March 2007
A LETTER
Hello;
Dear Maggie;
First of all I apologises for my bad written English. I am trying and believe it or not I use the spelling tool and still.
Give my regards to Leo. I am sure he is having a fantastic time preparing his amazing barbecues for the summer. And little Leo? And Isabel? We saw Joshua in Newbury and he was really sweet.
We are doing a photograph session at the theatre today with a very nice guy from Calgary called Shane Deny. He is amazing. You will see all the pictures when we are back because they are going to be in out posters and publicity.
A moment ago he showed us some of the pictures and already we are very impress.
We have had an amazing tour here. I know it is always like that. For some bizarre reason our shows work very well here and we get very good reviews and everybody think we are great.
We worked on the show with Cal fort he first week and then when he left we were so tired and the only thing we could do was to do the show the best we could.
We also spent one weekend with Ted and Katherine and they cooked for us and they were incredible generous.
It may not be for me to say but I think that even after all theses years we are still having the same fun doing things together as when we started to do Spymonkey. We all have grown older together and I hope we would carry on doing the same thing for quite a while more.
I have the felling this last paragraph is not very well written. I apologise again.
I know I could give it to Toby to correct my mistakes but I will rather do it myself.
We have two new member s in the company, Andy and Graeme. You and Leo probably know Graeme because he built the set for Cooped but Andy is our new technician and we have had a great time with both of them. They are great people to be with and also work really hard.
Bless is going well here but we know that this is Canada. They laugh a lot so it is not very good for us sometimes because then when we go back to England people do not laugh as much and we flop. The show needs more development. For me the relationships of the characters of Petra, Stephan and me are not developed enough and the audiences fells a little bit disappointed. They do laugh but not as much as we would like.
So, from tomorrow onwards we will be leaving Canada and going back to Europe to see what happens.
I am the first one to leave because I am rehearsing a show for the Young Vic. Then Stephan will go on Monday to Vienna. I think he is going to have a good time resting and spending some time with his family.
Petra, Toby, Graeme and Andy are going back on Wednesday so they will have a little bit of time to go back to the mountains.
Toby is doing the music for a show. Graeme and Andy go back to do work for other people and Petra is going back to enjoy the fame that the new series of Hyperdrive is going to bring her.
Well, Maggie it was a real pleasure to write just to you. I hope I did it quite well. Please give all my love to Leo and your very nice family.
Love
Aitor
Have fun.ANGELES
Hello,
Like the city of Los Angeles our friend that came from Las Vegas yesterday has a very distinctive personality. You love it or you hate it and I love her. She is very good and very clever and everything she has to say about us, the show, me and the life that we live is very appreciative and generous and honest and clever.
Angeles will stay with us here until Monday but I will be leaving on Sunday evening to go to my next job. But I will tell you all about my new job another day when I am working on it.
We did a show and I did a show for Angeles because I wanted to be good for her. Suddenly for the first time in a long time I understood why I was doing what I was doing. I had a reason. I was going to play for my friend.
I thought the show went well but it was too slow for my like it. It fells as if it picks some pace and then is very hard to get away from it.
I am hung over. I was hung over yesterday and I think I am going to be hung over tomorrow. This time we are spending in this tour it is being very drunk. But let me talk to you about it another time.
It is like in “the catcher in the rye” the world seems to be asphyxiating us. It closes on us until you think you cannot breath. Love, dead, family, money all at the same time fell on top of us and it is just the big bubble that we live while on tour that protect us. This time there have been some cracks in the bubble.
But them we still have amazing friends, beautiful people with big hearts that love us. OYR and Chris received us in their house and feed us. They gave us salmon cooked with mustard and some rice that was not really rice but pasta and then there was some spinach salad.
I got my plate and sitting there eating this comfortable meal and felt really happy. The wine was excellent and the company was great. Chris is Denis partner and is an incredible man. He brought out this picture frames with people on it and with the face cut out. Him and Denis did it first and then each one of us did it. Everybody was really funny and when it was my turn I laughed until I cried. I did it again and then I laughed until I cried again,
Great company, great food and great wine and life becomes a good place to be.
I went back home with Angeles, Stephan and Petra and I do not remember what happened apart from the fact that I did some pictures of Angeles with my new digital camera.
I fell as I write the necessity to say something really deep about what this tour that is about to end has meant for me and I can't. I am so involve that I cannot wait to have another conversation with Angeles so she would let me see what is going on through me.
After months of work Spymonkey goes apart and I have managed to have fun in the show. This fells like a small success and from here to the next leg of what Bless will be.
Have fun.A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION
Hello;
Crude news from Europe while we set up our selves to do a show. What at the beginning of the year looked like an amazing year with lots of work and lots of things to do is becoming an empty calendar because everything that we were about to do have fallen down. So it is very depressing. And we have a bunch of video cameras recording the show tonight and the news from the other side of the world is not good at all. Perhaps we should stay here forever.
It does go in me; it does make me think about what wills it be the best step forward? Yes, steps are always forward if not you will be static. So thou it does me inn I am going to do the show tonight and I are going to have fun. I am going to have more fun than ever before.
I called Angeles Campos from Las Vegas so I could arrange with her how to meet and where to meet tomorrow when she comes here and the first thing she said “ I am so excited I will be there tonight” so I immediately realised the magnitude of my mistake. I make fat too many mistakes like that one lately. The other day I was about to write e-mail to the people I did the opera with in November. I wanted to confirm the dates for this year tour. And as I clicked the answer window a managed to reread the mail they sent me some time ago. When I read I realised that the job was not for this year but from 2008. I am so stupid.
At night, yesterday, Stephan and me managed to see the latest Robert Altman movie. “A home prairie companion” is the title like the radio program that the movie is based on. There is this radio program in public radio in the USA that for something like fifty years has been done live. The program is one of the classics of American radio. The play folk and blue grass music and all that music is played life. The guy who run the program, I do not remember his name, wrote the script and with Robert Altman and a stars cast and a very small budget they managed to do the movie.
I have to say I loved it. I like that kind of music very much and also the actors play fantasticly well. I am sure it is not a movie for everybody. When you see the ensemble of actors playing together and having fantastic fun you just cry and laugh at the same time. Meril Steep is fantastic and also sings great. The double act of Woody Harrelson and James C. Reilly is better than better. Even the young actress Lyndsey Lohan is great. She has a very good singing voice. Kevin Klein plays this security guy that is very clamsy. He is all over the place super charming and he creates fantastic old fashion slapstick comedy rutines.
I liked it so much that I want to have it and watch it from time to time so I can remember why I do what I do. Because the only reason I do this is because I have fun doing it and when I see actors having as much as fun as this actors in this movie I am happy to have chosen this profesion so perhaps one day I could have as much fun as I saw them having.
Have fun.MOVIES
Hello;
On the screen a very funny Christopher Guest dressed as director of an independent movie that does not stop eating. It reminds me a little bit of the great Jim Broadbent. Then while we are trying to have a laugh with the movie a very distinctive noise comes from one of the corners of the room. As if the time has frozen we all keep looking at Christopher Guest pretending that none heart the noise.
• Graeme, you disgusting pig¡¡ Petra shout. Graeme answers -it was not I. While he keeps watching the movie as if nothing has happened.
• Who did that then? Petra asks in a threaten way. There is not an answer apart from a small giggle that comes from an unidentified spot in the room.
Until this moment all the attention is still in the movie but it fells as a false attention. Everybody is up for playing the game of guess that farted. I know that game does not really exists but when someone farts in a group of friends everybody laugh and everybody shouts at the person who did it and that creates a very funny moment of celebration.
Petra keeps asking – who did it? Toby has moved forward to get a beer and is blocking the screen. He can fell the accusatory look and before he gets ask he declares – it was not I.
Andy has narcolepsized for a while but still he is laughing in silent lying in one of the red sofas of the main room of the cabin.
Petra- I can believe it was you Andy! That is disgusting. Andy does not say anything he moves his head from side to side and Petra stop harassing him. Then she realise that there are just tow options left Stephan or me. I am sitting next to her and she can not think that if it were I she would have felt the vibration of the material of the sofa. Her brain is too small and very specific. Stephan will say that men had a different experience while farting. – Farting is part of being a man. Men do not talk but they fart and laugh. While women will word their thoughts and let them out while we men let our winds fly freely.
Instead she looks at me and then she looks for Stephan in the room. She finds him looking at his computer and shouts really loud shouts.
• Stephan¡¡¡¡ you are such pig.
And Stephan does not even move. Petra puts her hands on her nose and starts to flap them like trying to get the air that arrives in front of it. And then as if it would be the soundtrack of the movie we hear.
• Puffhhhhhhhhssss Graeme
• Ghffpphssssssssss Toby
• Fushggrrrrssssssss Andy
• Prooooprrrrrrssssss Aitor
And finally from the other side of the room
• Truckthossss and froughthssss and Bloprothuosssss from Stephan's bottom.
Petra tries to move but she can't. She carries one flapping her hands until she reaches the door and breath deeply.
When she comes back she sits in silence and then she starts to flap her hands from her ass to the air.
• I have just made a fart and you are going to smell it now.
But we do not smell anything.
Have fun.SNOWBOARD TRAITOR
Hello;
There is a traitor in the snowboard team of Spymonkey. We do not know yet who it is. It could also be that some one of us it is getting weaker when it comes to hit the mountains full of snow with the same amount of power, as they stay there static.
The signs are very clear. When the very early morning comes and you do not want to wake up. Early morning for all of us are around seven thirty and we never wake up as early as that unless we are going to snowboard.
In the beginning of the Spymonkey times we decided to make a company so we could snowboard in the winter and surfing in the summer. Thanks to that we have hit some of the best snowboarding slops in the world. The fever at that time might have been a little bit Taliban but nevertheless we should stick ourselves to what we are.
So finally after a big struggle we managed to go and spend the whole day in the slops snowboarding and Andy skiing.
In our way back, all of us now about to go deep in our forties we could fell how our bodies were completely battered. I do not know if this word here “battered” is a word or if even is the word I want to use. I want to say that our bodies were really tired and there was pain in many places.
In spite of that the members of the Spymonkey team were happy with the pain and ego to the forthcoming session of snowboarding in the Canadian Rockies. But now this is the revelations one of the member did not said anything in our way back home. While in the car that member in other time very enthusiastic spend the ride instead of talking about how good day she or he had that member was sleeping oblivious of one of the best things of going snowboarding which is to talk about all the great manoeuvres you have done during the day.
Nevertheless we did not know anything yet. One shower and a nice dinner cooked by our lovely hosts Kathryn and Ted put as al in the right frame of mind to go and punish the slops once again.
Before going to bed there was a little bit of fight trying to arrange the time to the slops. Finally one member made everybody to wake up and thanks to him the whole team was ready in the car at eight forty-five and ready to rock. The day did not look as good as the day before. It was cloudy and it was cold. As we were getting closer that member started to show signs that gave away her or his intentions of not joining the team for the session of the day. At this time we did not know anything. Every thing became very clear when grabbing our boards and gear to start the day and she or he announced in a very firm voice I am not going. I am going to the baths because I am very tired. We all are tired but there is pride and the sense of fulfilling a mission that make us never to give up.
For the first time ever one member of Spymonkey snowboard team has abandoned the team in one of the sessions. And I ask myself and I ask all of you is this the beginning of the end?
Have fun.BANFF, SUNSHINE VALLEY
Hello;
What a glorious day we have had in the mountains. We left yesterday after the show, a not very good show as I mention in my blog from yesterday. When we arrived here we were so tired and done that we could not even go for a walk. Well, Andy, Toby and Petra picked up the hiking boots and they went for a walk.
The day had been pretty hard already with a hangover matinee and then having to drive all the way to here and just wanting to rest and to relax suddenly I did not fell like doing anything. We did see a movie called “Good Night, good luck” and it was very nice. It was very interesting because it tells the story of a man during the McCarthy times. They use some real footage from time to time. What I mean is they use real footage from the time when the things happen and the main character of the movie really existed. I saw a picture of McCarthy and he was really ugly. He was unibrown and almost bold. He was really fat and with dark hair. His skin look really pale and I am sure his sex life was terrible. The movie is wonderfully acted and every single actor in it is great and perfectly cast. I particularly like George Clooney because he directed the movie also and won and Oscar for the best supporting actor.
Anyway we east sausages and squash. Graeme cooked sausages for a long time and Toby did squash in the oven. I had never had squash before and I have to say it was great. We love eating and drinking together. We do it very well because most of the time we do not mind at all what we eat. Andy is vegetarian but he does not mind people eating meat around him.
The evening had lost one of the members of the gang really early. Petra was completely destroyed after the show and the previous night party. She finished the drive and then she laid down for a while in one the sofas while shipping a beer and by eight thirty she was gone and fast sleep in bed.
We had a big supplied of movie from Blockbusters and we got ready very soon to see one of them. The chosen one was Borat. I had seen it already but Toby, Andy and Graeme have not seen it yet and we all thought that it would be a great movie to see with friends.
I do not know what happen after the middle of the movie because I have seen it already and I was so tired that I decided to go to bed. So I could have a great day snowboarding the next day and when I woke up I was felling very well and full of energy to face the day.
Not really, for not apparent reason all my body hurt already. I think it is the accumulation of work for the last four months.
The day was glorious and all of us apart from Stephan, injured and Graeme not interested went up to the mountains and nine in the morning. The sun was shining and the conditions were perfect. I had not snowboarded for one year and a half so I was a little bit weary.
At the end the conditions, the material, the weather and the fact that it is fantastic fun made a great snowboarding day.
As I was coming back in the car I looked at one of the mountains in the Rocky Mountains and I was amazed how impressive this place it is. It goes for ever and each one of them is as beautiful as the last one and completely different.
Have fun.I WENT OUT LAST NIGHT
Hello;
Yes, do not talk to me too loud just yet. My head fells thick and I am felling like a zombie. Yes, my head fells one way and I fell another way. I know it is estrange but that is what happens when you get drunk and you are old at the same time.
I did go out last night because it was Stephan's birthday. Petra and Toby mention a couple of times how nice it is to be all of us together out. And I have to be thank full to both of them because it made me fell very well to know the fact that I was there was pleasing them but also I was happy being out. I have not been out much lately. I was not felling great (go back to the blogs from the beginning of December until very recently and you will be able to catch up in my journey to Mordor and back) and really to be in the bars trying to do chit-chat conversation was not my strongest thing.
But last night it was Stephan's birthday and also Pam and Mooky were there and everybody had the felling of celebrate something. I had a couple of drinks and I had great conversations with the people that were in the Bar.
Stephan and Kerstin with Kerstin mum came to the show and it was really nice to see them. Not that I know Kerstin's mum at all but she looked nice.
So the bar was full of people and in away for how long can you be sad. You can be sad and autistic for a while and I am that kind of person that likes to change things. All of you who read this words from time to time know that I get bored really easily if I keep doing or behaving in the same way for too long. It is true that I do almost all the time the same things but it is also true that as soon as I get bore I change that thing for another one.
My friends were there and we all were around a table and we all were drinking beer and happy to be together. For a while I have not been happy to be together. I do not know why and I do not think I am the right person to give the answer but I fell I am the only person who wants to find the answer or better said the only one who really have to find the answer so I can be happy with my friends again.
In a weird short of way I felt I did not know my friends. Like if they were different people. Then the day I went out I was sitting with them and suddenly I had the greatest felling of all. I felt I had got to know my friends again. I felt relax and I could be myself once again. Yes, you can argue everything that I say but let me remind you that this is not a chat this is a fucking blog and here they only one who says thing is the Big Fatspiclebousky so shut the fuck up and open another page.
Eventually I left and went home. I had been out for almost three hours. I left at that moment were you out because you are not enough drunk to face the loneliness of your flat on tour.
Have fun.STEPHAN'S 45
Hello;
There is that stupid face that you get as soon as you find out that there was a plan and you were not aware of it and then someone tells you and you are doing something stupid like the same thing that the plan is going to be. They organised a breakfast party and I did not know and I went out for breakfast to the patisserie and when I was about to start to breakfast Toby arrived and Stephan said, “ You did not know?” NO I DID NOT KNOW. Well if did not matter. A cake had been organised for Stephan 45 birthday and we all went to Petra and Andy room to celebrate.
It was very nice. We did not sing Happy Birthday we sang, “For he is a jolly good fellow”.
After that we went vintage clothes hunting which is probably one of the Stephan's favourite pastimes. Not all of us went me, Petra, Stephan; Mookey and Pam and the boys went to the Avenue Dinner. They go there everyday because there is a girl that one of them fancy. I do not fell I am allowed to revile who that person is. So that means they go for lunch all the time to the same place and they eat the same dish all the time.
I did not find anything I liked or that I wanted to get. I have so many clothes at the moment that I do not want to get anything else. Well, I try to get some belt with a buckle and I did not succeed.
Stephan got a very good suit and quite cheap because if you will sing a song in the karaoke machine of the shop you will get a twenty per cent discount. So Petra did sing two songs and Stephan got just thirty instead of forty. They did not bargain well enough.
Then we did a very good show I have to say. I had lots of fun and the theatre was full of people and they laugh quite a lot and most of the time. We had fun doing the show together and that is always very good.
After the show I stayed for a drink.
I also went to the market with Pam. She was trying to show me another possible place to buy my belt. Pam is really nice. It seems as if they are having a little bit of a difficult time. Sadly is something that happens to all of us. We spend lots of time apart and our partners fell the loneliness and the disturbing of having a partner and not having a partner. The coming and goings and the sharing of problems and the sharing of happiness create complicated situations.
This trip to Calgary has really make us a Pam and Mookey the very best friends. It is great to see how these apart relationships instead of dying keep growing really strong. We love them and every time we are here they make us have the best of times.Have fun.
THE MEXICAN
Hello;
I love Mexico and I love the Mexican. I could not tell exactly why like just one reason. If anything there are so many that it would be difficult to say just one. Wait a second!! The main reason I can think of now is the fact that I had a great time everything I have been there. And it all comes from that fact the reason why we are playing a Mexican scene in Bless. The person that is playing the Mexican is I.
And I am having some troubles just playing that scene because I do not know it well? Because I lost my pleasure? Because it is not good enough? Because I do not do what I suppose to do?
My first intention would be to give up and just try to have fun with what we have but I have the felling that the better the scene will be the funnier will be. And for all of you who have seen the show what I mean is that the scene is so in the face that it fells like a Sesame Street scene of the Mexican problem with narco traffic. But what I think we want is a clever clown scene where the relations of the clowns can flower. Like if you have seen the show my character should have a dichotomy between “I did not take the money, it was the lottery I swear” and the fact that I am playing a horrible criminal. This is just an example.
Another thing I think about that scene is that it should be much better organised. I pointed it out yesterday after the show to Toby and Stephan but they did not think like me. And at the moment I fell weak with my opinions. I have not been able to recuperate myself from a flop I had some time ago. So I do not have the courage to defend my idea so I shut up.
But I think that if the Mexican has the relationships with the characters one by one and then the whole thing with the Fishmonger of Guadalajara the whole thing could have more sense. It would be just a matter of reorganising the beginning of the scene. The last part of the scene it goes very well with the Virgin of Guadalupe and the butcher. We play a scene and it gets enough laughs.
I wanted to share it with you…ah¡¡ and I think the scene should start with me first and then with father Forbes singing my adventures. In this way I am not the hero of the scene. Wait a second I might not be the hero of the scene? Perhaps I have been playing the scene thinking like this for all this time and now I have discovered that I am not the hero.
Well, yes and the other thing is that I have panicked with the Mexican so I have written to Cal for help. It is so embarrassing. He is probably thinking that I am a twat, he has been here for a week working in the show and if I had a problem I should have told him then but I do have to do it once he is left.
I am going to do the show today again and lets see what happen. I have to say I have much more fun than before in the show and the scene where I should have the most is the Mexican but I have not been able to achieve that so this is my challenge until the end of the run.
Have fun.MORE REVIEWS
Hello;
Two reviews today one in a magazine called the FForward and the other one in a radio station. They single out Toby in the magazine and Petra in the radio.
The one of the radio likes the show very much and reading an article in one magazine she comments in the things that Petra said and in her review she answers her telling many nice things about the show and about her. Petra said that everybody laugh at her body because is short and stubby and the woman in the radio tells her very nicely that is not true her body is nice. The woman on the radio is a Lesbian¡¡¡.
We did not have a great show last night. People wander why and the immediate answer is that we were all hangover. Well that is possibly one of the reasons but the main one is that we were fat too relax thou Petra is on one at the moment trying to make us work all the time. And we are about to do it everyday for at least an hour. And then we arrived to the theatre and no one is up for working really hard. And I am not saying this because I do not like working I am saying because that is what I saw there.
“…The trio maintains its base, criminal characters in each vignette, and they display their ingenuity by playing to each other's strengths. Massey's over-the-top delivery, from her mother Teresa look-alike to her pole-dance St. Catherine, tempers Basauri's understated comedic c timing. Kreiss's recurring transformation from an excitable pyromaniac to a pre-conditioned whimpering idiot is both sympathetic and riotously funny. The highlight of the cast, however, is Park, who plays his delightfully altruistic priest with equal measures of honesty and lucid sarcasm. He is a pragmatist who desires a controlled society and an idealist who wants to share the beauty of God and goodness. As the evening's emcee, Park cultivates the most sympathy for his determination to rehabilitate the three criminals left in his charge. Smartly veering away from the clichéd “dirty old vicar prevalent in British comedy Park's Mr. Murdston is both identifiable for his naivete and hilarious for his sincerity.”…
Andrea Campbell for FFWEEKLY on March 2007
Well, that is one of the reviews. Well, well done for Toby. It really is his show more than everybody. Stephan and Petra perhaps a little bit more are very good in the show but it is Toby the one that drives “the fucker” and he does it well. He deserves the good reviews for the hiuge amount of work that he has doe for the show. I have to congratulate him thou it is not easy because as a clown I do not like it very much when people like other people more than me. I better get used to that.
Have fun.DATES
Hello;
Mooky brought this morning dates so Stephan can have a new joke in the show tonight. He has to bite the balls of Mr. McKay and then put two dates or something similar in his mouth and spit them so the audience will think that he has really taken off the bollocks of Mr. McKay.
Is that a cheap joke? Lets leave it there. But is not cheap because dates are cheap it is cheap because the joke deals with the “pipi” and “caca” humour and we can do better. Of course clowns work all the time with bad material but this joke might have gone a little bit too far.
Mooky does not know but it is not going in the show just yet.
The sun keeps shining after Cal has left Calgary. He was nervous. I think he always gets a little bit nervous before he is going to catch a plane. He has done a good job this week and now is going back to London to do Comedy Cuts.
For all of us as he is leaving the flat starts a new time with the show and new era to see how the show grows and how can we make it grow as much as we can. There is a small sense of freedom that will increase with the time and that will make our parts in the show really ours and not the ones that the director told us it works.
We have taken different ways to spend our first day with no rehearsal and I have gone for the plain I am going to sleep and read my book until I can not ready anymore and the bones of my body fell more relax and less tired.
Everybody except Petra and Andy came down to say good-bye. Later on she appeared asking if that was a nice thing to do? Well, It no matter because you call Cal early in the morning to say good-bye by phone.
And here we are in Calgary, the zombie town, learning to live with our new show and Oh¡¡ boy, is taking me quite a long time to come to turns with the fucker. Still inside me there is something that is saying NO with big letters to this new show that everybody here likes so much. Probably my guts are wrong.
But like with the dates you always have to follow your instinct because that is the only thing you have at the end. You have to hear the voices of everybody else because they show you the way. That way it is not easy, you follow the path of your life and the only ways to know how to go forward is by listening inside you and follow your honest instinct.
So the dates are not in the show for now because it is our instinct telling that is not do it thinking that we do have enough laughs there and as for me I am working really hard in show and to have as much pleasure as possible.
Have fun.TESTOSTERONE
Hello;
That is what happens when you go to eat meat everybody and everything around you sweats testosterone. Like in the restaurant where we had our stake night of this time in Calgary. Part celebration of the end of a really hard workweek of rehearsals and part farewell of Cal going back to London. He has done a very good job and has been very inspired and the whole team have worked really hard to overcome a show that when we arrive here it was not really there yet.
I fell well with the show but I still have to fall in love with it. We have had a couple of dates and there are things about it that I already could not live without but some other things I am really not sure.
But anyway we all had steak except Andy. He is vegetarian and I am sure he was the only person in the entire dinning room who ordered vegetarian that night. We had a round table thou we had to wait for it. The restaurant was packed with people and really beautiful waitress served us. For at least half of the night we did not stop looking at them while eating our food.
We were seven with Graeme fully recuperated and then “the rabbits” brought Steven, David and Michael along. Blake was going to join us too but at the end he did not make it. They are all a very nice bunch of people and we had a fantastic time.
But let me tell you about the food, this is a stake house and it has something like six or seven options for you to eat the meat. As far as I am concern whenever we go for the best steak houses we always end up being disappointed and for me yesterday the food was good but I would not say it was the best. The meat was a little bit tasteless funnily enough. I had the New York sirloin steak with thin fries. It was big enough and thou I asked for blue the meat was not warm and it was a little bit disappointed.
My fellows eaters enjoyed very much and I have to say I had a great time with everybody. We laughed not stop from the minute one and Cal and Petra were on top form making everybody laugh and animating the party.
Special mention I should do to the deserts, Andy ordered a desert, I do not remember the name but it was like a piece of chocolate cake stuffed with hot chocolate and came with a ball of white chocolate ice-cream. It was really delicious. If I will have to say what was the best of the entire dinner I would say it was the desert.
This place, in front of the Marriot Hotel, it is like modern stake house decorated in Art Deco style. The room is very comfortable but for me it needs a little bit more light. I like to see what I eat and the people that are around me eating. And talking about being able to see the people eating around you at one point in the middle of the dinner we realised that Petra was almost the only girl eating in the restaurant. These restaurants are very old fashion and very men orientated. So the smell of testosterone was spreading all over the tables.
The bill was not too expensive taking on account we had lots of bottles of wine. So thanks again for having good friends everywhere we go.
Have fun.GLORIA
Hello;
“Comedy bend, it does not break” This is Woody Allen and it is a sentence that I like in one of the reviews of the show that we got in Calgary. I like that about comedy bending.
But then when I go to see comedy sometimes I am not happy with what I see because I can see what they are trying to do, what is the idea behind. At the moment everything fells as if I have been there already and now I need to drown in the sea of unfunny ness and then come back again to like funny things.
But this is not what I wanted to tell you about today. I saw the show of Mooky. The new one that she has been creating for the last year. It is not a very good show yet but it has fantastically funny things in it and she is very funny. She is very charming and you can be looking at her in the show for more than an hour. She is messy and that is fine but it is not very good to be messy all the time.
There are lovely movies in black and white that is projected in the stage in between acts. They are real finds. They are very funny and very charming. One of them that seem to mean a lot to Mooky is a clip from the Sound of Music. That is not the best choice.
She plays great character and from time to time you can see her real personality underneath.
I will say that she has to contemplate the possibility of going from her beautiful characters to her, to Mooky the great and write the whole show like that.
Her costumes are great and it is a joy to look at her and it was fantastic and super generous that she wanted to play her brand new show just for us. Well, she wanted Cal report on the show to carry on working but nevertheless she did it for all of us. Seeing Mooky on the stage is glorious because she has lots of pleasure and generosity and fells that she does what she does because she loves it so much and there is not doubt for one second while she is doing her show that she would rather be doing something else. Good old Mooky.
Everything of that evening was good apart from the fact that Graeme was in bed with runny pooh and he did not go our with all of us.
I should mention that Mooky played at the legendary Loose Moose theatre where all the theatre sports started. Keith Johnson is from here and this is the theatre were still people “improv” all the time. Well, you visit many legendary places while you are on tour.
We run the night away with a small dinner in a bar in downtown Calgary. I do think cheeseburger taste better in North America than anywhere else. It was not snowing anymore and we had another day rehearsing next morning so we all headed to bed.
Denise Clark had been working with us in the morning. She is incredible mover. She looked and immediately got body shapes in her mind that we could use in one of the scenes of Bless. What a joy is to work with talented people and that was the way it made as fell. We went back home with the sense of a full on day.
MOOKY & PAM & Cia.
Hello;
A Sunday matinee of Bless fells really wrong thou we have had a very good show. At this point of time it is difficult to say when the show is good or when you or I have had a very good show. It felt for me as I have had a very good show. I did not expect that things were going to go as they were going. So for me it felt as a very nice and refreshing swim on the beach. I did everything I had to do and I enjoyed with almost everything I did.
That felling is the felling you get when the show is starting to take shape and it is a very rewarding felling. I imagine that is like watching your kid grow. I do not have kids so I can really compare but once I plant a little flower in the window of my house and I watch her grow. While I watched the flower grow but they day I stopped watching the flower died. I like flowers but like with anything I get bored easily.
After the matinee we had an appointment with Mooky and Pam and their family. They remind me yesterday that I wrote something about where they live and who they are last time we were here. The last time we were here it was a year and a half ago and when we saw each other again two or three nights ago it fells as if time has not passed. Well Mooky is much thinner because she has been working really hard. Pam is as pretty as usual and very nice and then the boys. Well, let me tell you they are not boys anymore. Nick and Jonah are much bigger than me, almost as big as Stephan and very funny and charming people to hang with.
Jonah had done a movie about Ecstasy and he showed it to us and it was really good, very funny and very good. I have to say I was very impressed. Nick did like Saturday Night sketch with a friend and it was great. Nick is a very good actor and has a very funny sense of timing. They were incredible. I felt a little bit threaded by their talent. Those boys soon are going to have an amazing comedy company that is going to be upstaging us and then we would have to give up our clowns work to do something else because the better young generations are coming very strong.
We all gather around the table and we had a feast of food. The food this year was brilliant. I do not need to go to the Salmon incident from last year. We played Gestures and we really had a good laugh. It would have been impossible to top up the great game we had last year. We all got a little bit drunk and then two taxis came to pick us up. We all left the house and Petra was the last one to leave. I tried to wait for her because she gets lost easily. I turned around and did not see her so I walked back and as I turned the corner I heard a distinctive noise of a hard water stream hitting the floor. It was too late to go back Petra was pissing loudly in the garden, snowing around her and oblivious of anything else. She told me off, “I know my way she said”.
We had a great time in Mooky & Pam. They are family or like family.
Have fun.
ZOMBIE
Hello;
How is it possible that no one has noticed them? They are everywhere. They are dead alive. All the people in this town walk around them as if they do not exist and just they look of them are horrifying. Their bodies have weird shapes and I think is because they have been moving in a very estrange way for too many years. This is the same thing that happened in that movie about the body snatchers. In that one everybody apart from one person would not notice anything wrong in the people while they were getting adduce by aliens who will steal your bodies. They would keep your bodies and put inside a new brain. That brain was not familiar with that kind of physical forms so they will not move normal. A bunch of twenty or thirty is coming towards me.
I suddenly remember on movie that I saw some time ago where the main character keep trying to escape from a bunch of Zombies that wanted to kill them. In that movie they will say a set of rules that you must follow to make sure that you have really kill the Zombie.
Basically do not try to hit them anywhere else than in the head, especially if you are planning to shoot them. If that is the case then go and blow their brains off.
You could not do that with these Zombies because there are different ones. They move estrange and are really ugly and nasty.
Where ever we go in Calgary there they are as if the whole city has being infected by a big army of Zombies that have snatched all the bodies of the Calgarians and have converted into wild creatures.
As soon as we discovered that we went into a gun shop and got ourselves shorted. We all got automatic weapons and big machetes. I got an AK 47 because I am from the third world country and that is what we are used to.
Some of us thought we were over reacting but that night going back home we encountered a group of wild and dangerous zombies. They wanted us and we were not going to let them have us easily. A female zombie jump toward me and at first I avoided the contact and she felt on the ground. Her friend tried to grab Petra but Stephan chopped his arm with his samurai sword. We did not want to use firearms just yet. The zombie without arm started to shout and that attracted a bigger group of zombies. We got our firearms ready and we all had our swords machetes out ready to kill. Graeme and Andy chopped the first heads. Their faces of delighted surprise as the heads of the zombies were rolling on the floors made them to put their guard down and as they were going to be attack by a group of five Toby and Petra shouted the shit out of the bunch of zombies leaving Andy and Graeme safe for now.
We still had two blocks to go before arriving to our apartments and ahead of us we could see a small sea of wild creatures. So using all our firepower decided to go forward. Cal was using a 9 mm Beretta and all surrounding him starting to go forward using our swords. Graeme had an axe and Andy long butchers knives. They were cutting away on their side of the group and they like all of us were getting covered in really dark blood.
We arrived to the corner of 14 SW Avenue with our bodies making a circle around Cal. He was shooting away from his position in the middle. They seemed to go away so we all started to walk toward the entrance of the building. As we got closer we realised that they were waiting for us at the entrance. They were around a hundred zombies and we were seven so that means ten each and someone will have to get rid of three or four more.
We said lets do it fast and we run towards them with all our weapons firing and once the magazines were finished we took out our swords and started to cut all the members that were necessary before we could cut their heads off. In less than ten minutes we were in, just Stephan was outside getting rid of some bodies that he said did not look really dead. We said thy never died because they are zombies and they have already dead.
We slept great that night and next day we did not see anybodies at the door of the building.
Calgary is a safe place.
Have fun.NUDITY
Hello;
“A wild farce where everybody comes out naked” As you all know in our last show we were naked for a while in one of the most celebrated numbers that we had there. So now in this brand new show we have been really ready to show our bits non-stop. Now because we are still writing the show we are still considering having more moments of nudity in.
But then Pam and Mooky are here and they are great people to have around. The times we had with them in the pass in Las Vegas and in Calgary I count them as some of the best times ever.
Don't you think that having nice people around you is the best thing that can happen? Let me go back to subject of nudity in the show. It started as being too much and now there is hardly any. It is better like that, we are not pretty people to look at and also it is quite threatening for the audience to see someone naked on the stage. Even when you are in “titi” bar believe me. But nevertheless if you manage to achieve the vulnerability of someone naked and the ridiculousness of a naked human being then you are in for a treat.
“For sharing with the company, I am so appreciative that OYR has this great relationship with Spymonkey and that they were able to be a part of the season again this year. I have been waiting for the show since the launch announcement and loved Cooped. I remember last year filling the front row at Cooped with a group of friends from various backgrounds who don't attend theatre regularly and when the 'Adam and Eve' scene began I turned my seat to the side to watch them react to it. It was purely delightful and they all loved the show and some joined me on Wednesday for Bless.
Bless was fantastic. One of my favorite shows for the year. (Pan Pan's Oedipus Loves You is another) I enjoy seeing Spymonkey because it is so refreshing to see something completely new and different that you know as an audience member you are not going to see anything like this again. When I was not laughing so hard I was crying I found I was in awe of the physical theatre skills, facial expressions and energy of the performers and the inventive story lines.” Allison Moore
And then we get messages like this one in our mail and the whole day is worthy. At least for someone the show is great and likes it very much, Should I repeat the words of Allison? No, I do not know her, I promised. So this mail means that we still have all out Canadian friends here and that is very nice. The show is growing stronger and today we are going to put a new scene in. I think it is going to be very funny and people are going to laugh a lot.
Have fun.AT WORK
Hello;
Well, we have been at work the whole day and now we are about to start with the opening night. As I write, we are literally an hour and a half away from the official opening of the show. The show was previewed last night with considerably success. It is all very relative because you never really know how much the people like it until lots of people have seen it and there has been a bunch of different responses. Once you have done that you are able to take a better judgement.
I am happier thou.
And we have used the whole day to re work things that we do not like very much in the show. And also a small idea that we had of the prisoners being catch in the papers where they got arrested. Some pictures on the papers that will be projected into the cyclorama. Toby and Graeme worked on that the whole day and it need it more work so it went in the show not in a very good shape.
The show the night before went really well. I mean the show is not bad but is definitely not ready. There is my character that is not good at all yet. There are things that work but now we have to fill the whole thing with more things so I fell well about it. Petra keeps telling me that is my duty to create things. It is true that I should do more things but I have this felling of wanting to do things that please other people. Fuck you all, yes that is what I say, fuck you all and I am going to try to have as much fun as possible and that is why the show was much better the night before because we all in general were not giving a fuck about a silly show that we have, It is not the material. Clowns never play good material, what they do is to play with lots of pleasure and it is never very good material. It is something that Cal says it very well “clowns play very well bad material and comedians play good material well or bad”.
The most important thing is to work with pleasure. And I have lost my pleasure in a big church in Brixton at the end of December.
But lets not talk about me any more because it is very boring. Canada is becoming a very nice place to do our shows because people love to laugh a lot. It is not easy to do funny staff but the kind of things we do are most of the time funny and the journey that shows needs to do to become very good this is a very good place to give the show a long an healthy journey.
The opening night is around the corner and the theatre is going to be pack with people. It is a little bit scary and exciting at the same time. We will see what happens because that is the best thing of doing a live show that you never know what the audience are going to say.
Have fun.A TOILET ROLL
Hello;
I look on my right and I see the toilet roll. My trousers are down and I have my mind completely empty while I prepare my body for a shit. I have not made any force yet. The whole detritus is still in my intestine and while I get ready to the supreme effort my mind wonder towards the amount of toilet paper in a roll of paper. The amount of paper always comes in the bag and usually it is in metros but that is not what I was trying to find out. What was occupying my brain was how many times would I need to wipe my ass before the roll is finished.
So I had my shit and I go ready to wipe my ass with that entire thing in my head. I pull from the roll and something like half a metro ended in my hand. I folded once and I wiped my ass and I folded again and then I was ready. I had wiped my ass with half a metro of toilet paper. I am not going to go into the maths but I have the felling that I could do with a roll per month. Also I would have to consider that it depends on the kind of shit. You can have big shits or small shits but it is more about the consistence of the shit. When the shit is very runny or not firm the chicks of your ass close to your asshole get really dirty so it is very likely that you are going to need at least two pieces of paper before having your ass clean. So you know that you roll of toilet paper will last less time.
Cal was about to arrive to Calgary and we were going to do a run in front of him. We thought that it would be in the benefit of the show. When we arrived to the theatre someone told us that Cal was going to be late.
I do not know why I am telling you all these things now, Cal made it on time and we did a run through before the show. Cal gave us great notes for the show, lots of new things to have fun with.
The Big Secret theatre always receives us very well. It is a small and estranges space that has a limited amount of things and that creates troubles for our technicians but apart from that it fells very good to be here. It fells as if this is a place where we can do some of the best work to develop our work.
We have the first preview tonight and that is the last thing I can think of at the moment. I have bought a computer for Miren, I am a little bit tired and from time to time the jet lag tell us that we have crossed the Atlantic and that we have gone back in time.
My ass is very clean. And I do not say this to be funny I say it because since we go naked in a plastic bag with more people we have to be very aware of our smells. It is not polite to have a smelly ass or cock inside a place where there is more people working. When Stephan or Petra have their bit very smelly it is not fun at all. Well, it is fun for the audience but for us inside the bag it is not good, it is smelly and disgusting.
Have fun.
CBC
Hello;
CBC also now at 99.1 FM radio one AM we have been talking about the show and what we are trying to do and what we would like to do. The thing is that we have not done the interview yet. Stephan and me are waiting at the lobby of the radio station and the lady who has called us here has not arrived because he is never here before ten o'clock in the morning so it is as the ones that have to wait for her. Fair enough?
On the TV the big news are a hockey player that got knock down and got unconscious and then the whole debater about violence in hockey and then a plane in Japan. The front wheels did not work so the plane tiled forward for the last moments of the landing. It looked really scary.
A group of young boys arrived from a school where they learn everything in French. They are probably visiting the radio station and my mood is vile. I am fear full of playing the show tomorrow. The show it is not ready and we all fear the reactions. At the end of the day we are trying to do a live show and live shows grow in front of the audience.
And there is not much that we can do because “creativity is inefficient” as Carolyn Smith, spell in the old fashion way, tell us when we do the interview. And Stephan and me we look at each other's and we realise that, yes that is exactly how it is. You try and try but you need a good amount of time to waste, to waste time so the nice things come into your brain and as far as I am concern we have worked too much. But that is another different subject that I will talk in another blog.
It snowed during the night. The whole city woke up in white with at least ten cm of snow all over the place. I have to say I did not expect less from Calgary we like to come here to do some snowboard and to have the extreme cold in our faces. And now walking around the city the wind is extremely cold even if we are wearing our best hats. Also the boots for snow are very handy and our feet are warm. The snow is really light and the atmosphere really dry so you can kick the snow and creates small clouds that play with your feet while you walk.
I am excited about doing the show in here thou I am scare about what the people will think about it. We got a taxi back tot theatre and we drove through the town seeing how everything becomes much nicer when the white of the snow dress the city. Two days ago when we arrive the snow was leaving and everything looked really dirty and ugly now it fells as if the city has gone over night to the hairdresser and woke up with a new haircut.
I would not mind to go to the mountains and run in the snow and snowboard until I am very tired and my body cannot hold me for much longer. Instead I am going to the theatre to rehears a show with which I have not fallen in love yet.
Have fun.HANGING
Hello;
Everything hangs from my body at the moment. I have my tits hanging, the hair in my chest also hangs and then there are two new pieces of flesh on the side of my belly that are hanging too and they did not use to hang.
The skin around my eyes is not hanging but would like too. The problem is that is not big enough so it just get splash against the other piece of skin that wants to hang making wrinkles. They are not wrinkles but they look like wrinkles.
To go again to the Big Secret theatre fells really nice. We have been here working three times and we do know fell a little bit at home thou it is not really at home.
I keep looking myself on the mirror just because we are in the dressing room of the big secret theatre and there is not other place to look. And I am not looking at my best at the moment. My hair is very long, too long. I have my hair very long so I can do a really silly thing is the show that is not amusing at all. Then I can see that the hair growing in my face is getting wait. When it is quite well groom and a little bit long it is quite nice but what I do not like is that it make me fell really old. Also I can see in my face how my skin is starting to suffer the pass of time. There are bag underneath my eyes and the mole I have in between my eye browns is getting bigger and bigger. Also I discover another mole in the lower part of my eye probably it will develop in cancer and I will die from that.
At this moment my ears are really red. It is quite hot here and we have spent the best part of the whole day inside the theatre doing almost nothing so that is the place where the heat of my body goes.
We have been taking pictures of the three prisoners characters to project on the set while the presentation happens so all of us have gone into our costumes and then Toby to pictures of all of us so he could stick them in another photograph where someone was getting arrested.
We have not stayed for very long in the theatre. There was not point. Andy and Graeme have been working non-stop doing the get in. This is a great space but not conventional enough for our show so we need to do some kind of extra work.
I am excited about doing the show on Wednesday. I do think the show is weak and it needs lots of work but it is going to happen and it has all the good potential to become a very good show.
But let me tell you I do want to change something of the way I look because it is a little bit bad. I like to look good so I am going to do something as soon as we stop doing this show.
The weather is very good, all my winter clothes do not work at all but they all say it is going to change very soon and then it will change again and by the time we are away from here all the season weather we will have enjoyed.
Have fun.STUPID
Hello;
I called Lisa to let her know and suddenly they found me at my room in the hotel.
Yes, I know now you can read everything that has happen to all of us since November last year. I apologised. I have been kidnapped by a guerrilla group and kept in captivity for the last three moths. They did not let me go out and I just have been liberated by the police. Yes, I suffered a lot. The bit me, they slapped and the starved me for many months. I was kept in a very small room where I did not manage to see daylight. They cut one of my ears and two of my toes. They sent the ear first to my parents to show them that they were serious about their threats. My parents did not answer so they cut two of my toes and then my parents reacted. When the police arrived I thought that was it, the moment of truth, the visit of the wise guy so I tried to resist until I saw written with big letters in their jackets FBI and I understood.
I have been free for a week and the only thing I have done is to collect everything that has happened since and passed on to you.
So, I spoke to Petra. She told me that they sent me a text message from Calgary with the details to get in. I did not get it obviously. She told me that Lisa had sent a text to them telling them where I was.
I finally made it to the apartments and they were really nice. I am sharing an apartment with Stephan, Petra shares with Andy and Toby does with Graeme. They all are really nice and it is very nice to be hearing, after all these times this is like our third home.
Petra asked me why I did not try to call them on the phone as I called Lisa. I told her that is because I thought that because my mobile was not function able then the others would not be either. When I said that everybody laughed as If I had said something really silly. I think, I have the same mobile phone as they if mine does not work why theirs will? But this does not seem to be a proper logic thought. The more I argued about it the more the laughed. I felt tempted to fell really angry but them I was happy that they were laughing at me or with me.
But honestly, do you really think that what I did was very stupid? I did not think that for one second I could call my friends because their phones were not going to have service as mine did not have either.
Well, I suppose I have to live with the fact that I think very different to other people and that is the reason why I get in all these stupid troubles.
I did manage to hang all the blogs from the last three or four months and that made me quite happy. Lets see what kind of reaction gets from all of you guys. I am happy with my little stories but you will have the last verdict.
Have fun.NO CONEXION
Hello;
Little I knew I had to have a phone connexion while I was waiting to see someone at the door of the Polo Court. It was one o'clock in the morning and in order to save energy they time was going to be move forward in a little while and I was on the streets of Calgary after travelling for twenty-four hours or more from Bilbao.
I left my house at 4:30 in the morning to go to the airport. Then I was in Frankfurt at 9:10 and then from then on I have lost the sense of time. As I write I realise that we are here nine hours behind which means that … I do not know what it means but I was really tired and because I did not have phone connexion in my mobile I could not receive the message that Petra and Toby had sent me with the phone number and the instructions to go into my apartment. It was hard. I was in a part of Calgary that I did not know very well and I could see lots of homeless around us. In a way I was looking exactly like them but with a more expensive suitcase.
This is going to be a recurring theme in my blogs from now on, the terrible service of my mobile phone company in the Bask Country. This is called Euskaltel.
Anyway that means I did not have service connection in Calgary when I arrived from Toronto and it was one o'clock at night and I was not going to be able to meet anybody so I could get into my apartment so I would have to find an alternative place to sleep.
Needless to say that I walked a lot through the back streets of Calgary until I decided to go and check myself into the Marriott hotel. We have stayed there in the pass and I knew that it was not dramatically expensive.
Once there I rested.
Calgary is full of homeless and people living on the streets. The reason is because it is an oil city. They have oil prospecting very close to town and people from all over Canada and North America come here to find work. They were saying that they do not even bother to find a place to stay because accommodation is very expensive. The view is really sad. It makes me think that things are not getting easier. It also makes me think of the times when the Gold Rush was in full blast, everybody flowing to the place where the money is and a world of greed and violence happening all around them.
This is not really like Calgary it is at the moment but I can tell you that there are lots of weird people around downtown.
At the room of the hotel I collapsed in my bed. Suddenly I felt really tired and I had to have a plan for next day to find my friends. I felt lonely but happy to be so I had to have enough time in my house with the people I love and I was missing them.
It is one of those things where you go from one job to the other and then you forget the reason why you do them. I like doing what I do so after wards I can go back home and talk to my friends of what I just have done. If I do not have the time to talk about it becomes boring.
ONE DAY
Hello;
I should say just one day but I was thinking of the words of that Queen song. I have spend it the whole day thinking in the amount of time that I have left to stay with my wife and trying to make the most of it. It is difficult thou because we have been working for the last three days and now I fell quite tired and I would like to lay in bed or in a sofa and not think about anything. I do not have time. All the time I have is for her.
So we have gone for a walk in the morning and we have take enough time to do many things that couple do. I have kissed her many times, I have hugged many times and I have told her I love you many times. I do love her.
Then we have got ready to have lunch with my parents. It is my mum's 63 birthday on the 15 th and she wanted all of us to go and have a nice dinner together. And we really ate very well. I did not think it was going to happen because the last time we went into this specific restaurant we did not eat very well at all. They did not have fish at the restaurant because the sea was really rough and the fishermen could not catch anything.
I forgot to tell you Miren cut her hair. She has very short hair now and she is looking really pretty and hot. Think wild sex and you will be right.
At the restaurant, I am loosing track we drunk amazing wine with out meal. It was really nice food with very nice wine from La Rivera del Duero Marques de Hacienda. We got two bottles and we took home what was left.
I had some prawns as starters and then fillet Minong. And I had some cheese as desert. I have to say I was really happy with my meal. I had a great time with my parents and with Miren and the worst thing of that was that time was passing very fast. Time goes very fast when you are having a good time. I discovered in the middle of the afternoon that my flight would leave a seven in the morning so I will have to be in the airport very early in the morning. There was not time so we had to get bored together and made the time go really slow.
I am going to miss her a lot.
“So me and Toby met Glynis with Lisa and Michael there. We sat on the round table and I had the least comfortable chair. The flowers got in the way occasionally. I thought Michael was pulling faces at one point but it was just the way his face has been structured. We opened on the subject of 'Bless.' I will now use this brief moment to correct my fat funny friend the Spic and tell you point blank that ' THEY DID NOT HATE THE SHOW AND THEY DID NOT HATE AITOR' and I don't see what the fucking point is of calling you up Aitor and speaking with you for fucking hours to update you when all it does is just fuel your drug induced paranoia! So WHAT GLYNIS AND MICHAEL SAID WAS...
That the show was obviously not ready. They were concerned with the amount of time we need to get the show up to a suitable standard. The feedback they got from bookers etc was exactly to the same tune. They said that we should be aware that there is a lot of good will towards Spymonkey and we have to be careful about the 'process' of working the show with an audience also regarding ticket prices in Brighton, which were too pricey. They saw that Aitor was not at his best and asked why as normally he just has to stand on stage and do nothing and they laugh.”
I h ave included some of Petra's update of the famous meeting where I almost got fired from Spymonkey. I have to apologize for the degree of misinformation.
I am going to bed with Miren now.
Have fun.NICKERS
Hello,
I have arrived home a couple or three hours ago and let me tell you boy I could not wait to be here. I look around my entire self, and me me; my brain and my body and my dreams are advising me not to relax, not to get that sense of rest. That sense is the way I recharge when I am on holydays. There are contradictory messages coming to me from all the senses in my body, at once I get things like try to make as much as you can of the little time you are going to have here and then immediately after I get a express letter from the back of my main saying that keep going, try to keep busy so this time here in your house is going to fell like a really fast gig in Bilbao.
Miren has come to pick me up with Marta. They were there when I came out from the inside of the airport. I went home and then I went to buy some drugs.
Let me tell you I was really looking forward to have a smoke in my house before going to bed so I called my Romo dealer from London and I arranged to get some shit delivered later on.
I am not going to comment anything about this subject and if someone asks me anything about it I will deny that I wrote this. If I have to lie I will do it.
Miren and her girlfriends have every Thursday for the last year or so gone out to have drinks. They meet a whole girls gang that called each other “knickers night”. I know my lovely girl enjoys very much the time they spend together that night. I think she miss them quite a lot. Since we all have grown up they do not see each other in the same way they used to so on Thursdays they get to hang out together with no boyfriends, husbands, lovers and kids and for some ours enjoy a little of flavour from the pass.
Since they have been doing these outings they have started to organise more events and parties where they get to do things together. They just did a big meal in our flat to honour one of them that got her doctorship. They got lots of wine, beer and seafood and stayed together the whole day. Also they are organising for December next year a trip to Punta Cana. This is a resort hotel in Republican Dominican where you get a bracelet once you check in and then you do not have to pay any extra money for anything else. Whatever thing you may want or fell like you ask for it and it is included in the price. They all have been saving money every month so a big group of them can do it at the end. They really have lots of fun together.
So thou I was going to be just one day in Romo and with Miren we decided to go out. For me seeing Miren having fun with her knickers is very nice. When I see her happy I am happy. So we have been drinking beers and wine until ten minutes ago and now while she gets ready to go to bed I am writing this thing. But I am going to stop now to have a smoke because that was the thing I was looking forward since this morning when I left Cal's house.
Have fun.SUNSET BOULEVARD
Hello;
“I am big is the pictures that got small” This is really a beautiful line. I have the felling that here in this blog it does not make any sense but still it is a group of words that work great when put together.
Norma Desmond says this line in the movie Sunset Boulevard. I have been watching it today in the computer. The movie, the story of the movie has not aged at all. The things that happen in the movie if anything are more contemporary that ever. But what I like the most is the description of the world and the wonderful work of the actors in the movie. Perhaps I think this is because they have an amazing script with fantastic parts to play.
The three main characters are super strong and you have to be a very bad actor to fuck up the whole thing.
I said this because Petra called me to tell me how the meeting went. It was little bit depressing because they are not impress at all with the work that we have done for Bless. In particular think that what I do is not very good. Of course when I found out in Derby in a hotel after some pints of beer it let me really down. I even got tempted to get angry at Petra just for telling me so I could pay my frustration on her. I am not a fair person at all as you can see if anything I am an egoistic person.
So since them I have been trying to identify the reasons why I am so bad in the new show. The material I have to play is not very good, it was worst before and now is better but I do not know if it has became good enough yet. I do not thin so.
In the conversation with Petra, I hope she does not get cross with me for mentioning this. I got hurt but I appreciated he honesty as she said that was the reason why she was telling me all that. She told me that I had lost my pleasure. It is true for a while I lost my pleasure, specially while we were in Switzerland but after that I gathered my pleasure again and I have had fun doing the show but I have also realised that there is a lot of work, for me specially in the writing department to do towards the show. Because when I show is well written and there is enough ground to hold on too and to play with then the whole thing grows. At the moment we can do the show better but I do not think it has enough meat to grow.
Of course I am pessimistic but I think this is the result of not had had a fantastic time preparing Bless.
There is also another factor that affected the creation and still does and that is the fact that now we are five people so the dynamic had to change. I think that is normal and it is not bad. This means that we had to do “one more time work” for the extra character in the show.
All these things have made the creation of Bless difficult. Of course the troubles that we had before Christmas have also played a part in the finish product.
I am confident that things will get better as soon as we give it more time in Calgary. It is going to be very good fun because the response to the show has been very good.
Now the only thing in my head is to go back home and see Miren even if is just for one day.
Have fun.
THE MEETING
Hello;
Well that is how it goes sometimes. You create a piece of work and the people next to you are the ones who do not like it.
Let me explain myself; we had a meeting yesterday with GPH our producers and managers. They have come to see Bless during the week and due to the lack of work set up for the rest of the year we need to talk to them to see what was happening and what would be possible to be done in the future. So the out come of the meeting is going to be very important for the future.
I will mention that they did not like the show very much and that the lack of preparation of the show before is fully done make suffer the brand SPYMONKEY. People who have heard about the company and come to see it for the first time and they see a bad show will not come to see it again. That is absolutely right but sadly we do not know any other way to do things. Our shows and all the show that we like need lots of work before they are ready and that work can only be done in front of the audience.
They talk about more things but Petra told me that they thought I was not very good and that really scared me. I think they are planning to let me go. They are going to take the company away from me because finally after all these years they have discovered that I am a bad actor.
I can see the image of the meeting in the office, with that horrible neon light they have. They all have been talking for a while about this and that when Glynnis says in a very innocent way “Have you ever thought of making the company just English?” of course Petra and Toby look at each other and do not really understand. I am sure is Petra the ones that asks backing “What do you mean?” “What I mean is that just you and Toby become the company. You will be Spymonkey a English comedy company and things would be much better and easier specially now that we know that Aitor is very bad”
I want to believe that Toby and Petra need lots of convincing but at the end with a funny joke they both agree “ well, he was never good anyway and now we could do more classic work too and we would not have to say things twice because he does not understand what we are saying or as having to ask him what the fuck are you taking about” “ we will not have to try to read between the lines when he goes on an on in one of his silly thoughts. Well, life is going to be easier”
An in that moment and at that time they write an e-mail and let me know that I am not longer member of Spymonkey. They voted and decided to put me away and they thought that would be the best for the company so I would not mind as long as it is for the best of the company. I would receive the phone call in Bilbao and then I would not see them again until later in the year when I go to do Cooped gigs just as a hire actor.
It sounds horrible and I just wrote it for a laugh thou it is not funny at all.
Have fun.THE PROTECTOR
Hello;
An accident of a plane in the middle of the jungle has occurred. A small plain, one of those that the rich a powerful uses to avoid the crowds was flying over the Colombian jungle and suddenly the plane started to loose altitude until it gently crashed against the trees.
The plain got completely destroyed and most of the occupants died in the crashed. The only survivers are three kids and his bodyguard. They are rich a powerful kids so they have someone to protect them form kidnaps and things like that.
The have started to cross the jungle using the skills of the bodyguard an ex-army person himself. He knows how to go around in a hostile enviroment and is used to live in extreme situations. This time he has to keep protecting three kids in an enviroment that have more dangerous situations than a great city.
They arrived to a small village that they think is deserted when they hear voices the hide in a small room while the bodyguard goes to ding out what is going on.
In a small room the captain of a paramillitar squad is interrogating two farmers the where abouts of the guerrillas. The poor couple do not know anything but what they know is that they will get kill anyway, just a miracle could save their lives.
The man has been hit a couple of times and he is bleeding from his head the woman is crying on the floor while one of the paramilitary is going to rape her.
The bodyguard has decided to take action. There is so much unfairness he can take in. He opens the door and points with his gun the captain of the three men.
It does not look as a very balance situation but the protector has been train to assets and act in situations like this.
Well, this a little thing I have been doing for the whole day today and I will be doing more on Wednesday. I can not tell you details of what it is or what happens or what is going to be or anything because by contract I am not allow to revel a any information. It is top secret.
I was planning to go home yesterday but I decided to stay because I was going to get pay very well and because I had never done before a job as exciting as this. This is going to make my time in Romo with my dear wife shorter than I expected but you all know that the life of an actor is full of moments like this one. You cannot say no to any job because you never know when are you going to be called again.
My weapon was a German weapon that was very light. I had also a pistol, a nine millimetres Beretta. I had my training with an AK 47 as I explained in the pass so that helped a little bit but not much. The best thing was my colleague. They were all great actors, Pepe, Julio, Luz y Shan. We stayed drinking beers after the shooting and I think they had a drunk rid back to London while I decided to stay in lovely Derby.
Have fun.DERBY
Hello;
It is raining, it is the middle of England so it is raining, why I am surprise? That is what it happens when you come to the middle of England. It happens when you come to England anyway but it happens even more when you are in the middle of it.
I took the train in St. Pancras at three thirty. I had spent the night at Cal's house and I wanted to go to my next job as soon as possible so I could try to rest while I was there.
Miren told me yesterday “you do like staying in hotels” and I think what I like is travelling. I like going from one place to the other and then stay there for a while. I like going in the train or in the plane or in the car and then the arriving to a new place that for sure is going to provide many new surprises.
It took me a little bit of time to find the station. The St Pancras station that I knew is getting renovated and the new one is in the back but I had not been there for a long time so I did not know how to get there.
London transport on wee ends is a real mess and if it rains is even worst. I had to use two or three different tube stations and then gave up and took the bus to Finsbury Park. I real mess I promise.
The journey to Derby where I had never been in the pass it was really nice. The train was one of those very new trains that go really fast. Through the windows I could see beautiful English countryside in full glory. It was wet very wet with all the fields flooded. I liked the view very much.
Little by little the sun sat and I could not see any more the beautiful and wet English countryside so I concentrated in my book. We ere getting really close to Derby and I had to get hold of my bags and leave the train.
I could see anything from the city when I left the station. The taxi was driving really fast so I could not see anything really then I arrived to Mackworth, place in the middle of the road with two pubs and two hotels. People seems to come here to celebrates Sundays and Mondays and everything. If you ask me it is not very good thing to do because not everybody that come here can drink if not you will have to call a taxi to take you home and I think that is what they do.
I went into the Pub really hungry and I had a steak with chips with tow glasses of wine and a plate of cheese for desert.
When I finished dinner I was happy and full. I was ready to go to bed and rest and spend a long night sleeping and relaxation. I had a new job the day after and I wanted to do it very well.
Have fun.ENGLISH TOUR
Hello;
Saying good bye yesterday I felt a little bit sad that the team that have been working together all this time is not going to be in Canada. Lucy may be coming to Canada and we will help her to pay her ticket. It is not sure yet but who knows what we will do if we do not have one person helping us going to get staff while we rehears. We do not have anyone there.
Andy, Graeme and Cal are coming and now Cal is not giving a workshop he is going to be able to work with us more hours and perhaps we have the opportunity to crack the show while he is there that would be ideal.
And then there is Tanya, she did not think that we were going to be nice people and that is why she said that she was not going to come to Canada. So now we are on tour without her and it is really sad. She is tough but she is also a very good fun. Her and Andy are the tow Spymonkey discoveries of the year. Two people that do their job very very well and at the same time are great to hang around and very funny.
We had a better show last night at Newbury. The show it is not good by in Cal's words “you all did better yesterday”. It did felt better. He could not pay attention because there was someone in the audience that was talking all the time and upstaging us. Cal got really upset and told them to shut up. At the end of the show the guy went to Lucy asking if she was the one that told him to shut up. She told him -You did not like it did you? And he said- I thought it was shit, and Lucy said “thanks for the ticket anyway. The guy left and then came back and told her – I am happy I paid just six pounds for it- and as he was leaving Cal went back at him saying – this show is not for “wafs”.
I know in my writing the fight does not look terrible or really nasty but if you would have seen their faces they were really upset. We could not hear anything from the stage and I have to say that we were having quite a good time.
The audiences seem to like it until now. They all say it is very funny and it is going to be a great show when it is finish. So it is a little bit painful to hear that. I do know that there is always a process but after so many years you would have thought that things were going to get easier but no. Things do not get easier at all, if any thing because you think that things are going to get easier and as soon as you start to do them you find it difficult and the surprise it is quite painful. We love it thou or I do. After having a hard time the last four-week I had a good time last night in the show. I may have not been good at all but I had fun and for that is why we do the whole doing a creating shows shit.
Have fun.STROGANOFF CAKE
Hello;
“We had the ingredients for Stroganoff and we are trying to make a cake with them” Cal McCrystal. So that is to say what our show is at the moment. We have the materials to cook a fillet Stroganoff and we are trying to make the sweetest cake. That it can never been well because both things do not go together in a million years. You can't make stroganoff if you only have the ingredients to make a cake.
We did have a very flat and bad show last night and it was very pain full face the music this morning. Especially me was very bad last night. Cal had just one note, too slow and no pleasure at all. He is right. I hate it when he is right and in this kind of work he is right most of the time. So now after a very bad where once more we realised that it is not a very good idea to make a stroganoff fillet with the ingredients of cake and the people who we want to have on our side did came to see the show we do not know if they like it. It is a nerve racking but it is what we do.
Yes, I know, I am talking all the time about the show and the problems that we are having while creating it. My life is on it and there is nothing I can do to get out of there. I can tell you that Newbury is a very nice town but a little bit too conservative. It has amazing places to visit and we have not visited one. I think Andy went to visit a museum that is very close to the theatre but that is as far as it goes. We have visited the restaurants and bars around the theatre.
There is a racecourse in the town that you see when you arrive with the train.
The stop of the train before Newbury is a place called Thatcham. The first day I saw it really made me laugh. It looks like some one was playing a drum while passing through the city and he did not know how to call that last city that he had passed and then thought of the noise of the drum and said I will call it Thatcham, and then he carried on playing his drum thatchan, thatcham, thatcham.
We are all going back tomorrow to London so tonight Petra is going to go a get a rented car to bring the us back there.
I am talking for the shake of talking now and writing for the shake of writing but I have a very clear commitment to fill the spaces in this document so things look good in the web and it is not just one of those blogs where you just read I did not have time to write anything last days so forgive me and shit like that.
Have fun.
CAL WAS LATE
Hello
The sun is shining and it is nice but is also a very cold day. The town of Newbury is very nice but extremely boring. Cal had to be here at eleven and then he came an hour later. It is a normal thing to come some times late to rehearsals and make everybody wait for you. Sometimes it is even good to do it just so you fell important with in the group and to fell how much people want you and there fore are ready to forgive you for your mistake.
Yesterday I was the last one to come to the theatre and I have to say it made me fell really guilty but I am silly and I have a low concept of myself.
He is never late thou, I mean Cal. Cal is always on time.
Newbury is helping us to be in our toes because we are doing to show everyday. The fact that we do it everyday allows us to have the show inside the first part of our skins. It is they're palpitating and thinking that it is going to get born any time and we may get a handicapped show.
At the moment that is exactly how it feels, Bless is our handicap kid that did not managed to be for enough time in the bum of its mother.
We have worked rehearsing the whole day and did the show at night. This is the dynamic that we have been following the last weeks until the end of Canada where we will be able to say if this is a show that deserves to have a life or not. I have to say I will kill it tomorrow because I have not been able to fell happy for the show since very early on. In a way it may be an s everybody says the way I fell always at the beginning of any show but I do not think show.
We talked a lot about what is happening in the show and with the show and we do not arrived to any clear conclusions. We arrived to many but then when we go to the rehearsal room the only thing we do it to put more gags in the show. We need more gags we need many more gags because the show it is not very funny yet. So the show we are going to do today has to be very good because there are some people that we need to be in our side coming to see it.
We all are working really hard. We have been working really hard since the week we arrived to Brighton and sooner or later is going to pay off. We have good days and bad days because this is the earliest stage of the going solo of the show.
Cal was late today and still he did a good job creating and directing the staff for the show that was not very good.
Have fun.
