Turning techie

I like a challenge.  Really I do.  So, when I was asked to stage manage our local operatic society's production of Oklahoma! of course I said "yes".

It's a great show.  It has a wonderful cast -  one is a dear friend without whom my life would feel darker and several who I'd invite to dinner.  My husband is conducting it, my son is performing (as a cowboy, as a break from exam fever) and the director is the sweetest lady you will ever meet.

Yesterday at 6.30pm I wished all 32+ of them at the bottom of the sea as my gallant band of grizzled stage crew finally managed to ease away the last bit of set and the last prop.  Just in time for them to arrive and start USING the set.  How dare they?  Excuse me, this set is BEAUTIFUL.  Every prop has a HOME.  Everything has a place and there are good access points with no issues obstructing fire exits.  Now just all go away and let the crew and I enjoy ourselves moving it around in peace.

I've turned into a Techie. Worse, I've turned into a techie with the temper of a disgruntled troll and a shout that breaks lightbulbs.

Techies are a unique theatre breed.  If you want lighting, sound, set, stuff flying in, access to the broom cupboard, lightbulbs changing or anything of a practical nature done, you need a techie.  Generally they have a low opinion of actors because these only serve to clutter up their stage.  They're often not that keen on directors either - as who would be if you'd been up til midnight hanging a cloth only for them to swan in the next morning and insist that it needs to be moved.  I speak as a director who has done just that.  I was one last week.  How times change.

Last night was the Tech run. Our run.  The techie version of heaven when if any one of us raises a finger, the show stops while we mutter in corners and make infintesimal changes to the gaffer tape markings.  This is in direct contrast to our normal role which is to make sure the show stops for nothing bar fire or death.

Waving wheat in Oklahoma.  It sure smells sweet.

All this is a long-winded way of saying I spent yesterday squeezing the glorious open plains of Oklahoma into what is basically a big shoebox with no wing-space.  We did it.  Dress rehearsal tonight and then the show is mine all mine.  Never mind that the director has been slaving over this thing since February.  The stage manager is god when a show goes up.  Can't wait.

Just don't touch my wagon.

To do list - 5 May 2012

·         Borrow strimmer from dear friend to flatten lawn.  Before it stops being a lawn.

·         Sew pilgrim badges onto large cloaks.

·         Trim three strangely squashy hats.

·         Find shawl to wrap baby in.

·         Re-bloodstain hand wrapping.

·         Run Act 1 of Faustus and make sure new Lechery knows what to do.

·         Measure Mephistopheles.

·         Take in Grisolan's trousers.

·         Make sure Akahale the dragonborn warlock is up to date and send to patient DM waiting for him.

·         Test-drive bruise and dead skin makeup for Accrington Pals.

·         Paint bed type structure.

·         Find three pairs of rogue boots - i.e. the ones we had before the great boot crisis of May 2 which have now disappeared into the props cupboard.

·         Update games with entertaining treasure items.

·         Check rules for impending test drive game for some lovely bloggy friends.

·         Re-write Malfi programme in English and with correctly spelled names.

·         Make more blood pellets.

·         Find another jacket for goaler.

 
Sometimes I think my life might be a little strange.

Boots, hats and treasure

Heading to York this morning to collect multiple pairs of boots.  To be accompanied by super-talented ex-student so that we can discuss poster design.   Hopefully she can also map read as this place is somewhere in the middle of a field if Google Maps is correct.  There is considerable getting lost potential here, I feel.

On my return, I shall hurl myself into hat construction.  Squashy, vaguely renaissance hats are a huge boon to a largely female cast, half of whom are playing men.  Long hair is not awful for the period, but the fringes need to be off the faces.  Hence hats.  Luckily they are not hard to make and are a great way of using up fabric scraps.  Waste not want not.  And here I suddenly turn into my mother, whose favourite saying this was.

In gaming news, it's treasure time for the Lost City crew.  Half of them anyway.  This split party have been battling insects and arachnids for the last six weeks.  The team charged with taking down a huge spider queen and her spawn have succeeded.  Their treasure has been consumed by said spider over the course of her long career.  Apparantly.  I'm not sure any spider, however huge, can reasonably eat weaponry, but so says the module.  I'll roll with it.  If the party want to pick through spider entrails, that's fine by me. 

Stuff to gladden adventuring hearts

The other half of the party are still effecting regime change among the Trignotarbs.  Their task is somewhat harder, but I am confident that they too will be collecting a treasure bundle and some valuable, level-raising XP shortly.  They have an angel on standby to hoist them up and down the walls, so all should be well for them.  If they can avoid the healing sapping larvae.

As you were

Trapped in the strange limbo of the A-Z challenge, I've nonetheless been doing other stuff this past month.  Even if it doesn't feel like it.

First, a warm welcome to the new followers and friends.  This is where reality hits and you all discover just how tedious and ranty I can be.  To give you fair warning, this blog's title is not merely alliterative.  It is descriptive.  Who'd have thought?

Drama - is my bread and butter, so you get a lot of stuff about rehearsals, casts, costuming, directing, performance and so on.

Dice - gaming is another passion and I currently run four online games using D&D 4e rules.  It also covers my attempts to build an RPG setting.  Mikelmerck.  So dearly loved, so often the bridesmaid.

Damsons - is a kind of catch all phrase for my ongoing attempts to organise my home and garden.  We have a damson tree which fruits heavily and is a kind of emblem for the chaos that ensues when I try to keep things under control.

The next few days are going to be interesting.  At the end of this week, the Malfi cast have their final rehearsals and then perform on Tuesday and Wednesday next week.  Based on recent efforts, the audience will have a treat in part one and a horrible let down in part two, so that needs to change fast.  I am no believer in things being all right on the night.  I prefer solid preparation, but then I'm stodgy like that.  Unsurprisingly perhaps, some of the cast appear to think differently. 

Costuming for Malfi  is on target with the exception of boots.  I need many, many pairs still.  Failing that, we may just have to go with black shoes, but it will be wrong and will grate horribly.

Dream option

Likely reality

First though, I need it to stop raining long enough to mow the blasted lawn.  Unfortunately, I have a special relationship with the weather gods.  If I even think about getting the mower out and finding the extension cable, clouds rush to my aid and prevent my doing anything so energetic.  While this is a great excuse, I'd like to get the grass cut before it becomes impossible to find my way into the house.

S is for Short

S

Short person speaking here.  At just on 5 foot, I spend a lot of my life looking up.  Living in London made summer a horror.  No tube journey was complete without my ending up with my nose wedged in someone's armpit.  Joyous.

A point I make to drama students is that short is often good.  Better a well thought out scene with a proper beginning, middle and end than an interminable muddle that blurs the point.

Short in games does not mean bad either.  Intense wins out over long-drawn any day, but is notoriously hard to achieve in PbP online.  Long stories, short episodes is what I aim for.

Short is also for this post.  I'm a fan of economical writing (pace Tolkein and the three volume gang).  One day I'll manage it myself.  In the meantime, longwinded phrases, subclauses and conjuctions are my friends.

N is for Nativity Plays - drama in a nutshell

N

I don't know how it works elsewhere in the world, but for virtually every British child, the nativity play is the standard introduction to live performance.  Every nativity play contains a microcosm of every play ever produced.   All illustrations by Giotto.

Mary
There will have been ferocious competition for the female lead.  Reactions to the ultimate choice will vary from shoulder-shrugging "meh, it's not a very good part anyway" to "I know it should have been me, but I was just too good to play opposite Joseph".  These opinions will be expressed in audible whispers at every rehearsal.  If Mary is ever absent, there will be a flurry of eager readers-in, eyeing the director and hoping that the miracle will happen and someone will say "we've made a terrible mistake, you are clearly much, much better and shall replace her right now".

Joseph
It will have been very easy to cast Joseph as only two boys will have been eligble to play the role at all and one of them will have been absent on audition day.  The performer will take one of two forms.  He will either be sublimely confident or a gibbering inaudible wreck.  In either case, he will be mollified by being allowed to wear a beard.  Joseph and Mary will behave as though they are plague-ridden and refuse to hold hands.  Both will repeatedly say "we'll do it on the night".

The Magi
These three will be clowns.  They will probably be the most experienced performers and know that the best parts do not necessarily have the most lines.  They will make the whole cast laugh and everyone will adore them.  The director will not adore them.  At least one of them will have already played the role before and will know how to do it better.  They will not learn their lines as they will assume that the other two will.  During the performances, they will suffer collective memory loss and go through their scene three times in different iterations.  On leaving the stage they will have a massive and highly audible argument about whose fault it was.

Gabriel
Gabriel will either be a reject Mary (see above), or taking their first important part.  In either case the role will be taken extremely seriously and the performer will shoot resentful glances at unruly cast members.  The director will learn to dread those faintly pursed lips and the whispered "can I just ask you something?" 

Angels
Angels are obsessed with their costumes.  Furtive arguments will break out over length of dress and amount of tinsel.  They will always have a solo spot of some kind which will be impossible to rehearse as the whole team will only be available at the dress rehearsal.

Shepherds
This is the ultimate home for the too young, too shy and too grumpy.  They will want to be part of the play, but will feel that the whole project is an excuse to chat to their mates.  Some will find relative anonimity a relief, but there will always be a contingent hunting for ways to make themselves noticeable.  In a year's time, such performers will be playing Magi (see above).  Shepherds become obsessed with props.  "Can I have a stuffed sheep?"  If there is a Head Shepherd, he will be the other potential Joseph (see above).  He will need a special prop and woe betide anyone who tries to move or use it.  "That's my crook!" followed by a solid thump and tears is standard at this point.

If you think the above is cynical, all I can say is visit your local Operatic or Dramatic Society and look for yourself.  The person waving their arms, looking despairing and trying not to have a breakdown is the director.

F is for Father (of second order cybernetics and me)

F

Stills from the second video link below.

I said that my father would get a longer entry, and here it is.   First, a couple of video clips giving a rough idea of some of his work and ideas as explained by the man himself.  They're both rather grainy and come courtesy of Youtube.

The Experimenters from 1974 - part of a BBC series.  I dimly remember this being filmed.  Note the sweet synchronicity of my childhood being in Richmond, Surrey and our home now being in Richmond, North Yorkshire.

Archive footage  from 1979 I think.  Not sure where it was made, but it gives a good flavour of G's style.

Both are edits by Paul Pangaro, who also runs an archive of G's work (link at the bottom of the post).

All of this is public record of course.  My own perspective is a bit different since I grew up with the man and understood only a very little of his work.

It took me a very long time indeed to realise that G was a major figure and regarded by some as a bona fide genius.  I was a naive child perhaps, but it was a genuine shock to discover that other people had fathers who did things differently.

• Like being awake during the day.  
• Like not walking up and down the road eight times before dinner.  
• Like not running on the spot for 40 minutes every night.  
• Like not leaving eight dabs of food on the edge of his plate for the fairies.  
• Like not having a basement full of combustible machinery and a steady stream of adoring and/or traumatised staff and students living with them. 

Looking back now, I realise too that my mother was made of truly sterling stuff as she took all this in her stride for the most part.  G had huge personal charm, but was also tunnel-visioned and selfish to an astonishing degree.  Our lives revolved around  his timetable and nothing and nobody got in the way of it.  He needed that order to function I think.  He simply assumed, childlike, that things would happen as he wished because that was the way he wanted the world to work.  

That makes him sound like a unloveable tyrant and he was not.  He was, in all the important ways, the kindest of men.  He moved mountains for his friends, students and family, often going to a lot of trouble to do so.  He took infinite pains with his students, pushing them far beyond anything they'd thought themselves capable of achieving.  He listened with equal interest to the latest developments in his own field to the minutiae of my day at school.  Really listened as well.

I've never known anyone so open to information.

For the record, I loved him dearly, miss him terribly and wish almost every day that I could share things with him.

A proper memoir is brewing I think.

For those interested in the technical side of G's work, I warmly recommend Paul Pangaro's extensive archive.  To be found here.   Paul did his PhD with G and is an old, old friend. 

Back to Odysseus

I love this picture.  I can't tell if Odysseus is exasperated by some idiocy committed by his crew, slightly perturbed by something just out of eyeshot or merely having an "I wonder where I am now?" moment.

Saw some very good auditions indeed from the Bowes children and now need to finish writing the play to accommodate them all properly.  Lots of potential among this cast including a couple of rather useful singers.

Am toying with getting sirens to sing "Poor Unfortunate Souls" from the Little Mermaid.

Starting to enjoy this now after a serious block.  Possibly enforced absence from this script has helped.

Just discovered what Odysseus is looking at:

Circe en grande tenue.

Dress rehearsal

Despite a last second cast change (really last second, the decision was made on Thursday), the technical and dress runs for Antigone went very well.  I'll go down tomorrow to put some detail on the set and work through the lighting plot, but it looks ready for an audience.

Just as well, as it gets one tomorrow and Tuesday.

There is much to be proud of here and many firsts to celebrate.

For a lot of the cast, it's their first show in a professional environment.

It's the first time their director has directed.  She's done a beautiful job and said this afternoon that it looked the way it had appeared in her head when we first discussed her taking on this job way back last summer.

It's the first time I've mentored anyone through that process.  I really hope I haven't driven her nuts.

It's the first time I've made an entire set of costumes from scratch.  None of them have collapsed yet, although two pairs of trousers need attention due to inappropriate sitting.

It's the first time our Youth Theatre has been in a position to present a double bill of shows directed by our students for other students. 

The last is the real kicker for me.  If we can inspire our students to work to that level and enable them to do so, we might be doing something right.

Good luck to them all.

It's all about passion.

Looking down my blog list this morning, I came across this interesting question from Charlie Warren, over at The Semi-Retired Gamer.

What follows isn't really an answer to his question, it's more of an early morning rumination on RPGs, why they appeal to me and what they attempt to do.  There is the slight proviso that  this has relevance to me as I'm attempting to add another setting to the towering heap in the form of Mikelmerck.  Let's leave the slowness of that process out of the equation for now.

RPGs are about drama and interactivity.  Communal story-telling, in short.  In order to tell a communal story, you need a shared world for that story to happen in - which is why there is such a plethora of game settings.

In the case of Mikelmerck, I don't yet have to make any really hard decisions about how much information is too much.  It's still evolving.  I am simply finding bits of intriguing story and putting them out there without much of an attempt to impose a system on them.  Looking at the work so far, what I have for the most part is a series of adventure seeds.  These are places players might go, people they might meet, events they might encounter and creatures they may run across.  Any of them could lead to a story.

If I was in a position to GM such a game, that might well be all I'd want.  I respond to story rather than system.  In fact I usually ignore system in favour of whether or not I like the setting.  It was designed for Runequest rather than 4e?  So what.  If it has images I like, people and places I want to visit, something I can feel passionate about, I'll use it.

Heading back to the original question, I'm slightly surprised to find that I don't need or even want that much information as a player or a GM.  What I do want is passion.  Information is just mechanics.  Mechanics can be got.  Imagination, passion and desire to be part of a world is something else. 

That's what I want.  There's a lot of it out there.

Maria is a bitch and other thoughts on characterisation

Twelfth Night rehearsal today.  We're into the last three weeks now so things are moving along pretty swiftly at this stage.  We're mostly over the line-learning agony hump.  We're mostly over the "urk, which entrance is this one?" issues.  We're mostly over the mechanical problems of remembering to bring stuff on and take it off.

In short (and I can only speak for myself - I've got no idea how anyone else approaches this), I've suddenly got room to think about Maria.

Now the thing is, I love playing her.  And when I'm playing her, I love her.  I love her sass, her bossiness and her single-minded determination to marry Sir Toby and make Malvolio into a laughing stock.

If I met the woman, I'd want to smack her.  Hard.  She's a lot of things I actively dislike and work quite hard to avoid.

One of the big games we all play with drama is the taking on of character.  It is also one of the hardest lessons that any performer learns.  You are not the character.  You are just the vehicle allowing the character to live.

Case in point.  A cast member yesterday at my Faustus rehearsal is playing a cardinal.  She hates it.  She hates feeling she's a laughing-stock.  She hates being smug and pompous and being made a fool of by Faustus and Mephistopheles. 

She is still at the stage of feeling that a character with negative qualities (perceived or otherwise) is a reflection of her.  We all do it.  Some actors never really move away from that and have real difficulty playing unsympathetic characters.  The key thing is, that if you can do it, a huge barrier falls away.

Once you're made that leap from "I am the character" to "I am portraying the character" a whole world opens up.  The freedom is immense.  You can find your inner clown.  You can use all the negative, non-permissible things you spend your whole real life denying.  Freedom.

This is why I love performing so much.

Just about there

It may not seem like it, but I've been fairly incommunicado for the last couple of days. 

That's clearly a relative term as I've posted a lot on this blog, but (and this is very unusual) I have been deliberately offline for chatting.  Partly because I've been running from rehearsal to rehearsal, but also because I've needed to keep my fingers focused on writing some actual script.

Success is imminent.  I nearly have enough to let the Drama Club test drive it today.  Even more important, enough to let them take bits away and look at it prior to auditions next week.

Finding enough readily pronounceable Greek girl's names has been a challenge and I'm still not sure about Omphale.

Where the worlds meet

The more I write about the mechanics of drama, rehearsals and gaming, the more I become aware of how close they are.  I am sure this should be obvious, but like many things, the realisation has come to me quite slowly.  Piecemeal, at least.

GMing and directing have an enormous amount in common.  In both cases, when it works well, you are facilitating creativity.   When it doesn't work, you are basically a tedious nagbag.

Naturally enough, I prefer the first option, but accept that part of the job will consist of doing the second.  My aim is to try to do as much facilitation and as little nagging as possible.

The only problem with this revelation is that I'm now quite likely to start demanding the players know their lines and telling casts to roll a save v daze.

This could go badly.

Antigone - so nearly there

The Antigone team are heading into the final, final stages of preparation now.

Their last two rehearsals have been on the stage proper and it's been an enormous benefit to them.  For the first time, they've seen and worked in the space and realised what level of projection they need to use.

One more rehearsal next week, then their dress and technical rehearsals and then they're performing.

It dawned on me abruptly that this was an extremely inexperienced crew in many ways.  Which is dumb, as I've known from the outset, but never really put it together - so bear with my idiocy.

Of the seventeen cast members, only six have any significant performance experience.  Now, of those six, they've clocked up a lot of on-stage hours in the panto, the local Operatic Society and some Youth Theatre shows, but they've never done anything quite like this before.  Of the remaining eleven, about half have not really performed at all.

Their director is one of our senior students and she has never directed before.  Their mentor is another senior who has never mentored before.  I am the technical crew and costumier and while I can do the stage management without worry, I've never created seventeen costumes before.  As regular readers will know to their cost.

We are, between us, putting on an intense, passionate tragedy lasting one hour in which most of the cast never leave the stage.

Craziness.

Except ... it works.

They did a really good run yesterday.  While there are still some dodgy corners, we all know what they are and how to remove them. 

I am so proud.

On a cheerier note

About to start assembling the summer play for Bowes. 

Olympic year and all that, so we've decided they'll be doing Odysseus's voyage home.  Since a lot of them have nice voices, it means we can include a bit of singing as well as a lot of physical stuff. 

They test drove being monsters today and it was surprisingly effective.

Moving on to daggers

In my dreams, the daggers for Malfi (and Faustus later on in the year) would look like this:

Unfortunately, money is limited and health and safety must always be respected, so what they actually looked like was this:

Not as impressive, as I'm sure you'll agree.

Note, however, the past tense two sentences up.  Work is underway to convert the shiny plastic beasties into something a little closer to the top picture.  Side bits have been lopped off and handles wrapped in fabric and painted.  Cord wound around them.  Handles now look much better.  Attempts to de-glisten the blades have so far failed, but am about to apply sandpaper and hope.

The melancholy stage

The above is slightly unfair, but at the moment our Twelfth Night rehearsals are overwhelmed by mournful cast members clustering around stairwells and muttering lines.  In extreme cases, we grab other cast members and retreat to the kitchen, making each other suffer the agony of "no, it's not 'thy' that time, it's 'you'".  We are, in short, at the stage when we are agonisingly close to knowing it.

What this means in practice is that scenes run like lightning right up to the point when a particular word or phrase eludes us.  Then tooth grinding, wails, head bashing and swearing ensue.  Alternatively, we have to suffer the sterephonic effect of our highly efficient prompt stating the line slowly and carefully for us to repeat wrongly.  Many times.

Next step is to bash it all into shape with runs so the sequence becomes clear and the story gets told.  We finish the scene by scene grind this week and move on to running whole acts.  In theory this should make it all sink in.

Making masks for madmen

Interesting morning spent with ex-student making masks for Malfi madmen and trying to make daggers look less shiny.

Slightly concerned that masks looks more risible than terrifying.  A tea-cosy does not really inspire fear.  Dye and decor will help and I am off to buy stuff to do that.  The result I'm aiming for is something a little like this:

The proto-type reworked dagger, on the other hand, looks rather good.  Once the fabric glue sets properly, paint goes on and then we'll see.

Balancing Act

Half term has crept up with alarming speed.  January seems to have happened without my really noticing and taa-daa, suddenly it's nearly the middle of February.

The One Act Festival is a kind of starting post for the YT show season.  From here to the middle of July, we're in constant preparation mode as one show after another reaches the top of the heap.  In my case, it's Antigone first (12-13) March, followed a month later by Malfi.  Then I get a six week lull before Faustus crashes in.  In between those there are three other shows for which I have no direct responsibility other than being part of the YT team.  Which is, believe me, quite enough.

In the meantime, I'm honing my own acting muscles in Twelfth Night immediately after Antigone.  I've also somewhat foolishly agreed to stage manage Oklahoma! for the local operatic society.  Yay for good decision making.

Somewhere along the way, I also need to concoct a play for the Bowes Drama Club.

Oh - and I'm starting a long-awaited PTTLS course in ten days.  To make me eligble to teach adults.  Assuming that it doesn't get cancelled again.  Since I've been trying to do this blasted course since September, this is rapidly turning into a joke.  But I will keep trying.

Now, all this is either fun or paid or both so I'm not at all complaining, but it does mean I need to spend this non-teaching half term week with some care.

Where does the gaming fit into all this?  Where and when it can is the answer.  The PbPs will roll along quite happily as bar making maps they are not a huge time sump.  Those that have seen my completely inept mapping skills might well think not a lot of time gets given there either.

The real heartbreaker is Mikelmerck, which hasn't had anything like the attention it deserves for ages.  I'm missing it badly now, particularly as parts of the taster 4e adventure have been set there.  If I can find any time at all, I really want to write a starter adventure for it.  Hmm.  Maybe run a Google+ playtest? 

Update on a long day

One Act Festival went well.  Our YT did themselves proud and picked up a couple of bits of silverware, as well as nominations in the most categories.  Good adjudicator.  Extremely thorough and very detailed which is always helpful.

Officially exhausted now.