Royal Wedding – appendix

Shortly, I hope. The last post was rather harsh. I don’t take it back, but one thing I need to say. I hold nothing against William and Katherine Windsors. In fact, from what I’ve seen of them, they seem like reasonable people without the monkey king syndrome (overblown egos). I’m just a bit dismayed about the amount that went into their wedding – a one day event. I wish them all the best however.

One more note, congratulations to Prince Harry. I’m not a great fan of his antics, but the best man has done the good thing – took off some of the exaggerated stately glamour by playing the married couple a practical prank. To those who don’t know, Wills and Kate just married vehicle was Prince Charles’ 450,000.00 blue Aston Martin convertible, with plates saying “JU5T MARRIED”, colorful baloons and an “L” plate attached. It was the sort of joke any British couple could suffer from the hands of their best man – minus the Aston Martin of course. It brought the much needed everyday factor to an otherwise gigantic stuffed animal.

Take care, and do care.

Royal Wedding Extravaganza, Influenza and Pffft.

Congratulations Kate and Wills, you are now royally hitched. It only took twenty million pounds of British tax money. Seriously I can’t believe they spent so much of ‘little peoples’ dough just because the groom is a royal prince. Are we living in the medieval ages? Hey, people, my son has found a lovely gal, they’re getting married, so drop us your hard earned cash so we can wed them in style, and come with happy faces. Ninety nine percent of us folks getting married have to pay for our wedding day with our own money, and nobody complains tries to change that. Nobody will convince me that the British Crown had 20 million pounds to spare for this extravagance with limos, cavalry, guards, orchestras, tv and radio transmissions and whatnot. We simple, common folks neither can afford nor ever will have a bash like this. We also won’t have approximately 2 billion people watching, personally I’d be thankful for that little grace.

I wouldn’t be half so animated if it wasn’t for the state of the UK economy which has been down in the dumps for several years now. Scotland is showing some signs of improvement, but England’s still deep in the hole. Jobs are going, funding cuts are closing institutions and organizations, everybody is complaining. So how about some modesty, dear royal couple? Instead of coming in two separate limos, why not take one? Scrape off some of that useless bling that honestly brings on a headache. You are supposed to represent this country, how about sympathising with the masses of poor people all around? I’m one of them, I know there’s lots like me, and even worse off. I at least have a job, though I cannot take a loan, get credit, or even rent a small flat. In this context, I find twenty million thrown away so the royalty can flash, a waste of time.

Nor can I understand all the fuzz about it. Granted, I am not British, it’s not my royal family. But I know that plenty of the Scots don’t care either. There’s thousands of street parties going on in the whole of the UK now, about 20 in Edinburgh alone, but Glasgow has the grand total of zero. Thank you Glasgow! I know why I love you – it’s because you are being yourself and not going with the trend just because it’s currently fashionable to cheer two people getting married in the far away London. The size of hysteria about this wedding is mindboggling. A condom manufacturer issued a complimentary packet of their product with the faces of the royal couple on the cover. Trufax. A twenty bucks replicas of Kate’s (or Princess Di’s before her) ring took the US by the storm. I heard my friend from the US west coast say the wedding tv transmission starts at 3 am in her timezone, and she’s definitely going to stay up and watch. I guess I can understand the Americans somewhat, they never had their own royalty, and they hold this romanticized view of monarchy, especially the British one (I wonder what the Afro-American minority thinks). There’s been Facebook groups, tweets, announcements, all sorts of incredible stuff going on. Honesty, I think it’s energy spent in the wrong direction. Call me unpatriotic if you will, and I’ll just remind you: I’m not British.

Congratulations once again, Kate and Wills. I hope your future reign will be more go, and less show.

Take care, and do care.

Pushing Up

It’s right about time I stop being a slouching, weakish baboon who can’t beat the other monkeys to a banana. So, I started doing push ups – or press ups, as Brits call them apparently. I’m following the 100 push ups 6 weeks program. Don’..t get fooled, it takes more than 6 weeks, all depends on your stamina, muscles, fitness, strength, determination, motivation, frequency… Sounds like fun? Well, it’s a workout. It is divided into six weeks, but the weeks have to be repeated depending on the results. I’m currently doing week three, and I’ve just done 82 push ups, 2 above the minimum. I’mstarting to think this actually works, and mabe in ten weeks time I will actually start thinking I’m fit. If I keep doing it. Time to beat up that inner procrastinator and actually do something right.

The goal of the program is to get one hundred consecutive push ups in one go. Sounds like a daunting task? Believe me, it is. Who says workouts are fun? Step up and I’ll punch you in the nutsack, or, you know, wherever. It actually is fun to see the progress, which is slow but it’s there. I never thought I’d do 82 push ups in less than 15 inutes. Not consecutive of course, but divided in five series. I’ve also found out that Mark, my acting coach, is doing it too. He’s on week five and managing about sixty pushups straight now. I’m not dreaming of beating him to it, just hoping we’ll both reach the end of the program. And then it’s keeping it because these muscles slack and droop and disappear. Like I said, fun.

Take care, and do care.

Page To Stage

As promised, a blog about the Page To Stage event I attended two days ago at the Centre for Contemporary Art in Glasgow. The idea behind the meeting is for playwrites to playtest a scene with live actors and audience on the night. It was the first instalment, and the patches and seams were visible, but with about a forty people turnout I consider the opportunity and potential as very good.

There were three two person plays on the night, rehearsed simultaneusly in three spaces over the course of an hour, then staged in a small venue available at the CCA. I was a bit surprised about the process of casting. Instead of running even the smallest auditions for parts, the playwrites and/or writers just had a look at the list of attendants and picked up names. No readings, no auditions, just plain gamble, and a bit of who-knows-who. As an actor, I was expecting to at least see the selection process, so I was left with a big question mark until I asked about it during a little break between the rehearsals and staging. With a considerable time restriction (two hours for the whole event), I can see how proper auditioning was not feasible, though I’d welcome some more openness about this. I’m unsure what format would be both more fair and workable, but I’ll be happy to see them attempting changes.

Everyone uninvolved in the rehearsals was welcome to have a look. It gave me another glimpse into the rehearsal process, and to understand a lot about the plays and actors intents before the performances. I am not sure what practical use it gives the onlookers, and possibly people coming and leaving were a distraction, but it was interesting.

The three plays were vastly different. One was a comedy about an old woman dealing with a young man coming to paint her house. The lady was very funny, a feisty, round shaped character almost chewing the unfortunate man’s face off. The painter unfortunately wasn’t given enough focus by the writer and was reduced to taking insults until the finish, when he made his feelings plains and abandoned his job altogether. Another one treated about a woman’s lonely life in a remote part of Scotland in the early twenty century, her descent into madness after the loss of her two children, and desperate clinging to her sole visitor – a man collecting her husband’s debt. It had a definite vibe of misery and breakdown to it. The third, and my personal favourite, was a story about two men in a cellar – one is tied up and tortured, the other blames him for the murder of his daughter and pursues a route of justice/vengeance. It has been done before, but this scene was possibly the best piece of writing of the evening, and the actors gave an interesting show – one of them graduated from the RSAMD masters course in acting, and the other is currently taking it.

After the plays half of the crowd followed to a local pub where we shared pints and chatted. I’ve made some new friends and exchanged views about the evening, as well as more general topics. When I said my goodbyes to whoever remained at half past ten in the evening, one of the writers – who came to Glasgow from Edinburgh just for this event – declared she would write a scene with me in her mind. That was a very nice gesture, although I won’t believe it till I see it.

A quick recount, the evening cost me 3 pounds plus the pint of Guinness after. I saw actors rehearsing with director and the writer in place, and watched the final products – very raw with actors reading their lines from script, but I’m not sure anything can be done about it if performers keep to be allocated at the night. Most importantly, I met some people sharing my interest in drama, writers, actors and directors. Finally a bit of networking. Who knows, perhaps at some point the aquaintance will prove fruitful. I will be going to the next Page to Stage event, and hopefully will see some improvements implemented. First, I’d like a plainer, more in-depth casting for parts on the evening. Somebody suggested some sort of a workshop, perhaps improvisation, for everyone who doesn’t form part of the cast. The facilitators were very clear in their wish to receive feedback and suggestions, so I’ll have to rack my brain and come up with something, because I would like to see this thing grow in a direction that I like.

Take care, and do care

Easter rant

So today’s the Easter Sunday. Not a very festive day for me, I mean it’s quite ordinary. I’m not spending it with my family or with my friends. I’ve talked with my parents over Skype and sent my wishes to some people, received some back. Sundays are normally days off for me, otherwise I might do a shift at work and it wouldn’t bite me.

Since I had a lot of time to do something special, I went into town to see a movie. I watched Rio in 3D, it’s not the newest technology, I know, but I shunned it until this time. It’s nice, but nothing special, just gives the illusion of some of the characters and items sticking out like in real life more or less. It wasn’t distracting, and the movie was good, funny, entertaining. It has what the cool cartoons should have – some situational humor, some touching moments, a scary villain, heroes you can like and cheer for. Good fun for the kids, and there’s a bit of a kid in everyone, so everyone can enjoy it. At least one cartoon movie a year is a good recipe for some laugh and winding down.

Anyway, on the way there, and partly on the way out, I was surprised to see all the stores, pubs and bars were open, people moving about like on a normal day, no sign of some Easter halt. I’m used to Easter being a holiday, a few days off for mostly everybody. The UK thing is different, there’s some celebrating apparently – Creme Eggs are a big thing, of course – but it’s nothing so seriously traditional like in Poland. The Easter Monday won’t even be a Bank Holiday in Scotland, and back where I come from it always is. Different places, different custom. I’ll still have a day off, and planning to spend it quietly until the evening. Then I’m going to a Page to Stage event, some playwrites giving scenes from their works in progress to actors, and that’s what I’m going to write about tomorrow.

Take care, and do care.

Words, words, words

I’m going to write something pertaining to acting, finally. Over the last several years, acting has taken a large spot in my life. I’ve acted, recited, sang and presented on stage, I’ve been in two short films, a mime, attended several theatre festivals, took workshops, seen and read plays, and worked semi-pro. Two years ago I have decided to move to the UK and try to get into a full time course at a good drama school. I’ve auditioned four times so far, and still have to audition in London this year, and I’ve met with nothing but outright rejection. I voted the Oxford School of Drama out of my list, consider doing the same to Alra North in Wigan, but I’m absolutely in love with the RSAMD in Glasgow, in good part because their auditions are no bullshitters. They don’t ask you to spend an hour or more in the morning doing imaginary painting with your body, “running” in absolute slow motion, pretending you’re an elephant and playing a game of tag. That can be fun, but it’s totally useless for acting a part, and it doesn’t help with the nerves at all. Two monologues, maybe a five seconds from a song, a short interview, that’s stage one in the RSAMD auditions. No embellishments. No standing on one leg for five minutes for the sake of some sadistic panelists. And they don’t put twenty people through to stage two (twenty people is the average number of students in a drama school class, so of these twenty one, maybe two, most often zero will end up with an offer). The first year I tried, they wanted to see seven again. This year they only picked five.

I am not in drama school, so I’m going through a different route. There is a lovely little studio here called Acting Coach Scotland. It teaches acting through Practical Aesthetics method. And finally, after five years, I’m learning a practical approach to acting – proper warm-up, scene analysis, how to evoke true reactions from myself and from my scene partner. Mark, the guy who runs the class, takes no bullshit and gives no bullshit. He’s a to-the-point, driven, enthusiastic writer and director – not an actor. He claims that even the greatest actors rarely have what it takes to teach acting properly. Because the best actors work on instinct, and instinct is not translable to a classroom. In my honest opinion, Mark is a terrific teacher, engulfing storyteller and overall swell guy. If you want to get a feel of what he says, check my blogroll and follow the link to The Acting Blog. It’s well worth the time, though it’s nothing remotely close to listening to this man live.

Looks like I rambled on and on for two paragraphs and the main thing’s still not touched. I’m learning lines. I’ve got a scene from Anton Chekhov’s The Three Sisters, and I need to get the lines by Nikolai stuck well in my head before the class on Tuesday evening. They need to be instinctive, the memory must be a muscle that triggers in involuntarily when needed. Only then I can focus on acting, on my scene partner, instead of thinking what I have to say next. And the really difficult part is I have to learn them flat, with no intonation, because if I learn them in a specific way, with a rhythm and tone in place, I will have trouble changing that rhythm and tone in performance, and I will be a fake, I’ll pretend and the magic will be replace by blandness and lies.

I have about ninety percent of the lines in my head now, it’s a short scene, I have relatively good memory, it should be easy, but it’s not. Not only I’m learning the lines in my second language, I need to be careful not to slip into playacting them. Also, no paraphrasing. The writer meant something distinctive, and inventing words is killing the meaning of his scene. It is hard, but I know I will nail it. I just need to repeat them long enough. As Mark says, you can’t overlearn the lines. I’ve got three days off from work now, so that gives me plenty of time to learn and repeat, until hopefully the muscle is developed. Only then the real challenge – the truthful acting of the scene – can begin.

Take care, and do care.

Beauty is eternal

We’re having really amazing weather here in Scotland this. It’s actually sunny and quite warm, not on mediterranean scale, but you don’t have to wrap yourself in three layers of clothing to escape the wind or rain drops. And true to my thought from two days ago, today afterwork I went to explore.

I’ve only been living in Glasgow from the beginning of April, so I don’t know the city well. Leaving work at half past three, I decided to find the Kelvingrove Park, which is quite a big place. I only remembered the general direction, and intrepidly threw myself into the maze of streets. Before getting even close to the park, I stepped into Ashton Lane, and was blown away by a cosy alley full of people sitting on patios of pubs and bars. The whole little street seemed like a buzz of activity, entertainment and fun, real festive place. I’ll definitely be coming back.

But this was not my destination. I marched through, and after about ten minutes found myself on the bank of Kelvin river. This is good, I thought, there’s a walkway by the river, it looks quite cosy and park-ish, and certainly it will lead me to the actual park. So I walked down a set of stairs and followed a path along the river. At first it didn’t look like much, some trees, some grass with two young couples sprawled over it. But then I actually hit the path proper, thick lanes of trees on both sides and the river between them. Finally I found an area of calm respite. I sat down on a bench at the site of an old flint mill for a moment, looked at the river, the trees, the remnants of the walls, and people, though luckily it was not crowded there. Then I got up and strolled along until I found a bridge with a very nicely made olg metal gate (this pitiful layman cannot tell if it was iron or something else).

A walk over the bridge with the simmering of water under me, a hike up some stairs and I found… a botanic garden! Lots of open space, and literally hundreds of people around, mostly students, but also little chilnren, their mothers, joggers and cyclists. I saw a herbal garden, and read signs for world rose garden, visitor centre, and some more. What an amazing surprise for a starting Glasgowian. I know that I only skimmed the surface of that place, because soon after I walked out and found my way back home. I am definitely going back to explore. I have spent too much time away from the nature, and almost forgot how beautiful it is. Now I remember. Today was a good day.

Take care, and do care.

People Don’t Read

This is not going to be one of those rants about how people don’t read books anymore, and how they should. Although I totally agree with the sentiment – but mostly from the perspective of a once avid reader who’s been slowly plodding through this one book for over a month now, and the previous took him two months at least. Not because they are bad books, they are absolutely great, carefully chiseled, mind-blowing books (I mean the books in The Song of Ice and Fire saga by George Martin, a truly intelligent, thought-out, entertaining piece of writing), it’s me who let my reading muscle slack with disuse.

The purpose of this post is to say: people don’t read – on everyday basis. It’s like it’s become some antiquidated or arcane skill. There is a fire door at my workplace, with more than sufficient number of notices plastered all over: Fire Door!; Caution. This door is alarmed; Do not open. And they are large signs, I have easily read them all from ten feet away. Now every couple of days somebody opens those doors and stops in a daze when a siren blares. It blares continuously, sometimes for at least 5 minutes, and when it stops, my ears are ringing. I remember, when I first came to this place, I looked at the door and thought about leaving through them. But I stopped, I read the notices, turned around on my heel and endured the whole thirty seconds it took me to reach the proper exit.

Another example, when I am finished at work, and it’s customer service, I set a closing sign at the top of my counter. This till is closing, it says. And again, with stubbornness that would astonish a blind turtle, nearly every day one, two, even three people try to force their way on me even as I am clearly in the middle of signing off and cleaning my workplace. They do not read the sign, they don’t even see the sign, and they don’t care what I am doing.

After spending over a year with the same company, in three different places, I am a firm believer that I possess a rare gift. When I see a line of characters, I make out the letters, and I  pull those letters into strings which constitute words, which counstitute sentences. I read. And I understand. So I don’t leave blasting a fire alarm, and I leave tired working people be when they are closing after their hours are done. Which I sincerely wish is your custom too.

Take care, and do care.

The Three Elephants in the Blog Room

Every blogger, from a home & garden ethusiast to a political commentator to a physicist at CERN faces three main problems about blogging. They are The Why, The Frequency and The About.

The Why is, quite simply, what is the blog about. But it is not just telling in one post or in one sentence inside a post what the author intends to write about. That is, in itself, too little. I’ll go further and say it is redundant. The Why is the essence of the blog, the recurring motive of interest from the writer and the primary hook for the reader. It is the background on which a painting is made, a thread around which an entire tapestry is woven, the backbone of the body. My Why is this: I wish to share my thoughts, my fears and my aspirations with other people as I experience my life of emmigrant, actor, friend, brother, son, worker, writer, procrastinator, sarcastic fiend, cynical goof, insecure dork, undiagnosed head case, and whatever else I am, may or cannot be. It is both a simple and a very complex premise. Are my ideas interesting enough to keep people coming for more and more again? Is my writing exciting or stimulating enough to achive this? These questions are not The Why however, so they don’t belong here.

The Frequency deals with systematic writing. Blogging is about writing. The first rule of writing is: writers write. When there’s no writing, there is no blog. When the writing stops, the blog dies. The more frequent the author is, the better the chance of sustaining an audience. But what about the writer’s block, the unfavoring real life circumstances? What if, to get down to the most basic, nothing interesting happened to the author? Last week he was not abducted by aliens, has not found the miracle drug, did not meet a celebrity or even buy a new pair of shoes. Nothing. Absurd. There is never nothing. There’s always something. A devoted and successful blogger will write about anything, and will write it with thrilling enthusiasm and freshness. The fuel for The Frequency is fun. Am I having fun writing about this subject? Then I will write a kick-ass post about it and everybody (hopefully) will be happy. I’ve no idea what frequency I’ll employ, I suppose it is going to be highly irregular.

Of the three Elephants, The About is possibly the easiest, the least profound, it can be done and done well doesn’t require revisiting, rethinking, recultivation. Here comes the but. This is the one aspect of the blog that the author immediately stumbles upon, and needs to nail in the head with a three foot red hammer shining and glimmering like a neon sign over the Cesar’s Palace. The About is like the welcome doormat on the threshold of the blog. It’s the author’s and his blog’s calling card. It should reveal something crucial about the author, it would be beneficial if it revealed something about the Why. It is the one stop pass for the reader to quickly disseminate the tangled labirynth of shouts, rants, gestures, bad jokes and dry fact. A look at The About should give a passerby an idea of what and/or who the blog is about. Simple. Not so simple.

Take care, and do care