06 Friday Dec 2019
Posted in Theatre
Tags
A Christmas Carol, Backstage Life, Charles Dickens, dress rehearsal, first night, Shakespeare in Love
The second run of “my” A Christmas Carol” opens tonight – and let me boast a little: we’re sold out all the way to January. There is no way on earth to call it anything else than a huge hit, and I’m inordinately proud.
That said… Continue reading
28 Thursday Nov 2019
Posted in Scribbling
Tags
December, November, plans, play, projects, Short Stories, writing, writing year
Oh, look – the end of November!
The end of November, when I usually wrap up my writing year, and take stock of it. This year… well, this year things might be a wee bit different – but I’ll get there.
First, the writing year – the good and the bad of it… Continue reading
21 Thursday Nov 2019
Posted in Poetry
Tags
I’m in the mood for poetry today – so why not some Emily Dickinson? Emily is one of a surprising number of poets in my literary pantheon… and I call it surprising because I don’t write poetry, unless it is by accident. Then again, I read it, and I’ve always wished I knew how apply to prose the compact effectiveness of it… Continue reading
14 Thursday Nov 2019
I’ve always loved the idea of tableaux vivants. Enacting a painting, or a scene from a story – in one long frozen moment complete with props and costumes… Half theatre, half illustration. It appeals very much.
I remember reading Behind a Mask, one of Louisa May Alcott’s gothic stories, during a mostly sleepless overnight train ride… Continue reading
07 Thursday Nov 2019
Posted in Theatre
I think I told you in passing that I parted ways with the Squirrels… It happened earlier this year – around March, actually – and there were Reasons. It was a hard thing to do, after a decade with them, and a much longer time, if on and off, with Gemma the Director – but I had choices to make, and… Reasons.
It was a mostly civilised affair: I explained, and teared up a little, and they were mostly quite nice about it, and some of them actually teared up in turn. So I came away, and exchanged calls and emails with Gemma now and then, but never acted on the standing invitation to go and sit through rehearsal with them – because… well, I’d come away. I’d come away, and I had Reasons, and I didn’t want to tag along unofficially – much less to be dragged in again “just this once”… Continue reading
31 Thursday Oct 2019
Posted in Scribbling, Things
Tags
Until a few years ago – say a decade or so – in a village not far from here, the old, old tradition of Meeting March was still very much alive: on the last night of February, young and old armed themselves with pans, and ran around making all the din they could, to scare away Old Winter.
It was good fun, older than the hills, quite pagan – and nobody found it a particular reason for scandal… Continue reading
24 Thursday Oct 2019
Posted in Scribbling
Many years ago, when I was young and carefree, I thought up, together with a friend, the notion for a writing group called the Three Pages Club.
This is how it was meant to work: once every two months, one of the members would propose three rules. Any kind of rules: content, form, restrictions, theme, mandatory elements, style, tone… anything. Continue reading
17 Thursday Oct 2019
Posted in Things
Tags
A couple of weeks ago, Nina asked how I would like to be an assistant teacher in the Children’s drama classes.
“Not very…” I warily murmured. Because the fact is… oh, let me explain.
I don’t remember whether I’ve told you this before, but the Company runs a Drama School, you see, where I’ve been teaching play-writing for a few years now. Teaching the grown-ups – or at least reasonably so… As of this year, we also have a course for elementary school children, and the people teaching it have suggested the need for an assistant, and Nina asked me. Continue reading
10 Thursday Oct 2019
Gordon Craig in The Dead Heart
In 1859, as A Tale of Two Cities was being first serialized in weekly instalments in Dickens’ own magazine, All The Year Round, a play by Watts Phillips, called The Dead Heart, made its stage debut at the Adelphi, to much success.
Phillips, a novelist and playwright, had had little luck lately, because he insisted on writing serious, near-austere pieces that pleased the critics (and, apparently, the Queen) more than they did the melodrama-loving general public.
The Dead Heart, though, a stirring tale of the French Revolution, filled with thwarted love, howling injustice, epic struggles, evil abbés, heroic sacrifice, and so on, was a different matter – all the more so because very soon people started to notice the close resemblance between the play and that new novel by Mr. Dickens… Continue reading
03 Thursday Oct 2019
A couple of weeks ago my mother discovered, with considerable amusement, the existence of Talk Like a Pirate Day, and asked why I didn’t post about it.
“Never have,” I said. “I don’t even like pirate stories.”
“Nonsense,” was the answer. “You’ve read lots of them.”
And I protested that no, really – in fact, I rather dislike pirate stories… And I was thinking of Jack Sparrow and company, but even more of Salgari’s insufferable Sandokan and multi-coloured corsairs, without which no Italian childhood is considered complete… Continue reading
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