Augudt2006
9 TO PRONOUNCE AND SPEAK BETTER
6 LUCY GOT MOLESTED(Not in the good way)
HYPERDRIVE
Hello;
Toby has been called to audition for the TV series that Petra is going to be shooting in the autumn. They also asked for me, I was getting very jealous but then when he mention that they were wandering if I could stay until Friday that meant that they also wanted to see me.
Later I found out that they were going to try to see me next week and that is better for me because I had to fly home and see my lovely wife.
I have seen her very recently but still, I like being with her and I like to see her all the time even when she is angry.
We saw Munich yesterday. We set the projector of the show in Toby's living room and we watch Munich and then “the Aristocrats”.
Munich is the Steven Spielberg movie about the Black September incidents where a Palestinian terrorist group kidnapped and killed the Israel team of the Olympic games, in Munich.
The movie is very good. The look, the way is shoot, the fact that Steven does not take side and try to understand the motivations of both sides in the conflict, the actors are very good but from time to time I got a little bit bored and I realised what it was this morning. The characters talk too much, they explain everything about themselves and it does not really work because they are men of action but they talk a lot. It is a good movie, and it was great to see it like that, eating a nice dinner, smoke cod with rice and a nice bottle of wine.
Then we played the Aristocrats. This movie is documentary made by Pen from Pen and Teller, the magician's duo. The interview lots of comedians about this very famous and old jock called the Aristocrats. While they talk to them they tell the jock and they talk about the jock. When they tell the jock is really funny, I could not breath when George Carling was telling his take of the jock. It was fantastically funny and we pissed ourselves.
Of course I am not going to tell the jock, you twat, at least is a twat the one that though I should write it here. I thought about it but then I arrived to the conclusion that it would be a twat thing to do. Because if you want to know the jock gets the movie and watch it and you will have a fantastic time.
Have fun.CSI BRIGHTON
Hello;
I see Toby in the mirror of the van. He is walking towards me and it is confusing because we are going to take the van back. When he arrives to me he lets me know that his car has been broken out during the night and that some of the costumes have disappeared. He is going to have to count what we had and check the list of things that people may have taken. So I go to take the van back and I get lost and when I come back there is a man talking to Toby. I am wearing my headphones so I cannot hear what they are taking. He is looking inside the car so I presume he is the police. Toby has reported the robbed so we can claim the lost things to the insurance.
When I look at the guy he has ginger hair, he seems like a nice guy but immediately remains me of David Caruso, the actor of CSI Miami that we all think is very bad. I realise there is a red car park in front of Toby's house and it has a big sticker saying Scientific Police of East Sussex. Eureka I was right, we are getting the help of CSI Brighton, the Caruso of the East Sussex police is analysing Toby's car to find out the criminal that has stolen a bag with three suits of Forbes Murdston, a jacket for the Bishop and my Jew Coat. I am sure there are thousand of traces of our sweat in those costumes and the thief is going to have to pay a huge bill on the dry cleaners because the clothes were very dirty.
We are practising the song for Bless. We are playing the guitar and bass but I can stop looking the CSI guy through the window and check what is he doing all the time. He has takes a big torch and is examining the car to the detail. He has taken out also that scotch tape that they use in the series and is placing in different parts of the car. He is using the little brush and picking little pieces of dust from the back of the car. I am sure there are thousand of AND parts in the back of that car. Toby, Lucy and Petra were inn the car the whole day yesterday and I am sure the picked their noses and hair fell down, etc it has to be really difficult to be a CSI person.
After an hour the policeman knocks on the door and has a brief conversation with Toby. When he returns I was shy to ask what did he said but I can imagine something like this “ we are very sorry for your loss, Sir. We are going to do everything we can to find the missing things. Trust in CSI Brighton and everything will be fine. Thanks and here is my card, if you remember something else please give my call, anything”
GOING AWAY
Hello;
We left Edinburgh this morning at 9 o'clock. In fact we did not but yes we did but what I am trying to say that I fell as if we have been leaving since yesterday at 6.40 the time when the show finished. That would have been the fastest thing to do. Today we have been in the van for almost 12 hours and it has been really boring. We got a shitty van that did not have music so I was listening music in the headphones of my I-pod while Felix was sleeping.
Let me tell you about Felix, he is our technician. He is a good guy and he is good at what he does. Still I think he has to improve in human skills, in being with people. I have had a nice journey with him until here and sometimes we have had a really good laugh. I do not know, you see¡¡ it is difficult to leave with people and you need to learn how to do it very well and fast.
When we finished the show yesterday a sense that something very intense has finished. I had a drink in the bar and I could fell a stream of emotions going all over my body and I had to go. Everybody was there and they were people that had learned to like during the last month and now who knows? I may never see them again, Mike Wilmot, Karen, Michelle, Aidan, there are so many that I do not even remember. I remember some more people now, the technicians, the technicians of our venue were great and really nice, Hanna, David, Holly, Mathias and Martin from Norway, Panos, Maeve, Bertty. I remember always the names of the people I work with. I do it as a sign of respect. They have been great and very helpful, Thanks you very much guys.
We arrived to Brighton with time to spare, I should have paid a beer to Felix because I lost a bet with him while driving the van but he wanted to go back to London so we did the unloading of the van by the two of us.
When finally I arrived at Toby's home I was mashed, yes, like mashed potatoes and I could not move anymore. Toby, Petra and Lucy arrived an hour and a half later. While driving the have encounter an accident and their progress was very slow.
We sat in the sofa after having an amazing Thai take away and we could not talk or do anything else. It was a whole month of non-stop working and this was the time to rest and stop.
Have fun.
LULLS
Hello;
Lulls are moment were nothing happens. Usually you find them in movies, in television programs, in tales and even in Books but you also find them in plays. Apparently some producers and TV people have said that our Cooped have some lulls.
That made me thinks because I have not been able to identify them. I have done the play many times this year and I have not been able to fell them. Probably they are happening when I am not on the stage or when someone of my colleges are either and that is the reason why I have not been able to recognised them.
What can we do to resolve that problem? If we will ever to attempt to go to a bigger stage or a bigger place to place for many days those lulls will be more evident and will affect success of a run of the show.
They are the worst things that you can have when you do a show. It becomes such a hard work to get the people back when you fall on one of them. Yes, that is right is exactly like the big black wholes in the space, when a spaceship gets lots. It always takes them centuries to come back to the galaxy where they belong. In the shows you don't have to wait for centuries but it fells like that. You fell that you are never going to get them back and then they come back and then there is another lulls hidden in a corner of the play and that's it the people will clap at the end not with lots of enthusiasm. I know what I am taking about because some nights when we have not been top form, those nights the applause have been a little bit dull.
They are the monsters of comedy of course I mean in the bad sense of the word.
I hesitated before writing about this because I thought that there is such a thing as a good lull but then I realised that a good lull will be a “dramatic silence” ”slow pacing” so it will not be a lull. Lulls are never good as I say before.
I am sure it is just a matter of time before we get rid of them and I cannot wait.
Have fun.
AWARDS
Hello;
The end is here and the time to give the awards has arrived. I have got invited to one of the ceremonies, the stage awards. Since the day I got the invitation all my colleges thought that it mean that I was nominated for acting Excellency. I have to say that I for a little while I thought that it was true. I was happy and impress at the same time and a little bit incredulous about the whole thing but my ego thought for a couple of times about the speech that I was going to say as soon as I received it.
Later on we found out for real that I was not nominated and that the only reason why I was there a not any of my colleges is because they did an interview to me in the Edinburgh special. The facts are that when I arrived to the party there was no reason for me to be there; it was full of thespians with no sense of humour. I have to say that thou comedians are funny when they have parties to give awards they are not very funny either. I was once at the Perrier Award party and they were not funny.
So, there I was stilling pens and key rings for my friends have not been invited to the party and drinking enough beer in the little time that the party was going to happen.
Everybody felt really important and I did not know whom to talk with. David Benson saw me in that state and he was very nice inviting me to stand with them. Thanks David Benson, I have not seen you show but I wish you had won that award. The winner was Daniel Kitson. I like him a lot but I do not like his theatre show.
I left a little bit drunk and I was not in a mood for any more awards for that they. The awards of “If. Comedies” were about to be given but as I said I had been once in the party and I do not care. The winner was a Canadian comedian called Phil Nichols. I hear he is very funny and also he has brought two plays with other comedians.
Also that day there was a garden party with no awards at Donald's. He is the critic of the Times and he is nice but it was at the same time as our show and there was no way we could make it.
I went home and, well, no, I tried to see David O'Dogerty show but it was sold out. I went home them after another beer. This festival has so much alcohol.
Have fun.
STEAKS
Hello;
We have been discussing that we all need a good piece of meat. After at least 28 day of really hard work a piece of meat will mean re cooperating all the strong energy that we have been using during this time.
The show are sold out or almost sold out and my taste goes with the taste of the rest of the world. So I am getting lots of rejection at the end of the cues because there is not space for one more person in the auditorium.
I try to see “Hysteria” one of the success of the festival but I had gone to get the van that will take us back to Brighton and there was too much traffic because it was raining and I did not make it. Was I disappointed? Not really. I am tired of the festival now and I want to go home. I have not see one show that has blow me away. Everything I have seen has been very average.
So we did the show and after the show we went to a restaurant in the grass market. We thought that we might play at La Clique but there was not phone call back so we stayed at the restaurant eating before going to see “Michelangelo and the black gentleman”.
We arrived a little later at the restaurant and Petra and Angeles had got the only tow tables left. Those two table were outside which it was not very convenient by any account because Edinburgh it is not a warm town. We sat completely covered and as warm as we could and when the waitress came all at one said rib eye stake. And that is exactly what she brought us five rib eye stakes that were very delicious and that immediately gave me a felling of felling good. After four weeks in the festival the consumption of some meat made me fell well and strong.
At the Gayola the show was going strong when we came in and we joined in. A man called Moldavio was playing the clarinet and saying some kind of poetry on a microphone that I did not like very much. But then the whole band with Michelangelo at front came in and it was very nice and very good fun.
Everything was going brilliant, it was Matt Muller birthday and we were having lots of friends there and I was ready to be there for a long time when someone pull down from my jacket and said when do we leave? That was Angeles, so Petra, Angeles and me left in a cab at the moment where things could get dangerous. Toby stayed and Stephan had not even made it to the Gayola.
Have fun.
THE LAST WEEKEND
Hello;
Yes, at last the last one has started and it fells as if never is going to end and it worries me because if it never ends then I will never be able to leave. I like Edinburgh very much but I will rather be somewhere else once the festival is finish.
We had a meeting with GPH in the morning and the main comment is that show has lulls but everybody like it a lot and like the company very much.
The meeting finished by saying to us that we are going to have half to the TV executives in England at the show and that we better do a very good one. No pressure.
That is one of the things that I like about GPH that it is all about business. Also the say far too many times “being honest with you” and that is kind of scary because what is happening when they do not say being honest with? It may be that producers lie all the time? It is impossible to know.
After the show I got lots of notes from Cal. He is having an award on Sunday and we should all be there to cheer him. I will be there. I saw Angeles but she had gone to see another show. Miren had left in the morning and already looked as if she had left very long time ago. I am missing her already and if you read this I am not saying that because I know that you may read it I am saying that because that it the way I fell.
Petra was snoozing around, Toby was talking to punters and Stephan was talking to Cal. I spoke with Karen, Rich Hall's lovely wife that has been playing the dying girl in the beginning of the show for the last two days. She and her mum are big funs and now they are part of the travelling family of Spymonkey. And then as soon as Angeles came out of the show I asked her what was she going to do and she went to see Jerry Sadowitz with Stephan so I went home. I walked really slowly, I wanted to fell as if it was my time off and I had all the time of the world.
The weekend is going to be very tough and we have to be ready for the worst, I mean to work all the time non-stop. I am just wandering how much more energy do I have inside me to carry on doing the show without one day off. Lets make it till the end.
Have fun.
HAIRLINE AWARD
Hello;
This is going to be the day where we got the award of the festival but it is very difficult to know because lots of people have got awards this year and everybody have got lots of stars and everything is very confusing as who is the must see of the festival and it all depends of the person that you are talking with. And also there are so many shows in this festival that how can anyone be better than the others if there is not really time to see all the shows.
I wander what will it happen if suddenly tomorrow there is an amazing review of a show that nobody have heard during the whole festival and it becomes the hit of the week end? It will be quite funny to see all the cues to the venue packed with people saying things like, “I heard is very good”” I have a friend who saw it” “somebody told me that it is funny and touching at the same time” “I think they are from a African country” etc. All that palaver that people that want to be it talk when they do not really know anything about what it is going on.
Like the award of Hairline, it is a real honour to get the award but being completely honest I have never heard anything about this magazine. I am sure it is great magazine but I have not even see it once during this festival that is about to finish.
I got hold of the review and it is very good “Take one gothic thriller, add an pinch of hilarity and a huge cup of talent and you might just be lucky to get something close to the brilliance of this play.
A dim-witted young woman by the name of Laura Du Lay arrives at a country mansion to assume her position as private secretary to the sinister Count Murdston. Greeted by rather “Lurchesk” type Butler and soon followed by the high-strung Detective, Su Lay is throwing into a world where her life is in constant jeopardy and her hair is always perfect. What unfolds is a tale of murder and mayhem, which rivals anything you, will ever see at the festival.
This slapstick comedy has more clichés and belly laughs than a fat woman in a washhouse. Physical theatre can only aspire to be half as good as these talented monkeys. Special praise should be extended to writer/ director Cal MacCrystal and designer Lucy Bradridge who make complete this band of apes and create a melting pot of pure comedic magic!
I suggest you grab yourself a ticket and park your bum for an evening of sidesplitting laughter and laughter and tomfoolery that'll have you begging for more. Trust me folks, this show even has the critics going back for seconds and believe me it's just as funny second time around.”
“James Ferdinand”
It is a very nice one. Pleases do not believe everything he says, he really had a good time.
Thanks James.
Have fun.
REVIEWS I
Hello;
As I have told to everybody the review of the Scotsman came out on the 23 rd as it came some years ago when we played here with Cooped. They gave us four stars that would have helped quite a lot in the beginning of the festival. Also we got another review on the list and that was very good with five stars.
“You will never fell quite the same about figleaf's capacity to preserve its wearer's modesty after seeing this show, witch returns to Edinburgh in an expanded version, having first appeared here in 2001. Since then, Cooped has toured the UK and Europe, and the company has recently returned from performing in Las Vegas.
Following a framing device that casts the performers as characters (and vice versa), the show begins as a pastiche of a gothic country-house thriller. Laura Dulay (Petra Massey) is an orphan who arrives alone at Birch End, the (deep breath) Northumberlainshirehampton pile occupied by Forbes Murdston (Toby Park) to be his private secretary.
After receiving an unsettling welcome from the overbearing butler, Klaus (Stephan Kreiss), she meets her dashing new employer and quickly succumbs to his rugged charm-though his behaviour does seem alarmingly erratic. With the unexpected arrival of Roger Parchment (Aitor Basauri), the lawyer who drew up her contract, it becomes clear her new job is going to be complicated.
Puerile yet sophisticated, genre-conscious yet wildly unpredictable, Cooped certainly owes a debt to Monty Python, and perhaps also to the Young Ones and the Comic Strip Presents. The ingeniously animated horse, hounds and pheasants are very British touches, but Spymonkey's style of presentation also reveals the influence of its two European members (Kreiss hails from Germany; Basauri from Spain). Particularly distinctive are the energetic movement skills and the elaborate props and costumes. The fart gags also transcend cultural barriers.
Created by the cast with writer director Cal McCrystal, Cooped is constantly inventive and often very funny, though there are few lulls, almost inevitably, given the 80-minute running time.
These are partly alleviated by the bizarre set-pieces that periodically disrupt the narrative. Of these, the figleaf moment is the funniest, though there's also a memorable musical interlude. You won't stop laughing for long.”
Andrew Burnet.
I accept the review but I did not agree with it. Thou I am sure there are lull moments in the show and that is something that we need to work on as soon as possible.
Have fun.
ANGELES
Hello;
She is here. Our friend from Las Vegas, the Spanish girl that work at the Zumanity theatre that during the time we were working there we had so much fun with. She flew from America to see Scotland and to see us. I told here she should come with us to Spain and spend some time there. She said no, her family comes from Merida and she says that whenever she will goes to Spain she will have to go to Merida first. For someone from America to be in Spain and not visit her family village it will not be fair. So she is not coming but when she will we will visit Merida together and that will be nice.
I am sick. I do not want to say anything about that apart from that I am sick and it is upsetting.
It is Shaun's birthday and he is having a meal party at a small French restaurant in Frederick Street. I am not going because I fell shit.
Cal is also here and he is ready to give us notes and to make the show at his best. There are not reviews yet and it looks that these ones will come when they came last time we were here, the 23 rd August 2001.
I am all over the place, the show is great and working very well, people like the show but there is not chance for me to do any other thing that go back home to bed and stay there until I get better.
I saw two day ago “Encounters”. A show made with four short pieces written by writers from all over the world to celebrate the one hundred anniversary of Ibsen death. The shows had been rehearsed one afternoon and then put on the stage. I thought the work was nice. Miren choose Roxana's piece as her favourite one and I choose Josete Bessel-Mingo's one. After wards having a conversation with my friends I realised that I am not an artist anymore. I am not even an actor, I am just a fighter, a proletarian of the theatre world or better of the performance world because my conversations and my aspirations are just to entertain the audience with dignity but more than anything entertain them.
I am happy to do what I do and I enjoy very much and I also thing we do it very well.
Have fun.
AT NIGHT
Hello;
I have taken my shoes outside of the room and my belt got undone before I got inn because it was going to be very noisy. The buckle is metal and it does make lots of noise. The night was very dark and I was tired, sick and ready to go to bed. I kept my shirt on. I had been felling really ill during the day and now the idea of sleeping naked was not very appeal.
I was ready to get into bed. It was cold outside. My legs and the rest of my body was trembling and the idea of going to bed was getting impossibly great.
I lift the blanket, the dubbe, and a wave of heat hit me in the face and in the upper part of my body. As I started to lay in bed the heat coming from my wife's body was exciting and I was getting comfortable in bed. My body was stiff and I was keeping it really stiff so it will get really warm before relaxing there. My body was getting hot not horny hot and I was thinking I should write about it in my blog.
I relaxed my body and the warm of my wife's body was getting into me. It took me to sleep very easily and I was felling really bad and sick.
I woke up in the middle of the night sweating; my mouth dry and my lips were dry like the sole of shoes. I did not want to go for a glass of water because I felt really cold. In my bed it was really warm and I did not want to go out but I was felling terrible and I finally went for my glass of Propolis and went back to bed really fast. I was felling terrible and really sick. I was trying to get comfort from my wife's body. I turned around; the drops of sweat were coming from my forehead into the pillow so when I turned again the pillow was wet, not very pleasant.
I think I fall sleep but I do not remember because when I woke up again it felt as If I have never gone to sleep because I was still sweating and my lips were getting cut and my throat hurt and I thought I was not going to make it to the next morning. This time I turned against Miren and then I tried to sleep then when I woke up Miren was not there and I thought “I do not remember falling sleep but I must have” when I went out she was not in the house and I thought she could have told me that she is leaving.
My body was felling really bad so I went back to bed to stay there until the moment of going to go to the theatre. Then she came back with all the people and morning had started.
Have fun.
PAIN
Hello;
There is a spot of mucus in my through. It give me pain when I try to swallow. I am taking vitamin C and Propolis so I get dandy and healthy. Yesterday, I went to see “Tom Cream - the Antarctic Explorer”. He was great. The play looks a little bit like a monologue that you hear when you visit a museum. The actor is an excellent performer and he carries the whole show fantastically well. It is a real joy to look at him on the stage and get moved by what he does.
The problem was the air conditioning that was hitting me the whole show. It was really cold and it was very unpleasant. I watched the whole show with my jacket on.
After my show we had a meeting with Arnold Engelmann. Forgive me Arnold and the people that knows him for miss spelling your name. It is not my intention but I have never seen you name written in paper. It was the first time I ever met him and he was a real nice guy. We talked for a long length of time and he explained us that the show is very good but we have to create an expectation before we go there so the New York audience, the taffest audience in the world know before hand what are they going to come and see when they come to see us. So it seems that the best rout is to get famous in London and then go to New York. I can wait so long. Well, I can but I do not want to.
The just for Laughs festival came to see the show and loved it so we may be going to the other side of the Atlantic before we think so.
And then in the evening we had another guess spot in La Clique. We are becoming regulars there and it is very nice. Everybody there are great people and very friendly with us. I think is because they are Australians and that people are friendly with everybody. The time we spent in Australia in the beginning of the year was a great time.
No more reviews and that is frightening but the audiences are getting bigger and bigger. We are happy but arriving to the end of our tedars. Our age is demanding the toll and we are starting to pay. I fell strong and I fell I can take it but it will not be the first time I have defeated by the festival and I am sure it will not be the last one.
Have fun.
LYN GARDNER
Hello;
Yesterday we had Lyn Gardner in the house. I mean she came to see the show. She had seen the show many years ago when we originally open the show and she did not like it very much. Actually she did not like it at all. She was our best supporter when we did Stiff the first time. She gave us four stars review as soon as the festival started. That made possible for us to be successful at that our first festival in the year 2000.
So to a certain extend we own her some of our successes. I know it is arguable but well she put us in the map.
The first time we came to Edinburgh we did Cooped and she was going to do an interview with us after seen the show. I do not know what was expecting from us but what we saw and what we did was not what she expected. The show was in a very bad condition so she did not like it. And we think and I do too that she did not like the show very much so now three years or four after she is back to review Cooped for the first time.
We fear Lyn; we fear what she has to say about what we do because I may be true. She is a well respected reviewer and thou some times we do not like what she tells everybody thinks that she knows what she is talking about.
We were ready and the show went quite well. I have to say that it fell a little bit slow at times. But the problem is that we had more people that ever so it is difficult to judge it. Our show is a good show and it is a very well executed show so there is nothing to be shame off.
So, Lyn will give us a review of our dear show some time this coming week but it will not matter anymore because we are entering the last leg of the festival and the good reviews would have make a difference this week end.
The whole reviews thing is always very stressful but this year has been even more because the people who have to do the job did not do it right. We have not got any proper reviews and that has affected the mood in which we have been living our festival. I wander if with reviews we would have found something else to be stress about?
There is a great deal of epic in any adventure we made to be successful and as all those good epic stories the amount of suffering will make the success bigger.
Lets all cross our fingers so we get a great review from Miss Gardner anytime this week.
Have fun.
MIREN
Hello,
Miren is here; she has arrived at 12:45 from Frankfurt. That was the cheapest way to make it here. The first thing she told me is that “I did not want to come here, I wanted to go to Fuerteventura, to the Canary Islands, and I came just to see Angeles”. Well, that is fine I say to myself but now that we are together lets try to have as much fun as possible.
Miren has brought many things, the first one and the most important is the rain. It is raining a lot and it looks as if never is going to stop. It does reaming me of Bilbao. The sky is grey and the mist is very strong and the rain does not stop pouring down.
The other thing is the reviews, we finally got a publish review in a small paper called Three Weeks. It is a five stars review and it has gone to our posters even before the review was out.
“Spymonkey- Cooped Spymonkey
I ‘ve thought this carefully, and am now confident in saying that everything about this sensational show works brilliantly. Perhaps an appropriate addition to that statement is the fact that it certainly isn't for the easily offended or weak-hearted. A self-styled gothic thriller, there lies a surprise around every corner, at once disturbing and hilarious. In other words, the perfect Festival show? Well, yes. The cast delivers outstanding performances, entertaining us non-stop with their mind-boggling sense of humour. Indeed, the relentless comedy hardly left time for a plot, yet the actors handled the script deftly, always communicating clearly. In the hands of lesser performers this show could have become a mess but as things stand, Cooped is an absolute triumph of comedy and theatre.”
It is not signed so I cannot tell you who is the person that wrote that wonderful review of the show.
Hopefully the rain will go and the reviews as good as this one will come non-stop in this last leg of the festival. I was felling funny, my throat hurt but now I am fine and I can see a very bright future for the gang.
Have fun.
REVIEWS¡¡¡¡
Hello;
Where are they? Where are the reviews of the show that we need? Where? We all wake up with that scream in our mouths but for Petra was the biggest one. She was screaming until the beginning of the show and for once all that upset stopped before the show and did not harm her performance one milligram of fun.
Where the fuck is they? We have a PR company working for us and they were very optimistic about the amount of attention that we were going to have in the festival, at least that is what they told us while we were there. Then during the first week of the festival they were saying that they were holding the press so they will come to see the show just when the show was ready to be seen by huge amounts of audience.
Then the moment arrived and it fells as if the press like the show so much that they do not want to review it because they will have to say such nice things that it will hurt they hearts.
There have been some reviews but they are not enough, in the festival this year you have to have the reviews of the right papers to make the audience to come and see your show.
Also there are so many papers and they produce so many reviews that it is impossible to know which of all the show are the good ones and which ones are the bad ones. You see all the posters cover with bands full of stars.
Where the fuck are our reviews? We need them now to have a success or if not it will not be successful.
The show was rocking, literally rocking because the audience were standing up at the end. We have achieved that moment were we do the show well and it is just up to a little bit of inspiration to make it great. No, I do not want to say that we are great but this is the fourth year that we are playing Cooped and we are actors so we know how to do it.
We are tired and a little bit sick. I think it was the night we went out with Joey and Elliot that make us get sick. It was cold outside and we have sweat a lot and we spent the whole night on the streets. Bad very bad.
Have fun.
BEST SHOW
Hello;
It is late and I am a little bit drunk but we have had the best show so far and that is an enough reason to celebrate. We were flying, all of us, I do not know why but the fact was that we were all having a very good time and that was great.
When the show was going to start we had sixty-seven people and then when the show really started we were almost one hundred and seventy. It felt right everything we were doing and we got all the laughs we need to get and all the laughs the show has.
The fact that the show was good created a much stronger sensation that we are not getting the kind of audiences that the show deserved meaning that the PR is not very well done. We need to get our reviews and we need to get them soon. We know they are going to be good and perhaps the person that is in charge of our press is in London and not here as he should be may be affecting the amount of times we are in the press. We have done lots of publicity stunts and they do not seem to have been doing their part of the deal.
After the show all the phones ringing so things will start to change and get better for the second half of the festival.
Joey and Elliot were back from their expedition to the north of Scotland and we went to dinner with them.
They are amazing those two, very nice people that deserve to be starts and that are incredible generous. I had tickets to see a show at the traverse but I lost it because I did not go. The first day they were here I went to have dinner with my friend Gorka and his girlfriend so I did not see them properly so yesterday was my chance to get all the inside of Las Vegas new reality.
We drunk and we talked and they decided to go to the hotel and rest and I went home. I am going to miss them I said, and I meant it because they were like a very strong figure while we were in Las Vegas and that is nice felling, to be protected by a strong figure.
I walked home and it was cold and I wanted to go to bed, my legs were tired once again and I knew the last leg of the festival was not going to be easy to deal with.
Have fun.
C-90
Hello,
Two things I thought about today blog; first is that this is our only and first day off during the festival. It is a little bit scary because if before everything in your days off was about doing all the things you could not do while you were working now it has to use in resting pure and simple resting.
Second is the title of the blog. The title is the title of the show Daniel Kitson has in the festival. He has this show at the Traverse, probably my favourite venue in the festival because is the venue for actors and everything is very serious here. We have never been invited here and I would love to play there instead of the places where we usually play.
So my day off was very short. I woke up and I went to top up my phone because I had run out of minutes to talk with it. Then I went to pick my costume from the theatre to go and do a picture for publicity for the Total Theatre. There is a Total Theatre award and they are starting to create a little bit of buzz about it, creating long lists and then short lists and then the winner and they put pictures in the papers and the classic shit of the festivals.
After that I went home. I believe is at home and watching TV the best place where I can experience a day off at his full potential.
I stayed at home for dinner with the Kreiss. All the family are here and they are happy and having a very good time. Paulina, Theo, Elke and Michael the brother of Stephan they all have come here at the same time and we had a nice plate of pasta with a nice bottle of wine.
I left for the theatre afterwards and I was a little bit drunk.
The show was really packed, and it was very funny to see Daniel in a theatre trying to act. I think he is a genius. He is a genius for the great material that he has and for the way he delivers this great material but I was a little bit disappointed with the whole show because he is not a very good actor and also he did not go enough to be himself. It was like if he was trying be des attached of the things that he was telling to the audience. The show was ninety minutes and I liked the idea very much, it was not really original because Melville and Kafka had done similar things in the pass but it was Daniel who was telling the XXI version of Bartleby and he was not getting emotionally attached to his story. With this I am not trying to des encourage you in seeing Daniel's show, I think he is great and it is always very nice to see what he does.
I left the theatre and I walked home slowly enjoying the cold and my last bits of day off.
I like Edinburgh and I am having a good time in the festival-working non-stop.
Have fun.
LA CLIQUE
Hello;
Today is one year that we left Cirque du Soleil. One year ago I saw Zumanity for the first time and I did not like it. I liked all my friends on the stage very much but I did not like the show at all. So one year after we are at the Edinburgh festival and we are playing with Gula in La Clique. This Australian show that happens at the Spiegel Tent and it is a succession of cabaret, circus acts in a very small circle surrounded by the audience. The tent is not very big and I have spoken about it many times before.
As we were warming up with Gula we all remember that a year ago it was our last time doing the show in Las Vegas. I remember felling a little bit empty and with nothing to do from that they on but everything change really fast and now I am happy again.
We are doing a guess spot in the La Clique to advertise our show so more people come to see. We have done our show early in the day and now at one thirty in the evening we are about to play once again.
We are tired and excited because we do not know how the whole thing is going to go in here. We had a practise in the morning and also we had the chance to do it again at eleven of clock but that is not even closer to the reality of what is now out there. If you look through the curtains the whole place is packed with people and we are not going to be able to make it to the centre of the stage with out having to fight with the people that have paid to see us.
When the music starts to sound we realised that it is not from the beginning so they have to play it again, Sam. The four of us walk into the audience and I have to look down because I cannot see where I am walking. I am on the stage and the first gag goes fine and people seem to be enjoying. There is goes the moment when I have to go into the audience naked and I fell a little bit paranoiac because the people I interact with they look at me with funny faces. It really is my paranoia because the number is going very well. We do the last figure and the whole room explode in a big applause. The lights go black and up again and we bow and turn around a bow again. We have done it and it feels well.
Now we have to wait to the final salute, this is like being in Zumanity once again one year after we have left. As homage to our friends in that show and all the people that helped us to do what we did over there.
It looks as the salute is going to be a little bit compromise because we are covering our naked bodies with some materials that we hold in our hands and we have to lift our hands to salute so everything will be revealed but this is food for another story.
Have fun.
KNOTS
Hello;
There are not reviews yet, or at least as I write this I do not know of any new review of the show. It makes me fell a little bit vulnerable and small but I cannot help it. I spoke to Charlie that came to see the show yesterday and she said that it was very good. We could hear the laughs so why would I need to hear it from somebody else when I have the audience to tell me if they like it or not.
Knots are a show at the Aurora Nova in St. Stevens place in the North of Edinburgh. One of the dancers lives in Algorta and is friends with Eguzki so for her last night we went to see her show after dinner. The show was a little bit boring. They were very good dancers but the work was very conventional and talking to Robert he did not look very satisfied with the work so it looked like one of those shows that are very professional and that you do to pay your wages.
We stayed there after the show having a drink and it was quite nice to have drink in the pub in a Scottish bar, nothing to do with the festival.
Our show is getting better all the time and we are starting to have fun once again. It is a mystery how our brains work, I mean the performers brains, because everybody have an opinion of what we do and we keep doing it on the stage. All the opinions go into our heads and we interpretate them as good as we can a try to take on account what they tell us. But still I wander if that helps.
Cal called and we had a nice conversation. He is very excited about the future and thinks things are going to be great and we are going to d big things together. I hope that it is like that because I have to say that I still enjoy very much working with him and with the Spymonkeys.
Joey and Elliot flew to the north of Scotland and we managed to get the promise that they will be back here by Wednesday to have dinner with us. They are such a big part of our lives that it is really sad to see them go. The more time pass since we left Vegas the more difficult is going to be to go back. Las Vegas and Joey and Elliot belong to the pass and we are fighting for Elliot and Joey to be part of our present. They are great.
Have fun.
REVIEWERS
Hello,
The art of theatre, the art of stage art is a very hard and it needs the help of the viewers to identified, to self-reassured that what we are doing is going in the right direction. But, what it seems to be the most important thing the money, the money that the people that come to see the show leave at the door when they buy their tickets. And you are able to do that when you have good reviews in the papers. In Edinburgh there are many papers who fight for the trust of the audience, the list, the herald, the Scotsman, the Guardian… since last time we were here the amount of papers have increased and there are some that have taking the lead in what everybody should go and see. But also there are so many papers and good reviews that the posters are fill with cut outs of starts saying that so and so gave my show so and so starts and that is the reason why you should come to see my show and no others.
So, my point is that they came to see us, to see our show and review it. That put all of us in a really tense position because you fell obliged to do a very good show. We were tense, very tense and that is never good to make a show. But because the nights before shows had not been going incredible well we were ready to have revenge to our luck. Petra, Toby, Stephan and me took the leftovers of our tank of energy and we started the show ready to kill. It was not incredible playful but it was effective with a considerable amount of fundamentalist energy.
Everything was going well, effective, professional pleasure and big laughs with the biggest audience so far, one hundred and eighty five people, and there were moments in the show when the company was full of pleasure to play and having lots of fun, when the Hospital Tropical moment came and the TV was unplugged. Angela has forgotten to plug the monitor and there was not going to be a Hospital Tropical. A big cloud over took the whole back of the stage and the mood dropped dramatically but then immediately everybody put themselves together and did a fantastic end of the show.
It is nerve racking to think that your wonderful show can be a disaster because some journalist writes something nasty about it but nevertheless our job is to go there every day and forget about every thing that is not the show and have the time of our lives. Every show has to be the first one and the last one.
Have fun.
STRANGE FRUIT
Hello;
Strange fruit is a series of songs sing a play by Joey Arias and Elliot Douglas. They are friends of Spymonkey and Toby organised for them a couple of gigs at the Spiegel Tent. I am sure I have told you this before.
The night was sublime and the two guys were in top form. Their presence on the stage was amazing and very grandiose. You as a member of the audience had the felling that you were being chosen by god to witness that show and at the same time to know that he has made possible all of that. Well, that is just crap but I could not find any other thing to describe the special moment we all lived yesterday night at the Spiegel Tent.
Joey was sublime, he was magic in the way he was working the audience. Every single detail, every single movement was under his control and nothing in the room was escape from his control. He will move his eyes, he flirted with somebody and then he grabbed the microphone and carried on singing the song.
He is an amazing Billy Holyday impersonator. He has a connexion with the soul of the departed miss Holyday.
And then is Elliot playing the piano fantastically great. There are moments for him in the show where he can shine. Amazingly after two years at Cirque I never saw him being so happy playing his instrument. He was covered in a corner because the stage at the venue is very small and all the lights were in Joys as it should be. But still the audience were being droned to his playing. When he was mention at the end the crowed cheered him up really laud.
They were great and they deserve to be in a venue doing their work all the time. They are at Cirque and if you go to see them there you will not see the real them. Cirque du Soleil have kidnapped many artist and have made them do other things. It does not make them worst artists, we all have to pay bills and there are worst ways of making your money.
I love them and they are the greatest.
Have fun.
THE SPIEGEL TENT
Hello,
Joey and Elliot are here and Gula is here too. We have got a huge amount of information from all the people of the show in Zumanity. Sad news and wonderful news are making the rounds through all of us at the House of Douglas. We all have been particularly affected by the separation of Sebastian and Anne Marie. Who would have thought? The lovely Kieran….
We have not stopped working for cirque too long time ago but it fell as if we already belong to another completely different world. And tomorrow night we will be playing with Joey and Elliot and Gula in a small show at the Spiegel Tent.
The Spiegel Tent is a venue that moves from festival to festival that is specialist in having people doing music and comedy shows that are not very big. They have the big cabaret show of La Clique and it is going all over the world with lots of succsess. They were in Melbourne while we were in Australia and they were in Switzerland at the theatre Spectacle and then in Brighton too, so we are following each others around.
We went yesterday after the show to check the space and to get ready to for the show. The place where it is at the moment is really nice and very pleasant. I did not like it as much in Brighton but here is really good. There two tents and we played in the one that is called La Gayola that in Spanish means wank. It has a very little stage but we will manage.
I believe that the whole thing is going to funny and very nice and everybody will like it. The problem is going to be to tame ourselves after the show and not get too many drinks so when the Scotsman come to see the show the next day we will be fresh and ready to have the best show ever.
Our show went well, efficient, too efficient for my like it. We do not manage to through everything out before the show so some of the worries come with us into the play and that goes against the show. Where the fuck is the fun? Yes, we live under more pressure than ever but that does not mean that we can stop enjoying, even for that reason we have to have more fun, our duty is just to have fun, to have so much fun that they audience will think that we are completely mad or about to loose it.
People stopped me on the streets telling me that they loved the show. It is a good sign because in Edinburgh what it works is the word of mouth so lets hope that everybody thinks the same.
Have fun.
TO PRONOUNCE AND SPEAK BETTER
Hello,
There is so much I can do in a room that has such a bad acoustic. And yes, I should improve my pronunciation. That is my job for the rest of my life to be if I want a proper English actor. My pronunciation is not very good because I am from Spain and I also think I speak far too fast, like an Spanish person speaking in English but with the Spanish rhythm of speaking.
The show we did was nice. We did a solid show once more and this time the best thing was that the technical aspect of it was great and well done and that was a relief. Funnily enough I would not have liked to let Felix go. He is a good technician but we need a perfect one and if he is not ready to do that he would have to go. And I tell you why; the reason is because the things we do in the show are very bad but well done. If everything else goes wrong the show would loose his foot and it would be boring. Our show is a very well tune machine that needs to work perfectly all the time.
We had a publicity stunt in the evening in a show called “Movers and Shakers” that happens in the over belly venue. It is a big theatre that looks like an inflatable castle.
It was very nice to have a big audience and we could see them very well opposite to what it happens in our venue. They audience laughed quite a lot but I felt a little bit like a twat. I was tired and when I am tired I loose my sense of humour. I could see all these guys looking at me naked on the stage and I was a little bit self-conscious and …well it was not pretty. We have to do them; we have to work out the machine that makes people come to see our show.
Forgive me for airing my own personal problems of acting. I have always had troubles with my English pronunciation but I had never have troubles with my projection so I presume the notes I get is with pronouncing and articulating well enough. I am going to work on it and I will get better so I do not get told. I hate it when someone gives me a note about something.
My friend Eguzki came to see our show and she said she like it. I did not see her laughing a lot but I suppose that she was laughing when I was not looking at her.
Have fun.
HIGHJACKED
Hello;
A gang of teenagers with a very dangerous look and lots of make up in their school uniforms kidnapped the show yesterday night and we could not do anything to avoid it. They were the first ones to be at the door and they got the first two rows and where super ready to laugh as much as possible with every single gag or funny thing that happened in the show.
We were helpless. There were many things that could do but we did not do anything. We should have played together better and also try to include them in what was happening but we did not. Also the technical department did not do a good job either and that is very unacceptable. Of course there is an element of life in what they do and many things can happen but they have been very consistent in the mistakes and that cannot happen. We warm our voices do our training and do lots of work before the show so when we go inn we are more than ready and the odds are in our favour.
It was not the girl's fault why we had a bad show, this is the Edinburgh festival and things are not going to get easier.
My friend Eguzki came yesterday and she are going to be with me here until Sunday. Once upon a time we did a show together called Ordago. It was not a great show but we had a great time. Since them we have kept being friends and I took her to see a show called “El Conquistador”. A play developed at the New York Theatre Workshop and performed in Spanish by a Colombian actor. The play was a little bit too long but it had lovely moments and a wonderful imagination. The uses of high technology were very good and very funny.
He deal with Colombian nowadays situation by telling in a soap opera style what happens to a farmer that has to work as a doorman and the reality of the soap opera he watch on the TV and his life as a doorman in the apartments block get all mixed up. Of course the end is a happy end like in the soap operas.
My friend and me left and walked home slowly thinking about the play and the fact that we are in the biggest festival in the world and just that it is a big success so we should not allowed any body to kidnap our show because it is the toy that we have to enjoy the rid through this huge festival.
Have fun.
JASON BYRNE
Hello;
We had the best show so far in the festival. It flows and we had a great time playing it. I fear there is one coming that is not going to be very good.
We went to see Jason Byrne. For all of you who do not know who he is, he is an Irish comedian that we met in Melbourne. He is really funny and in Melbourne we never got to see him because he was playing at the same time as us. So, yesterday before he gets completely sold out we did the right thing and we got inn. Amazingly he is playing in a very big venue for at least six hundred people and it was on Monday almost sold out. Scary.
He is very funny but I think he is much funnier than the material that he uses in the show. I am sure he has written much funny staff than the one that we saw yesterday. I want to leave this clear, he is very funny, and I love what he does and how he does it. My problem with what he does is that I did not find it very original thou I have to say that is worthy to go and see the show just to see him doing the “There is a wily on your neck” routine.
I went back home after that and I did not even wanted to talk to anybody.
We saw Lou Viola a promoter and agent from New York. We met Lou in the first festival we ever did and we have kept in contact with him since. He is a nice guy and it looks like he is doing all he can to make you laugh but I was not very surprise with his material.
Anyway enough of Jason I will probably see him playing football next week. He is a very good football player.
I am very strike by the life of comedians or what I see of their life. It looks by far a more glamorous life than ours. They flight first class, they have girls going after them, they become very popular and it feels as if their lives are like the lives of a rock and roll star.
I have dreamed of become a stand up comedian but it would have been completely shit idea because my English is very bad. But I would love to try “Well come everybody my name is Aitor Basauri and I am going to be your host tonight, ¡¡get the flappers up!! Ja, ja” You see what I mean?
I will consider this option every time I see a comedian because I think I will love the live of a famous comedian.
Have fun.
LUCY GOT MOLESTED
(Not in the good way)
Hello,
There is a very nice park in front of 18 th Douglas Crescent with lots of trees and the river Leith in his last yards before making it into the sea, the North Sea. Many people used it and if the weather is good like at the moment is a fantastic place to do all kind of things. A bunch of boys, supporters of a football team where having a drink before the match in a narrow path in the park. They were having a very good time and the alcohol was making the testosterone dance inside their bodies.
Lucy runs in that park. She goes running in everyday and she says is great to run through the park. I understand that it is very nice because it is not boring because you have lots of things to see. She was running when she passed the bunch of boy mentioned before. She could fell there was something wrong the first time and then when she was coming back she went through the whole bunch and one of them slapped her in the ass really hard. She turned around ready for a fight when she noticed that the other boys were trying to corner her. Very wisely she decided to leave the scene but before that she shouted a couple of nice and accurate things about the virtuosity of their mothers and fathers. Things like “sons of the bitch etc.
She came back home and she was not felling very happy. She is a hardcore girl and she was not happy and a little bit scare of the whole situation because there are not many people in the park and she really thought that she had got in a dangerous situation. They behaved, as a bunch of bastards, there is not other name for that. They should have let her alone and in piece. I hate that macho culture that thinks that women are there to be use as we men pleases. It is a nice idea but it is completely wrong and I hope their pennies fell on the ground next time they have an erection for harassing my friend Lucy or any other girl.
But let me tell you about the show, it was solid. It was a good show with some technical problems but getting better all the time. It gave us a fantastic bust of confidence because we could see the light at the end of the tunnel.
The guest was the director for the Just for Laughs festival in Montreal and he was an ass. He got a phone call in the middle of the show and he left the auditorium to get it. He came back. He said that the show was too English. I think it is a little bit disrespectful. I must tell him when I see him.
Have fun.
STAR TRIP
Hello;
This is the title of the show that Ylliana the Spanish clown-mime company. But it also exempla rose the day that we had yesterday or better the show we had yesterday. It all fells like a rid through the out space. The spaceship lost in the middle of an asteroids field that was never there before. We have done this route many times and there was nothing and now a full field of asteroids that prevent us of doing the show we want to do. We have to be patient, like in the space the festival had his own rhythm and unless you have your own theatre equals lots of money there is not other way.
We set the levels on the monitors in the morning and everything was fine. Then when the time to sing the song again came we could not hear the show so it was terrible. The most terrible and upsetting thing was that we were making all those signs that you do when you do not hear anything and we did not fell there was a response from the board. That was really upsetting. It felt as if we were there by ourselves and the person behind the board had nothing to do with us. I was ready to disintegrate with my laser and then teletransport all his micro particles to another galaxies in the deepest part of the space.
So the show do not find his right timing and it is very frustrating because we dedicate to the show the twenty four hours a day so it makes it also tiring.
We had in the theatre something of 200 hundred people and that was nice but still for us is difficult because we are trying to get used to theatre. Which is a little bit like a big hall of a hotel and the acoustics go a little bit against us. We will survive.
So the show of Ylliana is nice. I had a laugh with the naughty things they do in the play, like taking drugs and doing things up the us and being very sexual in an ugly way.
But I miss the humanity, the possibility to fell for their characters, the reality that makes things for you as an audience to care about what happens to them. But the show is a rollercoaster of laughs and fun and they is really nice people.
I cannot write anymore about anything that is not related to the show, to Cooped, to what we are doing at the moment. We have very important things ahead, reviewers, opening night, and doing the show very well so the important people coming to see our show will give us lots of work in the future.
Have fun.
FIRST PREVIEW
Hello;
No press, no cancellation and the show must go on and the fact that yesterday night we work from eleven to twelve in the venue and that we are not use to cancel shows and that the whole thing is scarily big made possible to do the show from the beginning to the end with many problems but also with laughs and with fun.
The Pandora's box got open revealing to us that we are vulnerable as ever, as the first time we came here and we look desperately to our friends in the audience to try to understand what did go wrong and what could go better. We have been doing the show for four years of five and still it is as difficult as the first day.
We had a session of notes at the performers bar and we talked about all the things that did not go very well or could go better. There is a clear problem with lights and sound that has to be resolving because the lights are so dark that the audience cannot see what we are doing and it is a terrible thing. Comedy it is a very difficult thing to lit, if you want to be creative because all those fancy lighting states have to be bright enough so the faces of the performers can be seeing at all times.
Then the sound, it was the first time and it was not a disaster.
I drank two beers. It was a Singapore beer called tiger, I tried to get a paint of Guinness but it was really warm and I had to return it. They are still trying to adjust the coolers of the bars at the Assembly Rooms.
After that we went home to watch Big Brother, Cal is big fun so we all went home. We live in a huge house in Douglas Crescent. It is great because the ceiling are really high and it is in a very nice area, in front of a big park of the river Leith. We watched big brother and I cooked pasta for everybody and I went to bed. My body hurt a lot. I felt pain all over my body and I wanted to forger that I was going to have twenty-eight days ahead of me exactly like the one I h