Friday 28 February 2014

Reducing Bedlam


Against my expectations, I have been cast in Bedlam Reduced, the show where Bedlam satirizes itself. This, after many misdirections and red herrings, will actually be my final performance on the Bedlam stage (at one stage it looked like this would be Vatnsdal, which would have been unfortunate). Unless, of course, I don't end up leaving Edinburgh after all, at which point I might just stick around, never moving on- suspending myself in the metaphorical water of Bedlam like a prosophobic axolotl. But, let's all hope to God that doesn't happen: I don't have the facial hair to be David K. Barnes (However, I have the head hair to be Bryn Jones).

This will mean I've participated in all the major Bedlam traditions- Freshers' Play, Freshers' Slots, Panto, BedFest, 24 hour play, Candlewasters; and, if one includes Australian efforts- which one definitely should- I've actually written for, acted in and directed at all of them.

Bedlam Reduced will mean Esmond is directing me, and this is a new dynamic to our relationship, although there was a gratifying moment when the collected masses of the Bedlam Reduced cast joined me in calling out Esmond on his ridiculous pronunciation of 'segue'- he rhymed it with 'league'. I'll just call them next time he starts going on about 'banal premises', or as he'd say it 'bay-null prem-Ices' (he also pronounces 'rabid' and 'awry' like a twat).

However, Reduced also means that a date has been set for my final performance: it's weird when I think about how I entered that building on Monday 13th September 2010 at 12.00**.
This is how I know the exact time; and to think, I only went cos I wanted to score with Freya.
On April 6th 2014 at approximately 00.30- 3 years, 6 months, 24 days, 12 hours and 30 minutes later- I'll actually properly leave. And while I was absent for a year- for all of the time that I was physically in Edinburgh, there were only five weeks in total when I wasn't involved in some kind of theatre- granted, not all of that was in Bedlam, but 25 out of 47 shows were.
I've probably spent more of my waking hours in Edinburgh in Bedlam than anywhere else (after all, I changed flats four times). And as my last hurrah, I'm gonna take the piss out of Bedlam- its bureaucracy, its members and its brilliant, godawful, bittersweet, oxymoronic shows.
What a fitting end.

**I had to google several different several events to write this post, some of which happened four years ago and all the information was just instantaneously available to me; at the same time as I like having a sort of stenographer to my youth, it also creeps me out sadly how down to the minute I can pinpoint my entry to this one decrepit building. At least it'll make my autobiography less vague.

Friday 21 February 2014

Vainglorious Bastard Part 2

The Dionysia were performed last night: I was a part of Relief Theatre's contribution, Keep it up Sisyphus, written and directed by James Woe, who came to fame playing the Starscream to my Megatron in that one play where I was Robbie Coltrane. There were awards at the end of The Dionysia and while, sadly, we didn't win the big prize, Eric (the Scooby Doo to my Daphne) got Best Actor and I nabbed Best Other Greek Chorus (yes, I was a one-man chorus and yes, there is a joke in Pushing Daisies about that). This award was apparently created specifically for me, which makes it doubly as flattering and me even more prone to gush, Sally Fields style, "you like me! You really like me!". But, of course, I was too cool to actually show up for the awards show and instead sent a native Scotsman in my place to talk about the misrepresentation of his people.
It's actually kind of cool that I won an award for this because with Keep It Sisyphus I achieve the Best Supporting Actor quadrant. This consists of having played someone caught up in World War 2(just look at Academy Award winners/nominees Christoph Waltz and Ralph Fiennes), a pedophile (which I did in Spring Awakening- mirroring Stanley Tucci and Mo'nique),

a prostitute in Good Person of Szechuan (Mira Sorvino and Shirley Jones)


and a Woody Allen character in Death/God (Michael Caine, Diane Wiest, Mira Sorvino, Penelope Cruz, Martin Landau, Jennifer Tilly, Maureen Stapleton, Mariel Hemingway, Judy Davis, Diane Wiest again, the list goes on...)
The same as with Daphne in the pantomime, this could very realistically be my final role on the Bedlam stage, and I'd be more than fine with that- Greek Chorus was sassy, condescending and entirely oblivious to what was going on around him. I didn't even have to really act.
Doesn't he know there's a war on?

Friday 14 February 2014

Hair

A timeline of length for those who wanted one.
You know who you are.
If you don't know me, or simply haven't seen me for the past year or so, I have long hair that I tie back in a ponytail, unless I'm hung-over or need to use the hair tie for an improvised weapon. The reasons against having long hair are manifest and manifold: it gets caught in things, doubles my time to get ready in the morning, makes swimming impractical, looks kind of generally terrible and means that I am mistaken for a tramp an awful lot. I have been advised to get it cut by family, friends, colleagues and helpful strangers on the street desperate to inform me of my aesthetic faux pas. The thing is, despite all these reasons, I like my hair. I like that there is a number of things I can do with it, even if inevitably I just put it back in the same pony tail like always; I like the feeling of it on my back; I love the feeling when it's just been conditioned, or smelling it when I spring for decent shampoo; I like the feeling when the wind whips it around me- it makes me feel free, as stupid as that sounds. Also, there is also a personal significance to the length of my hair: the last time I got it cut was the day before I left for Melbourne, so any hair on my head has grown since I went to Australia. I can see how this sounds prissy and precious, but I like that I have a clear visual representation of how much time has passed since I made that change in my life.
Since New Year's Eve, I've been saying that I'd get my hair cut when I got a job interview; at the time, that seemed like an incredibly unlikely prospect and I thought I was safe to keep my locks for a little while longer. However, on the 24th February I will be travelling to Falkirk to interview for a job leading a class for parents on how to stimulate their children's language abilities. This sounds like an incredibly grown up and adult job for which to be interviewing, and I understand that I am much more likely to get this position if I show up not looking like a total scruffbag, but I really wish there was some way I could procure gainful employment and keep my stash intact. I'll miss my flowing locks when they're gone, even if I'm the only one.

Sunday 9 February 2014

Manhattan

The wonderful Emma Patten informed me today that she accepted an offer from Princeton University, and that they are even going to pay her to become a Doctor with a PHD from one of the most prestigious institutions in the world. This is amazing news, and I'm so immensely proud of her that I can't even express it, so I'm not going to try and will instead move on to dissecting how this affects me.
Princeton University is in New Jersey, which is where Jason and Kristen come from, and is a short ride from New York, which is a place that I have always wanted to visit. Do you see where I'm going with this? If I can scrape together funds, I could reacquaint myself with several old friends and tick a location off the old bucket list.
Of course, this will require quite a bit of funding (especially if I want to try and visit other parts of America while I'm there, which I probably will), so when I finally land a paid job (and I keep telling myself that this is a 'when' and not an 'if' scenario), I'll be saving for quite a while. And this got me to thinking about goals, both long term and short term. I actually know quite a few people who are planning the same thing as me- find employment, save like a badger, go somewhere cool for a while- Patrick, Poppy, Ella (who's already got a headstart on the find employment part and is presumably even now ferreting money away beneath her pillow). Poppy even said she was just going to repeat this cycle ad nauseum. 'But what after?!', a whiny little voice in my head (I suspect it may be Melodrama) is puling, 'what do we do once we're back from America?' And the answer is still 'I don't know'; but maybe for now, I don't need to know. Unlike the future Dr. Patten, my future is not clear-cut or well-defined, yet I know for what I'll be aiming during at least the next ten months or so- to visit America. And I can make a long-term plan later, when I've exhausted all my friends' hospitality twice over and no one else is willing to put me up. I'll be just like Llewyn Davis.
Except I will win an Oscar.

Friday 7 February 2014

Comrade Napoleon is Dying

I went to Becky's last night and am hung-over today, which is complete bullshit because I had, like, a thimble full of whisky. So, fuck this shit, is what I'm saying.
However, Becky's was very enjoyable: there is an observation about Rik that I have been repeating interminably since first year which is that he's unique amongst my friends in that he's an actual, legitimate functioning adult. As in, the lifestyle he leads is sustainable outside of undergraduate academics (this is less impressive now that he is longer a student); well, Rik is no longer unique in this regard out of my friends because Becky now counts as a proper grown-up, y'all (the fact that she probably has a worse hangover than me this morning does not diminish the truth of this assessment): she now lives in the suburbs, with a long term partner, serves delicious homemade vegetarian meals with a choice of two different desserts and has a dependent- her cat, Trixie. Enjoy adulthood, Becky, maybe I'll join you someday.
Maybe.

Lauren, my dissertation supervisor, has joined the choir of people that think I might be able to scrape a first- this is significant, because before a few months ago this choir consisted of my mother and my mother. I still don't know if I myself am singing with this choir; it'll take a lot of determination and effort and those aren't things at which I excel. Still, it's nice that there are now four people who believe in me. That's almost five.

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz re-premieres next week, and as such, things are heating up on the rehearsals front. If one removes the Christmas holiday period, compared to last time I've had a much more truncated rehearsal period- however, we've now done every scene at least thrice, so it's a case of rinsing and repeating until the day itself, making sure everything's polished and witty and bright and that at no point, having forgotten their lines, does anyone say, apropos of nothing, 'shut up, Tin Man'. Yes, this happened last time.
Apparently, I'm also going to be on the radio next week, shilling the show and generally trying to appear urbane and benign.
...I'll bring one of the cast with me and let them do the talking.

Saturday 1 February 2014

Everyone says I love you

Today there was a 'closeness and seduction' workshop with Relief Theatre, led by the incorrigible Rachel Bussom and Kirstyn Petras. I shouldn't really have gone, because my degree counts now etc., but it was an awful lot of fun. We started off with 'seductive ninjas', which is like normal ninjas but you make an awkward noise whenever you move: Kirstyn went for squeaks, Rachel for moans and I blurted out a serious of increasingly questionable statements that could or could not be interpreted in the wrong way. Though Adam won with 'Boom, headshot', just as he knocked an opponent out of the running.
The actual workshop itself consisted of variations upon telling your workshop partner that you loved them- either emotionally, physically or platonically- either through eye contact, physical contact or by just repeating the phrase 'I love you' to the point of inanity and back. My partner for these exercises was Emily Ingram, who's playing the Witch of the West in the upcoming production of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and who I now feel I know more thoroughly than anyone else in the cast. Especially since we decided to express physical desire without any words, which led to interesting positioning.

The Logic in Current Issues in Semantics and Pragmatics is starting to thicken, and I think I understand it as long as I keep it in my peripheral vision, but when I actually put it into focus it slips like sand through a sieve.

Speaking of uni, Poppy and I have begun to study together again, which is nice because it means that I get at least some work done. However, studying with Poppy does inevitably devolve into some looking at artworks online, telling each other irritating things about our dissertation as well as our excuses for not having done more, discussing interesting places we'd like to go, and staring at this photo:
which, I must admit, is one of the greatest things in all creation.

And, finally, I seem to have carved my immortal niche on Mother Bedlam by fusing the café door shut- I maintain that I just slid the lock shut, but it seems to have become stuck like that for all eternity. I like to think that, in generations to come, curious little Freshers will ask why one has to climb into the café from over the counter, and the fourth years will sit them down on their knee and tell the all about Uncle Rory...