This has been a wonderful week, in terms of both business and adventure.
Last weekend, Vicky and I decided to stay in the midlands again to save money. She suggested we go on a hike. My only real hiking experience being an infamous ascent of Half Dome last summer, I dug through my gear to find the most comfortable socks, stretchy-but-not-too-stretchy pants, several layers of shirts for those waves of exertion, and band-aids.
It didn't rain on us as we traipsed through cow fields and cozy wooded groves, but there were some nasty puddles for which my carefully selected running shoes just weren't equipped. In FACT, what we WENT on is, I believe, commonly referred to as a "stroll."
The following morning and afternoon saw us enjoying one of our many "duvet days," which consist of us, tea, various sundries and savories, and some sort of BBC period drama. The one in reference happened to be Pride and Prejudice, but we have since completed Bleak House and let me say, if you have yet to see it, bump it to the top of your list. I vouch whole-heartedly and so does the small pile of tissues that I blew through in the last two episodes.
But on to our London trip, lest you get the impression that all we do is posh out on the couch (I just made that expression up. Use it at your leisure).
We've been in a frustrating bind for a few months. Since February, we've had a location and performance dates dangling right in front of our faces with us unable to solidify them. The organization we've gone through to get a venue is a truly great NFP program called "somewhereto_" but they're swamped with the Olympics and just general, so although they out-and-out guarantee the venue will host us, conformation of the dates we've proposed keeps getting postponed.
Monday was our chance to see the space and ask any questions, and although we stiiiiiiiiill weren't able to confirm our dates, we did fall in love with the theatre. Honestly, it's more than either of us hoped for. We'd almost decided just to settle for a few shows here in Warwick and scrap the London bit, but seeing this space fired us up again.
Monday night, we stayed with a friend in Greenwich after seeing an angsty, vaguely racist coming-of-age flick for 60+'s called The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. If you feel a terrible urge to share the experience, I recommend going to your nearest Indian eatery and watching locals think they're more civilized than the wait staff. Simultaneously, listen to BBC 4. That should produce a similar effect.
We spent the first half of the next day exploring Greenwich and its many cheap bookstores and vintage shops. There was a particularly dusty one that had all sorts of hats... I'll take this moment to say that sometimes, in our general youthful merriment, Vicky and I lose track of the volume of our united voices. Though it occasionally makes us friends, it often seems to unnerve people. Luckily, in this instance, we charmed an older gentleman who took to popping out behind shelves with different hats on, where he was received with gales of laughter, especially when he unearthed a red-sequinned showgirl's headdress.
A very embarrassing address mishap (someone had pulled up two pages on her browser and inadvertently google maps'd a random address instead of the theatre she was looking for) found us in the entirely wrong part of London, so we had to go into a library to use the internet. England THROWS library cards at you. They cannot WAIT for you to get library cards. I have three already. They also seem to only hire extremely strange and mystical librarians. My first day here, while I was dragging my jet-lagged carcass around to keep from falling asleep before my train got in, I stopped in a library in Westminster and was greeted by a delightful fellow named Neil that I, a layman in the field of magical woodland folk, easily identified as a bridge troll. In Angel Islington, Vicky and I met yet another enchanted bookkeeper. At first he just seemed like a sweetly nervous man. He had us fill out our card forms and was making small talk when I, off the cuff, referred to Vicky as Allington, which is her surname. We often call each other Mathewson and Allington, so neither of us could figure out why the librarian had stopped short.
"Did you just call her 'Allington?'"
"...Yes..."
"But that's her surname."
"...Yeah..."
"But ANYONE could be Victoria Allington. Anyone off the streets!"
"......"
"They used to ask for more forms of identification!!!"
"........"
"But now they don't!!!!! Do you see????"
The more confused we got, the more worked up he became. Understand, he was by no means angry. In fact, he seemed almost delighted. We had and have absolutely no idea what he was talking about or what brought it on, but we agreed afterwards that it felt like the start of some sort of quest; like he was the gatekeeper of some amazing journey and was about to hand us our faded canvas maps and leather satchels.
Buuuut he didn't. He just gave us library cards which got us refreshed directions to the theatre. Trains. Are. SO expensive. They're four pounds thirty for a ride, which is roughly equivalent to eight dollars. FOR A SINGLE RIDE. ONE WAY. ANYWHERE. COULD BE JUST ONE STOP. Woof.
The reason we'd stayed overnight in London was to see this show, which I mentioned before, called "The Rest Is Silence." It's part of the World Shakespeare Festival and premiered in Brighton, but now it's in London and it'll close in Newcastle. I badly wanted to go because the reviews were good and the press photos looked AMAZING.
The show was an adaptation of Hamlet. Elements of it were really interesting and some even were amazing, but overall it fell a bit short. The production was hailed as "ground-breaking" and "innovative," and the concept truly was, but the actual production was, honestly, a bit boring and timid. I had been geared up for 90 minutes of pretentiously absurd performance art, which I normally hate, so you can imagine my disappointment when after all the pre-show pep talks of, "Try to see THEIR vision, Molly," and, "It's good for you to branch out artistically, Molly, realism isn't the only way," the show was roughly 20% funk and 80% daytime soap. Womp womp.
The last two days, we've had a lot of good progress in rehearsals. I think seeing a mediocre show made us more excited to make the best thing we can. I feel very proud of what we've accomplished so far and what I think we will accomplish. Our reason for creating this particular piece gets more valid to me every day - it's our way of addressing our individual fears, concerns, and hopes of/for where privacy and human identity will go in the course of our lifetimes. (See? The Hamlet didn't need to be pretentiously artsy. I did it for them. Sorry, I really don't mean it in a douchy way. This is a big concern for me right now, especially after the credit card fiasco and recently learning that even this blog, which I THOUGHT was privacy-protected, can come up in a search engine for the whoooole wide web to see).
We're seeing Julius Caesar at the RSC tomorrow night!!
OOOOOOHHHHH. So. I really don't know who my readership here consists of, but I'm gonna go out on a limb and post a link to Vick and my youtube page. Look, you have to use your best judgement. If the very idea of me cross-dressing, parodying Christian folk music/the Irish, or graphically depicting menstruation makes you uncomfortable, I offer this advice: don't follow the link. If you DO and what you see upsets you, don't come back to the page because we'll be posting weirder stuff as the weeks go by.
Also, just for the record, the characters shown here aren't part of our show. These are sample videos for a very small recorded segment; we were hoping they'd inspire our friends to make some similar vids for us to use instead of these, but we've begun to surrender that hope.
http://www.youtube.com/user/musclefleaeffect?feature=results_main
Lay'aaaazzz.
Last weekend, Vicky and I decided to stay in the midlands again to save money. She suggested we go on a hike. My only real hiking experience being an infamous ascent of Half Dome last summer, I dug through my gear to find the most comfortable socks, stretchy-but-not-too-stretchy pants, several layers of shirts for those waves of exertion, and band-aids.
I would have done better just to find some rain boots.
Hiking here compares to hiking in the US similarly to how snuggling a medium-sized teddy bear compares to snuggling a n eight-foot tall grizzly.It didn't rain on us as we traipsed through cow fields and cozy wooded groves, but there were some nasty puddles for which my carefully selected running shoes just weren't equipped. In FACT, what we WENT on is, I believe, commonly referred to as a "stroll."
The following morning and afternoon saw us enjoying one of our many "duvet days," which consist of us, tea, various sundries and savories, and some sort of BBC period drama. The one in reference happened to be Pride and Prejudice, but we have since completed Bleak House and let me say, if you have yet to see it, bump it to the top of your list. I vouch whole-heartedly and so does the small pile of tissues that I blew through in the last two episodes.
But on to our London trip, lest you get the impression that all we do is posh out on the couch (I just made that expression up. Use it at your leisure).
We've been in a frustrating bind for a few months. Since February, we've had a location and performance dates dangling right in front of our faces with us unable to solidify them. The organization we've gone through to get a venue is a truly great NFP program called "somewhereto_" but they're swamped with the Olympics and just general, so although they out-and-out guarantee the venue will host us, conformation of the dates we've proposed keeps getting postponed.
Monday was our chance to see the space and ask any questions, and although we stiiiiiiiiill weren't able to confirm our dates, we did fall in love with the theatre. Honestly, it's more than either of us hoped for. We'd almost decided just to settle for a few shows here in Warwick and scrap the London bit, but seeing this space fired us up again.
Monday night, we stayed with a friend in Greenwich after seeing an angsty, vaguely racist coming-of-age flick for 60+'s called The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. If you feel a terrible urge to share the experience, I recommend going to your nearest Indian eatery and watching locals think they're more civilized than the wait staff. Simultaneously, listen to BBC 4. That should produce a similar effect.
We spent the first half of the next day exploring Greenwich and its many cheap bookstores and vintage shops. There was a particularly dusty one that had all sorts of hats... I'll take this moment to say that sometimes, in our general youthful merriment, Vicky and I lose track of the volume of our united voices. Though it occasionally makes us friends, it often seems to unnerve people. Luckily, in this instance, we charmed an older gentleman who took to popping out behind shelves with different hats on, where he was received with gales of laughter, especially when he unearthed a red-sequinned showgirl's headdress.
A very embarrassing address mishap (someone had pulled up two pages on her browser and inadvertently google maps'd a random address instead of the theatre she was looking for) found us in the entirely wrong part of London, so we had to go into a library to use the internet. England THROWS library cards at you. They cannot WAIT for you to get library cards. I have three already. They also seem to only hire extremely strange and mystical librarians. My first day here, while I was dragging my jet-lagged carcass around to keep from falling asleep before my train got in, I stopped in a library in Westminster and was greeted by a delightful fellow named Neil that I, a layman in the field of magical woodland folk, easily identified as a bridge troll. In Angel Islington, Vicky and I met yet another enchanted bookkeeper. At first he just seemed like a sweetly nervous man. He had us fill out our card forms and was making small talk when I, off the cuff, referred to Vicky as Allington, which is her surname. We often call each other Mathewson and Allington, so neither of us could figure out why the librarian had stopped short.
"Did you just call her 'Allington?'"
"...Yes..."
"But that's her surname."
"...Yeah..."
"But ANYONE could be Victoria Allington. Anyone off the streets!"
"......"
"They used to ask for more forms of identification!!!"
"........"
"But now they don't!!!!! Do you see????"
The more confused we got, the more worked up he became. Understand, he was by no means angry. In fact, he seemed almost delighted. We had and have absolutely no idea what he was talking about or what brought it on, but we agreed afterwards that it felt like the start of some sort of quest; like he was the gatekeeper of some amazing journey and was about to hand us our faded canvas maps and leather satchels.
Buuuut he didn't. He just gave us library cards which got us refreshed directions to the theatre. Trains. Are. SO expensive. They're four pounds thirty for a ride, which is roughly equivalent to eight dollars. FOR A SINGLE RIDE. ONE WAY. ANYWHERE. COULD BE JUST ONE STOP. Woof.
The reason we'd stayed overnight in London was to see this show, which I mentioned before, called "The Rest Is Silence." It's part of the World Shakespeare Festival and premiered in Brighton, but now it's in London and it'll close in Newcastle. I badly wanted to go because the reviews were good and the press photos looked AMAZING.
The show was an adaptation of Hamlet. Elements of it were really interesting and some even were amazing, but overall it fell a bit short. The production was hailed as "ground-breaking" and "innovative," and the concept truly was, but the actual production was, honestly, a bit boring and timid. I had been geared up for 90 minutes of pretentiously absurd performance art, which I normally hate, so you can imagine my disappointment when after all the pre-show pep talks of, "Try to see THEIR vision, Molly," and, "It's good for you to branch out artistically, Molly, realism isn't the only way," the show was roughly 20% funk and 80% daytime soap. Womp womp.
The last two days, we've had a lot of good progress in rehearsals. I think seeing a mediocre show made us more excited to make the best thing we can. I feel very proud of what we've accomplished so far and what I think we will accomplish. Our reason for creating this particular piece gets more valid to me every day - it's our way of addressing our individual fears, concerns, and hopes of/for where privacy and human identity will go in the course of our lifetimes. (See? The Hamlet didn't need to be pretentiously artsy. I did it for them. Sorry, I really don't mean it in a douchy way. This is a big concern for me right now, especially after the credit card fiasco and recently learning that even this blog, which I THOUGHT was privacy-protected, can come up in a search engine for the whoooole wide web to see).
We're seeing Julius Caesar at the RSC tomorrow night!!
OOOOOOHHHHH. So. I really don't know who my readership here consists of, but I'm gonna go out on a limb and post a link to Vick and my youtube page. Look, you have to use your best judgement. If the very idea of me cross-dressing, parodying Christian folk music/the Irish, or graphically depicting menstruation makes you uncomfortable, I offer this advice: don't follow the link. If you DO and what you see upsets you, don't come back to the page because we'll be posting weirder stuff as the weeks go by.
Also, just for the record, the characters shown here aren't part of our show. These are sample videos for a very small recorded segment; we were hoping they'd inspire our friends to make some similar vids for us to use instead of these, but we've begun to surrender that hope.
http://www.youtube.com/user/musclefleaeffect?feature=results_main
Lay'aaaazzz.
No comments:
Post a Comment