Camden Palace Hotel

It's not a palace, it's not an hotel, — and it's nowhere near Camden; still, that is what it's called and that was where myself, Steff Master Baz and the Travelling Tourettes made our way to yester-eve in the continuing saga of 'Fivekinds'. In terms of audience, well... there was a few empty seats left when the show began but what can you do?



I will say this, the people down there running things must be some of the nicest that we've met so far. We shall be going back there now tonight and on friday too, and I for one am looking forward to it with the eager anticipation of an eager anticipatory thing.

almost.

Hi diddle de dee!

Well we went back to Clonmel and played our tragic tale once again to a higher but by no means incalculable number of patrons.

They gave us many compliments, many compliments indeed, and so I need hardly point out that they were a particularly discerning audience of unparalleled good taste.

Next week we'll be in Cork, but for the moment, I am as idle as the superannuated man. The end of ' Five kinds of Silence ' is in sight and I'm already grasping desperately around for some project to distract my brain and fill up my empty existence as soon as 'Five' is kindly silenced permanently.

I had hoped that the act of simply being in the room with an audience might give me an idea or two but so far, nada; nor have my e-mails R.E. Bloomsday in Oslo born fruit and so.... what to do, what to do?

I did have an idea before to organise a performance of 'The Beckett Lebowski' where nine characters ( trapped inside bowling pins in a similar fashion to the three people trapped in urns in Samuel Beckett's ' play' ) would act out all the dialogue of the Coen Brothers film: I love the way that phrases (beginning with George Bush Snr's "this aggression will not stand") reverberate from conversation to conversation in a constant language-echo-effect that I thought would suit the Beckett treatment,— but now that a chap has brought out a Shakespearean re-working of the fillum, well, The Beckett Lebowski looks like a load of copycat crapola.

The fact that Two Gentlemen of Lebowski is really quite well-written and works way-way better than my malformed idea does nothing to help matters.

Nothing at all.

Here's a sample where Sir Walter of Poland entreats Jack Smoke to "Mark it Zero":


Nay! I do protest, and draw my sword;
It shall teach thee to disobey my word.
Mark none but none into that bowler’s frame,
Else thou shalt enter to a world of pain.
A world of pain, think upon’t; unhappy world!
A lake of fire, rich with damnèd souls,
Gulfs of anguish ‘twixt vales of agonies.
Mark me; we stand at twisted, jealous gates
Of cast-iron, above which, in vulgar tongue, reads

“Here is a world of pain, thou enterest thus.”

My steel before thee, ‘tis the last of keys
I' faith, could lock these doors, and keep thee
From this world of pain, or with one flick
Ope its mashing maw, and summon winds
To cast thee down within; an excellent key!
Farewell to earthly delights, farewell to friends,
To fellowships and follies and amends.
The choice to spare thy passage through these trials
Is thine alone; take heed, I entreat thee,
And turn thy back upon this world of pain!


THE KNAVE
Walter, put up thy sword; tarry a moment.

WALTER
Hath this whole world been mired in madness?
Remain ye men of faculty complete,
Of full arithmetic and prudence fair,
Attending to our noble bond and contract?
Or does here stand the last remaining man
To give a fig for rules and order yet,
No noble savage, but a stave unbroken
Who loves the law and bids it no misdeed.
I’ll not be bent to lawlessness. Mark it nought, if we be men of honour.

THE KNAVE
Walter, too long we have tarried on public fields; the constable is notified. I pray you,
sheath thy piece.

WALTER
Mark it nought, else I’ll none.



JACK SMOKE
Good Sir Walter, speak with reason!

WALTER
Dost thou think I tarry idly? Mark it nought!

JACK SMOKE
Yea, I shall yield, and leave it to your pleasure.
Mark as thou wilt, in full and legal measure.

[Exit JACK SMOKE. WALTER sits]

THE KNAVE
In sooth, Walter, thou hast wounded me horribly.
Jack Smoke is cut of cloth alike my humour;
Peaceable men we, for peaceable times,
And Jack Smoke is a man of soft conscience.

WALTER
That he is conscious, I mark thee; I attend well.
In tender youth I dabbled in a course
To seek and hear moral philosophy.
Encount’ring pacifism on that road,
Though ne’er in Orient jungle, beshrew me; yet
I thought upon’t e’en on fields of war.

THE KNAVE
Thou markest that Jack Smoke hath woes of mind.

WALTER
Faith, beyond pacifism?

THE KNAVE
He is a man of fragility, sir, and like to shatter.

WALTER
“Like”; yet I mark not his fragile dust,
Nor saw him break, nor melt, nor cleave in two.
The heated moment passeth, river-tide
Below a bridge in Exeter. Speak, Knave,
Are we not victorious in our sport?
We progress as do rakes; or be I wrong?

THE KNAVE
No, thou speakest true—

WALTER
Be I wrong?

THE KNAVE
No, sir, thy speech is straight and true. But yet thou speakest not, for thou hast not spoken
but brayed, in the manner of an ass.

WALTER
Fair; then I am an ass; let it be writ down that I am an ass. Then, mark well; the Knave
and his partner, an ass, shall play again at ninepins in half a fortnight, their skills match’d
against Joshua Quince and Liam O’Brien. They worry me not; they shall be o’er-pushed
with certitude.

THE KNAVE
An we play again in seven days and seven nights, I pray you, be of good humour.

WALTER
“Be of good humour!” ‘Tis thine answer to everything.
Mark: thy peaceable nature, while conceiv’d
In upright spirit, meant for noble deeds,
May cited be by devils for their purpose.
Mark the Arab king in foreign land,
The base Mesopotamian, who lieth with steed.
Thou present’st to me a wall to hide behind
‘Twas born of truce in fear and frighten’d mind.

THE KNAVE
I pray you, be of good humour.

WALTER
I am as calm as still waters, Knave.

THE KNAVE
As steel waters, I’ll warrant; put up thy
Icy blade! Crack not gory tales of war!

WALTER
My calmness exceeds thine.

THE KNAVE
Be of ease, I pray you! Be of good cheer,
And let us not repeat what happen’d here!

WALTER
My calmness exceeds thine. But hark; here comes a visitor.

[Enter BRANDT]




It really is quite good.
Two Gentlemen of Lebowski site.

The roar of the greasepaint — the smell of the crowd.

The grand tour of 'Five Kinds' continueth. It's nice to say that we've 'been touring' all week; sounds somewhat less glamorous to say we've performed the play twice in a classroom and once in a nightclub,—that doesn't sound half as good; nor does it do anything to enhance any notions of 'showbiz' to point out that the nightclub show was attended by a total of nine people*, but there you are.

*Thereby outnumbering the amount of people on the stage by two.

Mind you, Clonmel was a loverly stage and an especially lovely and attentive and appreciative audience. We go back there tonight to, what we shall hope, is a bigger bunch.

If it's smaller, we're in trouble.

Big trouble.


how it went.

Barnacles and Bondage

I've enjoyed a rare day off from the play today. It cometh not a moment too soon because the voice is beginning to go and I needed to spend a good 24 hours in complete silence— rest and hydration I tells ya!

Feeding and snoozing and farting and generally doing 're-charge' stuff that requireth no use of the vocal chords has been fun.

What was I at?

Somebody recently mooted the idea of a free trip to Norway for Bloomsday, ( for any willin' actor who'd do a bit o' Ulysses for them) and I reckoned that, ( seeing as I have a 'tache and roundy glasses)— I might just be their man.


Be way of research, I reckoned I'd have another read of a bit of it, and, what was the bit I read?— only the row in the pub; then I had a look-see on the interweb of Angeline Ball doing her Molly Bloom monological what-have-you.

All marvellous, and why not go all out and get yourself a feed of Dennys sausages? says I ! (which I did, and why wouldn't I?) and a drop o' black tae and eggs and rashers while you're at it?



Sated and bloated with literature and protein, there was nothin' else for it but to watch an oul fillum for meself.
Why not?— says you; and what's with all these self-directed questions anyway?—would you not get on with what you're gettin' on with and not be botherin' the good people of the interweb with your blatherin oul' shite that makes no sense to man or beast you ignorant illiterate mongolian monkey man?

Faith I will, then: Right, the 'oul' fillum',

and, when I say oul' fillum, I do mean OUL fillum:

' Of Human Bondage ' 1934

Instantly watchable by doing a clicky here.

The pace and acting style of old fillums are likely to turn folk off nowadays: when you hear Bette Davis' british accent you may squirm slightly, or even a lot. Still, I enjoyed this old chestnut immensely.



It started off quirky and clumpy and odd with Ashley Wilkes from Gone with The Wind playing a quirky, clumpy and odd young painter with a club foot trying to make his name in Paris, but it became interesting very quickly.

If you have the time, you might try it, and just as the flavour of basil goes with tomato, it is the perfect accompaniment to the soliloquay of Molly Bloom. Watching them together is the way I done did it and it's agot me athinkin'...




Molly Bloom and Nora Barnacle and Matilda from ' Of Human Bondage ' had plentymany in common, I reckon. True to the social mores of pre-war cinema: Matilda ( who doesn't want to marry a decent, sensitive man when he proposes ), is portrayed alternatively as a bad guy*, and a bunny-boiler but there's a lot more goin' on there.

Ladies be complicated.

Okay, the pictures don't match the post.

On our part of The Donaghs, the family with the phone was a family from Monaghan with a volkswagon beetle that they covered in posters at election time and drove up and down the street extolling the virtues of Fianna Fail*

(*I think they have officially lost the 'fada' at this stage).

One year, this family had t-shirts, I reckoned they looked pretty cool and I asked me Ma if I could have one, her reply astonished me because we were good friends with this particular family:

"That 'Charlie Haughey' is nothin' but a gangster, and Fianna Fail are only gangsters, and they don't give a flyin continental about real people".

Ahead of her time; Hazel, in plentymany ways.

I asked her how come she was friends with this woman if she felt that way, and Ma said: "I don't mind her notions".



Now, I have notions: I have plentymany notions and one of my notions is about the purity and excellence of the 'person-created' art form, done for me, in the same room and at the same time as the person making it, vs the (probably higher quality) well-crafted thing with no soul or connection designed for mass consumption and maximum profit.

That's me notion, or that's one of me notions, but what I spose this post is about is me askin' you to take a leaf out of Hazel's book and 'don't mind my notions'.

The video clip at the very end of this piece is a bit of vulgar low-down huxtermanship. It is designed to increase the bums-on-seatage, and, for my fellow actores and the people bank-rolling this thing from the outset, I do get that perhaps marketing is the only way to pack out that first night,( or that one night in that town that never heard of you).

The well-marketed show is, to me, a much-despised bastard-relative of the show that 'does well because people recommend it to their friends' but, (in terms of any tangible financial reward for all the work you've put in,) the well-marketed show, what is crap, will beat the very good show, that nobody comes to, every time.



So here I am a huxtering. The same people who introduced me to Momus also introduced me to a much-treasured VHS videotape of Marlon Brando in 1965. On the tape he carries out a series of interviews about his latest film 'Moritauri'. I got the opinion, from watching it, that it was a low point of his career because he was so so SO unwilling to say anything good about it.

As it turns out: it's not a half-bad flick, highly entertaining and very different from the WWII fillums of the time, so why was Brando so unwilling to sell it?

Now I get it, Marlon Brando,(in common with myself and the yer wan on the Donagh's with the phone), had 'notions'. Unlike meself or herself he was charming with it. The interweb is here to bring you this treasure right now, here, free, gratis and for nothing. If you ever wondered what all the fuss is about that fat dude in 'The Godfather' then now is your chance to find out.
Observe:

part one

part two

part three

And when you're done with that,- check out the clip *sigh* for our up-coming show.

SMOKE OPTIMUM CIGARS

Videogroan

Socrates didn't write anything down. Like a lotta folks, he wasn't overly gone on this new-fangled technology of 'reading'. He claimed it ruined one's memory and turned your mind to mush. Luckily Plato and a couple of playwrights of the day were a bit more progressive and had absolutely no problem with writing whatsoever, which is how come we know today that Socrates ever said anything at all.

But he had a point. The knowledge we have in our minds is very different from the knowledge we have in our libraries.

Consider this bit out of Huxleys' Brave New World

He was digging in his garden–digging, too, in his own mind, laboriously turning up the substance of his thought. Death–and he drove in his spade once, and again, and yet again. And all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. A convincing thunder rumbled through the words. He lifted another spadeful of earth. Why had Linda died? Why had she been allowed to become gradually less than human and at last … He shuddered. A good kissing carrion. He planted his foot on his spade and stamped it fiercely into the tough ground. As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport. Thunder again; words that proclaimed themselves true–truer somehow than truth itself. And yet that same Gloucester had called them ever-gentle gods. Besides, thy best of rest is sleep and that thou oft provok'st; yet grossly fear'st thy death which is no more. No more than sleep. Sleep. Perchance to dream. His spade struck against a stone; he stooped to pick it up. For in that sleep of death, what dreams? …

You cant dig and read Shakespeare at the same time. If you're going to dig and contemplate death and think about Shakespeare simultaneously then you have to have the stuff inside your head. A head can only hold so much, and it takes a lot more programming time than the time it takes to write or print or download from the interweb, but I do think that the above passage illustrates that really learning things results in a more complete understanding of, and a more complete relationship with, the content.

As a bloke like as what has learnt plenty many songs and plays,- (to the point that he can regurgitate the words accurately and in the correct sequence, in spite of an all-encompassing terror,) I feel I know what I'm on about. I think that this process, for me, explains my addiction to thayture and thayture related shite. There is, or should be, a mental dedication to the work which is greater than that of 'second-take' mediums such as TV or fillums, and also, there is an almost atavistic respect for the human performer ( who shares the room and air with us) that we do not have for the slickest, most perfect, most believable recorded stories.

Now, I do get that recording things and methods of recording have a value, inestimable value in some cases; but the ubiquity of recording methods and devices and playback mediums must, in some sense, devalue things*.

*and perhaps also stuff.

I'll try to explain:

When Munster beat the All-Blacks in Thomond park there was no video coverage of the event because it coincided with the launch of Ireland's second television station, (RTE2) and they needed all the cameras for that.

When John Breens' play: 'Alone it Stands', was in its' first rehearsal, I was working in Limerick for RLOtv, and we made a programme about the upcoming play and the original match. The lack of any real record (there was about 8mins worth of grainy amateur footage) was bemoaned by many we interviewed but one team member (off-camera) had an interesting point of view;

"Nobody filming it, sure that's part of it... Nobody filmin' it, that's great, that's why people talk about it... nobody filmin' it made it the best game of rugby anybody ever saw... if we had film of it there wouldn't be the same stories, if we had film of it and you could see the match and then it wouldn't be so impressive..."

I remember this point of view set me a-pondering.

The lack of a recording turned that rugby match into a 'You-would-have-had-to-have-been-there' thing, and so it was recreated a thousand times over orally to attentive audiences in pubs, on park benches, and at kitchen tables. The event itself was an unprecedented and significant one, but the human element of it's recreation elevated it again to a mythic status.


Theatre and live music are 'You-would-have-to-had-been-there' things.

There is something different, something better, about actual human generated music and actual human generated stories that makes up for the absence of perfect studio sound or greater believability. As an Art College mate, (from the Careys' Road, who I dragged along to Waterford Youth Theatre's 'Our Town') remarked: "Play's make you think more". They do, and it's great. But there is no way to capture it.
There is no way to record that special feeling with any degree of accuracy. You would have had to have had been there. That's the point.

A play takes so much work that it's understandable that the people involved want some sort of record, something to show for all their industry; but I have always felt that even the most well-shot video recording of a play cheapens it. It places the actors and the stage on the same flat screen that Hollywood blockbusters, and high-end content, edited to the nanosecond, come from and unfavourable comparison is inevitable.

The projected performances, that are necessary for effective stage-acting, seem ham-fisted and ridiculous, and instead of being a 'You-would-have-to-have-had-been-there' thing, the play becomes something that you can watch later, if you feel like it, and talk all the way through (and comment to your partner "She's no Meryl Streep is she?").

As an atheist, with thayture as my religon substitute and the stage as my altar, I regard the presence of a video-camera in a theatre as sacriligious to my beliefs, and I think Socrates would agree with me. When the Dublin fringe told us they required a videoclip of 'Spinal Krapp', I was absolutely horrified. Now with this play (5 kinds of silence) another Dublin festival has asked for the same thing. I'm only one person in a collaborating group and so I just have to grit my teeth as I did with Spinal Krapp and just do the damn thing but I hate it. They have no right to demand it of us, it's like telling a Christian you want them to spit on a crucifix.

UmKay

I fell off the fag-wagon in spectacular fashion.
Rather than take the responsibility of my own failure, I've decided to blame alcohol.

What's all this about alcohol? we thought your body was a temple?

Well um.. okay let's put it this way: my body will never be a temple but has been a derelict squat and recently the owner decided to invest in it and do it up a bit.

Unfortunately the crew he hired for the job were absolute cowboys and last night they had their own party in the place and wrecked it even more.

Its time for a few P45s to be handed out and I'm afraid an alcohol ban for the next month is in order...

God help us.

On your marks...

Okely dokey.

Apologies for web absence folk,( I know how you all dote upon my dribbling squibbling rabbling babbling mental rantitude). I haven't been writing about 'Things and also Stuff' because I got some things (and also stuff) of my own going on at the moment.

About me is an air of general business, a flurry of activity if you will; the Five Kinds of Silence project is a big one.
'Word-wise' I got me a whole passel of memorising to be gettin' on with; 'body-wise' I'ne gonna really have to put some work in, (movement and blocking always takes me a long time to get me head around).

I have six weeks to 'quite liderally' get my act together.

As luck would have it, I'm a time-wealthy person, or I should say ,'I was a time wealthy person.



Just to make things extra-difficult, I've decided that my body will have to be, if not quite a temple, certainly less of a derelict squat, and, to this end, I have decided to break completely with my nicotine addiction.

It's all to play for boys and girls.



The Dubbelin venue for the show will be North Strand Tech, (the rather large 'soviet-block style' building that you see on the right just before you come into Connolly,) now known as Marino College. It's not hard to find if you know 'The Five Lamps'. We should be on there for one Monday night (very likely April the 4th).

Hasta Luego.

Billy don't be a hero.

I watched two fillums recently: 'The Road' and 'The Social Network', but as I watched them in the house of The Working-Class Heroes - I shan't be reviewing 'em; I didn't give them my complete attention; I'm in no position to comment on them: so I won't.



Instead, I'd thought I'd talk about this 'Five kinds of Silence' thing (that I was on about yesterday) because it is something that I have given my full attention to.

Now, plays are written to be performed, not read, and lots of things change as people go through the process of bringing it alive but I still think it's fair enough to comment on the script as a raw blueprint.

So,

Five kinds of Silence was written by Shelagh Stephenson as a radio play and won the 1996 Writers' Guild award for Best original Radio Play and the 1997 Sony Award for Best Original Drama. The stage version of the play was first performed at the Lyric Hammersmith, London in May 2000.

In Ireland, it was performed by Calypso in Andrews lane in 2004.

Structurally, it's very basic; thematically, it's really quite hard-hitting; narratively, I find it weak, but then again it's not a 'story-telling' type of story.

The characters are: three women who have lived under the constant and brutal repression of one man and the ghostly echo of that one man who remains with them even after they've killed him.

The man, ( Billy to give him his proper name), exists almost purely as a malevolent force. An abuser in every sense, he runs his home as a vicious 'one man Taliban' with complete control. The story of the play is not the story of three women finding the strength to carry out his execution; the story of the play is the story of the three women slowly finding some sense of their own identity once he's finally gone: a tortuous process, that takes place under the angry spectre of their dead,-but-ever-present, oppressor.

It's pretty strong stuff whatever way you look at it, and there are elements of it I am not looking forward to one iota.

The women are more or less realistic, and the ghost-Billy is poetic and surreal.
If you look at the monologue in yesterdays post, you get a sense of the cold and nasty poetry that Billy is made of: there is no real self-justification or warped desire to protect; the classic bully delusion: 'they deserved it', 'they made me do it', 'it was for their own good' e.t.c. gets no voice here.

Billy exists to harm and unashamedly delights in the hurt and pain he creates. The flashbacks to his own horrific childhood help us understand how he became a one-dimensional monster, but a one-dimensional monster he remains, and a one-dimensional monster is all we ever see of Billy.

Thematically, this makes sense if we remember that the Billy we see is the mental legacy of a murdered husband and father. The view of Billy we get is seen through the prism of those he terrified and dominated.

A 'real' Billy might have made excuses, given himself reasons, but the echo of life he has left in his victims is their construction and they know he enjoyed it. They know he enjoyed it and that that was always the only reason why he did it.

The Billy character is a pure sadist because tragically, his family remember little of him but the purity of his sadism. That is all they have ever known of him. Their horrible life, their rotten memories are the horrible and rotten Billy onstage.


Although it's written quite some time ago, I found it pretty resonant with our world today. Incestuous Austrian dungeon-families and books like 'The Room' echoed around my head as I read it.

It's not light entertainment but it is extremely engaging: it's an angry play shouting loudly on behalf of those who 'don't want to talk about it'.

Should be on in The Loft in April.

Five kinds of stagefright.

One night I dreamt I was a dog.


The moon was out, I could smell it.
Ice white metal smell.
I could smell the paving stones,
wet, sharp.
The tarmac road made my dog teeth tingle,
it was aniseed,
rubber,
and then the lampposts,
glittering with smells, they were,
studded with jewels of sharp sweet spice,
wood,
metal,
meat.
And the stars pierced my dog nose like silver wires.

A woman came out of her house,
sickly the smell of her,
rotten,
she smelt ofarmpitsandbabies

and a hundred other things screaming at me like a brass band.

I knew what she'd had for her tea.
I knew she was pregnant.
I could smell it.

She didn't look at me, walked straight on by,
thought I was just a dog.

I laughed a quiet dog laugh,
you think I'm a dog but I'm Billy,
I'm me.

I'm at my own door now.
I don't need to see it, it comes to meet me,
a cacophony,
the smells are dancing towards me,
the smells of home.

I'm inside the house now.

Hot citrus smell of electric light.
My wife, my daughters, stand up as I come in the room.

Oh home,
the smells I love,
all the tiny, shimmering background smells,
and the two I love the most,

the two smells
that fill the room like a siren.
One of them is
fear:
burning tyres,
vinegar,
piss.

And the other one is the
smell of blood,
matted in Mary's hair.

I gave her a good kicking before I went out.

There is quite a lot of things one can possibly do that might turn around and 'bite one in the ass' and writing criticism (for any creative medium that you are working in yourself) is fraught, yes fraught I say with "180 degree-turning and full ass-biting capability", as standard. Thas right boys, there's an ass-bitin' comin' down the line. Oh yes, by Jiminy; we'll see how smart he is now, the tables have turned the shoe into the horse of a different colour, by golly yes!

So, erm yes. I might as well get to it: Ladies and Gentlemen of the on-line commuinitah, I respect your authoritah, and it is with great pleasure that I inform you that I am to appear once again upon the stage myself, this April in fact, with Orchard Theatre Companah.

'In Five Kinds of Silence'.

The lines above are the opening monologue.

Not so feckin' smart now is he?

Whaddya think? : sounds like fun , no?