I dream of one day living in a normal house that has carpet, a television, a laundry... Oh to be able to come home and lie on a couch, it to me, seems like heaven... not to rubbish my life at all, I love it, but the glitter is starting to loose it's gleam a little. Later this year I shall hoepfully be rewarded for all this work with a comfortable house (rented not owned, dream big, just not too big).
So we have a bar opening up soon, I have just submitted the planning application to Yarra city council.. It fucking begins, my favourite thing in the world- dealing with council. I equate it to trying to chew on my own eyebrows. In fact I came up with an idea for a website once that you send people send emails to, and then the site auto-responds by sending back to that person exactly the same thing as what they sent. Designed purely to be annoying and pointless - something that local council seems to achieve with far more flare.
I'd be slightly concerned about throwing that out on the interwebs if I had a slightly larger readership than 2, but as that is not the case if this where to get back to council I pretty much know who to blame... me.
So I am going to talk briefly about a show I saw last night but mostly so that I can relate it back to my favourite subject... me.
*This is not a review
I saw Christina by Attic Erratic... This group of very lovely young people have been getting more and more attention, I think because they are fun and lovely and talented and just generally nice to deal with. There is also a whole bunch of them. I saw there short and sweet piece last year, a more bizarre theatrical experience I'd not had in a while and man I laughed my arse off, sometimes at the show itself and sometimes by watching other audience members expressions as they watched it for the first time (I saw it a few times)
Christina was in the Collingwood Underground car-park, a great venue! I'd never been there before, pretty much it is my venues antithesis, large concrete, cold and just generally expansive. I have a black box theatre, the back wall at this place is so far away it disappears into the black. So any play that goes on there had better be engaging lest they be swallowed up into the abyss.
Now I was not expecting to run into many people that I knew, or any, I hadn't really thought about it... So I rocked up stuffing my face with some chips that I bought down the road and with a veggie burger in my side pocket. As I lined up to get tickets my friend (in fact my first ever girlfriend, now good friend) turned around... surprise! No big deal, then she introduces me to her friend, a stunningly attractive girl, whom I can only assume is some sort of model... anyway I wish I didn't have a handfull of chips hanging out of my mouth at that point. Then I ran into someone from the Fringe Festival office and we got talking about registrations and shows, after another conversation I had just had with someone from A E about a show they have coming up and another person about a potential show they have coming up, both at my venue... then I saw another venue owner I know and say hello, she happens to be talking to someone else who is looking for an actor who can do an English accent, to which I say I lived in England for 2 years and as I look at him he is insanely familiar, then we get told to take our seats so I get a drink and head in, and on the way realise that that guy was an old teacher of mine from Uni, one that I really enjoyed, so that revolution kind of knocked me back as the Venue owner I mentioned was now telling me how she'll put me forward for the roll and how it is a feature film that shows a lot of promise, and then I'm in my seat and the girl is there and she moves over for me, and then I shake hands with my old lecturer, and Fringe guy sits next to me and starts giving me a bit of history on the Collingwood Underground Carpark as we remark on the set which literally was remarkable, then lights out and show starts..
To say that I was having trouble concentrating at that point doesn't quite do it, I was so far from concentrating that it took a good 20 minutes for me to even consider trying to pay attention to what was happening in front of me.
That's when I started thinking about Miss Julie and my opening nights experience... I really thought people would be totally blown away by it, and whilst the reactions have been quite good, indeed glowing reports from some people, it hasn't had the response I thought it would- and what last nights experience reminded me was that, you can put all the detail you want into a performance, but only people who are actually watching will see it. But what you have to think about is how many people in the audience are thinking about their dinner, or their work, or the person sitting next to them, or the burger in their pocket or their arse falling asleep, or anything other than the show in front of them.
Then I started thinking about if there is anything that can be done about that. There could definitely have been more variation in the way this guy in the show spoke- it was a one person show and it was well delivered but it went on too long and he didn't vary his delivery all that much. I found that my attention was grabbed when he stopped talking, or pretty much any time there was a variation... so I don't know where to sit on this, was it their fault or mine? Perhaps a bit of both.
Even watching Miss Julie there is a noticeable difference for me when the actors are fully engaged to when they are going through the motions- I think that is the difference between a good and a great performance, and people that come for a good performance would never notice, they'd say, yeah- that was good, I enjoyed it, perhaps if they where really engaged as an audience member of their own volition they may get just as much out of it, but I think when the actor is engaged, and delivering, fully committed and making it new every night- those are the performances that really make people stand up and shout. I'm not sure that is what I saw last night. But it's not fare of me to say that makes Christina bad, it wasn't it was really good. Perhaps Tom was just having an off night, perhaps he wasn't.. who knows.
That's what some people have gone away from Miss Julie with, and it's a shame cause when it's hot, people rave, when it's not they say, yeah... that was good, I enjoyed it.
I'm going to continue to think on this. Is craft enough to create a memorable performance, many theatre people claim it is... I'm not convinced.
I got the part by the by. It was for a reading of a film script, not the actual film... but who knows what the future will bring :)
