Spnak

So there I was a pining mess, yearning and longing for my Canadian lovely, but then it happened. My whole childhood was about to be turned upside down and ripped asunder.

For the final week of my work experience it was half term. For those of you outside the UK, half term is a week off for the schools. I guess you get them too but call them something totally different. But anywho, during half term theaters across the country usually will put in some kind of kids entertainment. For the big theaters they will get a national touring show like the one we had, smaller more local theaters will have fun days and maybe a small theatre club where kids can devise their own plays and perform them for each other and mums and dads.

In our theatre we have a staged version of a kids TV show called Rainbow. Now in my house Rainbow was must see TV right up till I finished my work experience. After the fact it could never be the same again. The illusion had been shot to shit for me. I’d seen the puppet master weave his magic.

Rainbow was a puppet show, the main characters were Zippy and George – Hand puppets George was a hippo, sod knows what Zippy was but his mouth was a hole in his head held there with a BIG zipper. When Zippy made too much noise (at least once an episode.. someone would Zip the annoying little sod’s gob shut).

Zippy and George

Along with Zippy and George there was Bungle. Bungle was a six foot tall brown bear… and no I don’t mean a tall black hairy gay man.. I mean a furry six foot tall bear who happened to be brown… sheesh you guys have some depraved minds)

 Bungle

Leading this band of miscreant puppets and stuffed socks is Geoffrey. Geoffrey is the sexually ambivalent head of the house who never had a date in all the years of the show and must have been a pent up ball of sexual frustration.. due to the fact that he slept in the same bed as Bungle ( I am rethinking the big brown bear thing all the time!!).

These four were the main trouble causers but every episode you could bet your ass that the three roving minstrels Rod Jane and Freddy would show up. Now Rod Jane and Freddy looked like ex porn stars from the 70′s dressed in baggy clown clothes. They would turn up unexpectedly sing a song and then buggar off again. Once in a while they would be the main focal point of the episode (usually Jane had lost something… I kept waiting for the episode where she lost her dignity by having to go back to porn to pay Rod and Freddy’s crack habits, but the show was canceled before that episode aired)

Anyway back to the live show. This was a big kids show.. lots of colorful scenery lots of music and laughter. I got to meet the guy who did Zippy and Georges voices and I met Geoffrey (a really nice down to earth guy really.. liked a beer in his dressing room after the show.. couldn’t go to the bar because of the kids). Everything was happy happy. On the Monday after the get in, I was pulled to one side by the theatre stage manager and asked if i would like to take part in the set changes and actually find out what it was like to work under the real pressure of a big theatre. I of course jumped at the chance.I was paired up with an experienced crew member and was told what to do and how to do it safely. I was run through the cues and what scenery went where and when. I had this down to a tee with my trusty new mate…. only my trusty new mate didn’t hang around to long.. he was caught smoking something other than a cigarette about thirty minutes before the opening afternoon show. No one thought to tell me who I was going to work with now they just let the show start and took me along for the ride.Now… please remember.. this was my first time actually changing scenery on a professional stage.. I was REALLY nervous and to top it off my new mate was stoned and probably sitting in a park somewhere feeling no damn pain.2 minutes to the 1st scene change and the stage manager comes to me and checks to see if i am OK with what to do.. I casually answer ” NO.. I have no one to do the change with how am i supposed to move this on my own.. blah blah blah”. I did the one thing any theatre tech shouldn’t do.. I freaked out onstage during a show. I was told to calm down and I would be alright and muppet number 3 would help.Muppet number 3 was a casual crew member that is drafted in to help out at short notice.

It showed.

During the first scene change Muppet number 3 and I took our first piece of scenery on to the stage and all composure was lost. The scenery got out of control at his end and began rolling VERY slowly toward the Gauze backdrop we were working behind. If it hadn’t been for the stage manager running in front of the scenery and stopping it.. it would have been in the front row of the audience quicker than it takes a lamb to shit when thinking of mint sauce.

I was taken off active duty and told to go sit in the crew green room. Muppet three was not.. he was allowed to keep working.

After about ten minutes the stage manager came to the green room and chewed me a new asshole. I wouldn’t have minded taking the rap but it really wasn’t my fault. I was told that I was no longer going to be an active member of crew and that when I was on stage I was to steer well clear at all times.

I did as I was told… I spent most of the week sitting at the stage door signing autographs for Zippy and George in readiness for the crowds at the stage door at the end of the show.

On the Friday I had an assessment with the heads of technical theatre.. Stage Manager Head of electrics. I wanted to know how I had done and boy were they honest.

I was told they thought I wasn’t suited for the work and even though I had been great at certain aspects of the job like the get in and get outs and working with the incoming companies. I really didn’t suit working at a theatre in residence. I should be a touring techie and make the most of what I could when I could. I was gutted. They had ripped out my little heart and stomped all over my dreams. It wouldn’t be the last time someone who thought they were better than me did that. I am still here and I although I am no longer involved in the theatre.. I still haven’t listened to them and still aim for something better.

Question: How do you know you failed in your life?

Answer: When the guy you went to college with who did little to no work outside of the actual theatre and got handed his diploma by a bent system that rewarded one and took from another ends up working for one of THE most prestigious theatres in the country and sounds too fucking happy by far and I end up doing what I am doing when in reality all I would like to be doing is either working in the theatre or be back at college getting the knowledge to become something more than a phone jockey. Damn it I want this fucking Bipolar to never have hit me. I don’t want to tied to a job I hate, I want to learn. I need to learn.

As for the smug git who I spoke to who when I told him who I was just laughed in such a way as to say.. I made it you didn’t…… I know you cheated I know you suck and everyone on that course who actually worked for the awards they got… they all know you cheated but most of all that you SUCK.

I apologise for breaking my silence with this little pissyfit but man I needed to do it here and now.

Back soon Promise

There are times in every young mans life when he falls head over arse for a woman so out of his league it hurts. Usually it’s for a pop star or a movie star… (I saved those for much later in life).

On week two of my work experience, the Stage Manager realized that there was very little for me to do with the crew of the theatre for the following week and he wondered if i would like to see what it was like to work with a touring company for a week. I wasn’t exactly sure what he meant properly…Ithought he was going to farm me out as a slave to Opera North.

What he was actually proposing (and had arranged and was only asking me out of courtesy) was for me to align myself with the company coming in for the next week. I would work with the head of costume and wife of the director. (I am ashamed to say that I don’t remember the names of the lovely people with the exception of the woman involved in the main part of this story) I will call her Pat, because it has a friendly ring to it.

This what could have been called a b-list headline show. It was a comedic murder mystery. I actually really liked watching the show most nights from the wings, but the local critics weren’t to hot on it.. I blame the “star” of the show… a used-to-be funny man from TV. He wasn’t that funny and to be honest he wasn’t that great an actor either. The other name in the show was a young lady from an Australian soap opera who was so bashful she insisted on having a dressing room built on stage so she could change during a scene in the wings. And before anyone thinks that she was right to do so.. she was wearing a long slip to her knees and all she was changing was a shirt. Now still you could be right in thinking that this was still OK.. BUT she was an actress from NEIGHBORS and she was almost always in a Bikini or a low cut top with tight shorts on. Looking back on the situation now, I find it hard to understand (maybe it’s the man in me) why she had to have her own dressing room.

Anyway I digress from my real tale. My whole job description was to do what ever was needed for the cast and crew during the week. If they needed something picking up from the costume dept I would be asked to get it. If it was lunch time and they felt like a burger or a pizza.. I would go get it. During Get In for the play I met a short haired woman who looked like she had just been on the worlds worst train journey, was wrestling with a coffee machine. It had eaten her money and she had no more change. So being the little gentleman that I was I bought her a cup of coffee. It was no big deal too me.. 20p for a cup of grotty coffee was nothing, but I was repaid many times over during the next week.

Her name was Bryan, she was a supporting actress in the play and she was only on stage for a maximum of 20 minutes in the two hours the play ran. During the run of the tour she had spent the extra time just chilling out and trying to find more work for after this show had come to it’s conclusion. But this week she would stop her job hunt and take me under her wing.

There was nothing to do during the show so I was invited up to her shared dressing room to chat (Get your minds out of the gutter you perverts). We spent each night talking about different things.. what I wanted to do after school, did I like the theatre, what other shows had she done (she did the Rocky Horror Show.. I was even more in love with her after I found that out). There was a new topic every night and in the days when she needed a guide around Nottingham I was the first to be asked.

I was smitten… no I was in love. Bryan was my first real big crush on someone out of my league. I should probably mention… Bryan was well over 30 but well under 40 at the time and I was just barely 16.. there was never the remotest possibility of anything happening… I knew that, but my mind had it’s own mind and it wanted to spend the rest of it’s life with her.

The week flew by, I was in 7th heaven but all good things must come to an end. I had to find a way to make her remember me… so I bought her a BAD Bob Dylan tape. LOL How young I was. Bryan, of course, showed no offense at being bought the BAD BADDDD tape. She was thrilled… she claimed she didn’t have it. I am sure it was relegated to the glove compartment of her car where Terry Pratchett once said “… all tapes left in the glove box for more than 14 days will invariably turn into Queen’s Greatest Hits”

Hope she enjoyed Fat Bottomed Girls at some point.

On the Saturday I was called to a large dressing room where the whole cast and crew were, and presented with a card of thanks and an envelope full of money. They had had a collection for me after finding out that I was not being paid for my work experience. If I remember rightly there was around about £50 in that envelope and that was the biggest surprise of the whole three weeks, that these people actually appreciated what little I had done enough to take time out of their day to come and see me and spend some time. The money was nice too..lol.

After the show that night we pulled the set down and then I went to the bar to say goodbye to Bryan and the rest of the cast. Bryan looked tired and ready to leave for the last train back to London that night, but she hung around and waited to say goodbye to me. She gave me her phone number and a kiss on the cheek… I nearly missed my bus that night, I don’t float as well as I walk.

I only used the phone number once… but she had moved (or given me a duff number). I have never forgotten my first crush on some out of my league and probably never will.

Until Next Time…

I want to take a break from my theatrical leanings for a day. I got me a hummer of a rant to go on.

Today is September 4th 2005. So why when I go shopping this afternoon do I see this…

I was with Linda and I went ape. I couldn’t believe it the start of September and there’s Christmas products on sale. CHRISTMAS PRODUCTS IN SEPTEMBER.

What the f**k is going on when you can buy Christmas selection boxes in FUCKING SEPTEMBER.

I am not a religious person so the over commercialization of Christmas has nothing to do with “The Message of Christmas”. It has to do with the blatant ripping off of the consumer. Food stuffs bought now are highly unlikely to be fresh and premium when December 25th comes round. What’s the point in buying so early, your going to either eat the chocolate in a fit of chocoholic withdrawal on some boring Sunday afternoon or your going to have a very upset 6 year old on Christmas morning when they go to open their selection box and find all the chocolate bars are white and moldy.

So what do you do then? You go out and buy more closer to the date, so your suckered into buying the same product twice. I don’t think sooooooo!!!!!!!

So what do you do? You go shopping and if you see any Christmas products on sale take a picture with your mobile phone (you have one handy) and send it to me using the link on the sidebar. I’ll post em, make sure you include where you took the picture and we’ll name em and shame em.

After you have taken your picture go to the stores customer service area and ask for an email address or a snail mail address and then send them a letter showing your displeasure at such crass commercialization of the holiday season.

Hell it’s not even Halloween yet. I just don’t get it.

Let me know what you think in the comments section.

Until Next Time…

During my sixth form at school we had to undertake 3 weeks of work experience each year. Normally you would go to a factory and be a slave or you could go to an office and make coffee and be the butt of the water cooler jokes for three weeks. If you were interested in theatre there was only one place you could really go in our small dinky town and that was The Palace Theatre. Going there as a work experience person was a curse. You got sat in the box office and told to stuff envelopes for hours on end and the closest you got to doing anything theatrical was watching the old ladies who came into the theatre coffee shop at lunch time regaling us of their past stage stories.

I was not willing to do that and waste the time, I would rather have stayed in school and studied privately (also known as signing out of school and going over to the park and getting drunk on cheap beer and smoking menthol cigarettes…ahh the life).

I had made my feelings known to my home tutor and to my head of year and to the teacher who had been organizing the work experience and they were most annoyed at my refusal to play the game, but they had an idea. We got in touch with the Nottingham Theatre Royal about the possibility of me spending at least 1 week there to get me out of their hair… (they loved me really). The theatre agreed and not only agreed but took me for the full three weeks. Was I excited… Not really.. it meant I had to get up at 6 am every day for three weeks including Saturdays too make sure I could get my paper round done and get to Nottingham before 9am. It was an hour bus ride to Nottingham each day and I would be at the theatre during regular theatre hours which were (looking back) crazy stupid hours. My day would start at between 9-10 am for the tech notes for either the weeks show or the notes from the night before and then we would have to act on the info given.

If it was a Monday we would have to Get In the show that was running for the week. I was lucky in the three weeks there we only had three shows. If I had been a month later in doing my work experience I would have been there during Opera North Month.

ONM is where a BIG ASS opera company come to a theatre and wreck the lives all involved. The show Three full operas in rotation… no show the same two nights running. Which means EVERYTHING has to be changed EVERY night. Sets had to be taken down and put up every day and night. It was by all accounts a marriage breaking experience. They had three shifts of techies working 24/7. I loved the theatre butI hated and still hate opera. I find it a really bad awful way to waste an evening. Anyone who claims to enjoy and love opera also enjoys having their private parts tied to an electric fence and then having cold water thrown over them. It’s the artistic equivalent of being tied to a dead cow and being forced to eat a McDonald’s Happy Meal. I guess you could say that I ain’t too big on opera.

Anyway back to a normal week of work experience. My first week there the musical Grease was making it’s Nottingham stop. I was excited as hell to be able to work on this show. When the trucks arrived at the theatre it was all hands to the loading bays and unpack the three trucks with everything Grease. Up to this point the biggest thing I had unloaded was a little three tonne van with some stage decking in it. This was insane. What surprised me was, the sets didn’t look all that great when they were this close up. It looked beaten up and tacky. They looked like the original sets from the 70′s. But hey I was a school kid what did I know.

Surprisingly the Three trucks were unloaded in about an hour. And then things started happening so fast I couldn’t keep up. Things flew from the ceiling, giant hair driers appeared from out of nowhere and then the cast started arriving and MY GOD, I had never seen so many agile dancers in my life and they were all great looking too. I guess that is what is called getting stars in your eyes. Needless to say the rest of the In House crew had seen it all before and it didn’t phase them as it did me. They took the opportunity to look at pretty women I fell in love with every single one of them. That love affair lasted roughly 35 minutes. Every single dancer was dating another dancer (I was gutted… now I wish I could watch the after show party tapes )

Everything kind of went into blur mode after that. I hung curtains, I painted sets, I caught footballs (of the American style) and had a laugh with some very strange people indeed. This was my first real exposure to professional actors and they were all (in hindsight) quite up themselves for no particular reason (the show wasn’t that good.. this was before the revamp).

For the rest of the week I would show up at 9 in the morning and leave at 11pm in time for the night bus home, and then do it all over again the next day. I look back now and realize it was no way to live but I was having fun and I couldn’t let the school down, after all they had gone to all this trouble. During the day I would do various household duties backstage, like making coffee and stuffing the odd envelope and take flack as I was the joke of the techies green room water cooler….

Coming next time.. our hero falls head over heals in love with a Canadian Actress

Until Next Time…