On the way home from The Fantasticks rehearsal room today, having said a temporary goodbye to our platform stage which has by now gone ahead of us into the Duchess Theatre where we will tread its boards again on Wednesday, I thought back on the journey thus far: the songs getting more tender and limpid …
Now that my Weekly Post is marked in red letters on my home page, I feel abashed not to be launching a new webcam film or at least a weighty and well-considered essay. Still, red-letter days can come in modest garb even though judges and academics traditionally don their scarlet glad rags. You see, my …
Two remarkable first entrances are my subject this week. First the professional debut of a young actress I saw at Birmingham Rep last Saturday in Lutz Hübner’s controversial play Respect, directed by Rae McKen. Rebecca Loudon appears dancing alone on an empty stage; it is an emblematic moment, though, from the realistic point of view, …
I am remembering one of Shakespeare’s birthdays: a party in 1967, aloft in the Old Vic rehearsal room after a matinée. It was attended by us National Theatre actors, now so recently the resident company. We felt, I think, rather up to the moment (we had done a matinée of Zeffirelli’s audaciously colourful and riotous …
We are getting grandiose. This film is a two-part epic of just over 16 minutes. Part One Part Two
I’ve never tried to get onto the performance poetry circuit. This circuit suits me well: I imagine the audience, and rehearse alone with them that conundrum of sharing confidence whilst steering the dangerous course between self-revelation and self-indulgence. The short webcam film is, like a doodle on a restaurant napkin, confined within limits; at the …
In touch with Kathleen across the world in the Sydney ‘editing suite’, I can report that we are a little more advanced this week and hope to post Aloft (ostensibly about the faithful reconstruction of Francis Bacon’s London studio in his home city of Dublin) during the course of Sunday Greenwich Mean Time. It continues …
Bear with me, but understanding things in theory is no substitute for understanding through hands-on experience. Perhaps that’s why so many government attempts to improve the way things work go wrong, though in Melvyn Bragg’s The City, Part Two on BBC Radio 4 this week we learned that it was only the intervention of government, …
For you out there, awaiting the next webcam movie, we have decided to delay the posting for a day or so for vital re-shooting: these things happen in Follywood. My editor Kate is working from Sydney, and here at the front office and studios I am everything from Star and Line Producer, to Best Boy …
This week I’d like to take you ‘on location’ to Hampstead Cemetery, the setting of a short film I’ve made. Graveyard Ditties, No.1 A Royal Command Variety Performance I like to prove that I’m still alive Though here old Father Time’s work with his scythe Has put so many people in the earth Reminding us …
I recommend the following films from this extensive list: