War of the Waleses

I think we’ve finished the Edinburgh cut. I need to sleep and it needs one more sense and grammar check when I have my eyes and brain back. I seem to have written a lot of angry rants in this. I have also started to learn how to be more economical with exposition and let the choices be made in performance. Oh and plot. We’ve all learned a lot about plot. This draft is all action all the time.

I have included my ending (which is a directorial rather than a textual choice) something we weren’t brave enough to do last time, but now it’s so important. We’ve also made the script touch on the Tory Party’s ongoing inability to agree on Europe…as that’s probably more resonant this year than last year’s 20th anniversary of the ’92 election.

I’ve started thinking about transitions, there was a faintly panicked email once I got 4:1 back today…”ARGH! We may need a soliloquy!” (Suspect Shakespeare had his share of that) but then I jiggled the beginning of the next scene so the actor doesn’t have to Wonderwoman change into the Queen.

And heartbreakingly I had to cut a gorgeous speech today…I just don’t think there’s time, and it’s a strange pause in the action, far too late. I hacked out some of my own bits as penance…

I listened to an album that we used in the original performance…and I think I’ve found a bit that will be gorgeous done a capella. No autocorrect, not “a paella” I’m toying with the balance of tunes that will make this evocative and fun and all that.

Next job is press and media strategy…oh…and train ticket purchasing…blimey, that’s snuck up.

How apt that this should be my 100th post…

http://www.rsc.org.uk/explore/projects/open-stages/

Today I found out that the RSC has launched the next Open Stages project leading up to the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death in 2016.

War of the Waleses would not exist without the first one and we all know how that’s gone…so I am sorely tempted to apply to be one of the 100 companies in the next one.

If you’re reading this wondering whether to get involved or not, you absolutely should, I’ve learned so much about Shakespeare, words and the stage, connected with other theatre companies, laughed my head off, met some incredible people and been touched by the love, support and enthusiasm of others. We’ll have performed in 6 different venues across the country over 30 dates in the 2 years since KDC joined the project. For a bunch of amateurs, that’s not bad.

But what would I do? I have never directed a full Shakespeare, so that’s tempting. I have been playing around with Hamlet in my head for a good long while. I love King John, I have a strong connection to Richard II – and War of the Waleses now contains its very own extended garden metaphor, which pleases me. I have always wanted to do Cymbeline since university – those are all strange and not done enough to have something in them…but the important thing is to do something a little new with Shakespeare…I shall think about it. Perhaps someone else should have a go, eh?

That said, if anyone’s looking for a writer or director for their 2015 RSC Open Stages project, I should have finished doing War of the Waleses by then!

It’s two weeks today - almost to the hour, that we start rehearsals…normally as a director I would have to do lots of prep at this stage, but I know the play, the actors know the characters, there are four major new scenes to block and I have a sort of a vision of how it should look but that’s largely dependent on the running time – which I won’t know until we read it out loud. My next big considerations are the tech and the front of house. I should be able to find someone to do our FoH up there for a fee – but the tech is something else…I think I want someone up there with us that we know, but asking someone to take 2 weeks off work to sit in a box from 10-11.30 every night is – well – I suppose I don’t know until I ask. I’m keeping the lighting simple, I work out in the next couple of weeks if projection is even worth it – if not I will have to do that stuff with sound cues.

We buy our rail tickets on Thursday, I finish the rehearsal script on Monday…in theory – just kind of waiting for the new start to act 4. I’m beyond delighted with the new ending to the play – my only concern at this stage is I think we’re 1000 words over. We’ll see how the readthrough goes, eh?

Next weekend I go to a marketing thing in Brighton to learn how to sell the play…I’ve run the budget model now I have more information on tax, box office, PRS, that sort of stuff…I feel confident and in control but bloody terrified, it’s been a theme of the project. What’s most terrifying is that it is 3 months until our tech at Edinburgh. Blimey. But it’s a revival…it’s not from scratch…and I don’t doubt any one of my actors for a second. Our guitarist may be a liability though…

That our Edinburgh tickets have gone on sale…

https://www.edfringe.com/whats-on/theatre/war-of-the-waleses

We could not have got to this point without the kind donations of our Sponsume people (I haven’t forgotten you, I have started completing the spreadsheet with what to send you all and the scripts are being delivered to me shortly) Generous Loan 1 and Very Generous Loan 2 (And er lots of my own personal money, but I don’t need to thank me)

It’s rather lovely that this is something I bothered to check at the end of a long day’s script editing. We have a new Act 4 Scene 1 to go in, we finally nailed our last scene and properly ended the play with some shouting. We have also learned how to do extended metaphors.

Our Camden Fringe tickets go on sale on the 1st June and you can buy Edinburgh tickets directly with our venue’s box office from the 1st July.

I can reveal most of the cast at this stage…but not entirely what they’re playing (although if you ask them they are allowed to tell you) all the actors from the original run are reprising their original main roles and Lex is our new Trueprint.

We start rehearsals on Saturday 25th May

Will Baltyn
Simon Hill
Lex Lake
Sarah Lowes
Matt Matravers
Stephen Russell

ANd now if you will excuse me, I have another show to write.

Hello everyone,

How has it been a month since I last wrote here? How has it been a year to the day since I was wearing my starry smock, weilding my big hammer and frantically taking notes at the Q-2-Q and dress? Blimey I’ve lost weight in the last year.

I’m off on holiday in a few days* – my last chance at freedom before I have to spend 2 weeks editing and saying thank you to our sponsors and then and then…rehearsing. I was so worried (actually I think that’s a theme every time we come back to this) about going back into the rehearsal room. WHAT IF I’VE FORGOTTEN HOW TO DO DIRECTING? Well, actually, I totally haven’t and anyway we’ve done the hard bit before and my new cast member knows what she’s doing even if she says that she doesn’t so y’know…I just have to tell them where to stand and even then they’ll probably just do what they like anyway, the little rapscallions.

We have a home in Edinburgh…the deal was done an hour ago. So now as long as we meet up a few times and learn our lines and buy our train tickets and I print some flyers that’s all we really absolutely have to do. I mean, if I want to make it brilliant I have to organise filiming and rehearse our new musical stuff and find some good costumey bits and do some secret promotional squirrel activities. So whatever happens we will be doing this in 4 months. And I’m not frightened (today) I get surges of WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING YOU BARE IDIOT. But that’s how I work, luckily most of the time I’m all like ‘Tra la la la, oooh! Pangolins**!’

Erm what else – oh yeah – I’ve got final quotes on all the things I have to buy and reworked the budget again – I’ve found a bit more money to put into the project (thank you, Deus Ex Cashpoint) – just have to sort out the tech for projecting and if that’s possible…and dear hearts I will start sending out the Sponsume goodies when I get back, promise, I thought I was going be getting my glowsticks from somewhere cheap with a very long lead time, but they’ve just cancelled my order so I’ve redone it – and the script printers have been in touch about my brief to them so I should have all the bits shortly after I come back from hols. I’m rather looking forward to that first two weeks back as it will be getting all my production stuff totally out of the way so I can concentrate on making us look and sound pretty.

I have to move house the week after Camden (just before I go to Edinburgh) so as well as writing, directing and producing a show I will be moving house into no fixed abodeness again. One of the quotes yesterday was to house my stuff whilst I live in Edinburgh – after all there’s no point in paying double rent if I can possibly avoid it. Funny how things work out. Well, not funny, but you’ve gotta laugh, eh?

*I’ve just broken it to myself that there’s no chance that I’ll get to go the the place where they do the best shadow puppets. One day, though.
**It’s Pangolins today, it’s usually birds of some description.

Well now, here’s a thing…

We are all signed up to go to Edinburgh (just need to dot the is and ts on the registration process, but I have paid our registration and we are pretty much off)

I have approached all of the potential cast – I have recast one role due to its original actor having transatlanticised herself* and I still have to find A Queen (ho ho – but also boo hoo that our Original Queen cannot make it) and work out how the roles will really split, but at least I know I have actors that could pick up the extras without blinking.

We have confirmed our Camden Fringe run:

29th July – 3rd August at the Tristan Bates Theatre in Soho. 9pm – 10.30pm. I am utterly delighted that the TBT have agreed to have us, it’s a great venue in an amazing location.
War of the Waleses goes off-West End in the actual West End, baby.

We are performing at Space@Venue45 at Edinburgh
12th August – 24th August 10.05pm – 11.25pm every night. Venue 45 is a three sided thrust stage just off the Royal Mile. Couldn’t ask for a better or more exciting home.

And most delightfully of all, our poster art arrived this week.

Steve Horry, whose work is fabulous (you should totes commish** him) has come up trumps with this design. It’s all Britpop and tabloidy and royal and satirical and provocative and exploitative and EVERYTHING I WANTED.

I have a loose rehearsal schedule forming…I am phenomenally excited…and oh I love my play, I love my lovely play. *Dances* *Lots*

*Yeah, thanks Becca
**I really don’t actually talk like this. For realz.

Tonight I talk about War of the Waleses at Bright Club (www.brightclub.org).

I know what I’m talking about, there are a few jokes but oh crikey, I have the jitters. I curse the fact that my passport is currently being renewed or I might have fled the country this morning.
But no – it will be fun – I’m not the only person speaking and as long as my legs don’t stop working and my voice turn to a terrified squeak, I might make people laugh.

And once that’s out of the way, there will be a formal announcement about our Camden Fringe run – which, coincidentally starts on the 32nd anniversary of Charles & Di’s wedding.

Also – take a look at what Hilary Mantel actually said, rather than what the front page of the Metro would have you believe.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n04/hilary-mantel/royal-bodies

“It’s for Shakespeare to penetrate the heart of a prince, and for me to study his cuff buttons.”

“Glance sideways, into the wings, and you see the tacky preparations for the triumphant public event. You see your beautiful suit deconstructed, the tailor’s chalk lines, the unsecured seams. You see that your life is a charade, that the scenery is cardboard, that the paint is peeling, the red carpet fraying, and if you linger you will notice the oily devotion fade from the faces of your subjects, and you will see their retreating backs as they turn up their collars and button their coats and walk away into real life.”

It is a wonderful piece of writing on monarchy, and I am appalled at how she is being vilified by the right wing press today.

“Adulation can swing to persecution, within hours, within the same press report: [...] Diana was spared, at least, the prospect of growing old under the flashbulbs, a crime for which the media would have made her suffer. It may be that the whole phenomenon of monarchy is irrational, but that doesn’t mean that when we look at it we should behave like spectators at Bedlam. Cheerful curiosity can easily become cruelty. It can easily become fatal. “

I don’t quite have the time to say my thank yous in the official format at the moment which is horribly remiss of me, but I have a day job to do and 8 minutes of material to write and rehearse by Tuesday so I hope you’ll forgive me if you’ve given and not yet received my personal regards.

31 people donated yesterday and I am so overwhelmed by the generosity of strangers, best and good mates (who really should know better), people I’ve only known all too briefly, people I’ve only ever spoken to on the phone, people I haven’t seen since 1993…that I want to make sure that I do it right. I hadn’t expected to have that many donations so quickly. I haven’t even had the company logo or the production’s artwork done yet (it’s on its way!) and I had been hoping to properly brand all my responses, but politeness and my astonishment at the kindness of so many people deems that I must say thank you, personally and soon. So I shall, just let me get my Shakespearean stand-up routine (Wilmington Arms Tuesday 19th February, Bright Club: Culture) out of the way and I’ll be up to speed again!

An immense thank you has to go to the person who nudged me in the direction of and researched crowd funding for me, Miriam, a tireless advocate of my work, the person who quietly suggests that I keep going and whose professionalism, enthusiasm and non-nonsense Lancastrianism never fails to keep me motivated. It was Miriam that found Sponsume (which I thought was probably right for me as if it works for Josie Long it’s probably up my alley). I’d like to thank my parents for not only donating, but also having the forethought to make sure I was born on a very convenient date – I suspect a couple of hundred quid was in genuine birthday presents!

As the numbers ticked towards £1000, my jaw dropped, I’ve never had such a generous birthday present. I will never forget yesterday and what it means to me in terms of trust, faith and encouragement…90% of the donations came through people I know personally, so whilst this is a collaborative effort, the production is rather more…’mine’ – my friends trust me to use their money to do something I believe in. I will eventually be sticking my financial neck out by around 6 times the amount raised yesterday…the exact amount of my MA tuition fees next year. So, yeah, I’m within my rights to feel a tad possessive about this. But self-awareness is all, the play will not shine like it did unless I relax…and the money from the crowdfunder is a very calming influence…it’s not just me now. There are 33 of us invested in this and that feels good.

Pre-production at the moment involves the second of my theatre contracts, inquiries about rehearsal space and sketching out the plans for the production’s launch party…as usual with all such things, I look to break even or make money rather than do things for the sake of extravagance…it’s the latent businesswoman in me, beneath this flaky veneer of creative flouncing, there lies a sharp-suited steely-eyed spreadsheet-scryer. But the party will be fun. The spreadsheet says so. Very soon once all the bills are paid and forms are filled (round about March 1st, I can truly concentrate on the important things, polishing the script, building my cast, and y’know – doing an actual play justice.

Today is quite a big day…it is not only the last birthday of my 30s, but it’s also 6 months before our Edinburgh run starts and the launch of our crowdfunding project.

The link is here

http://www.sponsume.com/project/war-waleses-edinburgh-and-camden-fringe-2013

The £1000 is to give us a fighting fund for rehearsal space (which can cost £600 for just 20 hours of rehearsals – we’ll need to rehearse for 60 hours so this is really running on a shoestring. It will ensure we can afford our PRS bills and insurance and pay for marketing materials, props and costumes and give us the cashflow for our accommodation deposits (which will come out of the actors’ pockets eventually)) The deal is that if we go into profit, these funds will sit separately from the production profits and go to provide the capital for future productions.

So far my friends have been incredibly supportive, the more that’s donated, the more I can spend on promoting the play and who knows, maybe even a proper wig for John Major!

I am speaking at Bright Club: Culture – a favourite night of mine at which I have previously made an appearance as Johnny Rotten singing Good King Wenceslas…it’s part-comedy part-enlightening, always entertaining, usually they get proper academics to do the talking, but this month, things take an artsier turn and I am performing in a line-up with theatre directors, writers and musicians. I will be a little whimsical about how and why I write and direct, but I also plan to talk a little about money, where it comes from, what happens when it is taken away and why arts funding and patronage is so vital.

Bright Club: Culture
Tuesday 19th February: Wilmington Arms
http://www.brightclub.org

It’s in aid of Arts Emergency, a thing I heartily endorse and tickets are available here:

Last night the writers and I met up and we are redrafting the play. I am working on the Diana story arc this weekend, at the same time as rehearsing my Bright Club routine.

There will be an exciting announcement about War of the Waleses: Redux on Monday…do pop back then…