly, it's blooming expensive and I've let all sorts of things slide due to the lack of funds - important things too, like Spotlight membership and headshots - just the sort of things that let other people know you're serious about what you do, but quite frankly, at times over the last couple of years it was between food/rent and joining Spotlight, so it wasn't really much of a contest. Besides I was beginning to feel that I may as well take the monthly fee I was paying to Casting Call Pro and flush it down the toilet, but perhaps too I just needed a break from all the rejections that goes hand-in-hand with being an actor, and to be honest I've never been thicked-skinned enough to take well. So since I'm not rich enough, not resiliant enough (which leads to not putting myself 'out there' enough) I do sometimes wonder "who am I kidding?" and whether I should just get a sensible little job with a secure pension (if those jobs even exist anymore) but then I feel my throat constricting from a sense of feeling suffocated. I may as well face it, my peg is square and ramming it into small round holes is uncomfortable to say the least, and yes I am aware that sounds a bit risque.

Anyway, I digress... aside from the 'little matter' of it not being paid, I'm very happy to have the job as team-leader in Geo Goynes. The audition itself was good fun - I got to use my creativity for a change, e.g. by competing for Jess and Simon's attention by just using noises and gestures and then having ten minutes to work out who you are and why you are in context of the new world of 'Quantum Technology' set five years into the future. This technology has the ability to predict your future (not as outlandish as it might sound since we are traced by location devices in our smart phones and also I remember over ten years ago reading about software on CCTV cameras at tube stations that was able to track movements and predict who could be violent and who might be about to commit suicide). These future predictions are being sold back to us as 'insights' by corporations and of course the Government are using using it. We (the auditionees) are 'gorilla hackers', Robin Hood-types thieving back the info for the good of society.

I only had time to decide I am called Quandra McKenzie and am working in IT when it was time to present our pieces. There were only three of us auditioning in this group and I went last (I usually volunteer to go first in these things, but I'm glad I did in this instance because I learnt fromt the others and adapted what I did accordingly). Once guy I initially thought was superb - he had real presence. The only thing was that he was so intense that it was scary and he touched people too much. Having worked with audiences before and noticing how I don't like people I don't know touching me, I know they won't like that. At the last minute, I changed mine to be a team leader for a work training session, before 'revealing' my true identity and telling people about the nanotechnology that corporations were putting in their cups of coffee that had the ability to hijack your DNA and be passed on to any off-spring you  have, which will be 10% the property of that corporation and DO YOU WANT THAT FOR YOUR KIDS, and WILL YOU JOIN ME ON MY QUEST AND DO WHATEVER IT TAKES TO TOPPLE THEM?!

So.... rehearsals start in just over a week. It's going to be tough to juggle work and this and the money side jaddajaddajadda, but it's going to be great!