Maintaing a direction

Last week I stopped acting and started directing. I've learnt a lot from my experience under the directatorship of The Wicked Witch of the North and had an arsenal of invective ready to hurl at my actors with gay abandon. I could also taint them all with the dreaded 'Christchurch Acting' label as it was a Christchurch play, done by Christchurch actors for Christchurch children in Christchurch.

It's been marketed as an improvised version of 'Cinderella' which poses problems from the outset. In theory when something is improvised you should be able to say anything and the other person should say yes and then say the first thing that comes into their head which is usually filthy and then the other person says yes and rubs part of their body and says something even more filthy and then the other person touches the first part of the other persons body that comes to mind and then both actors pretend to have intercourse before the third actor comes on stage under a blanket pretending to be an animal and wraps the scene up by fainting.

As statistics have proved that men think about other men having sex every seven seconds it's no surprise that an art form  where self-censorship is severly frowned upon usually descends into the gutter very quickly. When you're dealing with a children's story like Cinderella that is riddled with IED's (improvised explosive details) like, balls, fairys and a clock with a big donger, you have to be very careful. You also have to be careful to include important elements like Cinderella, at least one Step-sister, a Fairy Godmother, at least one Slipper, a Prince, the Prince's Big Ball and a Clock with a Big Donger.

As a conscientious director I have tossed and sweated night after night trying to grapple with the crucial question, 'How much can you change Cinderella before it becomes Pretty Woman?' I'm a big fan of Julia Roberts however I don't want the children to go away believing the way to a better life is to shag someone much richer than yourself, even if they have a gerbil up their bum. The message I want to get across is the importance of wearing nice shoes and good foot hygiene.

It's not really the children I'm worried about as they will go along with anything as long as it's entertaining. It's the grandparents who write the letters that cause trouble. Old people have lots of time on their hands and gleefully grab the opportunity to be outraged at anything, especially if they think their grandchildren's minds are being subverted by subtext. They'll sit there scowling and scribbling as their grandchildren laugh at one of the ugly sisters being portrayed by a man as this will undoubtedly lead their little grandson to put on a dress and run away to Animates to buy a gerbil to shove up their arse.

The other stressful thing about directing is that everybody wants to ask you questions. Costume people ask you how long you want Cinderella's skirt to be, sound people ask you how long you want the dongs at midnight to be and lighting people ask you how long you want the fade on the Chrome Par 16 Long Nose 12V to be and whether you want to close the barn doors after Cinderella has bolted or blow some smoke up her gobo. The pressure is enormous and now I can understand why the Wicked Witch of the North foamed whenever I asked if I could put my foot on a chair. I've found the secret to directorial success is to pretend you know what you're talking about by screaming things like, "I'd like a chase and a three phase fade with some DMX interpretation" or, "Cut some mids and sub the woofer by 3dB" or my personal favourite, "Make it more Brechtian." That last one is guaranteed to impress and confuse everyone within a two metre radius, even Bertolt Brecht... who looks a bit like Ronnie Corbett.

                          Bertolt Brecht                                        Ronnie Corbett

And if anyone knows an easier way to put bloody photos side by side on Blogger I'd love to know.

Anyway, to finish, here's a photo of me in the second sexiest car in Christchurch.

This is an Austin 1300. I used to have one and it was purple.

Watching Paint Cry

Last week was very busy with two corporate events and this week has been very very busy with one audition. The audition was for a commercial for a bank and I got sent two scripts because obviously someone at the bank had read my blog and realised I was very versatile. As usual I can't give too much away due to signing something in the waiting room however here are some snippets of the character description to give you an idea of my type.

"Interestingly normal...avergare with a twist, a little odd or slightly bent. Perhaps dreamy or hopeful, distracted or bored, eager or dull."

It's these sorts of descriptions that actors love as they are invaluable in nailing down your character. I decided to go all out for this one and be interesting, normal, twisty, odd, dreamy, hopeful, distracted, bored, eager AND dull. I didn't bother with 'slightly bent' as that's a given. The 'avergare' description was a tricker proposition however after googling avergare Google asked me if I meant average and I realised I did so then I asked 'Should I keep acting?' and it brought up this page about Vanessa Hudgens. It's actually an online poll and I clicked the box for 'Yes! I love Vanessa!' along with 15% of other participants. Predictably a whopping 59% have clicked on the 'Her best talent is getting naked. More porn!' box, which is a sad indictment on how 59% of the population view actors who accidently get photographed taking off their undies. We've all been there.

The audition was what I like to call a 'pulling faces' audition where there is lots of looks and no dialogue. I'd been for a few auditions with this particular casting director and he's lovely and makes you feel right at ease. He used to be an actor himself and I've found that most of the best casting directors have at some time been  on the other side of the camera and have some understanding of what you're going through. He asked me what scripts I'd been sent. I told him. He stared at me for a while. He told me he wouldn't bother auditioning me for the first one. I asked why. He said the character had been changed to a painter. I started to cry on the inside. He laughed. I decided I didn't like him so much anymore.

That's one of many problems with auditions and particularly commercial auditions. Nobody knows what they want. I had done all my preparation to become a surveyor and then boom goes the dynamite, he drops the painter bomb and in all of two seconds has decided I'm not cut out to be a painter. Bullshit. I had a good mind to tell him that my dad has worked his whole life in the paint and hardware industry and I've had a lot of experience with paint and even helped tint a paint once. I know the difference between undercoat and overcoat, water-based and enamel and have even used and washed a roller on a long pole. I also painted my grandfather's house single handedly. His house was one of those old weatherboard houses as well and was quite tricky to paint, especially up under the gables.

When you've taken a hit like that it's hard to recover however being a professional I managed to regain composure to focus on the second role which had even more useful character information courtesy of some hedging agency creative.

"This is the guy that things happen to."

Great. This auditon was a complicated one and involved a nod, an awestruck look, an incredulous look, a look of wonderment, a look of wonderment followed by disappointment, a look of frustration, a look of frustration followed by resignation and eating cake in a hurry. The casting director continued to laugh at me after every take which may have been a good thing or he may have still been imaging me as a painter. Anyway, I think the commercial will be dumb so if I don't get it I don't mind although I may paint the casting building just to prove a point.

Just before I finish I'd like to point out the wee box sitting at the bottom of this post. It may not be there if you're reading it via Facebook however if you're reading it here it is. Why don't you move your cursor over it and share this on your Twitbook, or MyDigg, Bleetbox, Blip, Bloggy, Dipdive, Doower, HEMiDEMi, Link-a-Gogo, Mister Wong, Planypus, Stuffpit or my favourite Windy Citizen. Then a little line graph will tell me how many times you've done it, where you did it and what you're wearing.

Comedy is a mysterious business

We had our final show on Saturday night and it was probably our best. It was certainly one of my best performances and I finally worked how to deliver lines that had never got a laugh in a such way to extract a good rippling titter. If you can get a rippling titter you know it is only a matter of time and timing before the line will shoot up the hilarity curve from a titter to a snicker to a giggle to a chuckle to a cackle to a chortle to a snort, to a shriek to a scream to hysterical cachinnation and clutching of sides while rolling in the aisles with red faces like oversized Jaffas in suits. If you're really lucky an audience member may expire from laughing too much and then and only then can you legitimately say that you 'slayed' or 'killed them'.

I'm very happy the show has finished on such a high however it's always slightly fustrating that the season ends just when I'm starting to really hit my straps. I don't know about other theps however it usually takes me at least two weeks before I know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em,  know when to walk away and know when to run. You can get a huge laugh one night and then deliver it in the exact same fashion the next show to be greeted with  the sound of one cricket clapping while a tumbleweed mounts the thrust. It's a bit of a mystery and the more you try and analyse and understand why it happened the more crickets and tumbleweeds start booking seats. An old improv saying we had was, 'Those who try to be funny are not, those who are funny don't try', and that little gem is what I fall back on when the only laughs I'm getting are from my fellow performers. I read a biography about the comedy genius Tony Hancock a few years ago and it seems as if he drove himself to suicide through constant self-analysis and trying to understand why things are funny. In his latter years he would be hilarious on the first take and then get progressively unfunnier as he desperately tried to replicate what he had done before.

I've just read that last paragraph and think I may have just finished it by arguing against the point I made in the middle. That's the thing with comedy as Tony found out, the more you think about it the more confused you get. Repetition of material will allow you to refine your delivery however repetition of delivery will not refine material.

That previous sentence is undoubedly the wankiest thing I have written on this blog so far.  I've a good mind to delete it however I won't because even though I don't think it means anything it may mean everything. That is an even wankier sentence.

On the other end of the seasonal spectrum are those plays that run for ever and a day with matinees thrice a week. I'm thinking Le Mis, Cats, Four Flat Whites in Italy and the mother of all long-running shows, The Mousetrap.The Mousetrap opened in 1952 and has had over 24,000 performances...mostly to Americans. There is a whopping great twist at the end of this murder mystery that the audience are asked not to reveal however I'm going to reveal it now....the murderer is M Night Shyamalan!

I'll wait to you all stop laughing....

David Raven played Major Metcalf for 4575 performances and for that he gets a measly two line Wikipedia entry. I've tried to find a photo of him with no luck however I did come across this cracker of a Repertory photo from a Mousetrap production at The Patio Playhouse in Escondido in Califormia.

Poor David Raven. He gave up 4575 of his evenings and Sunday afternoons to entertain hundreds of thousands of people and you can't find one solitary photo of him on the web yet these guys who probably only played for three weeks like myself pop up five pages in. I bet David was a true-pro as well and never once phoned anything in while letting the audience shape his performance is subtle ways they could never realise or understand. I salute you David Raven and I salue the wonderful cast and crew who made my 24 performances so enjoyable and fulfilling.

Oh yeah, Detective Sergeant Trotter is the murderer in The Mousetrap and the murder weapon is a mousetrap so now you can save your money and go and see some edgy real theatre like this and this.

Carry on Corpsing

We're into the final week of our run now and the show is humming along nicely with full houses, a happy director and lots of laughs from the audience... and the cast. I don't think I've ever been in a show where myself and the other actors have corpsed so often. 'Corpsing' is yet another luvvie term to describe the naughty act of breaking out of character to laugh at something. The origins of the term are unclear however according to Wikipedia it came about when other actors would attempt to make the poor work-experience actor playing a corpse on stage laugh.

A bit of corpsing in the right place is not necessarily a bad thing and is sometimes done deliberately to get a laugh. Most times the audience enjoy the actors losing it on stage as they believe they are seeing something unqiue and watching other people trying not to laugh is extremely funny. The last third of this show has some great comedic moments and the point where Bill Sykes realises he is cured of his erectile dysfunction is a good place to corpse because the punters can laugh at Bill Sykes getting a semi-on and laugh at us laughing at Bill Sykes getting a semi-on.

Speaking of semi-ons I used to work at a wine club and the only thing that got me through six hours on the phones trying to hock booze at dinner time to suspicious members was being able to say things like, "Have you ever had a sémillon before?", "I've got a nice sémillon on hand", and "I think you'd love to wrap your lips around this sweet white sémillon." Good times....good times.

When corpsing can be an issue is when it happens at a dramatic, dreadful or dull part of a performance. Unfortunately this is usually when it does happen as all the actors are getting bored and there's nothing funnier than a bunch of people trying to be serious. There are two main corpsing catalysts. The first can be termed the 'cock-up-corpse', when the corpsing begins as a result of another actor's cock-up. Cock-up corpsing can erupt from a muffed line, a missed cue, a trip over furniture or a costume malfunction. As professional actors we should be able to stay in it when someone says 'Michelle Duvauchele' instead of  'Monsieur Duvauchele' or when Bill Sykes begins improvising and throws in an unexpected 'knob-jockey' reference however I and most of my fellow cast have found it impossible to do so.

I'm quite lucky in that I sit with my back to the audience so I can just put my head down and pretend to be studying my lap-top while I snigger, snort and shudder. If the audience are paying close attention they may notice my shoulders shaking however they will put it down to a fine display of  back acting. The actor facing me who I shall refer to as 'Hibiscus' does not have this luxury and must continue to face the audience and deliver dialogue with my contorted cheeky face laughing like a stifled hyena directly in her sight line. Corpsing is contagious and is spread by making eye contact with another corpser. Even if you're managing to keep it together, one stray glance at a giggler is guaranteed to set you off. The only way to stop the corpsing circle of death is to avoid eye-contact with anyone at all costs, even if this means delivering your 'To be or not to be' speech to the chair that your foot is on. If when watching a play you notice that none of the actors are looking at each other it either means there is corposing afoot or that each actor has found out another member of the cast has been rooting the cast-member they thought they were rooting exclusively.

The second corpsing catalyst is the known as the 'naughty actor', 'angel of death' or in our case 'Mr Bumble'. They deliberately try to send their fellow performers up by using old tricks like the tongue in cheek blowie simulation, the under the breath sexual advance or the old favourite of flopping it out in the wings as the other actors look off-stage. Sometimes Mr Bumble manages to set us all off simply by not getting a laugh on one of his lines he's that damned good. Every show needs a Mr Bumble. According to Peter Brook the world is riddled with deadly theatre and in my humble opinion where there's corpsing there's life.