G Is For...Girlfriend

My seventh post for the A-to-Z Blogging Challenge, G Is For... Girlfriend:

I love my girlfriend. Her name is Sarah. We met in 2010 and moved in together just over a year later. I can honestly say I've never been happier.

She's very funny. She's very intelligent. She's fantastic. She makes me want to be a better me. I love my girlfriend, but to be fair she makes it easy.

This is her:

And this:

And this as well:

This is her on Red Nose Day:

This is us:

And this is us as well:

This helps too:

I love my girlfriend.

F Is For...Free

My sixth post for the A to Z Blogging Challenge, F is for Free:

I began to hate telling people I wanted to be an actor. There was always a sharp intake of breath from whoever was receiving the bad news and then a lecture about how the path I was choosing was a difficult one. "It's a hard life" they'd say all say, presuming they were the first to say it. I'd nod gravely, hoping I looked as though I was taking it on board. Again.

People used say things like "You've got be thick-skinned" or "You need to learn to take the knockbacks". I don't know where I'd learnt it, but I was well aware that most actors were not acting all of the time and that they would have to take other work to pay the bills. I had assumed that an actor would audition for every job as yet uncast and would need to be "thick-skinned" if they didn't get anything. It never occurred to me that getting an audition in the first place would be the hard part.

The fewer auditions you have, the greater importance you place on those you do get. The more important they are, the more likely you will over-prepare, overthink and talk yourself out of the part.

As the credit began to crunch, there was a smugness in the industry that we wouldn't be too adversely affected. This turned out to be incorrect as fewer things that were commissioned, months later there was less work to go around. As there was less work every one took a step down the ladder. Movie stars did more TV, TV stars did more theatre, theatre stars took smaller parts and those of us happily getting by on the bottom rung of the ladder found themselves being stepped on.

More and more projects wanted actors to work for free. I have no problem working for free for the right project and only if everyone is in the same boat, but it was still common to pay camera, lighting and sound crew and then expect actors to work gratis.

I was cast in a short film in which I would have been the only actor. When I discovered I was also the only person not being paid, I decided not to take part. It was even implied that I should be grateful to be involved in a production made by such an expensive crew. I don't care how good the Director-of-Photography was supposed to be, if he or she calls in sick that day you can still film something. If the only actor in a film doesn't turn up, you have nothing.

There's no doubt that the industry has contracted and I don't know what lies ahead, but when you're working there's no job like it...

E Is For...Etc

The fifth post for the A-to-Z Blogging Challenge, E Is For...Etc:

I like writing dialogue and I try to make it read and sound as realistic as possible. I'm fascinated by words we don't use. We "blah" when we should go into detail and we "and so on" when we don't want to be asked any more.

This doesn't mean we say less. It means quite the opposite. We obfuscate, we ramble and we waffle. The more we say in quantity, the less we say in content.

"Et cetera" translates from the Latin as "and the rest", but isn't it all the more revealing that we would take a phrase that already lightens the load and then abbreviate it to lighten the load even further.

One of the worst crimes committed in dialogue is clumsy exposition, but this does not mean exposition is inherantly bad. Good exposition finds a way for characters to reveal what is required at the right time and in a realistic fashion. Everything else is et cetera.

I don't mean that it has no importance, but it is the et cetera that gives a script or a story flavour. We shouldn't be dismissive of et cetera, we should embrace it. People can argue about plot versus story until they are blue in the face, but we learn more about a character when they stop to smell the roses than we do on busiest or most exciting day of their lives.

Incidentally, I distinctly remember the day I learned what etc meant and that sadly it wasn't the same day I learned what et cetera meant.

INT: A classroom. A group of children are reading from books while a teacher sticks their drawings on to colourful sugar paper and then staples them to the wall.

David: Miss?
Teacher: Hmm?
David: What's etc?
Teacher: Et cetera.
David: Miss?

Teacher sighs heavily.

Teacher: Yes, David?
David: What's et cetera?
Teacher: Get on with your work, David.

There it was gone. The perfect opportunity to impart a little knowledge. A day to learn something that everybody has to learn eventually. And yet strangely in itself a great example of etc.

D Is For...Directing

The fourth post for the A-to-Z Blogging Challenge, D Is For... Directing:

I recently accepted a job working for a term at a local college of further education on their BTEC Performing Arts course and will be directing two shows. I have directed bits and pieces in the past: Caryl Churchill's Far Away whilst at university, a piece that I wrote called Four Doors Down during the Bike Shed Festival, a version of Harold Pinter's The Dumb Waiter with the second year students at this very college and I have assisted other people with several productions over the years.

The second year class will be devising their own theatre piece, while the first year class will be performing a play text.

This is the first time that I have had to choose a play for others to perform in this manner. It wasn't a blank slate, it never is, but having to choose a play that serves a cast of sixteen, can possibly incorporate songs, but isn't a musical and is suitable for students. After reading several plays, I would get so far in to a play I liked and then face a wall of impenetrable Russian, Jacobean verse or swearing that proved unsuitable for the age group.

After much deliberation I have decided that the first years will be performing The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov.

I'll keep you posted on our progress...

C Is For...Captains

My third post for the A-to-Z Blogging Challenge, C is for... Captains:

I recently compiled a Top Ten list of my favourite ships and every spaceship needs a captain and so with the same caveats as before, I present a list of my top ten favourite captains:

Special mentions for Captains Montgomery Scott, Edward Jellico and Jonathan Archer from Star Trek, Captain Han Solo from Star Wars, Captain Blackadder from Blackadder Goes Forth, Captain Carrot Ironfoundersson of the Discworld's Ankh-Morpork City Watch, Captain Mike Yates and The Captain of The Pirate Planet from Doctor Who and intriguingly the enigmatic parrot Captain from The Sarah Jane Adventures.

10 - Captain Spock
Everybody's favourite half-Human, half-Vulcan hybrid was promoted to Captain between the first two Star Trek films and placed in command of the ship he had served on for donkey's years, but what marked out Spock as a great Captain was his ability to step aside and relinquished the centre seat to Kirk when the situation demanded it, logically of course.

9 - Captain Kathryn Janeway
Star Trek: Voyager's matriarch navigated her stranded vessel through hostile territory over the course of seven years and crucially got her crew home. For the most part she successfully juggled the chain of command with friendship and must be responsible for more first contacts than any other captain in Starfleet.

8 - Captain Jack Harkness
Doctor Who's Face of Boeshane peninsula turned time agent assumed the identity of a deceased Captain Jack Harkness on a visit to World War II. Whilst travelling with the Ninth Doctor he was exterminated by the Daleks and resurrected by the power of the time vortex flowing through Rose Tyler in 200,100 AD. He travelled back to the 19th century alone, discovered he was immortal and was recruited by Torchwood. He waited until the 21st century to be reunited with the Doctor, now in his tenth incarnation. Buried in 27 AD and exhumed in 1901 AD. In his 2,000 or so years he has been married, pregnant, a fixed point in time, killed his own grandson and bruised his arm.

7 - Captain Hikaru Sulu
Sulu was always a favourite character of mine and George Takei was always great, but when Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country came along and the Captain of the USS Excelsior was the former helmsman of the Enterprise. I was thrilled. When he turned up again in Voyager's Flashback there was a murmur that it could possibly be a backdoor pilot for a spinoff series of his own. Names like The Adventures Of Captain Sulu or Star Trek: Excelsior were bandied about, but sadly it was not to be. It could have been magnificent.

6 - Captain Frank Hollister
On the face of it Captain Hollister wasn't a man marked out for greatness, but instead a honest man who got on with the job at hand. That isn't Hollister at all, he's a man who would do anything for an easy life. Dennis the donut boy lied and cheated, and changed his name to Frank Hollister, to become Red Dwarf's Captain. Killed in the first episode you would have expected his career to be a short one, but he returned in a flashback, via a stasis leak and was eventually resurrected by nanobots to become a regular character in Series VIII. Mac McDonald played the part with a quiet dignity and combined it with a deafening lack of dignity.

5 - Captain Turanga Leela
Futurama's cycloptic mutant is the Captain of the Planet Express ship. Saddled with the likes of Fry, Bender and Zoidberg it's a wonder that they ever make a delivery, and it's usually down to Leela that they do.

4 - Captain Jean-Luc Picard
Star Trek: The Next Generation's Captain sees himself as an explorer, but on TV he was really more of a diplomat and by the movies he'd turned action hero. Briefly a Borg, he prevented a Klingon civil war, went undercover with the Romulans, was tortured by the Cardassians, appalled by the Maquis and represented humanity on trial by the omnipotent Q. Patrick Stewart was always great and lent the series a series a gravitas that was often lacking in the early days and seemed instrumental in upping everybody else's game.

3 - Captain James T. Kirk
Captain of two ships named Enterprise and commander during Star Trek's five year mission. Kirk was a regular prime directive breaker and repeat temporal offender. He tangled with Klingons, fought a Gorn and stole from Romulans. He was promoted, demoted, framed for assassination, imprisoned, showered with tribbles and is largely responsible for bringing his best best friend back from the dead.

2 - Captain Benjamin Sisko
Captain of both Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's space station and the USS Defiant. Sisko was sent to DS9 to help bring Bajor into the Federation, but he did the opposite and it saved the planet. He was a Starfleet officer who understand how to operate in the shades of grey that his frontier posting presented. He was made Emissary to the Bajoran people in more ways than one and practically raised to godhood by their prophets. He started the war with the Dominion, went undercover with the Klingons, pursued an all-out vendetta against the Maquis, punched Q, raised his son, flirted with a parallel universe version his dead wife, got James T. Kirk's autograph, married another woman guilty of terrorism and he did it all with the middle name of Lafayette. Fantastic.

1 - Captain Malcolm Reynolds
Firefly and Serenity's Captain fought on the losing side, but is Browncoat to the last. An idealist who delights in being a thorn in the side of the Alliance. Sometimes his ship carries goods, sometimes passengers, and sometimes legally, sometimes not. His crew all represent a facet of himself that he has lost along the way and as such he probably needs them more than they need him. In the face of an overwhelming tide of certainty, Mal is refreshingly unpredictable, a law only unto himself and uniquely sure of who that is.

Who are your favourites?

B Is For...Blogging

My second post for the A-to-Z Blogging Challenge, B is for...Blogging:

I have a blog. I'm blogging it now. I blog.

The A-to-Z Blogging Challenge has made me think about blogging itself. I don't particularly like the word. Sometimes I feel silly saying it out loud. I get that Weblog became We Blog and thus blogging as a verb was born. I'm not suggesting that we need a new word, but instead that maybe I need to find a new way of saying it.

I try to keep this blog up to date and maybe I take it a little too seriously, but I have found myself posting to something of a formula in order to keep up the number of posts. In an average month I will probably post ten times and within that there will most likely be an acting post about a show from my past, an example of something I've written, a post with some photos that I took for another blog, a video from a Pulp gig and a These Are A Few Of My Favourite Things post about my favourite things from a particular year. A lot of people have been discussing the themes they are writing about for the A-to-Z Blogging Challenge and I suppose that is my theme. The sorts of things I already write about, but more so.

Ideally it'll also be crammed full of posts about what I doing in the present. The almost Catch 22 situation is that the busier I am the less time I have to write this blog, while in quieter times the less I have to actually write about.

One of the things I've been wondering about recently is whether I spend too much time blogging. I realise that maybe the beginning of a month in which I am going to try to post more frequently than ever before is possibly not the best time to consider this. I started this blog in order to showcase writing and it seems as though blogging has taken over.

One thing is certain however and that is that more bloggers will visit me this month than ever before and so I have a question for you all:

Does any of this ramble seem familiar, and what do you do to avoid blog stagnation?

A Is For...Acting

I am taking part in the A to Z Blogging Challenge. Twenty six posts over the course of the month of April all corresponding to a different letter of the alphabet. Here's the first post I have written for it and naturally enough it concerns the letter A.

A is for...Acting:

I am an actor.

I make that sound like a confession, or an introduction you might hear at Actor's Anonymous, and I don't mean to.

My father was in the Royal Air Force and before I knew what an actor was or did, I was going to follow in his footsteps and join up. We lived on RAF bases, I went to RAF schools and practically everyone I knew was involved in the RAF somehow, so I had no idea their was a life outside the Royal Air Force. When I was about seven years old, we returned from two years based in Germany and I attended non-forces school that did a school play every Christmas. I was very quickly hooked. I loved it. I became aware of actors for the first time. The people that did this for a living fascinated me. I read TV and film credits voraciously and would be able to quote tranches of certain actors CVs whenever I saw them on screen. I began recognising actor's voices in cartoons and the revelation that a few actors could voice a cast of thousands was magical to me.

I knew that I wanted to be an actor, but there was still a veil over the profession. I had no idea how one became an actor and the only references on TV were in Making Of [Insert Film Name] style documentaries/promotional material, that implied that actors were to be found in armchairs and full make-up waiting to be interviewed and that all actors worked constantly.

Sadly, that isn't the case. This is an exaggeration, but:

I've certainly never had more fun in a cold and drafty church hall than when I've been rehearsing a play. When you hear an audience react positively, it's intoxicating. It may very well be an addiction, but it's not one that I'm willing to seek treatment for. Maybe those periods of unemployment work like going cold turkey. It's unpredictable and unreliable, but when you are working there's no job like it...