oh no, what will our local councils do next!

Rosie told me something rather disturbing earlyer. Sutton Council, yes Sutton Council are pouring an un-affordable £4million into a youth centre that....wait for it. That will have a virtual street, with virtual drug dealers and peodofiles in order to teach primary school children, yes, primary school children about street crime and violence. What? Why? All a child needs to do is, watch the news! Or go out! or talk to people! We say that children spend to much time inside being unsociable playing on there computers and then some mad person decides, lets make a virtual reality, to teach them about reality! What? If you want a child to gain life experience, send them outside to play, they will see, and hear things, but no, lets coop them up in cyber space and teach them about reality in hyperreality! ahhhhh!

This makes us worried to, I want to go in to community theatre, I want to be able to teach people things, through community theatre, how am i, and a bunch of other just about to graduate theatre fanatics, going to do this when virtual reality is taking over the world? How I ask you?

How?

Pub communities

I work in a pub called the Cabbage Patch, in Twickenham. Its a big put right next to the train station and is very successful and nice place to go for the family, for friends. Its a good place to meet, eat, socialise, party, get smashed, make a mess of the toilets, start a fight with your best friend...

I like pubs, I like drinking, but when the time comes when you've had a enough to drink, you can't stop? Personally, I have some self control, other people don't. I was in the pub one time when two best friends started a fight with one another, the stronger one of the two grabbed hold of a pool que and smashed it over his best friends head. Why? Because he was angry and pissed. Not a good combination. The influence of alchol on our bodies and minds also holds a certain degree of influence over the decisions we make when it comes to the people around us. I could be drunk, someone might innocently bump in to me and I might hit the roof and swear at that person, not because I'm a nasty person, but because I'm drunk.

I love the sort of drunk you might get when your feeling over confident, you talk to people you might never talk to, tell someone you like there outfit, and ask them where they got it from when your in the loos. When your dancing (of a sort) you might grab the nearest person next to you and dance with them, just because you like the song and want someone to share a moment with you. I find it strange how little social groups might form or fall apart, just from the influence of alcohol. The enjoyment of a football match might unite one side of the pub, and not the other, or vise versa. There's the people in the resaurant and people by the bar, people outside smoking, all these small social groups that form, shift change and dispearse, everyday. Interesting is it not?

The end of the first week

Myself and Rosie have just completed the first weeks worth of rehearsals, it was hard work but I think we got somewhere, especially on friday where we created to new scenes and even tried running through everything we had so far. Mark asso came a long and helped us make the scenes a bit jucier. He said that it needed to be a bit ruder so we tried this, I think we might have been letting the barrier of 'there just children be present to much and I think we underestimate at times what the children will like. Therefore we worked on making the performance style a bit more 'older' but still tried to keep the blocking simple as to keep a clear focus.

We have founf problems this week with regards to blocking as we cannot start rehearsing in Chiswick part yet, therefore we have to try and think about the park's lay out as well as the blocking of the scenes. We decided not to worry to much, as long as the actors know the scenes well enough, re-blocking shouldn't be to hard.

The first rehearsal!

We had the first rehearsal for 'The Shrinking Land of Kalku'. I think personally that it went very well, we have pretty much made the first scene, just needs to be rehearsed and scripted more but otherwise a very good start to the rest of the rehearsal process. We will be rehearsing with the different character groups on a seperate basis but then having full cast rehearsals on the friday so we can begin tying scenes together.

This was my first experience in directing and I quite enjoyed it, I didn't really know exactly what I was doing but it worked and Rosie and I pulled it off and I feel we did a good job. I think once we get confident in our roles and comfortable with being directors and making bold decisions we will begin to flow well and get a lot done.

I got back from Manchester yesterday, and I believe its true what they say, people are a bit more friendly up north. I don't know why, and I'm sure (as I am a southener myself) that southern people are very nice people, but perhaps don't show that they are in front of strangers as much as the northern lot. It's just a thought, disagree or agree with me if you want.

It's strange that In London that when you walk around, whilst on a day out that you feel rushed, don't walk slow, they will trample you, or take you with them, regardless of whether you want to go that way or not. In Manchester I felt as ease, relaxed and calm and walked around at my own pace.

Is it the city that makes the people or the people that make the city? Why have londeners got this mentallity of go go go? Why do mancunian's seem to be more laid back? It's a mystry. Lets not even talk about Scotland!

Casting the show

The casting yesterday for me was very successful, myself and Rosie got to see everyone working together and on an individual basis. We went in already casted the show as we had an idea of who we wanted to play each character. However, after having watched them play out a scene and a monologue each we found we had very different ideas of who would be good at what. We played a character based game with them where they had to stand on chairs and play out all sorts of different characters in different situations. I found myself drawn to people who were the most playful and who started doing something the moment the stood on the chair. It showed us who would suit a playful role, who would suit a serious role and thus helped us see who could play each character.

The casting also suprised us and we ended up casting people in roles that we might not have expected to cast them in, which i think is a good thing as everyone exceeded expectations. Myself and Rosie are looking forward to directing the show as everyone in the community project is commited and excited about the final project therefore making the rehearsal process (hopefully) very enthusiastic and fun.

We will be rehearsing with the four main tribes people very closely while infusing that with working with the more cameo based roles such as Milky Magician. We will then have a full company rehearsal every friday so we can start running things and working together as a full company.

Rosie and I have also decided to meet together with Skye in order to prepare for the following weeks worth of rehearsals, by doing this we hope to be able to keep on top of everything and resolve any problems we might have faced in the previos week.

Giving the story away.

It felt strange last thursday telling the story because it felt like we were letting everyone else on a secret. There was a lot of hype about it and we felt that there was a lot of pressure on us to come up with something original. I also tried to keep an emotional distance from the story as I knew that it would have to be up to the design team to make it come to life, and as I director, I don't want to have too much ownership over the story as I know it will probably change and shift in direction when we start working on it. Therefore, looking at it from an objective angle from after easter is good because the story will start to create its own identity when myself and rosie start directing it.

I have never directed before so I am very keen to start and I think Rosie and I will be able to work together well. I want to, before anything else, do a lot of company ensemble work as I feel that being in four seperate teams for so long has hindered us ( in some respect) from working as one. Therefore I want everyone to get to know each other again and get used to acting in an ensemble.