April 2007
PEE & CACA
Hello;
Well, yes everything is all right, I am fine it is just that I was in need of visiting the bathrooms and I went. Once I was there doing it I suddenly felt the urge of doing something else that I did not fell like doing on the first place. So I had to finish the first thing before I could do the second thing but it pissed me off that I did not fell both things at the same time so I could have saved some of the effort and I would have relived myself completely on the first place.
And that is what it worries me the most the fact that now a days I cannot read the messages that my body sends to me properly. I can ready some of them but things as simple as wanted to go for caca used to be very easy to read. This days most of the time I think my body is asking for caca is just a fart. But then I am in the toilet, sitting and I cannot believe that what I interpreted as caca is a mere fart so I push and it becomes something worst. It becomes a solid fart. Do not tell me you do not know what a solid fart is? There are different kinds that is true but the classic solid fart is the one that you think is going to be just air and you end up finding a big marc in your pants. Or when you go to the toilet thinking that you want caca and you just get a minuscule turd. And for me these ones are the worst ones because you do not fell very well how they are or what they are so when you pass the piece of toilet paper through your asshole you do not take the shit and most of the times you just end up spreading in the deep face of your ass chicks. And then once again you end up making your pants dirty.
I went for a pee and while I was peeing I felt like caca but I could not stop peeing so I had to finish peeing and then I could caca. I put my trousers down and I sat and I sited. This time the message was clear but I was not able to read it.
It worries me because that means that I am getting older and sooner than I thought I am going to be peeing in my trousers of having problems with my prostate.
Do you think this is something to do with the wanking?
I do not know, or perhaps it is something to do with the lack of use for sexual purposes? It could be anything. My guess is that is age.
Now the only thing I can think of doing is that every time I go to the toilet I am going to sit in the toilet and hope for the best. If it is what I thought it was then everything is fine and if it is not then I will pull my trousers back and I will walk away like normal.
It is a weird sense not being able to identify what your body is trying to tell you. At the moment this is the only department where I am having troubles reading the messages. Perhaps, Alzheimer is kicking and I am not living any more and all these things are just a dream and belong to the time where I was a human being in perfect conditions. Well, I was never in perfect conditions, fat, bold but you know what I mean.
Have fun.MOVIES; PLAYS
Hello;
This is such full day, from one cultural event to the next, from one exciting movie to a famous play from North London to South London. This is one of the best things of living in London that there are always many things to see and all of them potentially very exciting.
So because it is my day off I packed it with many cultural events that other ways I do not have time to do.
I left the house in the morning ready to go to see the n German movie “the life of others”. When I arrive to the cinema in Soho they were not showing the movie until really late and I had tickets to go and see a play. So I bought a ticket to see “This is England”.
I loved the movie. I thought the end drag a little bit but just a little bit. The kid that is the main character of the movie is just fantastic. He is a kid a child with the face of a grown up person. He plays very well and what it amazes me the most is the way the director works with him. He really has managed to get the best out of him and put it in the movie.
There is another actor that plays the old skinhead that is very good. He plays really tough but also he plays really sensitive.
For me at the end of the movie the story kidnap the whole movie, as if the director had to go and tell the end when in fact the best thing the only end is death. Nevertheless it is a great movie and it is very well acted and very well shooted.
After that I wander through town. It was full of people. The weather is very good and here every body goes out as soon as there is a little bit of sun.
I had to meet Petra at BAC at five. She had spent the weekend in Brighton with Lucy and Toby and their friends. She called me from the train telling me that she was going to be late and that I should leave her ticket at the box office. She will pick it up when she arrive.
She arrived to the BAC while we were already sat. Antonio Gil Martinez came to see the play too.
The show was called Hysteria. It is a famous show. It went for an award against us in Edinburgh last year. One actress from the company and one actor from our company went to make a photo for the Total Theatre magazine. I was the one from my company and Lucinka was the actress from their company. She was really nice and I promised her I will go to see her show but I never made it.
I liked the show but I was not surprised or drown to it or very seduced or even very interested. They are very good performers and it is an interested piece but Do you want your work considered interested? I will heat if people said that our work is interested.
I must say I was expecting much more but it seems that the evolution of physical theatre has stopped. Between you and me I have all my hopes put into the new Theatre O show. It is a show of “The Brothers Karamazov”. It sounds an amazing idea.
Listen before I leave let me remind you to go and see “The Hound of the Baskervilles”.
Have fun.THE NO DAY
Hello;
I have just been working the whole day and I am far too tired. We had a matinee and because I leave quite far away from the theatre I have to leave the house very early and also because I can not say no to another beer at night I go back home very late at night and then when I am there I can not stop me from reading a little bit or watching a movie or doing something that will take me away from what I have been doing during the whole day.
So I did the matinee, and for me was the best performance of the show. I suppose it has something to do with the fact that you are very rested and you have not use yet any of the energy that you will be using during the rest of the day.
In between shows we Laura and Danny had organised a treats festival and we were all called at five thirty to eat cake and scones at one of the terraces of the theatre.
I did not get anything so I had to make a very fast visit to the local Sainsbury and get things for people to eat.
Then I had a nice chat with Carolina and with some of the cast from how much is your iron? They really are very nice people. I knew Joseph from before but I did not know Michael and Naomi. We saw her in Measure for Measure in Berlin. She is very nice.
I have to say that the cakes and the scones with double cream and jam were really superb. I had one some and there was no more cream so I decided not to take anymore.
While in the terrace I could fell how my eyes where getting really tired and I was worried about the evening show.
Paul came to see the show and Emma Rice from Kneehigh and the guy who runs the BAC. They were very nice thou all of us thought that the guy who runs the BAC did not like the show very much. At least he did not say anything but we are physical theatre performers and we read body language could see what the message his body was sending.
And it was not a pretty message.
The second show it was not as good as the first one I thought. And then after the show we had more drinks. Jason called to go for a drink but I was too tired to get involve in a drinking night and I went home. I did receive a late message saying that he was with Lisa and Rachel in Soho but I was already in Muswell Hill and I was not planning to go back to town for a drink at that time.
It has been an amazing week and getting to know all these people that I am working with is really good. We have probably become friends but this is something that just time would tell us. I have the felling that actors in this town and the whole world do friendships that do not last or better say that last the time that you work together and then the odd moments that you see each other's again.
Have you gone to see The Hound of the Baskerville? Well you should go and see it before they run out of tickets.
Have fun.BUSSINESS
Hello;
Spymonkey is this company created by performers and theatre artists Toby Park, Petra Massey and Aitor Basauri, Spymonkey seeks to promote high quality innovative physical theatre. WE aim to produce and tour work in the UK and internationally to as wide an audience as possible. We provide opportunities for creative exchange between our members, other theatre artist and audiences, towards a fertile theatre company. And today in the meeting we have added the fact that we also are going or want to start to work in Television and movies.
The board or the members of the board who did make it to Brighton met at Angel house, a lovely hippy place by the sea where you have to get rid of you shoes in order to go to the room of the meeting.
We went through different things that we need it to talk about what has to happen to Spymonkey and how it has to happen and what has happened until now. It is really weird when you talk about all these things because it always looked like you are blaming someone and that is not the thing. It is not about blaming it is about responsibility.
My biggest consideration is that for the last two years since leaving Las Vegas, Spymonkey has been Cooped and a little bit Bless. We have dedicated our energies to promote Cooped and to make it the best show. People have come to work with us to sell Cooped and to make money with it but we have neglected Spymonkey. And I believe that Spymonkey is more that one show or at least that is what I want to believe.
I doubt many times if the three of us are able to come up to decisions without a director but I am in it to try. When we started there was no one there and we did it there fore why we cannot do it again?
As and example we are discussing the possibility to work a little bit with another director so we can have another experience. So if one of us says I would like to work with this director then each of the other have another different idea of who they would like to work with. So my question is how can we work together?
Well, Michael was there and he was very good. Nick Perry also was there and he was amazing also Gill and Kathy that I have to say she was looking gorgeous. Really pretty Kathy, the only thing I can think is that the life in the countryside really makes you very good.
Well, in the afternoon I started to loose concentration. I had to leave to do the show and I was starting to panic that I was not going to caught my train back to London so I lost any information that was happening.
My feelings are that we are starting something, it is new but we could not do it without what we have done before. It is less innocent and more professional and the word fun is not anywhere that I can see it. It fells like a place to make money and then go back to the places we like to have the fun. It makes me sad and I take responsibility for that. I miss the times when we were just happy to work together.
Go to see the Hounds of the Baskervilles because they need audiences and I am sure it is a good show.
Have fun.
VIEWS
Hello;
Earlier than expected there were in the papers many views of the show. I say views because they are just views of the work. And in a way if you know how to write very well you can have many views and also the most important is how to articulate those views in a piece of paper.
So lets go through them from the best to the worst, the best is at the Guardian written by a man called Michael Billington.
“What will surprise many is how moving the play is: a reminder that Brecht erected his later theories as a barrier against emotional dynamic. Paul Hunter's production and Biyi Bandele's translation are also graced by an extraordinary performance by Sandy MacDade as the heroine: in place of a net-mending old crone, she gives us a bleakly obdurate, close cropped woman who will got any lengths to protect her children. This is Mother Courage in miniature that learns the hard way that there is no safety in short-term survival. And, although the play has a didactic intent, it emphatically proves that agit-prop need not exclude art.”
So that is not bad at all. It is the best one and in away it is just a view that coincides with our view or better Paul's view.
The second best is in Metro. In this view the writer does not even give her view she just talks about what the play is about so I am going to pass on her.
The third best is The Times and is done by someone called Benedict Nightingale
“With Sandy McDade's title character doing all she can to stop her sons following her late husband into frontline battle with the increasingly murderous Franco, the effect is a mix of Lorca and Synge's Riders to the Sea, which reputedly inspired the piece. Many with passion, but also with a sympathy understanding not only of maternal fury but also of the anguish of the Catholic priest who clings to pacifism he knows are suicidal. The young Vic continues to prove Brecht a less predictable writer than we sometimes assumes.” It is not great but still like us.
There is another view in the Evening Standard. This is probably the fourth best as far as I know. “In Senora Carrar's Rifles, director Paul Hunter takes a more conspicuously Brechtina approach that has been seen elsewhere in this season. This Greek-style tragedy of a Spanish Civil War widow who won't let her sons fight gets a huge framing device, an undressed, artificial looking set, and flat lighting.
It's drab to look at and, it turns out not great to watch. Biyi Bandele's translation clunks. The actors neither fully engages with their characters nor each other: moment of emotion jump from nowhere, comic episodes are fudged. Only the play's political message comes across, loud and dated. It's a shame that a season that otherwise reveals Brecht as a playwright of immense sympathy and breadth should include something so true to his negative stereotype: didactic and dull. Still three out of four ain't bad, as a fat man almost sang.” Kieron Quirke.
Well, this is the one that some people I know identified with. But I am not agreeing with it. I think we could have done more with the play but I like it.
“Still, it is ultimately stronger than Senora Carrar's Rifles, set in the Spanish Civil War, and depicting a peasant woman attempting unsuccessfully to keep her family out of danger. There are strong echoes of Synge and O'Casey, and anticipation of Mother Courage, in the recognition that sons die and mothers grieve. But Brecht's political purpose keeps him from fleshing out the characters or evoking universals, while he makes and remakes his point repeatedly so that, even at 45 minutes, the play feels overlong.
How Much Is Your Iron? is anchored by performances and direction that tread the delicate line between reality and cartoon, but Senora Carrar's Rifles is further hampered by a jumble of accents and performance styles”
This is definitely the worst of all the views of the play, it appeared on the stage magazine and he definitely did not like it at all.
Now go and see the hound of the Baskervilles and let me know what you think.
Have fun.HEIIIIAAGGHH!!!!
Hello:
High, yes, sorry, well, yes I am a little bit drunk. You do not need to look so attentive. I can tipe properly, tape, tipe , type I really do not know how to spell it so the best is to try all the way until it makes sense to me. Another sipe from my glass. I am becaming a drunk. I drink too m much. Why do I do that? I do not need to drink as much as I do. I could avoide it. I canot write I am drunk ithais so silly. I keep trying to do it but even if try to croorect my word I am making a mess. Where do I look? To the screen? Or do I look to the keyboard?
That wine is not as good but the one that was really bad was the one that we were given as red wine by the theatre. It was really embarrassed. I got a glass and after that I could not look at the waiter in his face. I do not like him. As far as I am concern that waiter is dead and I do not want to see him ever again in my life. I have not make any mistake writing this so probably anger is on her side. And now I am looking at the screen and not looking at the key board. And I lost key and I have to repeit key and repeit. I have to repeit repeit because I do not know the spelling of the word and I am drunk so the spelling gets a little bit funny.
What we were talking about. It is my drunk assumption that you out there are many but I can live with that. In fact I can live in a fantasy world I do not have any problem to that.
I had to have another sip from mywine glass before carry on writing. I am drunk and I do not know what else to write but I thought that it wcould be interesting for all of you to go through the words of someone that is not completely in control. Mainly as a psicological experiment.
I think I am goijng to vomit so I better stop writing.
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Have fun.PRESS NIGHT
Hello;
I did make an effort this morning to have a nice and relax day but I could not. I was working I was concentrated in the part I had to play in the evening. So I went shopping and then I got some food for lunch. I went home and I cooked. And I cooked this beautiful rice with seafood I got from Sainsbury. Do not miss understand me please because the seafood was not beautiful what I thought it was beautiful was the rice. Sometimes I really cook the rice very well.
After lunch I say good-bye to Matt and I went to the theatre. We supposed to be there at five so we could some work in the show just before the opening night. It has proved to be a very go idea to work a little bit in the show before hand because then our concentrations keeps higher.
While in the show I was very excited but not all together and full of pleasure. I have troubles with my pleasure on the stage for some time now and in this show it was not going to be different. I enjoyed while I did it but I was not very conscious of what was I doing.
I thought the show went quite well for what it is. I do not mean this is a bad way. The show has been rehearsed for a short period of time and probably for a piece that is not genius writing it would have been very nice to have done a couple of weeks of devise work. The play is political and for what someone told me after the show it is also part of sailors or fisherman theatre. Plays that happen in places where people live by the sea. I have never heard of that before in my life. The person that told me that is an Irish writer so I presume he knew what he was talking about.
When the show finished we all looked at each other's and there was a general sense of enjoyment and satisfaction. We did not know if the audience had like the show a lot but at least we had the satisfaction of to have done what we said we were going to do.
There were flowers and cards and trifles, Rick wanted to do a joke with rifles and trifles and he just did not take enough time to do it and set it.
I forgot to get a card to Similia and that was terrible. She has been really nice.
We drunk wine in the dressing room and we eat chocolate and we went out to celebrate. There were lots of people there in the bar. We got congratulations. Matt and Heather my guests came from the show not being completely happy. That was my impression but they say the opposite, they told men that they enjoyed. It is probably my paranoia. Still it is nice to be surrounded by actors and by people that works in the theatre.
The guys from the hound of the Baskerville came to have a drink and I ended up going home in a black cab with Jason and Paul because we lost the last tube. Go and see the show of the hound of the Baskerville because it is a funny show.
I arrived home and I heated the left over of my rice and I ate it with a glass of wine. Nice end for a busy and full on day.
Have fun.FIRE ALARM
Hello;
Everybody at the Windmill waiting for the emergency moment to happen but nothing is happening so we are in our way back to the theatre. It is a very funny situation when you see lots of people from many different shows coming out of the theatre in their different costumes. Between us and the people of “How much is your iron” at least there is a similar time face or time look but with “Vernon God Little” all the action happens in the seventies I think so the contrast is quite big.
The Windmill is a pub next to the Young Vic. There is a very good pub non-the other side that a friend told me that the food is very good there but I have not had the chance to try it yet so I will have to organise that at one point. The members of the “Iron” cast where on their costumes and it was quite funny to see them they're mixing with all of us in twenty-century costumes. The alarm went off really fast and we went back to the theatre to carry on rehearsing. We have not done the show for one day and we had to pump ourselves up to get the mood of the play back.
Another story would have been that the alarm would have gone for a real cause, a fire in the theatre, a terrorist attack, or perhaps a car in the middle of rush hour could cope with the waiting and took his way through an crash again the posh restaurant of the young Vic and then mashing one of the walls of the entrance of the theatre to the point that we could not use the dressing room any more.
That situation would have been upsetting but it would have been a great story to tell in the future. I would not have felt anything if all the waiters of the bar would have died in the accident. Well, I would have felt really upset if the girl of the blues eyes would have got kill but the men are horrible. It fells that the bar belongs to them and I do not think that is the case. They are really unfriendly.
But lets leave that because it is a completely different subject and if I hear an alarm I want some action. Perhaps this is because I have never been in a situation when the alarm has gone on and anything has happened. I am sure the reason why the alarm went on was because they were testing if everything was fine in case of an accident.
And everything went well and everybody was at the place the suppose to be so if something happens when the big guys and the press come to see the show tomorrow then nobody will die. Imagine if the main character from Theatre of Blood decided to use the fire alarm of the theatre to have all the critics outside and then try to kill them all together. That would be something amazing. It is a pity they did not think about it when they did the play at the National.
Talking about the National, I have bought a ticket to see a show at the National in June. It is called “Matters of life and dead” and is a production of the National and Kneehigh. I will tell you all about it June but until then go to see the Hound of the Baskerville.
PETRA'S BIRTHDAY
Hello;
A sunny Sunday is something to celebrate because time disappear and you fell like you have your whole life in front of you to do all the things you want to do. And as I woke up that is exactly what I felt. The pillow was talking into my ear. She was saying things like stay in longer, why are you leaving me? You don't like me anymore? And I was trying to tell her that I had other things to do and other people to see. Today is Petra's birthday and I have to go. The party is going to start at one o'clock and it is already 12:30 and I am still here and that is when I left the pillow laying in bed and went to get ready.
I got Petra a present in my way to the party. I saw this thing in a shop and I thought she is going to like it. I was not sure thou so I looked for something else but then I did not see anything that like so by three o'clock I was there.
“You are late” it is very easy to bully me. I do not know why. I always had the idea that I was a very tough person and that people felt a little bit fearful of me.
So I went up with my present, my bottle and myself getting ready to a big extreme welcome. In a way I know Petra by now and as I was coming up I realised that she had forgotten about me in the time that was going to take me to upstairs. And it was like that, I arrived and when I kissed her happy birthday her face was like the one that has not seen you for a very long time and it is very surprise you are around.
Toby was in the party with Maya and Noah. Noah had a long hair and I did not recognise him at first. Maya with all the kids were lying in bed watching the movie “Madagascar”. Of course we had a small Spymonkey meeting. I suppose that this business relationship it will end up killing our friendship but that is normal.
We are getting ready to start another leg of our professional life as a company. Things should change but how much and how?
Lots of people were in the party; the entire Massey clan was there. Maggie told me that I make lots of mistakes when I write in English and I said I am trying to get better. Leo, little Leo, cousin Leo, Zoe, Joshua, Isabel looking really nice and funny, aunty Joe and Ally were there.
Then all the usual suspects, friends that Petra has had all her life and that are very nice people, Tiane and James, Liz, Charlotte, with their men and kids, Lucy is a yellow number telling everybody I am not going to stay too long because I have to be in the morning in Brighton and I left at one in the morning and she was still there.
How else? Karen and Dixie, Belinda, Amy, Stompy, Tania and Beth, Andy Purvis that has lost his name since working with Spymonkey and now is known as Basal. Matt was there. He is very nice Matt I like him a lot.
The party was great specially having that great terrace that Petra has in his house. I would have stayed there much longer but I had to do work next day and I did not want to get really drunk. Nevertheless when I left I was already quite drunk.
And do not forget to go and see The Hounds of Baskervilles. It is a great show.
Have fun.IN THE BUS
Hello
It has been our second night and the show has been performed with more panache and energy and we were all much happy.
And the night before Jason and John from Pepolikus came to say hello. They are doing the Hounds of the Baskervilles on the other side of the river. You must go and see it. So we had some drinks and then when the time to leave arrived I found out that John was going in the same direction and we walked and talked about all the things.
In the bus with John Nicholson I discovered that he is a very insightful person. Sorry, John but you do not look like the clever one.
John's company has always been a little bit of an example for me and for my colleges of Spymonkey over the years. They started before us and we have been able to learned a lot from them. Thanks to all of that and the fact that they have always were very generous we have not made many mistakes or at least the same mistakes they did when they started.
On the bus we shared our future plans and how things were going for our companies and if things are as good as we like it or not.
John is as far as I see it like Toby in our company. They are very driven people and thanks to them we both have more or less well balance and organised companies. They both are very talented people in opposition to Javier and Petra Stephan and me that do not know how to do any other thing that the one I do. David is different because he is also a very talented director and writer. I think.
So in times where we do not have a clear direction as a company and times where we have to decide in new challenges for the future. The fact that they have already gone through the same problems his opinion or his thoughts were really illuminating.
We also talked about the blog. He said that sometimes he fell the whole thing is a little bit too personal and I am agree with him but there is not other way of doing it because I write all the time and I do not know how to write just from imagination. I told him that there have been many times when I felt I was going too personal and then I just mixed it with something that I imagine. So, yes, some of the things I have written in here are things that are product of my imagination.
Then as I was walking through the park I felt well while I remember the conversation. I could be really honest with John because I knew he knew what I was talking about because we have gone through the same things.
We had a good show and things were going forward and I was having a party next day for Petra's birthday. She is going to be a little bit older and also is not having the best time of her life so I am going to do what necessary for her to be happy.
SI, go and see the show The Hounds of the Baskervilles, at the Duchess Theatre.
Have fun.PREVIEW
Hello;
The preview became an opening night as soon as Antonio saw Simon in the audience. He came back stage after the beginning and his face was very serious so it was not going to be fun because he had seen Simon. He, Simon I mean should have waited a little bit in the run to be here- he said. Suddenly the show was a big task, was something that had to be good.
I am sure Simon is aware the kind of expectation that he creates when he is around. Everybody wants to be there and say hello and please him. He is not just a very good director but now he is a famous Hollywood star. When you know that someone like that is in the audience you want to do a very good show and you want to be liked by him.
But being honest with all of you that were not the reason why we did not do a very good show. The main reason was that we did not know. We have never done the show in front of a normal audience and we were a little bit tired and trying to find how the reaction of the audience was while we play. So we ended up doing a very tentative show and I am sure that from an audience point of view this is not very good.
We had a two hours and a half of more tech work at ten o'clock in the morning and then we broke and then we had a run through and then we had another long break before the show. It was all too long.
And I was nervous, and I felt prepared but nervous, and I wanted to do the show and have fun doing it but I was scare I was not going to be able to do all the things that we had rehearsed for it. It was all that fuss because I cared. And I still care and when I will do it tomorrow I will do it better.
We had a long a nice warm up and Sim, she is the assistant director suggested to do a game together.
I have not mention Sim before and I fell really badly for not doing it. I like her very much. She has a great smile. So when you arrive to work in the morning and you are not felling great she welcomes you with a big heart smile and you fell that everything is going to be all right.
So we play the ball game in one of the sides of the auditorium and I had a great time. I could fell how my energy tanks were getting empty but the adrenaline was going to take me through. Sadly that was not the case. I am sure that it was not very much up to me the fact that the show was slow but I fell responsible as all my colleges.
At night, in the bar the cast gathered together for a drink. We were tired and there was a small sense of being defeated. We drunk a beer and we left for home knowing that tomorrow it will be another day and we will have another opportunity to do the show that we have learned to love.
Before I forget go and see The hound of the Baskerville.
Have fun.RADICAL
Hello
I was late and as I arrived to rehearsals and there have been radical changes. I over heard some names, David, Robert one conversation last night etc and I understand that there was some little things that were suggested to Paul and he very diligently took on board and that is what we will trying today but the fact that I have not slept many hours and the embarrassment of being late made me to need a moment to take all the things in.
I see the actors of the play performing, acting and I love it. I love what they do where they put themselves and the places where they go in order to make the audience have a nice time. If the audiences would have a nice time that is another thing all over. They may be seeing a very honest work from very good and generous actors and they do not fell move you will not want them to cheat on you clapping more than they should.
And then like out of nowhere there is an excitement in the room and things are happening really fast. People go up and down and things disappear and then appear again and you can spread the air with a knife. Do you get the image? There is not tension in the room like when you can cut the tension with a knife but there is an exciting tension in the room that you can spread. One you have had a bite of that tension then you want more and for some hours we fell taken forward by the beauty of an inspirational move.
We put the actors in the middle of the theatre, in front of the stage before the beginning of the play and then we start the play. We want to open the story to the point that the audience is part of the action and fell involve in is going on inside the stage.
There is excitement in the room. We fell we have a direction where we can put the things we like and where we can do more of the staff that we like to do. Another different thing is if the audience is going to like what they see or if it is going to be everybody's taste. It happens ever so rare that you do things that everybody likes a lot.
We rehears and rehears and then we do a run and then I go to see another show because I fell full of theatre. And then when I go a to see a show I understand the work of the actors a little bit more and how difficult it is to make it right. The journey is endless and the possibilities of success very few and still we are far too many trying to make it right and we are the lucky ones.
I went to see "A Final Balance" by Tamasha. The play is based in a novel written by an Indian writer that I do not remember the name now. I like the play a lot and especially I liked the two main actors. They play a very estrange double act where they are cousins but behave like father and son. They were great. I just thought that perhaps the rhythm of the show could have been a little bit faster.
Still it amazes me how tough we are with other people's work and ours is always great. Would that be because we think that they do not have the same honesty as we do?
Well, go to see the Hounds of the Baskervilles is very good and you are going to have a great time.
Have fun.MORE TECHS
Hello,
The great thing of working with a company like this is that everybody likes to have a very good time while they are working and I like that very much.
Oh, I have to say how sorry I am about the 33 people killed in Virginia the other day. It is such a terrible thing all that guns thing they have in America and the fact that nobody does anything about it. How on earth they do not realise that weapons are not necessary at all. People need to be free to go about with not thinking that one person can kill them. I know it is a very obvious thing to say but why do you need to have a gun? Who needs guns? Oh it breaks my heart.
Cal left for Mexico to give a workshop and to direct a show with some fantastic clowns. I was going to go with him until I got this job, thanks to Paul Hunter. Every time I have worked with Cal as his assistant I have had a great time and I have learned a lot. He is a good person to follow.
I am not writing in the theatre today I am very involve with the creation of the show even if in the environment everybody has a very specific roll and the fact of the matter is that everybody respect that roll, like in a big army where everybody has a rank and everybody follow orders.
I am having such a good time that …well I suppose I am having such a good time because I did not have such a great time while I was doing the Bless.
Little by little we go through the whole show. What some days ago it was just a group of performers in their rehearsing clothes now is a well dressed set of characters in a very Spanish peculiar space with a very incredible sound track and the lights of a very good play.
We have been going on little by little through the play from very early this morning and when we arrived to the end we went back to the beginning and we did the whole play again. We put all the tings together and we gave it another go in order to have it ready.
It did fell very nice but it also felt that it need it more runs in order to get the right rhythm. As we were going through the play with no stops I was felling that the show was doing like when a car is stalling you press the brake by mistake and you do not change to the right gear and the car stops and then goes again and then stops. You fell pull forward and backwards and it is not very nice.
We have a discussion during the notes session and it was very clear for all of us that the pace of the show would be achieve as we play the show.
Now forget about my show and go to see The Hounds of the Baskervilles they need you and you are going to have a very good time. I am sure they are going to be developing the show so you can really go more than once.
Have fun.TECH
Hello;
Teching the whole day for our beautiful show and still I have not been able to get rid of my hang over. I mean my hang over from the fantastic show The Hounds of the Baskervilles that I am telling you; you have to go and see it.
I drunk a little bit too much but also I have a hung over from the show because I have not stop thinking about it. It did inspire me. There are not many people who do work as well as these people from The Hounds of the Baskervilles the show that you must go and see it. Yes, do go and also buy a program and tell your friends to go and see it too.
And I am writing a little bit in the middle of the tech because my bits are not ready yet and everything that all the crew is working in is bits where I am not involved.
And that allows me to admire the amazing work that people is doing around me. First it amazes me the amounts of people involve in the whole putting up of this little show.
Danny is the big pilot of the submarine. She receives the orders from all the chiefs and organise them and give them to the rest of the people. The chiefs of the different compartments of the submarine are Robert in set and costumes and design and Misha is the chief of the lights compartment. There is another chief called Ian that is in charge of the sounds in the show. I think it is really amazing what he has done.
Then Paul listen to everybody distribute his orders through Danny but I said that already. All chiefs have people working for them, working for their departments, Hatty and Frears for Robert, Matt and a young guy for Ian and Misha I do not think he has anyone working for his department but I am sure there is someone.
The there is Marice who is the one that is the chief of the tech. She is in the middle of the theatre shouting how things should be. July and Jeff are her guys. They stay at the back of the stage and called the shots. If someone comes out of the things that have been set up they can break your legs and then they will drop all your left over into the river Thames.
Jeff is doubling up by playing a dead person in our play. He is going to be cover in a big sail and he is going to have blood all over his face and foot.
I have not met anybody else that works in the show and I am sure all the people that work in the office like someone called Paul, and Sam the casting director that called me are around or they will or they have been but I have not met them yet.
It is very nice to go back once again to do just the job that you suppose to do, acting. I do not think I am going to have many chances to repeat because I am a Spanish actor that works in London and the competition is very big. And I should have studied English better but now it seems to be a little bit too late to start to do classes in speaking English properly. We will see. If things get really tough then I will do that.
I am grateful to all the people working in our show, I think they all are great and they have made have a great time.
Have fun.
THE HOUNDS OF THE BASKERVILLES
Hello;
Well, first of all guys you all have to go and see this show. The show is performed and created by the very funny company PEPOLIKEUS and this is the first time they have managed to take a show to the West End of London. They have done the journey that all the companies like his wants to do.
A bunch of people from the show at the Young Vic went to see the first night. They were having the first night the day after. It seems that they show did not go as good as they wanted for it to go but I have to say I had a great time and I think is a good show.
It is impossible for me not to long for the kind of wild and very funny work they used to do in the pass but nevertheless they are a great company. I remember the first time I saw them in “Let the Donkey go” and I look at them now and they are amazing. That show was incredible but now that is the fucking West End. I have to say I felt super proud. My friends, people I have worked with had their names on the big posters over the entrance of a West End theatre.
It is a good show. They are very good in the show and they tell the story of the hounds of the Baskervilles in a very imaginative way. The day I saw the show some things went wrong but I am sure they are going well today and they are fine by now. I liked those mistakes and things that went wrong when I saw it.
The only thing I would like to say is that they should not worry about telling the story. Everybody knows the story of Sherlock Holmes and even if they do not really know it very well they imagine very easily what is happening so have more fun and take further all the things, all the funny things that you do in the show.
And now this is for all of you out there who are reading this blog go and see the hounds of the Baskervilles at the Duchess Theatre in the Strand I believe it is at seven thirty from Monday to Saturday. You have to go and see it because it is a good show and there are not enough shows that do the cross over from the world of independent theatre companies to the West End commercial world. So all of you whenever you have decided to go do not go by yourselves call five friends and take them to see the show. They would love it and then they would love you more. Once they have seen it organised a competition to see who is the one of those previous five people who managed to take to see the show the biggest amount of audiences. The winner will have a free ticket to see the show again.
Once you have organise this competition between your group of friends then tell you friends to have the same competition between their own group of friends. This would mean that we would have created a big chain of people that would fill the theatre until the end of the run being this at end of July.
So now GO AND SEE THE HOUNDS OF BASKERVILLESG
Have fun.TOUR
Hello;
There is not much for the future in the Spymonkey horizon but a small light of hope appeared the other day and we are still waiting to hear. The colour of that light? I don't know really but it fells exciting to know that we may be going to Montreal to the Just for Laughs festival. It is an old aspiration of us to participate in that festival because we know some people from the time we were working in Montreal for Cirque du Soleil. I think that if we had gone a little bit later on time we would not have had as good chance as we have now. In one more year we would have been forgotten us.
And then the way we make our money and the way we exercise our trade is by doing gigs. Not so much by doing shows but by playing gigs with all the shows that we have created ‘till now. And I do understand that it is different for all of us because I do not have a big family for me to be on tour it is not such a big thing. In fact I still enjoy very much all the things that means to go to do a show to another town or to another festival or similar things. There is something really lonely about that life in hotels and places that you do not know but for me many years ago I learned to enjoy them. I learned to get the most of being in a hotel room by myself and not having to be told by anyone stop changing channels or I learned to go out on the streets and once I have recognized where my building is and I have learned how to go around then I learned to enjoying getting lost in the middle of lots of people that I am not going be able to recognise.
I also learned to have fun visiting places that comes out in the tour guides and then when I am there it makes me fell really good to drink a beer or read my paper or look at it from the outside or take a picture and walk away while all the people that surrounds me are tourist who have come from far away places just to see that. The fact that I have refused to visit the monument and these people around me have travelled and spent lots of money to see it has always made me fell really powerful.
I learned to enjoy the coming back home and the staying of the airports. I learned to be very satisfied by finding a book in the newsagents shop and reading it from page one to the end while in the air or in the car. I learned to get up to date with the latest movies while flying and I learned to give myself patience and time while going from one place to the others and learn to understand that everything takes always time.
I did not learn to be happy in one place for too long but that is the result of learning to enjoy all the other things. I did not learn as my friends say to think like everybody else and not be contradictory or even as Cal and Lucy said to be less change able in my opinions.
I am still learning to be myself, honest and truthful with what I want and I like but more important at least for me is to learn to be happy all the time. And today I fell I will achieve that when I learn to accept all the things I am.
Have fun.
AND THE OTHERS?
Hello;
Very nice day!! I open my eyes and there is an amazing light and it is Saturday and my lovely girl still sleeps next to me. I turn around in my bed and my head, the brain inside goes from one side to the other in the inside of my scalp like big portion of jelly in a boll. My head hurts a little like remaining me that I drunk too much two days ago and I had some drinks yesterday and I should not have.
Void and void and void and void with my eyes open and emptiness surround me and my brain drift to the thinks that are important to me. Miren moves and does a funny noise in her sleep and then I think in my colleges, my Spymonkey colleges. Where are they? What are they doing? What do they want to do?
Petra is at home in despair for problems of the heart that I do not need to comment here. She is great and she will be even greater. She is all over the place networking for The Firm aka Spymonkey from now on. She goes out with her celebrity friends and has tee at Groucho Club and talks to big entertainment wigs about their necessity of the services of The Firm.
Toby? As far as I know Toby had a weekend in Brighton with no family immediately after Canada so this week it has been his detox week and I am sure it had not been easy. He is the real Keith Richards of The Firm. He probably is enjoying his family while he does the editing of Bless for the meeting on the 27 th . He did not tell me happy birthday on my birthday and I am going to have to tell him. He is getting ready to do the music for a Mimbre Show.
Stephan? Has been taken care of his family and for what I know he is being in touch because he was going to do a show in Austria and now that we are going to Montreal he is not going to be able to do it. He sent a couple of pictures of the shooting of the TV thing we did for Mr John Ploughman. He has been trying to bully us from far away where he is but is not being very successful. I am sure he is having a fantastic time. I hope he can come in the summer to Bilbao to do some serious surfing.
Graeme is working non-stop. While in Canada we learned that The Firm did not have any business ahead he kept reminding us that he was having troubles deciding what job to do next. So I am sure that now between piece of stake and roasted meal he is working all the time.
Andy sent some youtube links to check recently. I checked one of them. There was a guy skiing the escalator of the Angle tube station. It was fucking great. Now he is working at the Maids of Neil Bartlet and he will be doing this show is Brighton during the Brisghton Festival.
After all these last months working and living together it fells as if someone has chopped on of my hands and I can live without them but I miss them.
Have fun.FRIDAY
Hello;
I am trying to remember what is it that I have to say to you. We had dinner at Petra last night. I was worried about Petra but she is fine and I believe her when she tells me that she is fine. She is having a hard time but she is going through it and the only way to go through it by suffering it. She gave us dinner and lots of wine and grass but we have nice conversations and when we left it was already late at night so this morning I was very hang over and I did not like it very much. I rehearsed a little bit in the morning and then I went to eat a chicken rusticana at Pellicis. Please do forgive me because I do not remember very well what is the name of this great Italian Cafe in Bethnal Green.
Oh¡¡ I saw Dave Gorman in the restaurant. He was having lunch and I did not say hello to him. It has happen to me before that I met him and I told him hello and he did not say anything back so now I never say hello to him anymore. We met at the Aspen Comedy Festival and we met again in Edinburgh. He never says hello.
Anyway after the great chicken dish my hang over was gone and I was ready to do a run through of the play.
It went very well. One member of the audience ended up crying. I am not surprised. The day before the whole cast and Paul had a conversation about how big is the threat, how close is the war to the family of the play? And suddenly in the run the stakes were much higher and everybody played with much more conviction and commitment. It was really good fun.
After that we did notes and we tried to work some little bits but we were tired and longing for fun. Everybody was making joke s and silly things. There are real funny people in the cast doing dramatic roles, Antonio is very funny, always busy and with funny ideas in his head. Rick is as funny and always for the funny side of everything is doing in the play. He would love to do a funny play with Señora I am sure. Jane is so funny too. I have seen her perform funny things and she is great. Celia has a very good sense of humour and also is up for a joke all the time. Hugh is young but likes a good laugh and is not an afraid of make a full of him and Sandy likes to laugh. I think she has a good sense of humour because every time there is a chance to have something funny in the play she goes for it. She is also an amazing actress, really amazing. And then Paul loves laughing and thanks to that we are having an amazing rehearsal time and hopefully would be a great show.
Also we booked tickets to see The Hound of the Baskervilles by Pepolikus. We are going on Monday and I will tell you all about it when I see it. Nevertheless please go and see it. They have to do very good in the West End so many companies like them will have a chance to go there and do their shows. Of course I am thinking in Spymonkey.
We went for a pint after rehearsal. It is very nice to do a play in London and be an actor for some time.
Have fun.ACTORS
Hello;
Like a big hearth of animals they all gather around a table, occupying all the sitting spaces that are empty. Once there they find a comfortable position and their hands and faces and eyes and mouths and some of them even gather their legs underneath their ass or they would put their legs against their chest in a foetal position and then with their necks going in all direction they start to talk. They talk not to one person in specific but to the world. They are trained to entertain so their stories will be funny, sad and will have a good dramatic end where they will be able to use some of their physical skills.
They are actors. They talk all the time. They take themselves very seriously and they like very much what they do. They live emotional journeys with each one of their jobs and they are not shame of it. They believe it is part of their profession.
They will laugh loud and they will engage their whole body with the laughter and then they will share their emotions with the people they have around them.
They have lots of ideas and they will share their ideas with everybody even if that everybody does not really want to know.
Then someone mention Phil. Phil is doing an Othello at the RSC and Nick says that he did one Mamet with him at the NT. Olga says I saw that and she also says that she cried and everybody looks at each other's like saying that must have been absolutely great. And then Brett says that he was in RADA with Phil but he was two year above so they never met but his friend Mandy was in LAMDA and she met him in a workshop with Improbable and he was great. The Patrick and Sarah agree because they saw Othello the week before and Phil was the best thing of it. Then is the Young Vic saw the main character of the conversation and they all say that is very fantastic full of playfulness and fun and all the actors are great thou some of them have been doing a very famous production for too long and now they are disappearing up their own ass. They are too young.
They also like to be friendly and they love and hate everything from one minute to the other. They are very volatile people and my lover says “sometimes they walk one foot over the surface”.
I am sure you have guest but I am going to tell you anyway they are actors. Actors are great people. They are very entertaining and for such a long time I have not been an actor. I have been a Cal clown. And Cal's clowns do not play do not act very well and I miss it. I studied to be an actor. Over the years I have realised that I am not a good actor but nevertheless I like acting and I love to see acting when is very well done. And I love to talk to actors and to hear what they say about their profession and about other actors and plays.
So actors in Señora Carrar's Rifles surround me and I think they are great actors, and wonderful people and I am having a blast.
Have fun.AVENUE Q
Hello;
It felt as if there was justice in the world. When all my Spymonkey friends went to see the show in New York, my lovely girl and myself were in Las Vegas doing ñaka ñaka so we could be parents. Things did not work out and we did not become parents and also we did not see the show that all. My dear friends bought the soundtrack on their way out of the theatre and we got a copy and we started to listen to it all the time. In two months we knew all the songs by heart and it was the music we carried in our car during all the time we stayed in Las Vegas.
Finally after all this time we went to see the Broadway hit in the West End. It is quite funny that it is like that.
Miren likes the songs very much and for us it has become something of a tradition to go to see a musical everytime she comes to London. I know like all those conservative couples from middle England that once every year live their farms and come to the big city to dine an wine and see musicals so they can tell all their neighbours about their amazing trip to London. Well we do it for the same reasons.
We got very good sits because they are not selling out and we got them in the box office an hour before the show.
We bought some jellybeans and there we were in the middle of the stalls ready to see the show that we knew by heart.
It was bloody great. We had a fantastic time. The puppets and the actors were quite good and the songs, the lyrics I think you have to say in these occasions were very funny a witty. I mean we knew the words of the songs but we did not know how the play went from one song to the next one. The plot is very simple and some of the actor's singer's dancers are really very good. We thought that the japans girl from the original cast was better than the one doing the show here in London. Everybody else sounded as good as the original cast.
The show went for almost two hours included the interval of fifteen minutes and when it finished we were very happy as the rest of the audience.
That is one of the best things of going to see musicals the feel good factor is always very well take care off. We saw My Fair Lady in another Miren's visit and it was a little bit of the same experience, everything seems fantastic until you leave the theatre so when you are on the streets you want more and I imagine then you go and buy tickets for another show or for the same show. I mention to Miren that some members of the audience looked very weird, fat and ugly and lonely. I think they probably found happiness watching the show and they keep coming again and again. Sad.
Have fun.
LONDON CALLING
Hello;
Funny? It is the title of a great record from the Class. But I think illustrates what Miren and me are going through while she is here. She arrived to London on Saturday and she said I want to be tourist again. I want to go through London as if I have never been here before. So from that day until today that is what we have been doing, on Sunday we did Camden and Soho, on Monday we did Tate Modern and the South Bank and yesterday we did the West End and we saw Avenue Q.
From the time when we arrived here for the first time ten years ago the city has change quite a lot. We used to live in Hoxton Street and we also live in other parts of London that as soon as we stopped living there they become the most fashionable place to live there.
For example we lived for almost two years in Stamford Hill and now it is not Stamford Hill anymore is as the people from the nearby neighbour hood of Stoke Newington called it North Stoke Newington. This is a classic thing that happen in London, all the hoods that are not famous try to get a little bit of start light by calling themselves like the hoods where everybody wants to live. There was a time when people did not live in Newington Green but in East Islington of course that was not true but it helped the State Developers and the owners of flats in the area to make more money with their flats.
And London has become a very nice town to visit. When we arrived here some years ago to have a walk around London it was something really grim. The weather was not great but what English people thought it was nice, a smoky pub with ugly men that could not talk and that would open on Sundays from eleven to one and from five to ten it was not very nice. Then lots of foreigners started to join what England is until the point that England is full of foreigners and it is fine to be from somewhere else in the world started to be very nice.
In the theatre we had a very exciting time because in all the plays you went to see there were some foreigners doing some work and that was fantastic. It gave me hope towards the idea of having my acting career here in London.
London now it is more than ever a multicultural place that works as the centre of the world in many things. Fashion, Theatre, pop culture and many other things come from here and go to the most obscure places in the world.
And another favourite of mine, to eat in good restaurants, London does not have the best restaurants in the world but has indeed fantastic restaurants and what it is more important it has now a days very good places to eat that are not incredible expensive and where the food is great. What do I mean about the food being great? I mean that you can eat well and the people from the restaurant care about what they serve and they way they serve it and how their customers enjoy what they eat.
Miren and me have rediscovered London in a very good way. It is a great town. It is very expensive that is very true and it is not an easy town. London is more hospitable than what it use to be but that is definitely the subject where this fascinating city could do more work.
Have fun.DINNER PARTY
Hello;
In England and I think in all the Anglosaxon world people socialize by having dinner parties. In these parties people eat of course but mainly what they do is drink. But this is something that in the Anglosaxon world they do all the time and in any event they make in order to be able to talk to each others.
Another very important thing they do is that they talk and they talk a lot thanks to the drinks and to the fact that they have put themselves in a close room where they have to be together for more than a couple of hours. So that make possible for them to develop their relationships.
In Spain or in the Mediterranean cultures we meet outside. We gather in squares in bars or in markets and we talk and perhaps we drink but we do our live outside so we do not need to meet in each other houses but for me after all these years living in countries of the north I enjoy very much the talking around the table or in a room instead of having to talk to someone in the middle of the street or through the noise of a crowded pub.
Cal is one of the best people I know when it comes to organise a dinner parties. He makes sure that everybody has a great time and he is incredible generous with his guests. He knows as a very good director when the party is falling down so he push the party back up and he manages to create great atmospheres combining the right people.
At dinner we all drunk some wine in the living room and then when the ice had been broken we all passed to the kitchen where the table was set. We went back to living room after dinner to see some scenes of his latest movie “The Bubonic Plague”.
I have to say the movie is looking very good and we all had a great time. And I mean it because when we saw it the first time it was not looking as good or we did not think it was as funny but as I was looking at the screen I thought this does not even look as the movie I saw some months ago.
We met again some of his friends who we have met in the pass and it was really nice. I have spent the whole day with Miren in the streets of London visiting touristic places and I was a little bit tired but seeing other people and having a nice Seperd's pie helped to fell comfort again.
I have tried in the pass to do dinner parties in my house in Bilbao but it has not really worked. The dinners started very well everybody around the table and having fun and the food comes and everybody enjoys and then more drinks and deserts come and coffee and another drink and then perhaps a cigar and then everybody starts to move on their sits like I have to go now. And then there is always someone that says why don't we go for a drink to a bar. And like if their sits would be burning everybody stands up and we all finish the dinner party in the bar. I do not get it there is people in the house there are drinks Why do we have to go to a bar? What are we going to get there that we do not get in the house? Probably thinks that will entertain us outside that do not entertain us here. Perhaps is because we have a very short attention span.
Have fun.EASTER SUNDAY
Hello;
Petra, Lucy and Cal went to a birthday party last night. They had a great time and for Petra was fantastic therapy because she is not having the best time of her life at the moment. I am not going to go into it. Today it is Easter Sunday and everybody is enjoying their free time a time of holydays to say hello to the warmer times and goodbye to the cold times. As we walk through London like any other tourists I can see how people is happy when they do not have anything to do, when all they have to do it is just spend their lives doing what they fell like it. One man tells the other, - could you get the bottle of water from my rock sac? The other man goes and place him self behind his friend and reaches for the bottle and pass it to his friend. The man opens the bottle and drinks a very small sip of water and handle the bottle back. The man in the back while putting the bottle back in the bag tells to his friend – you were not really thirsty and slapped him in the back of the head. And then both laughed. People are happy with each others doing things that make them happy and allow them to enjoy life.
London is a place for that when you are off work and you have enough money to go around and friends and people you love to share those moments with.
We did Camden Town like tourists in Easter. I have not been in Camden Town for at least ten years and I know why I had not been there for such a long time. I had been too many times in the pass and I am not as impress with that, as I was when I came here. I thought to be a Londoner you had to go to places like this but now I do know that people from London never go to Camden Town on Sundays they go during the week. They leave Camden for tourists on Sundays so they can make enough money selling the little silly things they sell that I bought when I was younger.
We went to Soho again like tourists and we mingle with the rest of them from all the parts of the world. While crossing streets and corners and going into shops and coming out of them the amount of different languages that we heard was incredible. And everybody was enjoying the good weather. For ones we can be grateful for the global warming.
My favourite moment was lunch at the Junction. The Junction is a great pub in Kentish Town. They have a set lunch menu on Sundays that is really good. Miren and me stayed there for two hours eating under the sun and talking and catching up and just being like two teenagers in love. I am sure everybody that were looking at us thought I was a filthy old man that had managed to pull a lovely young lady and after a horrible night of sex of perversion was treating the young girl to a proper meal.
We did laugh and we had a great time. And leaving the pub and walking down to Camden we saw all the people coming out of “the Church” a place in Kentish where many people go to party on Sunday mornings. Everybody was completely drunk, like not being able to walk. It was not funny but it was exciting because everybody was young.
I think I am becoming a sad old bastard.
Have fun.LOVE
Hello;
Well, Love is … is difficult to define. Perhaps I should look in Wikipedia to know exactly what other people say about it. Love is any of a number of emotions and experiences related to a sense of strong affection or profound oneness . You see they do have something to say about it but if I say I am in love I do not mean precisely that I mean there is someone in my live for who I am completely stupid.
In the Wikipedia thing they say that the definition of Love change or vary depending on the circumstances and without reading about it I have to be agree with them.
At this point of time I have to tell you that my love has arrived to London and that we are shearing my bed and Cal's house where I stay when in London and that I am very happy thanks to the fact that she is here.
My love for my little one has changed over the years. Also in some moments of our life together my love went to other people that was not my love and in some other moments my love for my goddess went funny and then grow back stronger and then went funny again and then I wander if I should place my love in some one else or in something else. Also during all that time we had been together I considered the possibility of not giving my love to anybody because I was not able to sustain any number of emotions and experiences at the same level of the time and I felt that I was not being honest.
So now I am sure that I am in love, I am sure and I know that my love is going to change and developed in ways I can not prevent and that my love is bigger than me and that I do not have any control of it.
But I still after all these years I like being in love. For me it is like surfing in a very long wave while you try all the time not to get wipe out. The exhilarating felling of felling love make you do so many things, most of them surprising things and unpredictable things that it makes the love thing very exciting. And also for me the quality and the quantity of the weird, surprising and unpredictable things give you an idea of how big is your love.
I have felt like that a couple of time in my life. I hope that my love will keep me on my toes until I die. I hope that I will be able to fell so unsettled about what the future and that will make me take care of my love. I do not mean her when I say my love I mean my love as my number of emotions and experiences related to a sense of strong affection or profound oneness.
Have fun.
BERTOLD PLAYS
Hello.
I do want to be honest with you and tell you about the two other plays that will be part of the session that Señora Carrar's Riffles is in. I want to tell you exactly what I thought about them. But there is something in my mind that is not letting me does it completely free. It is not something big it is just a small conscious barrier so I do not hurt anybody.
I am going to be doing a play myself and there is going to be someone out there that is going to heat me. If I find out it will not make me fell very well but so I am thinking that if they find out that I did not like it that will not make them very happy. Yes, I know that I am no body and who cares about what do I think!!!! Fine I did not say it for that reason.
I did like the plays. I liked one more than the other. I did not like the way one of them was acted. This play is a funny play but I did not laugh at all. And it was a real pity because it was my birthday and I was ready to laugh. The other one is was really hard. The story was really hard and also the work of the actors was really hard so in the audience you felt really upset and uncomfortable but drown to watch non-stop.
The one with the wedding had lots of potential to make people piss them selves with laughter because the text and the situation was great but everything was too artificial specially the way the actors played. Why? I do not get it! I do not get why the director will tell anyone to do something like that.
It started very promising because all the actors were looking at the audience all the time and for a moment I thought it was going to be a clown show of ten actors but that stop as soon as the got into the stage. They looked to the audience some more times but they were not really looking because if they had looking they would have seen that we were not laughing.
I like the set and the idea behind but they did not do it right.
I told this to my colleges at rehearsals this morning and I felt that I was being a little bit too hard but if you do a comedy show and the audience do not laugh that is far harder than to say that I did not like the play. And as I say I hated when people tell me they did not like what I did. I am getting in troubles.
It is a very interesting situation to be in when you are in a play. And I think it is very special when you are doing a comedy play even more because the reaction of the audience is very immediate. I have to say all the actors worked really hard and I am really thankful for that but as an audience who cares? I did not laugh and if you tell me with your actions in the beginning of the play that I am going to laugh and I do not do it then I am upset. That is the tragedy of comedy.
I am going with Petra and Miren to see Stomp on Tuesday and I think I will like that a lot. I have also going to take Miren to see Avenue Q. Of course I will like both because they are proved and tested that is why they have been going on for such a long time.
I hope that everybody likes our play a lot. And I hope that everybody likes my colleges and me a lot because the wonderful work that we will be doing.
Have fun.YOUNG VIC
Hello.
Bip, bip twating bip and I wake up. I get hold of my phone because I think it is the alarm clock but it is too early. Petra has sent me a message. She is telling me Happy Birthday and that they have arrived here from Calgary and if I go for drinks later on I should call her. I smile and try to go back to sleep. It is my birthday for the thirty-eight times and I am starting to get a little bit bored.
I cannot go to sleep, I have still too much of jet lag to be able to do it so I go into the Internet. I will have to leave soon so I take a shower and switch on my other phone so my friends from Spain can send me some messages.
I breakfast and my I do not care attitude about my birthday goes because I want to get some presents and I also want to be told happy birthday and things like that. So when I leave to go to work I got into a polish bakery in Muswell Hill and I get a tart for the company I am rehearsing with.
I have to carry the bloody cake all the way to Bethnal Green. Many years ago when I was young I would not have done that so people on the street will not be looking at me. Now I am 38 year old and I do not care. It bothers me that some one in the tube might puss me and then my cake will to the floor and the whole thing will become a disaster but it does not happen and I make it in good time to the rehearsal space.
While we have coffee there I announce that I brought desert for everybody and that they should keep it in mind so while they lunch do not get anything sweet. At the same time I say that it is my birthday and that it the reason why I brought the cake.
Everybody congratulates me and that makes me fell very well.
I am 38 years old now and I still like to be the centre of attention on the day of my birthday.
We work the whole day as if nothing important happens. My birthday does not change anything of the working day. Perhaps in our break they sing happy birthday as we eat the cake and the assistant director organised a card and a box of chocolates while I pretend not to notice that something is going on.
I do not receive many congratulations during the day. That makes me a little bit nostalgic of the time when I would be telling everybody that today is my birthday and you should tell me happy birthday and then try to go away and get me a present because I like presents in my birthday.
After work we go to the theatre to see the other two Brecht plays that are part of the season where we will be playing. The Young Vic has been remodel and now it looks like bar for yuppies and people from the city. It does not look like a theatre at all. We all sit there and have a beer and I meet lots of new people that I like very much. I do not know if I like the people very much but I think what I like is to meet people.
I go home after the play and I check my phone and my e/mails and there are at least ten messages of happy birthday.
I think that this is a good time as I go inside my bed completely tired.
Have fun.
THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR
Hello;
The Spanish Civil war is one of the most horrible and great conflict the modern world has seen. The war was cruel and terrible as the old wars were but the reasons why people fought were modern reasons like freedom for all men and women and rights to be who they are.
I have been reading, researching information for the play that I am rehearsing for the first time in many years without my colleges of Spymonkey. I have been reading books and other things that could give me material for the show to illustrate the reasons why people do what they do and why the whole situation made the life and death in Spain at that time so easy and extreme.
I have to say I love the subject. The bad guys won the war in Spain as far as I am concern. They were there for many years after the end of the war. They governed Spain until the dictator died in 1975. In Europe Adolph Hitler tried to do the same but the rest of the world won the war so a time of freedom started and now Europe has been living many years in a free and democratic political environment. Spain got that in 1976. It is terrible that the whole of Europe got together to fight Hitler and they did not get together to fight Franco. If they would have dome something about it I will not be here now.
My parents my have become hippies and perhaps they would have never had me. It is all estrange.
All the people that I am working with do not know much about the Spanish civil war because the winners never told much about it. They do know a lot about the Second World War firs because they were involve in it and they studied in their schools and second because by knowing a lot about it, through TV and movies and books they are trying to prevent that will never happened again.
I have the felling that in Spain everybody tried to hide it so if someone behaves in the same way, as before the war they will do it again.
The thing that happens in the play makes me think all the time about my family and how was the time they had during the war. My mother's family was in Maruri and my grandfather, the father of my mum fought in the war. He fought with the Basque Nationalist against General Franco in the battles of Bilbao. I do not know much about it apart that he was in a prison camp in Morocco for a couple of year after the war and small battles that he told us he fought. But until now I have never thought about it so I am not sure any more if it is my imagination or he really told us that.
My grand mother, my father mum did not fight. She was in the republican side and she had to live her house and go to live with her son, my uncle to a relative's house in the countryside because they did not have anything to eat.
No one has ever told me anything about my grand father, my father's father and what he did in the war.
It is something that no body like to talk about it. People are starting to talk about it now so nobody will forget but when my grand parents were alive people were still ashamed or hurt and they did not want to remember.
Have fun.SEÑORA CARRAR'S RIFLES
Hello;
When I arrived on from Canada on Monday the second of April I went straight on to rehearsals. My friend Paul Hunter to do a Bertold Brecht play has cast me. The play is a very small play that the famous German writer wrote in the beginning of the war to denounce the conflict while he was in Paris.
It is a terrible history of a widow mother that does not want her young boys to go to war so they will not get kill as her husband did. The woman has to go against her principles and ideas in order to make them stay at home where she thinks they would be safe.
I have always liked the subject of the Spanish Civil war very much. I hate war, do not miss understand me but I think specially in that war the fight was more that before about ideology. Probably like any other war people make lost of money and the struggle for power previous to the war was because people do make more money when they hold the power.
So, while reading the play with my colleges in the rehearsal room I fell very emotional all the time. I think all the time about my family and how did they live all that time. My grandmother leaves the war and she used to tell us things about it. But she was very upset with it while my grand father was upset about it too he told us many adventures from the time when he fought against the rebel army.
The team for the show is very good and I will be telling you things about them as we go alone. Also is really different to work with one of these companies made for just one project in comparison to working with Spymonkey. Here everybody leaves after rehearsals and everybody is like really busy doing many other things. I sometime go for drinks with Paul but since I am rehearsing I have not been in the pub with him.
My character is a man called Gonzalo Queipo de Llano. He was one of the first ones to join the cup the teat. He was in Seville and with a very small group of soldiers and lots of cruelty managed to get hold of the city very early. After that he started to use the radio giving speeches to threat the enemy and to try to put their moral down. He was like the Goebels for the Franco army. He was a bastard.
And I have to say that he was a bastard because like with any other war but with this one a little bit more it all depends of who tells you what happened to see who was right or wrong. I know I did not explain myself too clear. I have been doing some research and if you read things from people that won the war my character was an excellent man and if you read things from people that lost the war they tell you that he was a murder. But for me he was a murder. The bad guys won the war of Spain. It was not the first time but it has been as far as I know the last one where the good ones lost and nobody in the world apart from some exceptions did anything about it. So for you all listen to thing get embarrass about what your countries did during that time.Have fun.
ZOOM AIRLINES
Hello;
They are good. They were quite good with me. They are like the Easyjet to cross the Atlantic Ocean to go to Canada. I went into the plane at six thirty while my colleges were having lunch and the snow was falling really hard over Calgary and they brought me to London at the time they say they will.
The plane was full and of course like in any low cost airline I had to pay almost for everything. Soon there is going to be Tescos at all the airports. You will buy your meals in the supermarket and then you could heat them up in the microwaves that are in the kitchen of the planes. So there would be announcements like “ladies and gentlemen everybody sitting in rows 12 to 15 this is your chance to go an use the kitchen. Remember that you have just ten minutes. Also you will receive two glasses of complementary free water for your coffee or tea. You will have ten long minutes and after that rows 16 to 19 will be able to use the kitchen” I mean it would be terrible. To see everybody heating up his or her already cooked meals. But it they want to carry on lowering the costs so there is bigger competition is going to be mad.
Also in this plane we did not have individual screens to watch the movies and that was a little disappointed. And I am sure this has happened to you in the pass. You pick the earphones and you plug them in the armrest of your sit. The plug is one of this where you have to connect two jacks. So you do it and nine out of ten you listen to the movie just through one of your headphones. It is upsetting because you spend half of the movie trying to find that precise point where the connexion is right. And it is never right all the time. This happens to me in my flight.
The other thing is that I cry with movies. Yes, I do. I cannot help it. I am cynical person most of the times but when it comes to see a movie is terrible. So if you are sitting between two people in the middle of the plane and the movie moves you a little bit you start to have a sob. Well, that is what happened to me. I started to sob with “the Queen”. I know it is really sad. I did not like Lady Diana more than I like any other celebrity but the way is done in the movie and with Helen Mirren playing so well I could not helped. And then the earphone made me to forget that I was sitting next to somebody else and I could hear myself sobbing like a baby.
I can wait for the time when flying in planes would be like staying in a hotel. Yes, I do not think the private plane thing is good because it is very bad for the pollution. But imagine that planes start to get the same process as planes. So you can get a three starts plane with you own little double room or single or you could get something more expensive or something cheaper, a motel plane ticket and that would be what we know today as the low cost airline. Of course this would be just for the long transatlantic journeys.
Have fun.FAREWELL CALGARY
Hello
Literarily, I've just woken up and Angeles is in her room sleeping. Stephan is there too. The only thing I remember is that I had to go to bed. My eyes were sore and I was so tired I did not have any more energy. So Petra, Stephan and Angeles stayed there for much longer. Stephan stayed for another hour and Petra and Angeles stayed until five. Then Petra went to Toby's room and carries on partying until early hours of the day.
We had our last gig in Calgary and it was sold out. The show had a good pace and we all had quite a lot of fun doing it. After striking down the whole set and made it ready to go back home we went for a little bit of a party. The party lasted for as long as we had energy and some of have lots of energy.
We have had another great time in Calgary Our friend the Rabbits are still there going strong and being as always very generous. The new man in the office David Crosson is fantastic and has made us fell at home all the time. Dennis and Criss and Andy and Blake and Michel and of course the real boss Steve have done anything possible to make us fell very good about ourselves and then do the best possible shows. Also Anton, Gavin, Richard, Glynish, Michel and the whole gang of people that we did not get to meet this time.
We all went for a stake to Keg but it was close. So we ended up in a bar in 17 th Ave. eating really fast because my taxi was coming and I did not have much time. I ate really fast and the rest of the gang stayed there for longer.
While I was walking back to the house it was snowing a lot. We have been in Calgary for three weeks and it has not really snowed a lot and now when we are about to leave the real winter start.
This place with it oil, its zombies and its snow has become and special place for Spymonkey. We create shows that have a very fragile life for the first months and to have the chance to visit this theatre and put them up and run them it is a privilege. For that I say thank you. I say thank to the OYR first I say thank you to all of you who came to see Bless and I say thank t to the Big Rock beer that we drink all the time. I say thank you to the Rocky Mountains for being so magnificent and I say thank you to Katherine and Ted for giving us shelter while we ski. And finally I have to say thank you to the growers of the beautiful grass from British Columbia and Alberta for doing such a fantastic job. It is a pity is no legal yet but without your hard work we will not know what to do in those cold nights in Calgary. This is a little bit extreme but we have enjoyed your products immensely.
Have fun.
