Am-Dram, Thank You Ma'am

2010-02-18T03:13:00.000-08:00

TAX NEEDN’T BE TAXING

My last blog contained a hint that Christmas is not my favourite time.

I’d like to say I’m over it now, but the Government has a cruel way of celebrating the excesses of the festive period - it sends you a tax bill.

I’ve just paid mine, and I think I’ve noticed a subtle shift in official policy. It seems that, presumably to minimize paperwork and bureaucracy and to cut out the middleman, Gordon and friends have now targeted the half a dozen or so people still in work, and ordered each of them to send all their money to a nominated bank in order to recapitalize it.

I got Barclays.

The theory is that, having sent them all my money, Barclays is now in a much better position to lend it back to me. This, apparently, gets the economy moving again, and that in turn makes sure that Britain’s wealth is more evenly distributed between those who earned it and those who couldn’t be arsed, which is only fair.

Why am I telling you all this? Well, more than ever, just after receiving a tax bill, one has to have a sense of humour. How I laughed when I received mine. The tears were streaming down my face. I hadn’t felt like that since January 31st at the end of the previous tax period.

The only other time I experience such regular jollity is at the annual Golden Beaks Comedy Festival which, like many annual events, takes place every year. This, for those of you who know nothing of it, has become a great theatrical institution. I started the whole thing off about a dozen or so years ago (we forget exactly when) by hand-making some very bizarre trophies (a sort of golden theatrical mask with a duck’s beak – don’t ask, I was under the influence of some mind-altering substance at the time) and offering them up to any theatre company who could present a one-act play that made us laugh.

Yes, it was comedies only. I was fed up of attending festivals where the wrist-slashing piece with the social message always won, because the comedy which had everyone rolling about was deemed too frivolous.

Usually in festivals, the adjudicator adheres to a traditional marking scheme which allocates the teams an overall score based on the quality of their production. He takes into account the standard of acting, staging, direction, props, use of music, and all the other aspects of stagecraft. What he doesn’t do, however, is judge the play itself – in other words it’s not considered to be the playwright that’s on trial, just the production.

Now this gives us a major problem at the Beaks. With this marking scheme, in theory, a very good production of a very unfunny play could win – and that’s obviously a nonsense in a comedy festival.

So, with scant regard for the traditions of GONADS (the Guild of National Adjudicators of Drama Students) we’ve turned that principle on its head. Yes, the adjudicator is still looking for good acting and smart production. But in our festival, a big chunk of the marks go to a new category – a category we’ve simply called “Comedy”. And that means that if the play’s not funny, it ain’t going to win. No longer can a society turn up with King Lear and hope to scoop the honours - not unless they’ve discovered how to wring some big laughs out of it. At the Beaks, both the play and the production are on trial.

Entries are now invited for this unique occasion, which takes place at the Theatre On The Steps in Bridgnorth over the weekend of 18th-19th September.

Entries are limited to 12 and there are cash prizes on offer as well as the world’s most off-the-wall trophies.

So, what’s it to be? Duck’s bill or tax bill?

For more information, contact goldenbeaks@yahoo.co.uk

2009-12-18T05:00:00.000-08:00

First of all, apologies for not blogging sooner – things have been a tad hectic, what with one thing and another – in fact it was two things and another (that’s three things in total).

The first thing was the production of my latest comedy “Searching For Doctor Branovic” which I premiered in November at the Theatre On The Steps Bridgnorth. I don’t mind admitting I was a little apprehensive about how this might be received by the wider public. I think I’d lived with it for too long and couldn’t even decide if it was a comedy any more. But, thankfully, reactions were overwhelmingly positive, and I can now let the little child go into the wider world knowing it’s had a decent start in life.

If anyone’s interested in seeing a short clip you’ll find it on the web site by following this link: www.flyingducks.biz/d25_000064.htm

The second of my two “things” was happening the very same week. Highbury Players from, well, Highbury actually, were premiering another of my new plays “Hypnosis”. All in all they did a splendid job of bringing this dark, comic thriller to the stage, and had a very successful ten night run – so well done to them.

And so to the third of my three things. Inspector Drake - The Movie.

This has now become a major obsession, and will envelop every waking moment of my spare time for the next year or so. This film is my mid-life crisis, arriving somewhat belatedly. A motor bike would have been cheaper, and possibly safer, and undoubtedly quicker, but nevertheless I’m hooked. I’ve been making videos for a long time now, but always for other people, and usually built on fascinating scripts about Health and Safety, or Human Resources, whatever the hell they are. Inspector Drake – The Movie finally connects up the best bits of my day job to the very roots of my writing hobby.

I want to try and harness all the talent from all the people I’ve met over the years, and indeed people I’ve yet to meet, and showcase it in this ludicrously ambitious project. So if you’re out there, and you have something to offer and want to be a part of it, get in touch. I’ve even sold my soul to the devil and set up some Facebook pages, including a group site one for the Flying Ducks Theatre Company, so people can get involved – you’ll be able to track us down on www.facebook.com/flyingducks

But before all that, we have to get through Christmas. My favourite time of year.

As we all throw ourselves, lemming-like, over a financial precipice; force grotesque amounts of food into every orifice until we split; feign goodwill gestures to distant relatives with whom we share nothing but the same basic number of limbs; watch films we’ve never seen before, like The Wizard of Oz, The Great Escape, or some shite American modernisation of A Christmas Carol with Bill Murray; indulge in dreadful electronic versions of board games with rubbish rules that never finish; undermine the climate change talks and destroy the planet by lighting up the house like Blackpool for three weeks; queue for Jeremy Clarkson DVD’s that we’ll never watch, cookbooks we’ll never use, and celebrity autobiographies written by unknown journalists which we’ll never read; add to our huge stockpile of unwearable socks, comedy underpants and ill-fitting leather gloves; write panic replies to Christmas cards we weren’t expecting, from people we don’t know or care about; inexplicably buy a Terry’s Chocolate Orange, a box of Matchmakers and some walnuts; get up at 3am on the 25th to switch on an oven, and 5am on the 26th to stand outside some more shops offering 1% off an eight thousand pound sofa, two pounds off some boots that look crap on you, and a half-price coat that was originally priced at three times its true value.

Merry Christmas, everyone. And don't even get me started on Pantos.

2009-09-24T09:20:00.001-07:00

Acting.

So, what do I know about acting? Well, in so many ways, not much. I’m probably about as good at acting as Dustin Hoffman is at bricklaying – or, for that matter, as I am at bricklaying - in other words it’s not what either of us does best. (Excuse me, I now need to do a quick Google search on Dustin Hoffman’s bricklaying prowess, in case I’ve accidentally hit on his secret hobby…no, as far as I can see we’re all right)

But - and here’s the thing - I bet Dustin knows a decent brick wall when he sees one. Dodgy brick walls are not hard to spot. You might not be able to pinpoint exactly why, but somehow they just don’t look right; they don’t feel solid; they just don’t fill you with confidence.

And so it is with acting.

Any buffoon can spot a poor actor. Unfortunately, it needs no training on behalf of the audience whatsoever, so a director can’t simply send out a cast member with the morale-boosting pep-talk “You’re crap, but don’t worry, they’ll never notice.”

In a nutshell, then, what I know about acting is exactly the same as anyone else knows. I know the difference between good, bad and indifferent -instinctively and without complex analysis. Beyond that, though, I do have certain pet hates which I will share with you.

Number one amongst these are devastatingly poor and entirely gratuitous character accents. For some reason best known to themselves, some actors feel that their first duty to any role is to do it in a foreign language - Scottish, Welsh, Irish, Cockney, Geordie - anything but their native tongue. When you suggest that perhaps they should just use their own voice, they don’t get it. “But, I’m acting.” “No, you’re annoying everyone, and from the first moment you open your mouth until the end of the play no-one will focus on a single word you say because they’re too busy being irritated by your crap accent.”

This peculiar phenomenon even extends to some experienced film and TV professionals. I mean, honestly - what on earth was Richard Attenborough trying to do in Jurassic Park with that ridiculous Scottish accent? And for that matter why did Stephen Spielberg let him get away with it? Perhaps to an American ear it was less obvious, who knows. Thankfully, our Dickie gave up after the first scene and became English again, by which time it was probably too expensive to re-shoot the opening. Yes, I know that in the book Hammond was supposed to be Scottish, but does it matter?

Unless there’s a really good reason to change your dialect (and there usually isn’t) don’t. Just don’t. It doesn’t matter where the play’s set. Localize it. Make it work for you. Even relatively accomplished accents are not worth the effort. The audience want a good storyline and believable characters, not brave but flawed impersonations. And the moment you step outside your normal voice, you are simply reminding everyone that you are acting.

My next pet acting hate is the “sing-song” voice. I hope you know what I mean, because frankly it’s almost impossible to describe without hearing it, but essentially it’s when you do away with normal speech patterns and inflections and replace them with something akin to a six year old child’s rendition of a poem. Writers spend a long time trying to make their words sound like natural speech, and saying them on stage ideally shouldn’t involve anything more than adding a bit of extra volume – just for practical reasons. If you want to sing, join an operatic society.

Next pet hate, paraphrasing. When I’m directing, obviously I do like actors to learn their lines eventually, but I’m very wary of making them drop their scripts prematurely. If they do, the chances are all your hard work will get blunted with a thousand and one paraphrases – all those sublime moments will be watered down into mediocrity. It wouldn’t happen with Shakespeare, would it? “To be, or not to be, now that’s the issue…”

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not Shakespeare (you probably already knew that) and I have nothing but sympathy for an actor who has to commit a million words to memory and then deliver them flawlessly on the night, while I can’t even remember where I’ve left my car keys or my glasses.

If you blank on stage, or have to invent a huge monologue to get you out of a hole, I’ll be right behind you. But don’t do it in rehearsals. Actually, a nice compliment which an actor friend once paid me was to say that he found my stuff “easy to learn, because the words just felt right.”

Having said I have nothing but sympathy for actors who blank on stage, there are limits. I once saw a play where one of the characters walked on stage and needed a prompt for his first word. And when the prompt came, guess what it was.

“Hello.” Yep – he couldn’t remember that he had to walk on and say “Hello.” What a star.

It then transpired that he needed a prompt every thirty seconds, and it set the whole audience squirming with embarrassment. There comes a point when you have to say “Why is this man ruining everyone else’s hard work, and taking up room that could be occupied by an actor?”

Pet hate number four is pets. They’re a pain. They ruin the furniture, cost a fortune in food and vet’s bills and leave hairs everywhere. Nothing to do with acting, but I thought I’d share that with you.

Pet hate number five is dodgy make-up – especially attempts to make a 25 year old look sixty by painting three huge black lines across his brow and Tippexing out his hair. The audience aren’t stupid. They know you can’t always find the ideal aged actor, but why remind them just how wrong he is for the part by turning his head into a Rolf Harris sketch? If I see an actor is the wrong age, I see it once, get over it and move on. Dress him up like a scarecrow and I see it all the time.

So what’s the alternative? Act old. Talk old. Yes, make-up can help, but most amateur dramatic society auditoriums are quite small. Small means intimate. Intimate means subtle. Unless, of course, you’re producing the kind of comedy where the make-up can join in.

Anyway, I’ll be back with more ramblings in due course. In the meantime, have fun with your productions. It’s certainly going to be a busy Autumn for me – two world premieres in the same month. In November, Highbury Players of Sutton Coldfield will become the first society ever to perform my dark comic thriller “Hypnosis”, and the very same week I’ll be directing The Flying Ducks Theatre Company as they test out my latest comedy “Searching For Doctor Branovic” in Bridgnorth.

And as soon as that’s out of the way, I get started on my next pet project – “Inspector Drake, The Movie.” I’d better take a vitamin tablet.

2009-07-06T12:43:00.001-07:00

LET'S BEGIN AT THE BEGINNING:

Okay, let's get one thing straight. I'm not a theatre person.

Having said that, I don’t really know what a theatre person is. But I have heard rumours that they prefer to wear black (T-shirts, polo necks - even in extreme cases throw-over knitted shawls) and that they say things like “Blocking” and “Up-stage left” rather than “Go and stand over there.” However, other anecdotes that they call each other darling and kiss both cheeks in public are clearly exaggerated and I give them no credence.

I must be careful, of course, how much I imply any criticism of “theatre people” as I run the risk of alienating my entire potential readership before reaching page two. But then again, perhaps other theatre people like you don’t consider themselves to be theatre people either, thus by default making me a theatre person. Are you following me so far? Me neither. Let’s start again.

I think what I’m trying to say is, I don’t really think of myself as a typical theatre person. My early experience of the theatre was unorthodox, and it has remained so ever since. I first realized I was interested in producing drama when my primary school class was asked to present an original sketch to the parents at some end of term gathering. Usually a very shy and reticent child, I instinctively jumped in to fill the void, announced that I was appointing myself unopposed as writer/director, held auditions, sorted the actors from the carpenters, and produced a strangely off-the-wall piece involving a red telephone box (they were all the rage in those days) and a long queue of characters waiting to use it. It purported to be a comedy. You can only imagine the thrill that sizzled through this nine year-old boy, waiting anxiously in the wings, as for the first time ever he heard adults actually laughing at things that he had written – things that he had meant to be funny.

I remember very little about the sketch now, but I do recall that even at that age I had a very practical approach to the business of staging a show. For example, one boy had a good face, but one of the silliest voices I had ever heard. I cast him as a mute.

Fast-forward to University. The new recruits were thrown together at Spode for a few days to get to know a little more about Shakespeare and each other, and for the last night’s entertainment we broke into four groups and were told to write and perform a spoof of Hamlet to entertain the masses. Again, I remember instantly morphing from a quiet, bewildered youth, genuinely lacking any real confidence in my ability to keep up in this rarefied academic atmosphere, to the group leader. I had the sketch written in under an hour and this time, with the unanimous agreement of my colleagues, even cast myself in the lead. And then we made them laugh. English students. University professors. We made them laugh a lot. And it was the best feeling in the world.

That wasn’t the last time I acted. More out of long Summer holiday boredom than burning desire, I joined a Dudley-based am-dram sometime into my second year at University. They were casting for a play called Ritual For Dolls. I got the part of a clockwork monkey – a non-speaking role. Occasionally throughout the performance I had to bang a drum. I like to think I took direction well, and gave the performance my all. But nobody laughed. To be fair, nobody was supposed to, but it wasn’t the same. From that moment I gave up acting and decided to concentrate on writing and directing.

Fast-forward again, to a village hall, and the presentation of the annual farce by local am-dram Highley Entertaining. I was in the director’s chair. After all, I was new to the village, I had a degree in English, and no-one else wanted to do it. I won’t name the play, for reasons that will become obvious, but I think it might have had the words Benefits and Fringe in the title, though not necessarily in that order. Unlike Ritual For Dolls, this was supposed to be a comedy, so people should laugh. It was my job as director to maximize those laughs. Well, I tried suggesting a different inflexion here and there, a more dead-pan delivery, a cocked eyebrow, a faster pace, a slower pace, some ad-libbed visual business, but still there were certain sections weren’t working as well as I would have liked. It began to worry me that perhaps I was a rubbish director, that my inaugural production would fail, that I would become the laughing stock of the village because no-one laughed, and I would have to sell my house, change my name, and die in poverty.

Then it hit me. The play wasn’t very funny because the script wasn’t very funny. Perhaps I was also a rubbish director, but at that moment I had to find a solution that didn’t involve doubting my own abilities, and so I decided to re-write a few lines. Well, more than a few lines actually. Whole chunks of it. Yes, I know it’s not allowed. The actors told me so. They looked on in awe as I scrubbed out whole pages and gave them “new bits” I’d typed up the night before. Including a new ending. As a mark of respect to the original authors, I kept the title.

I like to think I won the actors over rather quickly. They liked the new bits, preferred the new ending, and were thankful not to have to learn the chunks I’d scrubbed out.

Of course, as an “official” playwright myself now, I live in fear of some other little cocky runt popping up fresh from university and re-writing my plays to make them funnier. But I suppose I asked for it.

Directing

Ask any adjudicator, and they will tell you that you should never direct your own play. This hoary chestnut has grown from the simple but fallacious belief that no-one can do two things well. Let’s put this in context. An adjudicator (let’s assume it’s a woman to save me getting into all that clumsy “his or her” stuff) has just witnessed the most appalling dross ever to torture an audience, and she now has to stand and pass judgment. The writer, a local man well-known to the adjudicator for his indifferent acting and different directing, is sitting wide-eyed in the front row, breathing heavily, eagerly anticipating the critique. What does the adjudicator do? Does she stand up and knock the stuffing out of the man, humiliating him so devastatingly in front of his peers that he goes straight home and uses the hoover pipe to connect his mouth to the car’s exhaust? No. No matter how deluded and annoying the individual, that would seem a little harsh. On the other hand, does she praise the work, thus encouraging the man to persist with his endeavours, and in the process both ruin her own career as a serious adjudicator and possibly send some of the audience running for their own hoover pipes? Rock and hard place.

What she does, therefore, is grab at chestnuts, no matter how hoary, and start tossing them from the stage into the audience. She starts by saying what a challenging opening to the festival it was, and then spends a few minutes discussing the merits of the props (dead giveaway – if the adjudicator starts talking about how well-chosen the cushions were, or spends more than twenty seconds praising the make-up, or the lighting, you can be sure the acting was dire). Finally, fearing it can not be put off any longer, she pronounces that a writer should never direct his own work, thus implying that this is the sole reason we have all just witnessed a total bag of shite. She points out one or two problem areas to support her thesis, the man nods thoughtfully and appreciatively, accepting that maybe on this occasion he has taken on too much. Her reputation remains intact, he remains alive.

Of course, had a really good director been let loose on the local script, it would still have been a bag of shite – albeit possibly a pacier bag of shite and therefore better because it’s over quicker – but then the adjudicator could have taken refuge in another old chestnut, the one which states that she was only there to judge the performance, not the play. Quite why directors should be so easily absolved of blame for choosing a crap play I’ll never know. It’s a bit like saying “I’m only here to judge how you sprinted, and will pay no attention to the fact that you chose entirely of your own volition to strap a bag of potatoes to each foot.” I wouldn’t mind if the choice of play was forced upon the entrants – “Right, you bastards, here’s your sow’s ear, see what you can make of it.” That at least would be a good test of skills and ingenuity. But, let’s face it, that’s not the way it is, so where’s the excuse? Surely the choosing the right material, whether it’s for a festival or a home audience, is a fairly important part of the procedure?

Directing a play essentially involves making a series of decisions, and choosing the right raw material has to be one of the most important. If you get that wrong, it will certainly at best mask or muddy whatever directing skills you may have, but frankly it should also reflect on your judgment. You should be docked points for it directly at Festivals. (I must mention this idea to my good friend Chris Jaeger, who at the time of writing is the Chairman of the Guild of Drama Adjudicators. He would no doubt relish the idea that anyone choosing a Tristram play in future should automatically start with minus fifteen.) After all, choosing a lousy play is a far bigger mistake than making an actor stand in the wrong place at the wrong time. It’s tantamount to making all the actors stand in the wrong place, and say all the wrong words, from beginning to end.

So, back to the plot. Should writers direct their own plays? Well, that depends on two things. It depends if the writer is a good writer, and it depends if the writer is a good director. He or she could be either, neither, or both. Perhaps it’s less common to find someone who’s good at both, but the skills involved are certainly not in any way mutually exclusive. If it’s a bad play, then no-one should direct it. If it’s a good play, and the writer’s a good director, then in theory there’s no-one better to direct it. Isn’t it supposedly the director’s job to interpret the wishes of the writer? That makes the writer pretty handily placed to do it justice.

Incidentally, the notion of actors directing themselves is another kettle of fish altogether. We can all see the logic of advising that someone who cannot literally adopt the point of view of the audience shouldn’t ideally direct proceedings. But having said that, a good but partly handicapped actor/director is still a far better bet than a bad director.

Over the years I’ve always directed the premieres of my own plays, but that’s not because I think I’m the best man for the job. It’s just that no-one else was around to do it. I did once hand one of my plays over to another director, and the results were not pleasant. But that’s just because I was unlucky – he simply turned out not to be a great director. So what went wrong? Well, being the playwright, of course, I would start by defending the director’s choice of material. I’d like to think that the script wasn’t the problem. But as I said before, directing is simply a series of decisions, big and small. Good directors get all the big decisions right, plus as many of the smaller ones as they can before time or budget runs out. This particular director got one big decision completely wrong. The play, The Secret Lives of Henry and Alice is a fairly complex two-hander, and calls for virtuoso performances from two very experienced actors playing a variety of characters. So, after choosing the play, that’s the director’s next most important decision - choose the right two actors. Get them wrong – or even just get one of them wrong – and the whole piece falls apart. Nothing else works. None of the decisions you make about props, clothes, lighting, music, or anything else matters one jot if the wrong two people are on stage. It’s the same for all plays, of course, to a greater or lesser extent, but it’s so much more acute a problem with a two-hander.

Trust me on this.

1. Choose the right play.
2. Choose the right actors.
3. Everything else is easy.

I know that sounds facile, but it’s amazing how many people overlook one or both of those first two vital stages, and then work in vain trying to rescue their production from the abyss. Try making a nice cake with rancid eggs. Could a top chef do it? No. But the point is, he wouldn’t try. He’d go and buy some more eggs. There’s an old proverb about a good workman not blaming his tools. That’s because he doesn’t have to. A good workman uses the right tools.

So what if you simply haven’t got access to two actors who are good enough? Then choose a different play. One with less pressure on each part. No-one in the audience will see, or care about, all the problems you had in rehearsals, or the difficulties posed by the text. They will just pop along and see a production which either works, or doesn’t. And it’s a director’s job above all else to make it work. If it doesn’t work, it’s the director’s fault, not the actors’ or the playwright’s. It’s only the actors’ fault if they don’t do what they were asked to by the director, and if it’s solely the playwright’s fault then his play won’t be performed, which serves him right.

I’ve been lucky enough with my productions to have good actors at my disposal. Good actors make things easy. They make the director look good, and the writer look better. Which is great if they’re both me. Of course the reverse is also true – good writing and good directing will always make an actor look better to an audience. And let’s always remember that it’s the audience perception that counts. Back to our chef analogy, a typical audience member cannot separate the acting from the directing from the script any more than you can separate out the individual ingredients of a cake once it’s been baked. It’s now just a cake – a simple matter of taste – and they’ll either wolf it down, or have a polite nibble and leave it on the side of the plate.

Okay, that's quite enough for one session. I'll be back next time with some unorthodox thoughts on acting. In the meantime, please feel free to leave any comments below, and enjoy some of the goodies in the new members-only VIP zone of the website:

http://www.flyingducks.biz/theatre.html