Pre-results nerves: we all want A stars
“I’m more nervous about your play than I am about my daughter’s A-level results,” my friend emailed me. Her daughter can always retake her A-levels. And I can always rewrite the play. But that’s not the point. All of us – students and budding playwrights alike – want to get it right first time and score As (or should that be A stars?). (more…)
I’m a celebrity…where are the paps?
“You’re a local celebrity,” my friend emailed me. “Be careful you’ll get papped!”
Turns out one of my press releases had made it into a local paper, the Wimbledon Guardian. And my photo is almost as big as Jason Donovan’s… (more…)
My Olympic marathon to get publicity
Only on Sunday I was moaning to one of the cast that despite being a journalist, and knowing how the press works, I was failing miserably to get any kind of coverage for Martini Bond. After all, there is no such thing as bad publicity, right? Then on Monday, a reporter from the Camden New Journal rang. (more…)
The Olympic effect on Team MB
So Danny Boyle got the queen to be a Bond girl. Fantastic. So funny. Queen parachutes (wasn’t she pushed?) out of helicopter into the Olympic Games. Ohmygod. I’m going to have to rewrite the beginning of Martini Bond (MB). (more…)
Olympic challenge for theatre ticket sales
I’d heard anecdotally that theatre ticket sales could be hit because of the Olympics in London. West End sales were down on this time last year, I was told darkly. After all, the thinking goes, people have come to watch sport, not take part in the sport of getting on the Tube in rush hour. (more…)
Sounding off
It was terrible. The sound on the video didn’t work, Helen Niland, the director, was telling me after I’d just been to see her latest show Conference Call at the Ecetera Theatre in Camden. Still the night before had been even worse: the sound man hadn’t turned up because he’d had to work late. But with a mixture of downloads and some home-made sounds, the show had gone on. (more…)
The perils of networking
“What do you mean, ‘Am I dressed up for my show?’ I always dress like this,” said the man with full make-up, long brown glossy wig, a 1940s style dress and heels. So my networking was going well at the Camden Fringe launch party this week. (more…)
It’s getting messy …
“No more rewrites please! … My script is in a terrible mess,” that was the plea from one of the cast after another had asked for some changes. “Just noticed you have changed some lines in the last scene. I am learning this scene now so I hope this isn’t going to change any more?” That was the plea from the actor who had, er, asked for the changes in the first place. (more…)
For once, men are the bit players
“I gave up acting in my 30s. The parts were getting harder to find,” my cousin’s wife was telling me at a family party. She had enjoyed a successful acting career, taking her from regional theatres in the UK to TV roles, including a part in the TV comedy Only Fools and Horses. But she was echoing a sentiment that I had read on Facebook and in the Guardian newspaper in the same week. (more…)
