Actorly bitching

Its a lean summer.  I have no fringe show on the horizon.  No Summerworks. I do have a show in the works that will start rehearsing in August…but that seems so far away right now.

You guessed it. I’m jonesing for some theatre to do.

I’d also kinda like to get back to some Shakespeare, which I haven’t performed in…well, a year. 

I’ll keep patient, and hopefully either something will come up, or I’ll be able to pass the time until the project in August starts up.

Newsflash: The Sun twists story

Here’s an interesting story from The Toronto Sun.  And when I say Interesting, I’m not talking about the content. 

In the second week of April, a male Sun reporter and a female Sun photographer went into four GTA hospitals and took swab samples in CSI fashion. Although no bacteria, such as C. difficle or Staphylococcus aureus, were found, the investigation showed that someone in street clothes and without any identification could walk into a hospital, go into restricted areas and do what they wanted, with no questions asked.

What’s annoying about this article, is the fact that its clear that the original idea for the article was going to be about how the hospitals are infested with bacteria.  When that story didn’t materialize, they had to justify their time by turning the story into another kind of scare mongering:

The Sun investigation shows that an unauthorized person in street clothes could introduce a contaminant to a hospital

This again?

So, in a round-about way, this post is a lesson in how to make Phil blow a gasket.

I found myself with some time to kill before work today. So, I went into an Indigo to look around. As usual, their selection of books related to theatre, plays or writing were limited (that’s usually the case, but I like to check, just in case). Finding myself disappointed, I wandered over to the biography section. Now, this happens occaisionally, though there are few biographies that I’m interested in. Its rare that I pick something up. But if I do, chances are its a biography of Shakespeare (yeah, I know. nerd). I do have several different biographies and related books already, but for some reasin (nerd), I can’t resist more of them. Granted, I have a weakness for books as it is…but books on Shakespeare…now that’s something I will almost always want to read. So…into the Biographies section I go.

I look. I look some more. There’s one book, that has a picture of Someone on the cover and in big letters “SHAKESPEARE”. So, I get in closer (it was on the bottom shelf) to take closer look. And this is what I see:

Click on the picture to see it in full size.

See the title?

“Shakespeare” by Another Name. The life of Edward De Vere, Earl of Oxford, the Man who was Shakespeare.

Now, this is one of those “arguments” that always gets my back up. I could go on and on about this one, citing various scholarly works - at least at first, until my ire raises enough that I start frothing at the mouth and spouting obscenities - which I admit wouldn’t take long (last time I was clocked at only 0.0007 seconds of rational rhetorical arguement before several words beginning with “fu-” and others that end with “-unt” were uttered. I never said I was a great debator).

So, seeing this book, you can understand the few options that were open to me. I had two:

1. Fly into a rage and begin tearing this abomination of a book to pieces with my teeth.
2. Blog about it.

Clearly I very wisely chose the latter. Though it was close.

Hamlet: Tired, not enough time, and more tired

Today I am tired. Today we shot some of the video portions for this production of Hamlet.

The week ahead looks to be exhausting, what with the working at 9-5 and then rushing off to rehearsal every night. Of course this is what happens when the show opens in about a week.

That said, there are scenes that haven’t even been blocked yet. There are other scenes which we haven’t rehearsed for several weeks. The scene where I play a corpse has had more work than the ones in which I am speaking.

I’m still rusty on the Polonius & Ophelia lines (which are the ones we haven’t done in weeks).

So, basically there are 7 days to pull an actual performance out of this thing. At this point, I keep hoping that I can just get myself off book for all of my scenes, let alone pull an actual performance out of my ass.

Hopefully, I can do both.

Wish me luck. And stuff.

Hamlet: more bitching

So. Rehearsal last night.

We do a scene that we’ve never blocked (because we’ve never had each cast member for the scene at at rehearsal). I know for a fact that we only read the scene, and never blocked it. But I was told by the director that we had.

What’s the big deal? Well, I am expected to be off book (we open in 2 weeks). But learning lines is made easier for me once the scene is blocked. Even worse, there are scenes that we haven’t even read over yet!

Just to put this into perspective, let me explain my own personal theories about “rehearsal”: First of all, ideally, you want 4 hours of rehearsal for every 4 minutes of stage time. And each scene must be rehearsed many times. You go over a scene, initially for the blocking, and then you have to revisit it frequently. The French call rehearsal “repetition”, and for me, I find that describes the way that works best for most actors. Repeat the scene frequently. This way, by the time you need your actors to be off book, they are able to do so without effort (because the scenes have all been repeated so frequently).

What you cannot do, is block the scene and then walk away from it for two weeks. What you shouldn’t do is under-rehearse the scene. When you block the scene, don’t block it through once or twice and then leave it. Go through it a couple of times for blocking, and then do it again. Let the actors play with the scene and the blocking. Do the scene as frequently as possible. And don’t complain that there’s not enough time to rehearse that frequently. If that’s the case, then you should have started rehearsing earlier, shouldn’t you?

That’s enough bitching for now.

Hamlet: a few issues

I’m feeling kinda lost with Hamlet right now. Every time I go to reherasal, it seems like there are more changes to the script, and the actors have more questions about their characters and who things are playing out, but there are no answers. Its becoming very frustrating. In my opinion, if you are going to deviate heavily from the text of Hamlet (or any other Shakespeare play), you have got to have a solid vision. The changes will mean that your actors have more questions, and so a director needs to know the motiviations of each character. And he can’t fly by the seat of his pants.

But this seems to be occurring here. The directing appears to be haphazard and inconsistent. The focus seems to be more on the multi-media aspects rather than on the characters. And as an actor, it feels like were being left on our own to direct ourselves.

And don’t get me started on the disorganization in terms of the scheduling.

Honestly, at this point, I am far too frustrated with this production company to put into words. And I think that I won’t be sticking around for the other two shows in the new year.

I think that it would be more helpful to be creating my own theatre, rather than participating in someone else’s butchery of classic plays.

And then my head asplode. Or my tooth.

Last night, as I was eating dinner, my tooth exploded.
At least, that’s what it felt like.

I was just finishing off the open faced turkey sandwich from the local diner, when BAM! It felt exactly as though my tooth had exploded in my mouth. Or at least, that’s how I imagine this would have felt like. All I knew is that, I couldn’t sit still, and had to get out of the restaurant. I quickly paid, and rushed home, where I immediately quaffed a couple of extra strength tylenol, and then paced. The pain was so bad that I wanted to scream. I didn’t…although I admit to some whimpering.

My friendly landlords were kind enough to provide me with some Orajel, which helped to numb the pain long enough for me to relax some. Then the tylenol finally (mercifully) kicked in.

I was suddenly very tired. I stayed up for a while finishing off a few things (and so that i didn’t end up waking up at 3am or something silly like that). Then I collapsed into sleep.

Now, the plan is to find a dentist to help extract this tooth as quickly as possible. Of course, let us keep in mind (as I have mentioned before) the fear that I have of dentists in general. This is not helped by the fact that I expect that the solution to this problem is going to be painful. I just can’t put it off any more. A certain dentist has been recommended to me, but I they may not be open on Monday. So, I might have to settle for a more expensive, less highly recommended solution as quickly as possible just to get the problem solved.

I’ll keep you updated.

Lies and Obfuscations about file sharing

Who’s have thought that it was possible?

/sarcasm.

RIAA propaganda movie for students in desperate need of remix
The RIAA has just released a back-to-school propaganda video called “Campus Downloads” that is full of lies, half-truths, omissions, and intimidation aimed at convincing students to stay away from file-sharing.

This is such a steaming pile that it desperately needs to be remixed. Someone out there needs to make a version where every lie is interrupted with an explanation of the real story, to be shown alongside of it.

Its really too bad that more people don’t have the kind of resources that this guy does. It will be interesting to see what comes out of this.

EDIT: Allow me to say that I don’t think that piracy is right. However, I do believe that the RIAA is engaged in bullying tactics, which include outright lies, in order to protect an outdated and dying distrubution system and business model.

Not a good start to the week

So far at work, this has been a less than stellar week (I know, its only tuesday…sad).

More and more gets piled on this department. There are expectations for us to support 4 products now, all at full time levels, when we have are staffed to support 1 product full time. As such we are dividing our time between all the products, and falling behind on everything. I’m waiting for the shit to hit the fan when they realize that we haven’t been able to do what they expect due to lack of bodies. They haven’t previously shown themselves to be understanding of this sort of thing.

To top it off, yesterday and today, we were short staffed. So, not only do we not have enough bodies to do what they are expecting on a regular day, we’re falling way behind now.

As a part of the job, I’m expected to do phone and e-mail (approximately half and half). Yesterday, I did e-mail for the first hour of the day. After that…it was all phones. It was the same for everyone else. And today, I can see how much that hurt us. There’s almost double the mail that there was yesterday.

I’m getting really tired of this.

Yes, the job is less stressful than the last one, but that doesn’t actually show signs of continuing. I’m watching everyone’s stress level go up, even the people who were so happy with this place before.

To top that off, I have a serious toothache right now. I broke a tooth in Montreal, and (like an idiot) I procrastinated on seeing a dentist, because, until now, there was no real pain. Last night, however, it started to hurt. When I woke up this morning, I thought I would be fine, but now the tooth is hurting again. And my insurance doesn’t kick in until the end of September. Which is a pain.

I admit, however, that I am afraid of dentists. I always have been. Or rather, I have been since I didn’t go to one for…oh…over 10 years (that’s what going that long without health insurance will do). Now, I have 5 teeth that need to be pulled. I know this. I’ve been told this. I could have avoided this pain before if I’d had the work done when I was first told about it. But my fear of dentists (and dentist-induced pain) caused me to put it off. And now look where I am.

This is a bad situation. I have no idea how much it would cost to have these teeth dealt with, but I’m betting its not cheap. And I’m such a coward about this whole dentist thing, that if I’d want to be put under. The thought of the dentist with his knee on my chest pulling the tooth really just makes me ill. I’d hate to see what actually witnessing it would do. But anaesthetic would drive up the price hugely, I’m sure.

At this point, all I want to do is get through this horrible week as quickly as possible.

Wish me luck.

Abandoning Parental Responsibility.

The five meerkats were euthanized at the Minnesota Zoo Thursday, a day after a 9-year-old girl reached her hand into the exhibit and was bitten.

Apparently, state health protocol requires that the animals be destroyed because the 9-year old girl’s family didn’t want the girl to have rabies shots (which might be painful).

For the child to put her hand into the enclosure, she had to work hard to get her hand inside:

Zoo officials said she must have crawled over a driftwood barrier, climbed up more than 3 feet of artificial rock and reached over 4 feet of Plexiglas to get her arm into the exhibit.

And the parents were doing what at this point? Was the child unattended? Did the parents just watch? Regardless, shouldn’t a 9 year old know better? Who goes to the zoo and sticks their hands into cages? And do they get what they deserve?

At this point, I’m not angry because some cute animals had to be put down. I’m just lamenting the stupidity of the general populace.