May 2007
TOBY'S BIRTHDAY
Hello;
I have called Toby this morning because it is his birthday. I believe he is now forty-one. He was not there. I spoke with Heike and we had a really nice chat. I could hear Noah in the background and Maia was upstairs. They are now in the midterm holydays. I did not really get what kind of holydays those ones are, does that mean that they will be going the whole summer to the school? English people are really mad sometimes. Well, as I was saying Toby was not there. He had gone to a meeting with the Arts Council of England with Lisa Wolf.The meeting was quite importan not just because any meeting with the Arts Council is an important meeting but also because at theis moment in out time we are facing new challenges and what is ti going to happen to us in the future.
CINDY SHEEHAN
Hello;
For all of you who do not know who is she I am going to tell you. She is a mother. She lost one son in Iraq. When she found out that her son had died in Iraq she went to George Bush's ranch with a poster saying why? She wanted to know why her son had died in a war that started because someone said that Iraq had nuclear weapons and that was prove not to be true.
She started a movement with lots of American people that were not happy with what the USA was doing in Iraq. The most important thing was that they were citizens from USA and they were against the war. They were not against getting Sadam from power and making Iraq a democracy but they were against lying to people and then taking them to war and then people dieing in that war.
For me it was very emotional and very incredible to see that woman fighting against the most powerful man in the world.
Today she is in the papers because she has given up the fight and has gone back home. The people that support her in the beginning, especially the democrat party has betrayed her. In the same way than the Republican Party the only thing that matters for them is to have the power so once they have seen the power of the nation quite close they have deserted her.
So now she is going back home and she fells completely betrayed. My only hope is that she does not fell that the whole thing has been in vain. Thanks to her many people like me for example believe now that one person can make the difference. Perhaps she has not been able to achieve what she wanted, the USA troops out of Iraq but at least she created an amazing movement, a social movement pro peace and social justice that has made many people in USA and around the world to get conscious about what the USA was doing in Iraq.
I remember when we visited Santa Barbara in California, a beautiful and really rich city north of Los Angeles. The city has amazing beaches and houses and hills very close the sea. The day we arrived a big air carrier with troops from Iraq had arrived to town also. We were visiting the pier at the same moment the sailors and officers from the ship were visiting the town. The first thing they saw was the beach with one little American flag for each one of the soldiers that by that time, two years ago now had died in the war in Iraq. We spoke with one of the guys who had organised the protest and he was telling us that Cindy had been there the day the started the protest. They were going to be there until the war will stop. He showed us the flag that represented Cindy's son. We could fell how we were getting very emotional by the minute the we saw one soldier who just has left the war ship and discovered that one of the flags was representing one of his friends. He was crying. We had to leave after that.
So I am proud of you Cindy Sheehan. For me and for people like me you are a real example of what we all should do when we think what other people is doing is not fair.
Go to see the Hound of the Baskerville.
Have fun.SEXPEARE
Hello
I saw a show called “For Sale” from a company called Sexpeare. Yes, I know it is the title of the blog and probably this information is already said twice.
It filled me with hope for Spanish theatre. The play was funny and the actors played very well and with lots of pleasure.
It was very funny because we I could see many things that remains me of the work with Spymonkey. They were doing lots of things that we could do in our shows and the best thing was that they were doing them in a very funny way.
The show is about these two guys who are getting ready to perform a show. They appear on the stage with their backs to the audience and like by mistake they start the show and goes on and on. They played lots of different characters and they break from time to time from the show to their real life and that is very funny.
They both perform very well and have lots of pleasure on the stage while they do many stupid things. My favourite thing in the show is this guy who play a singer songwriter that is not very successful and by pure chance he becomes a comedian. He is great and very stupid.
Some time ago Marcos Ottone told me about them. He said that every time he saw our work always thought of this company and now I understand why.
The show has brilliant things like one of the character fall in love with a sausage. He takes the whole love story with the sausage that it became a lovely story and very funny and tragic at the same time.
And now just a little black spot in the whole show is that sometimes they play horrible little characters that I do not like very much. I think, after seeing lots of show in Spain that this is something that we like a lot in Spain. We like to play silly characters that are all the time in the outside and they do not really touch you. It is like a comment about the character more than the real thing. But it is something that has to change to be more exciting and to be more touching for the audience. Thou what is what the audience want? In fact all the audience in the theatre were very happy in the theatre so … probably my little comment does not have any importance. Well it has importance because I think we always have to do what we want to do on the stage because that will make us happy once we are there. The audience always like everything that is well done even if what they want see is shit they wanted really well done.
Go to see the Hound of the Baskerville because it is funny.
Have fun.SHAKEING
Hello;
There it is again. It happens like that all the time. As soon as the time to go arrives my heart starts to get smaller and I fell really bad. Not really bad like when you are ill but bad, like unsure, fragile, silly, stupid, vulnerable, sissy, thick in my brain, retarded and scare. And it is not as if it is the first time I have gone out of here and visit other places to do my work but it happens again and again.
I am going to Madrid on Sunday the 3 rd and I will stay there until the fifth in the morning. Then that fifth I am flying to Paris with all the Spymonkey. I will be back in Madrid on the eleventh and then I will go to Seville for four or five days, I will stay there until the fifteenth that I am coming back to Bilbao. I am going to do a clown workshop.
So it is not as if I am going away from Bilbao for ever or for a very long length of time I am going to be away a mare two weeks. And there is nothing to fell weird about that.
And then I always get nervous about how is it going to be my relationship with my friends in London. I mean my friends from Spymonkey. I want them to be happy to see me but I get really paranoiac thinking that probably they have got really hungry with me because once again I have not done something that I should have. Then when I meet them everything is more or less as usual and we get alone quite well and we laugh quite a lot. The biggest problems always come when we do have to do work in the company in the administration of the company. All of us fell the same about that kind of work and I being the one that lives away from England is the one who does the lest of work in that department. Also I am sure I abuse of that in order to leave work for other people but also I am a little bit lazy.
My brains works in a weird way and always have thoughts that do not help when I go to work with the Spymonkeys. When I am in Spain and the moment to go away is coming I start to build a huge world of what has been going on in England while I was away and then I see Petra getting stress in her computer and giving calls to everybody and Toby in his house completely piss off because he always have to do everything and me here writing my blog and organising the little things that get given to me. Lisa is a big help and Michael too but the company now is big and we need more people.
So, now I do not really want to go. I fell sad to leave. Why? I am going to do a very funny thing and a very interesting week working with Joss in Paris and then I am going to have a brilliant time in Seville and in Madrid but again it fells like jumping from a very high cliff into the void. I must remember to take a parachute in the duty free.
Go to see the hound of Baskerville
Have fun.ELECTIONS
Hello.
How do you vote? I mean I know how to vote but my question is how do you do the voting? I know where do I have to go but what I do not know is in which glass box do I have to drop my vote? I do not know in which room it is that glass box where I will be putting my vote.
Also once I am there, would there be a privet room or cabin or somewhere where I can put my vote in an envelope with nobody seeing which party did I give my vote?
Also when I go there do I have to give my identity card? Would they give me any trouble because I have double residency or they will let me vote with no problem?
Also when I get my paper do I have to write anything in my vote or just grabbing the leaflet of the political party I wan to give my vote and putting it inside the envelope is enough?
I am full of questions about my voting today. I have to vote for the council and for the region. I know I am not going to give my vote to any nationalist party. I do not like nationalism as an ideology so I am going to vote for a political party that is not nationalist.
But perhaps the best thing would be to vote for a party that is nationalist because that would be the better thing, because they care a lot about the region and the village and they do not have to care about national or international politics.
I am wandering if I can leave my bicycle at the door of the school where I have to exercise my vote. Because now, before I go to vote I am going to go for a ride in my bike and I would like to vote before I go back home after my time doing exercise.
I see from my window that there are lots of people going to vote. This information contradicts the information of the papers saying that people are not going to vote. It seems the rates of people going to vote are going to be very low.
Sometimes the weather is a very important factor, if it is sunny people do not mind to go out of their houses to vote but if it is raining now a day people do not bother.
This time the Spanish elections are very equal. The papers said that we are taking the very modern thing of bipartidism. So there are two parties and to vote to other party that is not one of them means that your vote is not going to be useful but I really do not care. My friends from Spymonkey always tell me that I am Mr. No because whatever any one say I always say the opposite to everybody else and most of the times I say no.
So I hate that thing of having just two political parties. A good and healthy democracy has to have lots of political parties because the society and the people that make societies always have many different ways of thinking and being completely honest with you I would like to have my own political party. I do not know anyone who thinks like me and I would not like to find someone that thinks like me so if I will have my own political party of myself I will not have any doubt who to vote, I will vote myself.
Go to see the hound of the Baskerville.
Have fun.RIOJAS
Hello;
There are very few people on the streets today. It is Saturday afternoon, it is late afternoon, it is two o'clock in the afternoon and there are very few people on the streets.
There was a mail from Barth from Las Vegas saying that there are two possible dummy actors or better said two actors who could play the dummy in the show in Montreal. That is one of the difficult parts of doing a show very far away from your house in conditions that may not be the best in the world.
There was a mail from Petra she is working really hard in doing the tour manager for this gig. Toby is finishing the music for the show, Aitor is in Spain and Michael is very busy or about to go on holydays with his family so Petra is doing the whole motherfucker, well done you.
The bar in the corner is still close. There is a note in the window saying that it is going to be close from the 21 st to the 27 th inclusive. No one knows what has happen but everybody in town guesses that they probably have gone on holydays. Since they opened last time after the refurbishments of the bar they have not stop working. It is busy all the time but I am not surprise because they really make the best fry calamari in town so everybody comes here on Saturdays and Sundays to eat something before going for lunch.
Cal is still in Mexico. I have seen pictures and there is a small video clip in you tube. The show is called Callate and I think is going to be amazing. Adriana and Darina look the part and we think they are going to be amazing in the show. We do not know the boy in the show but he looks great. They will be playing at the Assembly Rooms this summer at the festival so I strongly recommend you to go and see it. We have not seen it yet but there are many things about the show that it will be worthy to see.
The streets ahead of us are still empty thou we see someone at the end. They are lying on the window counter. There is a very fine rain coming down and the temperature had gone back to March. It is the global warming. The global warming it is changing the face of the world of meteorologists. Any one who knew a lot about weather now does not know anything because all the old signs do not work any more. All the popular knowledge about weather with those beautiful phrases does not work anymore, in April never rains again, in Seville does not rain but “graniza”(those little icy balls who look like frozen rain. I went to get the dictionary Spanish to English but I could not find it and Miren is not here so there is not way I am going to start to look for it in the middle of writing this) and then in the middle of May the weather is like in February.
Lucy is coming to Montreal to play the roll of the legendary Angela, aka Margot Wotherspoon. She will be stage manager and probably screaming woman. Also Andy is on board of Cooped. The last one of his kind dies of rocket accident in the middle of the South Pole. He is much better now wherever he is.
Oh, the glasses of wine are on the counter and we are scare of grabbing there. We are suffering to a big hang over and it hurts the only way forward is to get the glass and ship a bit of wine to get better, SALUD.
Go to the theatre and stop watching TV and see the Hound of the Baskerville
Have fun.BEANS
Hello;
These are white beans. They have been living in a pot for god knows how long. You must take them out of the pot and pour them into a drainer. Then rise them all with water and let them rest. This is important because in order to spend a long time in a pot they soak them in a really filthy looking liquid that you must try to get rid of it.
Then take a pan and put it in the fire. You must put three table spoons of olive oil and then get a medium size onion and chopped it really fine and put them in the pan with the oil.
Now is the moment to switch on the fire and let the onion get cooked really well.
Also pick a piece of red dry sweet pepper and chopped really fine and soak them in water so when starts to get cook its flavours will come much stronger.
Put the pepper into the pan and let it cook with the onion, this could be a good moment to add some salt and pepper if you like pepper.
Then peal a potato or two and slice them and then when you are about to arrive to the end of the slice break the piece so the flavour of the onion a pepper will go into the potato. Put the potatoes in the pan and let them fry with everything that already is in the pan. Do not let them fry until they are completely fry because you want to have them boiled but not fry.
Then you must add all the beans. You are going to stir in the pan so they do not get stuck. And once you have stirred them for a little while go and put water. You should not put too much water just a little bit. The beans were cooked before they were put into the pot and now they only thing you need to do is to give them a little boil so they get all the flavours of the onion, pepper and the chorizo that you are going to put it after wards.
This is the right moment for you to serve yourself a drink. Your kitchen is full of smells, the food is boiling and you can hear the bubbling in the pan and you want to have something to eat. I recommend having always something in the fridge that can work as a tapa.
For example, open you bottle of wine, the one you are going to have with you drink and poor yourself a glass of wine. Then the moment of adding the meat has arrived. The dish is almost ready and it is just the cherry to the cake. This time I am going to put some chorizo. A typical Spanish sausage made with the blood of the pig and some fat of the pig and spices, it is really delicious. You will have to peal it and chopped in small pieces so when you are doing this get a piece of bread, the one you just got today in the bakery and with a small piece of the chorizo make yourself a tapa and have sip of wine.
Now the dish is ready and you can switch off the fire and let it rest. The potatoes must be cooked and set the table and pour another glass of wine and call everybody to eat. Bon appetite.
And go to see the hound of the Baskervilles because it is a very good show.Have fun.
FIFTY EIGHT PER CENT
Hello;
It is very optimistic; there are fifty eight percent chances of successes. So after many techniques and laboratory precedes then the chances of success are fifty-eight per cent and that¡¡ it is a very positive prediction or hope for success.
So the little egg will be provide by the bank of eggs and the little elongated things who are many and run really fast to get hold of an egg they will be taken from my human body. They are not in a very good state any more because they are thirty-eight years old sperms. They are not young and strong anymore. I say this because I know the times when they were really strong and they had incredible adventures like the one when they almost met with the eggs of an Indian girl. I do not mean an Indian girl like the Indian girls from America, no I mean an Indian girl from la India. She was a dancer and her eggs were super strong and flexible at the same time so the sperms got really excited and ready for a god ride. But I am not going to tell you that story just now. I will tell you all about it another time.
And the techniques of someone that wants eggs and sperms pair up properly are very successful but it all depends to whom do you talk. What I mean by that is that if the source is a merchant of eggs then the possibilities of success are endless but if you talk to an organisation that take care of the health of the people then the possibilities of success are more realistic because they do not have anything to sell.
This takes us to the modern idea of lying. It is morally accepted that someone that is trying to sell you something can lie to make his sell more secure. So we live surrounded by lies and we accept them with no complain. And that is estrange because if someone that is my friend or my family lie to me I will react angrily and I will let him know that to tell lies or to lie is not a good thing and that you should always tell the truth but when it is in a public environment we are unable to denounce it.
So the public administration do not lie, the doctors and scientific people in the hospital do not tell lies, I mean in the public hospitals because they do have a big commitment with the truth. Also they do not have to fight for customers.
The 58% march it does not give much optimism in my main. I think that 99% is guaranty of success and the 78% is an optimistic result but 58% makes me wander if it is worthy to carry on trying.
But 58%is definitely a very positive number taking on account that the whole thing starts when you realise that there are 0% of possibilities of you eggs and sperms to met together and that is why you go and ask for help.
Got to see the hound of the Baskervilles, it is a funny show and if the weather in London is as shit as it is here in Bilbao everybody will be going to the theatre and you will not be able to find tickets.
Have fun.
WRITINGS
Hello;
The thing is that with so much time in my hands to think about things I am thinking about the blog. And I have arrived to some conclusions;
First I have realised that this is not really a blog as the blogs I have read from other people, I think this is more a column. I place where with a little bit nice writing if I can I will tell you my opinions about things that happen to me and to the people that live close to me.
Second, that the more I write the more I like it. The more time I spend doing this little piece of writing the more thing I found to write about and to think things about things and the things that surround other things. Like when you put your lat top on your knees and start to write e-mail or your blog. You see the screen of your computer and then the keyboard. You see your hands playing with the keys and if you have a little bit of practice you do not need to look at you hands or to you screen you look in between and that helps you to write much faster. Then I always see my horrible beer belly hanging completely squeeze in between my tits and the end of the computer. Nowadays my belly looks as if is trying to jump into the keyboard and ruin everything like a big Baab al Fajah from Star Wars. I see my arms to my elbow but those are boring.
Third; I do need to be personal in what I write because by doing that people will have an small understanding of who I am and by relation of who Spymonkey is. I work with Spymonkey. Toby, Petra, Stephan, Lucy, Lisa, Cal and me are Spymonkey and if they work with me is that at least they tolerate me there fore they probably like something about me there fore they are a little bit like me in the same way I am a little bit like them. Does that make sense?
Fourth; these writings also want to be a light tower for all of you who wish to be illuminated into the world of Spymonkey. The light coming from this blog will allow you to see far behind the shows and the glitter of the wonderful spymonkey shows and get to know the real intestines of what happened there between the heroes of your dreams. I want to fell like you, to worship Spymonkey in the same way you all do and then by learning to fell what you fell when you see our work then be able to lead you in the wonderful world of Spymonkey and all the characters that live in it.
Fifth; I want to say what ever I want. I want to write what ever I please whiteout thinking in the consequences. I want to go mad and I want to tell you about things that may be I am the only one who is interested in or I want to be amaze by telling you something in here that I may not dare to say anywhere else. But the most important thing is that I want to write what I fell like writing even if it is not true.
I do recommend you to go and see the Hound of the Baskerville it is a very very funny show.
Have fun.THEATRE IN BILBAO
Hello;
On Sunday there are elections in Spain. What is at stake here is the council and the regional government. Thing are getting hit up with the subjects of terrorism, corruption and the Spanish politics classic of houses build all over the coast but in Bilbao there is one man called Ramon Barea. He is an actor, director, writer, filmmaker and a kind renaissance man from Bilbao.
He is good, he is very good sometimes but for Bilbao he is the best and I do need to say that because I am sure that is the way he feels about himself.
Recently the theatre in Bilbao has touched the lowest point in its history. We have passed in almost twenty years from having twenty or more theatres in Bilbao to have just two. The scene twenty years ago was really big and now is very small and all the professionals of Bilbao are in a quest to find whose responsibility is and also what can everybody do to change things for better.
So some days before the elections Ramon Barea called all the people in the profession to show them a documentary about how the theatre life is in our city.
In order to get the best diagnosis of the situation he has interviewed lots of people from the profession lots of people that manage to work and live here and lots of people who work and practice their profession away from this city.
He has interviewed lost of politicians and of course the night of the showing they were all there. Not all of them went to the preview and that give us an idea that sadly “the culture” is not a very good politic point to win the elections.
After the movie that was not very good, there was in the audience a sense of sadness. The sense that things to get better have to change a lot and it does not look like the right people is ready to do the effort necessary.
There are some professionals from Bilbao working away from here but there are many more who have decide to stay here and the politicians have not done anything to change the way things are done here.
In the movie they interview the responsible for the theatre of Bilbao, the Bilbao of the Guggenheim Museum and they way he was talking in the movie it was really embarrassed. He did not know anything about what the performing arts world, do, fell, need etc. I was really upset. If ever I thought it was possible to do my work here this was a big kick in my bollocks to let me know that what ever I will try to do here it is going to crash against the mains of very unhelpful politicians.
And then there was not a sense of responsibility from all the people who practice this profession for make thing different because in many cases that would mean that they might loose their jobs. But I have to say that no one in this profession have a job forever. The nature of the job is that you change jobs all the time and whenever you fell tempted to stay forever them that is the time to leave.
The director did a good job trying but for me he did not go deep enough and did not talk to all the people who practice the job.
Go to see the hound of the Baskerville because there is an actor from the Bask Country one of the ones who have to practice his work away from here.
Have fun.MY NEIGHBOURS
Hello;
You have heard me talking about my neighbours in the pass and you know I do not like them at all. They really are a pain in the ass, believe me. And the thing is that every time I write Neighbours the music of the famous Australian soap opera come into my head and I can stop thinking that to have neighbours is a good thing but lately I do not think so and in this department my lovely wife and me are in the same page.
Let me tell you the latest in the story of my block, now a there is a shop on the side of the building that has water coming into the shop and apparently their plumber has told the owners that the water comes from our house. So we as presidents of the community of residents called a meeting to inform every body of the situation.
The meeting started late because they came late. As they appeared through the door of the lobby the man was whipping his mouth and burping. The flavours of his latest meal arrived to our noses telling us that he has had fried eggs for dinner.
He is about a metro and sixty-seven cm. He is in his sixties and really fat. That is the reason why many years ago he had to stop working because he developed through his diet a very fragile heart condition. Since them he has not got better but worst and in the deepest place of my heart I hope he dies very soon.
He looks like a big fat troll. His stomach is so big that comes into the room minutes before his head. His face is fat and looks as if it swollen because another big fat woman has sat in his face and farted really loudly and windy. When he walks he leaves behind him a very disagreeable smell that seems to come from a public toilet in the cue for the auditions for the next Harry Potter.
He walks slowly and always goes with a little pussy dog. I could not tell if the dog is small or is his body that is so bloated that makes the little dog look so small.
His wife is also small. It is as small as his dog and I am sure he mistakes them from time to time. When they have sex because he cannot see his wily and now it does not work any more he put his wily into his dog ass and then the dog fucks his wife. That is one of the reasons why his son looks so ugly and disgusting. His semen went through the body of the dog and went into his wife pussy and got mixed with the sperm of the dog so they ended up making a child-pussy-dog that smells as bad as his father and looks as ugly as the dog. He is a kind Quasimodo that will survive in this world as long as do not leave his house during the day because if someone sees him will think that is an estrange mutation of a rat-dog and human and will try to kill him.
So this is my neighbour and I promise I did not exaggerated one point. I know it fells like in the Sire a family of Orkos have decided to stay and live surrounded by lovely hobbits.
Go to see the hounds of the Baskervilles everybody who saw the show loved it so why don't you go.
Have fun.GARDI HUTTER
Hello:
The last show at the Clowns Festival of Arrigorriaga was a show by the famous Swiss clown Gardi Hutter. She is a clown girl. We met when we were working at Circus Knie and she was coming to do the tour of the year after us. She came to see us in the tour with her little girl. She was going into circus girl without knowing.
I went to say hello and tell her that we have met in the pass and she did not remember. Our show was shit. One of those shows that you want to forget as soon as possible so I should not have been surprised to realise that she did not remember me. I imagine that she remembered much later.
Anyway, it was a good show but I did not like it. It did not make me laugh once. The problem for me was the clown. She played a clown character that did not make me laugh at all. Because you could not see the actor behind the clown and that is something I hate. Perhaps if your character is so amazing and funny and does not allow me to think about who is hiding behind then is fine but this was not the case.
And then the show was a good show. It was the story of character that lives in a theatre. The character lives underneath the seal of the guy who whisper the lines to the actors when they do not remember any more. Then they do the last show in the theatre and they forget to tell her that they all are going to stay in another theatre so she gets ready for a matinee that never happens. You know the kind of story? Sad and melancholic but full of poetry and niceness. I wanted to vomit.
She was amazingly good technically, very very good and the show had fantastic games with props but I have to say that to see clowns like that really turn my stomach because you do not have to do anything. You do not care for one second about the things that happening on the stage. I like the theatre, the shows were they move me and the only way to do that is by being super real on the stage.
Also she did not look at the audience from the very beginning so it looked as she was performing with a fourth wall and she was not performing for us. Clowns as far as I am concern always play for the audience. They come to the stage and they have to look at the audience and let them know that what they are about to do is just for them it is just because they came to see the show and the clown is going to do it for them.
Sorry to be so radical, or Taliban but when you see a good clown show it is the best but when you see a bad clown show is the worst.
It rained a lot that night and I almost crash my mother in law's car coming back home. It was not pretty.
I like going to see clowns because it confirms that what we are doing with Spymonkey it is a very valid piece of work and a very valid way of working.
GO to the Hound of the Baskerville
Have fun.ARIANE
Hello;
Ariane knew he was going to leave from the very beginning. He is a playboy, he is rich he has been with many women and he has said good-bye to all of them many times before.
When they met she fell in love with him immediately. He charmed her with no much effort. She is a really nice and naïve young lady looking for the love of her life and there he was ready to take her in his arms and give her the ride of her life.
Now when he is leaving all her fears have become true and the nightmare is not in her dreams but here in front of her. He is packing his suitcases and leaving some the papers in the little coffee table of the hotel room. He is tipping for the last time to the bellboy and shaking his hands as farewell. She had dreamt that before and now that is not a dream anymore but he is they're doing all the things that she dreamt before in front of her eyes.
She has seen this before in her dreams but that is not taking any of the pain that she is going through.
She never went into his arms immediately. She fought and created this imaginary world where she was having a life very similar to the one that he was having. She created for him a world of lovers where she will not have time to miss him. So every time they will meet he will not be the only one who could talk about the Riviera or Malibu or Cairo or Beirut she had created imaginary lovers in all those places.
He was fine. He kept his life the way it was. He liked her but he did not seem to be becoming more attached to her than to the other girls. All the girls were more glamorous girls than her and that is why she did borrow the white fur coat, or lie to her father or did the estrange things she did during all this time and now for nothing. He is leaving and she in never going to see him again.
So he comes closer to say good-bye. She is going to embrace him possibly for the last time. The quartet of gypsies who had been playing the soundtrack of their love is still playing but this time a very sad and romantic music. He is looking to her eyes and does not managed to say anything. He is just smiling. She would like him to say something. She looks at him and is waiting for him to hold her. He carries on looking at her as if she does not want every to forget her. She moves forward so the embrace would be easier and still he does not grab her. Then he does, he takes her by her waist and she lift her arms folding them over the back of his neck. She can fell the pressure of her arms in the lower part of her back and she hides her face on the left side of his face. Her face is full of pain. Her eyes are shrinking and her mouth and the pain make her face shake like a piece of paper in the middle of winter storm. Her eyes are screaming do not go and if you do please take me with you but her mouth keeps shut.
It really is a beautiful image the face of Audrey Hepburn saying goodbye to her lover in Paris the wonderfully charming Gary Cooper. The movie was written and directed by Billy Wilder. Oh I think I am felling romantic today.
Go and see the hound of the Baskerville and have fun.RIDING
Hello;
I am have started to ride my bike everywhere. I have done it as my commitment to prevent the global warming. I am trying to convince everybody in doing something similar because if we all use our bikes the earth will last longer. Someone that knows about this subjects told me some time ago that the thing is destroying the environment the most is the emissions from the car. We use far too much the car and we use them really bad in a very spoil way.
I see lots of people riding their cars when they could use the tube or the bus or simply ride their bikes or walk. We have become a very lazy society and we will pay for it if we do not manage to something before everything becomes so destroyed that is will be too late to get it repair.
I mean here in my town nobody seems to be too concern about the global warming. No one could really believe that things are as bad as they say they are. If you rid your bike for half an hour you are in the middle of the countryside and there everything seems to be as green and healthy as many years ago. People do not seem to care about factories or construction in preserve areas because as long as people can make enough money to live and get richer everything is fine. I think we have been spoiled by nature for far too many years and now is too late too stop. Now we are like the spoiled child who grow up and now it miss treating his parents.
And probably in London they are more aware of the global warming effects because they have done worst things to nature than us over here but I think here we have to have the same awareness.
So I am doing campaign for the cause by riding my bike to everywhere that I can. So If I go surfing I get my bike and I put my board in the bike and then I ride to the beach. If I have to go to town for business or to see someone I get my bike and I ride over there. I arrived everywhere covered in sweat and it is not nice so sometimes I have to use alternative ways to make it to my appointments but so far so good. Also I am doing exercise to get in shape and that is helping me for my preparation for the incoming tour with Spymonkey.
So yesterday I was talking to my friend around a glass of wine and I was trying to convince her that she should use her bike more. Recently she told me that she was going to start to go to work by bike. She works in a factory close by and she uses her car to go to work everyday. She could go walking. I told her she should stop using her car and use more ecological ways of transport. She agreed and my full of myself and proud for thinking that I had converted someone new into the ecological cause I told her that I go to town all the time in a bike and that is very ecological.
To that she answered me. Well, you could go on the tube and that is also very ecological.
I was there with no words to answer. She was right and all my campaign have failed.
But anyway go to see the Hound of the Baskerville.
Have fun.SINGINGCLOWN
Hello;
There is a clown's festival in a village nearby and today I have gone to see the opening show of the festival.
It was a clown girl. She was very charming and good and funny but the show that she was performing it was not very good. It was a mixture of birthday party clown and street clown and everything was happening inside a theatre. She was funny and it had a great spirit. I liked her.
When I read her bio I learnt that she worked at the Universal Exhibition in Seville and that probably we met there. She was a member of this very funny company of girls called “ Las Rebajas”. That means “Sales”. They were a really hot bunch of girls, very sexy and also very funny group entertaining and doing shows in one of the stands of the Universal Exhibition. I was also working there so I am sure we met.
And this is part of my whole experience of living in Bilbao or in Spain. Every time I am back here my pass traps my in its web and sometime does not even let me move. That pass that I am talking about is huge just because I am old now. I have lived for thirty-eight years and I have been doing these things for at least twenty of those years. Now I have met many people and their journeys are completely different to mine. So when I meet them again I fell sometimes as If I have betrayed their journeys by having my own one. It is like having a very wrong sense of my own life. I took my own decisions and because they were different to the ones they took I am a traitor. Oh¡¡¡ I should not write things like that¡¡ it is too personal and some of my readers like John from Peepolikus fell a little bit embarrass. I am sorry John but I am sure I am not the only one that fells like that when meeting with people from the past. And I try to write my blog the most universal possible and I think I achieve that by writing about things that people can relate.
Anyway, I managed to talk to the lady who organised the festival and I gave her a card of Spymonkey. I told her that we would love to come and play here because we like eating and drinking and in here we do that very well. The problem is that people do not speak much English here so the people who organised the show here get scared because they know that audiences will not come to see the show. I keep trying but it is difficult and sometime fells as if I am just taking the piece and I have created this imaginary world away from Bilbao where I work in theatre and I have my own company with more people and where things go more or less well and where I can work and where I am successful and where I travel all over the world but no body has ever seen what I do. So it fells more like a Hitchcock movie, the man who came from nowhere or something like that. But it is true and many of you have seen our work but people from here do not travel much because for them this is the best place in the world so why bother?
Go to see the Hound of the Baskerville because one of the performers is from here and the show and the performers are very funny.
Have fun.
SPYMONKEY WHY?
Hello;
Why? It is the question that lately comes to me when I think about what we are doing in England. It is not so much why do we do it in England but why do we carry on together? After all these years and all those troubles and debts and shit between each others and the fact that more we get know each other the more we realise that we are so different and that we do not even like the same things but there must be something that we still like to do together and that is probably the reason why we are still working together and it looks like the reason why we will work together in the future.
But then I think in all of us Stephan, in Vienna everyday more in love with his family and every day needing to be closer to them so there is not chance of going in big tours.
Petra is English and she wants to be famous in England. She works really hard and she has lots of talent. Things have changed a bit for her lately but I think she wants to have the place where she lives to be the place in the world where she spends most of her time. When it comes to the kind of work that she likes to do I fell that is more comedy as comedians than any one of us.
Toby is Brighton and I fell he has the most amount of projects in his head. He wants to do site specific shows and parades and cabarets and shows where the ideas are very important and also he wants to do them in Brighton where the town is becoming a very important focus for arts and culture. Also his family has always been very important for him and that is not going to get smaller.
Petra and me do not have family yet and it sounds very difficult for both of us that will change in the very near future. I am not going to discuss this information with all of you just yet. So the question is still there.
There is something in the fact that the last tour we have done in Canada we had a great time doing what we have always done. And then that means that we could easily repeat it if necessary. And of course whenever we have gone and work with other companies or people we do not do so much what we want to do meanwhile in Spymonkey we still manage to do what we want to do.
And there are many difficult things when it comes to carry on with the commitment or oath that we all have taken. The more difficult one for me is that you do not have intimacy. Everybody has to be on the known. I do know that this is the most important thing to make sure that the confidence between each other's does not get destroyed. We need to know about each other's lives so we can understand what everybody is going through.
So, why do I keep going there? Probably because I can stop living without Petra, Toby is the only person in the world that still makes me laugh and Stephan is always very sweet with me.
Go to see The Hound of the Baskerville.
Have fun.
THEATRE OPERATIONS
Hello;
Well, while there are no gigs with Spymonkey and all of us have to keep away from the theatres the members of Spymonkey are going into another kind of theatre, the theatre Operations.
First Stephan decided or betters Stephan's body decided to go and ask for repairs. His knee in a very silly and stupid accident collapsed and for months he has been suffering. Last Wednesday in the Barbarian capital, Munich Stephan went into the theatre operations to get his knee completely repair. The first problem is that by now with our ages it is very difficult to get your physical strength back. We are not young anymore. He is going to have a very hard work out to go back to basics. And of course he did let me know on his firs SMS message after his operation. He told me that his recovery time is going to be much longer and difficult than he thought. I knew he was going to say something like that. He is a real pussy when it comes to talk about his physical problems.
He has been cut in the middle of his leg and he will be trying to get better before he goes to Montreal so the show is going to be very good.
¡Petra! She could not get out of having an operation. If someone gets a little bit of spotlight then she has also have to have a place where people could talk about her and she has done it. Petra is having a problem with a part of her body and she is going in to put everything in the right place. She has been in the theatre operations for one day and then when I spoke to her she was weak and she was going to be weak for quite a while. She tried to go to the bank and then she felt really weak so she has to hold her mums arm to be able to go back home.
They both have behaved very well in the theatre operations. When they had lots of pain they did not shout, they had taken such a big amount of pills and drugs that even if they had cut them all over their body they would not have felt anything. They were scare because both of them are health and body freaks. Petra, and I say this here because it is a well knows fact spend the good part of the year we spent working at Circus Knee eating parsley and carrots. Of course that was not healthy but when you are a health freak sometimes it is difficult to know what direction to take.
Stephan had his operation in Munich and he is going to be going around in crouches for quite a while. Vienna is a very flat city and I do not think she is going to be missing the cycling because he never used them. Petra I am sure she is missing all the physical things that she cannot do. She is not going to be able to do her yoga and I am sure that her rides on her bicycle have to be a little bit smaller.
Well, I am tempting to say this, we, I use the plural “majestatic”, send them both our love and best a fast wishes of recuperations.
And do not forget to go to see the hound of the Baskervilles.
Have fun.
A CASTING
Hello;
The phone rang while I was in the car. Later in the day I was asked to go to a studio in town to be seen for an add for TV. The lines of the add will be send to my e-mail address as we speak and then go with it to the audition. I arrived to where I was going and I saw my friend already had them so I copied them into my little book and learned them as well as I could.
But you know how it is? Some days you just do not have it.
I walked to the studio and I waited for ten minutes in the wrong place. After such a long time living away of my city now I do not know even know it anymore. I called a friend and he told me where the studio was. I arrived there and the people doing the casting have not arrived yet so I had to wait for a little bit longer in front of another door.
Once inn I went all the way inside the studio and started to chat with the casting director. He is an old friend of well and mine, I still like him. And then he become professional and cut me off and told me to go out and give my name and details outside. It left me a little bit funny and I thought, this is really professional!
The casting director told me to introduce myself to the camera and after that he demonstrated to me exactly what did I have to do. He wanted me to do exactly what he had done. If I will do that I will probably get the job.
I gave it the first go and the casting director stop as soon as I opened my mouth. He told me I was acting too much. So I was doing lots of acting and I had to be more normal. I have not even said the whole text and he had already stopped me.
I tried again and this time I managed to arrive to the second line but them I did the physical staff and I forgot my line so I made a big pause and he stopped me again.
He told “You did a too long pause”” now do it all much faster”. In my head panic was taking shape and I could see his big eyes and big disgusting body grabbing all my loins and member and I was not having any fun.
I tried again. When you go to this castings and they do not go well there is a moment when the big black hole opens and you see it and you fell and from there until the casting ends and you leave the room everything fells as if you are falling down and each minute you gather speed and it feels really bad.
I tried once more, and this time the first and second line and the third went fine but I did not play the intention at the tale of the line. The casting director told me that that is the secret of playing adds, you have to put all intention at the tale of the line.
I understood immediately and I tried to do it but I could not do it to the taste of the casting director. The only thing is that I did them really bad, the lines did not help but the problem was just I that I was not doing it well. I was being bad. I was gathering speed and the end of the hole was getting closer and closer. The casting director said the magic words “the last time” and as soon as I finished I run out of the studio almost without saying good-bye. I did it really bad. I have done things like that before not as bad but this time I have over done myself with this casting. I am happy to say that this one has been until now the worst casting of my life.
Never the less, go to see the hound of the Baskerville. That is a good show.
Have fun.MISSING OUT
Hello;
But lets see what is happening when you are not present. I have got used to delegate but sometimes I hate it.
I love the idea of not having to worry or even the idea of not having to know anything about anything but this is an impossible scenario when you are the owner of your own company. You probably can do that once your company has become really big and you have an incredible team working for you and you get weekly reports and all of them are very good and said that everything is going great.
When I talk about missing out is…well, is not just the job, it is the people, the parties, the way people do things. I have spent almost four months in England last time I was on tour. I have had a very good time much better time than the one I had before Christmas and I suppose I am getting use to the new situation and I am going through the cold turkey of live in London. When I was doing the play “Sra. Carrar's Rifles” I got into this kind of life or habit of working in town, seeing people, drinking after the show with actors and people that work in the theatre and do things, going to see shows and movies in my weekends and staying by myself imaging things that I would like to do when I grow up. It has felt a little bit like being a teenager and leaving home for five days and living for the first time the life I always wanted to have. I was an actor. I was doing a play in town. I was meeting people who just have seen me in a show and they were not saying I was really bad in the play. They were not saying I was the best thing in the show either but they were just happy with what I have done.
Also I was walking everyday to work in a very sunny London. I was listening to my I-pod through London, like putting a soundtrack to everything that I was living. Imagine what music will you hear when you go to buy groceries to Tesco? Or better imagine the music you would like to hear when you are buying a nice bottle of wine for a party? Or for a dinner party? Or Sunday morning going for a movie? What kind of movie and then what kind of music for that movie? And then having nice lunches on Sunday while I go through the pages of The Observer.
There are many things that I am missing out today from the time I have spent in London lately.
I am missing saying good morning to Matt and talking about my day with him. I am missing Petra, but if you say that I will deny it, and her dinner parties at the house. She is a very good friend. I am missing Toby and making sure that I remember to call him for his birthday. I think it is the 28 th May but I am not completely sure. And I am missing my friends in “Sra. Carrar” because I have had a great time with them. They are having a breakfast party today and I have not been invited or told about it and that makes me really pissed off and now I want to kill them. I am missing out things that I know as soon as I am there I will not be missing and I will be missing what I am having over here at the moment.
Go to see the Hound of the Baskervilles because it is a good show.
Have fun.LUCY'S PARTY
Hello;
It is raining. There is this felling of failure in the air. There has been a lot of preparation for tonight's party. It is not going to be an affair of lets go down to Tescos and get some drinks and some crisps and deep in and then go back to my flat and have a party, NO.
Lucy has put a big tent in his garden, has a DJ and has contacted lost of people two months in advance and everybody is going to be there apart from Cal, Matt and Stephan and me. We are going to miss the party of the century. Petra was very nice but it was very much family orientated. Now this is going to be the real McCoy and everybody is going to make a big effort to have lots of fun.
And it was great, yes, it was fantastic, the weather did not get better but who cares when you are not getting wet and there is plenty to drink and lots of things to dance to and very interesting people to talk to and lots of lovely girls and boy to dance and flirt with.
Lucy, the birthday girl looked really well. She was wearing a while dress that shows a big cleavage and then she was wearing white fur sleeves that make her look like a fairy, a very sexy fairy. The biggest feature apart from her amazing body is the big chunk of jewellery she was wearing around her neck. There were pearls going down her pair… and she was looking very good.
Petra has tried to keep a low profile but her huge personality and star quality is not playing on her favour. In order to be subtle she is wearing a pink wig and is wearing a white fur jacket. She was looking very happy and in top form. She was dancing and taking pictures during the whole night.
Andy and Graeme were talking for a while. Andy is doing some work in Brighton for the hottest show at the festival and he went to the party with one of his new girls, I hope. Graeme is working in a big statue project and he is very happy the reason why is because he is getting very well pay. He deserves it because he is a very talented boy.
Tania was there giggling and potting around. Last time I saw her she was with Beth and I am sure Beth came later to the party because she probably had a gig at the Barbican. You know how it is when you have a partner that works in the theatre.
Emma was looking very good dancing and mingling with everybody. She is a very good-looking girl and one of the goddess of Spymonkey world. We have more but Emma, of Pewee and Emma has been one of them.
Flick was hitting the desks in a very good manner and thou not everybody was dancing the music was happening non-stop and everybody was very happy. Much later the dancing picked up and it was not like drunks imitating the Shane of the dead it was a little bit of drunk dancing but good fun.
Toby was there a little bit like a father figure. He was hugging Petra in fatherly way so much later he could have a much sexy approach to her when the alcohol was playing its part. He had lots of fun.
Everybody had a great party and then Lucy had a cup of tee in the morning with Petra and they laughed and laughed remembering the amazing time they had have.
Please do go and see the hound of the Baskervilles is very good show.
Have fun.
TU TERNURA MOLOTOV
Hello;
This girl when she was young, eighteen met this Arab guy. They were very happy together. He was very good in bed and very impulsive and very radical and it was that time when everybody wanted to be radical, even the ones that did not want to be radicals where radicals in not trying to be radicals. It was an estrange time. But the girl was very happy until things got a little bit boring and worry and one day she left. He had gone with somebody else.
Now she is a yuppie, a successful TV journalist that makes lots of money. Her husband is very successful and their only failure is that they do not manage to get pregnant. So today they have to fuck to have a baby when they are about to get at it the doorbell ring and a packet arrives.
Basically the story of the play “Tu ternura Molotov” in English is something like your care or your tenderness Molotov. I think the play is not very good, is too complicated.
I went to see it with Jon and he is the main actor of the show. The main actor is the female character. I think that is because everything goes through her and the husband and the things that happen when the box gets open. It is a very difficult play to play.
I enjoyed very much seeing Jon on the stage. He is very good and you watch him with happiness. He has become very good actor.
The girl that plays with him was good too but for moments she was a little bit too light.
She was pretty.
Then the only thing that I thought it was not very good was the direction. A famous Spanish independent theatre director called Etelvino Vazquez has directed it. He is a good director. For me his mistake is that he decided that the play was a tragedy and for me it is very clear that it is a comedy, it is almost a farce. In a very particular situation something very particular as result of a pure chance happen and one chance and another chance make possible for the play to go forward. I do not say that the play should play for laughs but just to know that the play has laughs and deserve to have those laughs played.
They play at this town of Cantabria called Los Corrales de Buelna, In English the corrals of Buelna. It really is a mythical name like mane names of lots of towns and villages in the far away places of the Iberian Peninsula.
We drove there early in the afternoon and it was really nice to go to do a gig here in Spain. I do not think I have done something like for many years now and it gave a really sad thing of nostalgia. I helped them to do the get out.
When we left Jon and me had a last beer in a road bar full of lorry drivers and people that work on the roads.
Theatre is still a very difficult business. There were not enough people in the theatre and they deserved it to have bigger audiences. The play need bigger audiences to develop to become the good show that they are.
Never the less go to see The Hound of the Baskervilles it is at the Duchess in the West End.
Have fun.
THE BEACH
Hello
The sun is shining and there is not sings that he is going to stop shining like very soon. The sky blue and early in the morning there is a small layer of freshness that the night has left in the air and it gives a felling of cleanneness to everything.
There are people doing cycling and running and walking to get rid of the extra kilos. For my part I am in my bicycle cycling all the way to the shore. I am sweating quite a lot but we have gigs of Cooped in the beginning of July and I have to be so fit that I am not wasting one second in preparing myself for the long beast that is Cooped.
My legs are taking me quite fast but I can fell how my body is telling me that I will pay the price later on when I am home in the afternoon.
There is a hill in front of me. Things change all the time so this is the first time I am coming back to the beach since I arrived from London. I had planned to come before this but I did not have time and I was doing other things anyway.
So every time I go somewhere I get lost or things have change so much that I do not recognise the places so it takes me a little bit too much of extra time to go to places.
But I have been here before but I have never being here on my bike. After this hill, on the other side there is the beach so I am going up and this place has changed a lot. Now there is a road just for bikes and to be easier they have done it in spiral so the going up is longer but easier to climb. The road for bikes is in red and they called here “Bidegorri”. When I make it to the end the hill starts to descend very fast but now there is not “bidegorri”. I break but my breaks are not very good so the bike carries on and finally when I managed to stop I realise that there is a very big wall of cloud coming against the cliffs.
The cliffs are on top of the beach. But do not misunderstand me the beaches are very sandy but they are crowned with high cliffs and that make the beaches look very good.
I cycled all the way to edge because I have come here to see the beach and the waves and I do not want to go back without doing that. But there is nothing to do because everything is completely covered.
I am going to try a little bit more to the west because the cloud seems to be coming from the east, from England. I rode my bike two hundred metres more and I went all the way to edge of the cliff and I bent forward and tried to see the waves and I could not see anything. ¡¡¡¡I could not see anything that was five metres in front of me!!!!
I could hear the noise of the waves against the shore and I could see some surfers leaving the water. It looked as if the sea was trying to tell all of us that there is going to be a storm very soon and that everybody should go back home as soon as they can so you will not get completely wet.
So I took my bike and in a frenzy mood cycled all the way back home. When I arrived I had sweat so much that I was completely tired. I was completely tired but happy because I did not get wet and also because I had made an extra amount calories burning but there was a little bit of pain in my heart because I could not contemplate my lovely sea.
Good God you have not see the hound of the Baskerville yet?
Have fun.
EL CELEBRITY
Hello;
It is in the middle of the other side of the river. You arrive to Laiseka and then leaving the little church on your left side and then on your right you see a little bridge and straight on from the bridge that is where it is. Today the grass in the front of the house was too tall for my liking. The small house on the side is made of stone and lately is where the owner has kept their car. There is enough space to make a great apartment while the main house is going to be use as a Bar.
The Bar is going to be called El Celebrity. It is going to have two floors and a terrace in the back where you can play “Petanque”. We will have to build the special field for the game but I can guaranty that sooner than later many people will be coming from all over the world to drink the great the famous Green wine of Laiseka and to eat the great meats and cheeses and vegetables that grow in this wonderful part of Las Encartaciones.
Because I have not told you yet but I am planning to open a Bar.
It is going to be called “El Celebrity”. I will hang in the walls of the Bar pictures of myself with celebrities of the world. My plan is very simple. People will come to drink to the bar and they will see the pictures hanging and will see me serving drinks. Then they will tell me Is that you? And I will play a little bit shy, like someone that has been discovered while doing something a little bit naughty and then I will answer, yes, that is I. They will be very star struck and by that time I will be out of the counter and starting very slowly to tell them the moment when I met the celebrities and how I am an actor that works in LA and London and … I will push for them to ask me if I want to have a drink and I will say yes. So they will have to pay an extra drink.
My stories will be long enough and entertainment enough that they will have to have another drink and perhaps a little something to eat. By the time my story of how did I met this person or other is finished the customers will be so happy with the place, the story, the drink, the food and with me that they could not wait to come back and tell all their friends about this amazing place that exist in a wonderful hidden place that not many people know and that you should visit before it gets too well known and it will not be as nice any more.
How wrong is to say that thing, when El Celebrity will get very well known Celebrities will come to eat and drink and then they will tell their own stories in my bar. We will buy they houses that are close by and we will build in Laiseka a big entertainment complex where people from all over the world will come. My pictures with celebrities will disappear because the celebrities will hang their own pictures in the walls and all of them will be signed and the back of the picture is going to be always the front of the EL Celebrity.
So, did you like the hound of the Baskerville.? It is a very good show, isn't it?
Have fun.
EXCITED
Hello;
Yes, I see you tomorrow for a while, I have to see Antonio, or better I told Antonio I would go to have breakfast with him and before that we could have a coffee and chat for a while. Oh, sure not problem.
Well, now there is problem because I thought that my fly was much later than it really is so I am going to have to be in the airport before I thought. So that is how is going to be I am not going to be able to see anybody.
And that is what I did, I packed my suitcase and I put it down in the living room. Then I went up to the bank because they had send me a letter the day before and there were some problems with a cheque I had done a couple weeks ago. I went all the way up to the Broadway and the bank was closed. It was bank holydays. That is one of the problems of being a foreigner you never remember the bank holydays.
I went back home and I finished organising all the things to leave my room clean and presentable. Matt is going to see Cal in Mexico this coming Monday and he is not going to have time to organise anything apart from that so.
Matt took me to the tube Station, Bounds Green on the Piccadilly line and I was set all the way to the airport.
When I was in the tube listening to my I-pod a gentleman sitting in front of me touched me in my leg to let me know that my suitcase was going solo. With the centrifuge power of the speed of the train my suitcase had left the place where I left her and now was going all over the train. I stood up and I took her back the place and this time I secured her with my other bag.
Two hours before the flight I was checking and there was almost nobody in the airport. So the nice girl at the counter where I checked my suitcase allowed me to travel with an extra heavy suitcase. She was very nice. I have always thought that many people that work at the checking counters behave a little bit like policemen. ¡¡¡¡You have to follow the rules!!!! We said twenty kg and that is what you are taken with you so go and come back with the right weight or you will have to pay. I hate them when they are like that.
It is very difficult to travel a lot and not go over the limit with the weight of your suitcase. If you think about it no one person could travel with twenty kg of clothes if you are going to stay in a place for more than a moth.
Anyway at the airport I had lunch, again a horrible Panini. Do go already lunched to Heathrow Airport if you can. I believe Gatwick is better, it has more options and the food is nicer.
The plane left really fast because as I said there were very little people in the airport so we were set to go very fast. I made it home very fast and now I am writing this form the comfort ability of my sofa and my wife is sitting next to me just being pretty.
Go to see the hound of the Baskerville.
Have fun.LONSOME
Hello;
The fire is extinguishing slowly as the light of the day comes out over take the night. The prairie is quite and there are herds of buffalos in the horizon. The café is bitter because it is long time ago I run out of sugar.
I am travelling home. For the last six week I have had a really full on journey and today I am going to do the last leg of that journey. I never thought I was going to have so much fun and the whole experience has been really good.
I saddled my horse and I load all my things on top of my loyal horse. He has been with me during all this time and I have developed a very special bond, we have had wild sex every night in the middle of the prairie once the moon is up. The coyotes go away when they hear our screams of pleasure.
But now the time to go back home has arrived and the endless rides and the lonesome nights in the middle of the big fields with the only company of my horse.
I long for a bath and female company. My time away from the place where I belong has arrived to a natural end and I will spend some of my time in town.
Shuush!!! I think there is a coyote back there and is trying to get the food I have in my bag. I will use the bullets in my colt 45 to teach the animal a lesson. ¡¡¡Bang!!! The coyote has jumped back but it does not look like he is going to leave. I am going to shoot him very close to his leg and I am sure he will go. ¡¡¡Bang!!! ¡¡¡Ohiiiii!!! I have hit him, I am sure I have. Look he is leaving in little jumps towards the deep darkness of the desert. He will not be back tonight.
Something in moving back there¡¡¡ Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it is superman¡¡¡ I always wanted to do that joke. But, now for real I can see something moving back there. I am going to grab one of the pieces of the still burning wood and holding my gun in my hand I am going to go and see what is going on over there. I can not see anything, the fire is really low, I have to get closer. Fuck¡¡¡ it is a snake, it is a rattle snake and her bite is deadly¡¡ it is one thing I do not need now, to be bitten by a rattle snake in the middle of the desert and die here like another starving animal, precisely when I am about to go back home.
I am going to have to kill her ¡¡¡¡ Bang !!!! I missed it, ¡¡¡¡Bang!!!! That's it, the snake is dead. I grab the snake and I put her close to fire where I hit her up so it is easier to get her skin out. I am going to get a belt made as soon as I arrive to town. Then I will sell the belt and I could buy some food for when I come back here to spend time going around the desert finding the cattle that have gone missing.
It is really lonesome to be a cowboy but it is what I have been doing all my life and I do not know how to do any other thing. Next year I will be a cowboy and the next year too. It is too late to change profession.
You cow boys out there go to see The hound of the Baskerville you will not regret it.
Have fun.BACK AT THE JUNCTION
Hello;
Thou I could not sustain myself straight because I have not slept very much I managed to make it all the way to the crossroad. The crossroad where there is a junction waiting for everyman. Mine is up there and I can see it now. I had a late night and I had a very early morning. It has been even earlier because I had a very late night but it was worthy. Things come in life and you have to accept them as they come.
This morning I arrived to the end of something for now. The end of a nice an interesting project and now the crossroad is full of options.
If life is journey there has to be endless amount of crossroads and junctions where a man has to take decisions. A man has to choose between forward, left, right or backwards and always hope for the best. And it is always going to be the best be sure of that because it rests in your attitude the possible result to things or choices.
And now I am walking towards mine. I am over dress but the clouds in the sky give a different message than the warm weather that I am felling. I left Amy at her house. She was not in the mood for work and I could not decide in what kind of mood I was. The last show had left me with an uneasy sense of emptiness and I need it to make a new choice very soon.
There are moments when you just fell more inside yourself. There are moments when you find yourself thinking about very little things that matter a lot but now you never think about them anymore. Things that you just give for granted because you have done them very often and you do not value as much as you should. And now it is all about going back to the beginning and starting all over again. It is not going to be easy but it looks like there is so much work to do that is a little bit scary.
There it is, I can see it a couple of hundreds metres away and it is going to take me a couple of minutes to make it there. I do fell like a very important moment in my life is about to arrive. I will face that cross road and then I will take another path in my life.
It is not going to be different but something has change and now a new moment a new part of the life there is.
And I have crossed the path and I have taken a decision. I am completely committed to do what it has to be done. I have ordered the salmon, the beef and the apple crumble with great ale from Norfolk. I think I am going to have an amazing time.
It has not been easy but the junction has a very nice set menu on Sunday and I have to be here to having one more time. I was going to have a siesta afterwards but it was worthy to give myself that present after so many days working non-stop.
I think I have told you before that you should go to see the Hound of the Baskervilles because it is a very nice show. So go and do it.
Have fun.
FAREWELL SRA: CARRAR
Hello;
Ourla, I think this is the way you write her name; the director of how much is your Iron? Is really hot. This statement bring me some troubles but I believe what I am saying is true. I saw her after the show today and she looked lovely so I have to let you know that she is hot or better I think she is hot.
And that was it. Yes it finished the whole thing as fast as it started. There was during the whole day at the sweatshop a very clear sense that this one was the last day working together. There was the sense that we will never do that again because very good ensemble that work very good together do not happen very often. Who is going to call the same people to do another show? Nobody, not even Paul the one that had the wonderful idea of putting all of us together will try to use the same cast for another show. It does not work like that. Whenever you are going to do a show you think about the amount of parts that the play has and then you think of actors that you would like to see playing those parts. Then you try if that would work and then you cast them.
Never the less we have had a great last day. We have been able to say good-bye and take pictures with everybody so there are enough tokens that would remain us of this nice time we have spent.
We did two shows and then we did Saturday treats. Laura and Danny brought lovely things to eat and this time Frear brought cookies that were very nice. Even David Laan came upstairs to the terrace to see the picnic. The whole cast of How much is your Iron? and the cast of Vernon God Little also joined so it was a great party in the afternoon. Once again we laughed and we had a great time. I ate too much.
I had to be very good for the last show because Sarah Jane was coming to see the show and she is “the lover” of the director. She is lovely Sarah. She came with two friends and we were trying to find them a boyfriend. It did not work but we tried. We did not try hard enough because the man was Antonio and they could have got a very nice man with them from Seville and a very good actor to be entertained.
After the show we partied for quite a while. I stopped thinking that I had to work in the morning and I put all my attention in talking with Kristine Landon Smith. She is looking really good, really pretty and is very nice. I wanted to talk to her for a long time because I have not seen her since we went to Australia.
She is going there very soon. Then Claire Thompson and Maria were there. Both of them completely full on and having a very good time advertising their new company “Tancacha”. They are giving a party next Saturday in London where you have a tango lesson and then the party is a tango party.
Oral was there and she was looking really hot. We did not talk much. I like her and I like what she has done with the Hound of the Baskerville. You must go to see the show because it is getting sold out and then you would have missed your chance.
At the end Antonio and Me were the last ones to leave. We drank until there was nothing else to drink and the people of the theatre wanted to go home. He took a taxi with Tamsing and then I walked to the bus. I am a looser.
Have fun.
FRIENDS
Hello;
Mick Barnfather came to see the show. He is going to be reading this so Hello Mick. I love to see there, you are great.
For all of you that do not know Mick is giving workshops the first two weeks of August in London. He is a great teacher, actor and director and very good fun to be around. So I extremely recommend you to go and do his clown workshops there are great. You have to go to his web page but I do not know if I am spelling his name properly but you just have to Goggle him and I am sure it will come up.
Also Martina and Sarah and Joyce were there and it was very nice to see them all. I think they enjoyed seeing the shows; the two of them and that was nice. I always like to be liked by my friends when I am on the stage. They did not really told me that they liked me but I think they did and well, yes they did tell me and that made me happy. And we drunk a couple of beers and then they had to go and they gave a lift to Antonio and he left with them and I managed to get the last tube home and…well, that was my day.
Now I am in my room thinking in watching a movie and relaxing of my very long day. I will not have to work tomorrow morning so in a way I could stay much longer and watch a movie or perhaps I could try to read something. I really have so many things to do that is a little bit embarrass not to do it.
The show that I am doing has been keeping me really in an ecstatic mood. A little bit like Santa Theresa, you fell so happy that you think you are seeing God. This may not be very good for my next ventures with my dear Spymonkeys but the only thing I can do is carry on working with the Spymonkeys and try to enjoy a lot the work we do all together.
Also make me think about the hard work all my mates have done for the last ten years. Soon, very soon we are going to be ten years old. It has been mainly Toby, he is a good man taking care of things. He is good in other things too. And now we are going into the beginning of the future and it is a little bit scary.
The last time I remember I was in a similar situation I quitted. Yes I quitted and that was it. So everything from now on is going to be super new. I am going to experience something that I have never experienced before and hopeful the journey is successful.
Then I am going to close the computer and go to sleep. Hello to you Michael, be sure that lots of my readers will be there in your show and the rest of them will go to see the hound of the Baskerville. It is a good show. Perhaps a good plan would be ¡¡¡¡to do the workshop and then go to see the show!!!!
Have fun
TWO SHOWS
Hello;
With danger of repeating myself I have titled this piece of writing two shows. I have titled other blogs in this page Two shows mainly because I have done two shows the date that matters but this time I will try to give it another flavour.
As Rick Katz says, he is sitting next to me in the dressing room “ if we would be making Nike shoes they will be outrageous” and he is right. When you do two shows in a theatre is like working in a sweatshop. And all of you in the third world who read my computer will be thinking and asking yourselves how someone can say such unfair thing? He is doing a play while we are sowing Nike shoes. It is not fair.
But the point is not what is unfair; the point is that it is unfair. When you participate of something unfair you have to know that it is something unfair. I live thousand times better than anyone who works in sweatshop but that does not mean that the situation is unfair.
But then we like very much what we do and also one we have started to work we do enjoy very much the show and it feels like a present more than something that you have to do.
Also I should tell you that we do not get paid more money because we do two shows. We get the same amount.
When I finished the first one I went out and everybody had someone that they knew coming to see their show. They were all talking and I did not have any one to talk. It made me think about my foreigner condition.
Paul came to see the show and then he left very quickly. He had to do Idiots business. He is being really great. He has done a great job. He has done a simple power full play and has managed to gather a cast that gets on very well together and makes the whole job a more exciting experience.
And then the second show I could not tell anything of what happened because I have gotten into the rhythm of the job and I am full on into the routine of coming here doing a show and then having a beer and then leaving all the way back to Muswell Hill. And the best of it is that I like it. I am likening it being an actor in London. I have never thought I will say something like that but as my friends said I always contradict myself and once I say something and then the next I say the opposite thing.
We had to have some of the left over from the dinner of the omelettes and the gazpacho. We all waited until five thirty and then we went up to the Green Room and we all ate there. Kathryn came also to the Green Room. She is one the ex theatre company Brouhaha. She is a wonderful Swiss clown.
The Gazpacho was still very good and I had three cups then when the time to play came I was so staff that I could not move properly.
Have you see the hound of the Baskerville? You have not then you must go and see it. Soon, because it is getting sold out.
Have fun.
PARIS
Hello;
Well, just to let you all know that we are going to Paris the first week of June. Over there we are going to be meeting Joosh Houban. He is a famous director and teacher of the Jacques Lecoq School in Paris. That is the school where all these famous theatre performers have trained. They have been training some of my favourite theatre practitioners that I have ever met. Well, I liked them very much. They were my heroes and now they are all very stabilized theatre practitioners. The most famous one is definitely Simon Mcburney.
We are trying to became a big famous and rich theatre company that will make shows that will go all over the world. The most important thing would be the company and the show it makes. We do have to increase the pull of people tat we work with.
Joosh it is our first approach to expand our horizons is this work that we are going to do in Paris.
I am very excited. We have had the best ever rid with Cal during all these years. It would be an idea to carry on doing shows just with him but it fells like the right thing to do to try to work with somebody else.
We are going to ask for a grand to get money to pay for this work because Spymonkey has never been so broke. We have to do something to be able to survive and feed our starving families.
But then there is Paris in the late spring and everybody says is really amazing. I have never been in Paris at this time of the year and of course I would like to be there with my great woman. I would like to go for a walk underneath the Eiffel Tower and hold hands with her. The walk along the Sena and while we decide which restaurant we will be eating that night.
Then we will go to our little hotel in one of the very typical neighbourhoods of the city of lights and we will make love the whole night.
And in the morning, after a whole night of love we will be ready to go for break fast to one of the cafés, have one croissant with a coffee and then go back to Hotel to do all the sleeping that we had not done during the night.
It seems that this will just happen in my dreams, for now I will be waking around Paris with Petra, Toby and Stephan. There is not going to be any holding hands and walks by the river, and I am not going to fall in love with any one of them. We may be able to discover some new things about ourselves but that will not make us fall in love with each other's.
For me the great thing of being able to work all together again and the exciting thing of doing something completely new it make me really happy.
I do not know if you have seen the hound of the Baskerville you must go and see it.
Have fun.
ONE MORE YEAR
Hello;
The only thing I remember from this day is a picture I saw the next day in a paper. There was a woman in Trafalgar Square with her arm up and waving a flag with the colours of the International Anarquista. It made me fell very excited because suddenly there was a someone who still believes that there are reasons to have fights for. Also the fact that there was this lady meant that there was a big enough crowd in the Square to appear in the paper.
Then my brain, my modern and dirty brain realised that the lady had not shave her armpits and she was really hairy down there. I thought really badly about her. I am sure that when she will see her on the paper she will hate herself for hot have having a shave. I do not mind if people do not have their hairs completely gone but when I see them in pictures I do not like it.
It goes with the kind of people that goes to the 1 st of May demonstrations. All the workers of the world are united against the unfair and injustice of this world. And then a very spoiled and silly person witness the demonstration and the only thing that he can come up with is the fact that that lady has not done her depilatory duties.
On the other hand I had to cook in the morning and then I had to work with Amy and then I had to go and do the show and then we had to eat what we had cooked and then I had to go back home with the fear of loosing the last train.
I woke up very early to go shopping for ingredients to do Spanish omelettes. We talked the other day and Antonio and me thought a good idea to cook some nice Spanish thing for everybody in the cast. He would cook gazpacho and I will cook Spanish omelettes. I did not really fell like it at all but we have had such a good time working together that I knew that once I was with all of them there everybody was going to enjoy very much.
And yes they did like it very much once they had the chance to try them.
We gather the food and the bottles of wine that the theatre had given us for good luck for the run. They gave us a bottle of Marques de la Concordia, a crianza wine from Rioja.
We waited for a while until the cast of How much is my iron? Finished their show. They came an hour later. And there we went full on for the Gazpacho and the omelettes. The response? Was really good actually. Every body loved the meal.
I have to mention that Naomi, the pretty girl from How much is my iron? Cooked a great cake for all of us. She brought it because once she was in Spain and they thought her how to make it. It was called “pastel de galletas”.
We stayed for hours and then when the last tube was about to go I was there in the station getting my train to go home. I have had a great day. I worked well with Amy, I did my show and then I did the Omelettes.
Go to see the Hound of the Baskervilles because they have a great show and everybody should go and see it.
Have fun.
