Scratchings in the Cyberverse

Not quite the full day I would have liked, but out of the three events I attended two were highlights:
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Crime Scenes, containing ferkster 's and my play Housebound closes this Saturday night. Both ferkster and I will be there on the closing night.

(and I have one comp left - which can't be used on Saturday - so if you want it, comment below.)

How I'd like to describe it with a straight face -

Rocked up to the Short and Sweet Gala - shook hands with Georgie Parker, collected the award, waved to my mate John Derum, got interviewed by Movie Extra then dropped ferkster back at the hotel.

What actually happened -

ferkster and I received a certificate for, effectively, long service with Short and Sweet. It's a Silver certificate for five years (in ferkster 's case, six years) of involvement with Short and Sweet. I kept thinking of it as the Paul Newman award for hanging around long enough. Stupidly I expected to be named next to ferkster , but then heard other names called out. Typical, I thought, my name's fallen off the list again. I'm standing here on stage with about twenty other worthy recipients and I'm going to be the one the audience will ask themselves later "What was he doing there?"

Of course, what had actually happened was the names were being called out in alphabetical order so I sheepishly stepped back into the light when my name was called, shook hands with Georgie Parker (she seems like a nice person) and collected my certificate and Ferrero Roche chocolates.

I did wave to John Derum and he acknowledged us (he's directing our next play and we had spent a pleasant evening with him discussing it) and ferkster and I were asked questions for the Movie Extra series on Short and Sweet (which I won't see, as we don't have cable) but the questions were about the plays in the Gala, which ones we liked and which one we thought would win. I chose the play John was in ("A Safe Pair of Hands" a very funny Gallipoli reminiscence written by Pat Sheil) - which turned out to be the ultimate winner.

More - including photos of our entry in Short and Sweet - on ferkster's blog.

Yes, it's that time again when I cajole you all to come along to ferkster's and my latest mini-masterpiece (or minipiece) "Multiple Choice" - the story of a woman on the brink of a great discovery and the lengths she'll go to to stop herself.

Showing soon as part of the Short and Sweet 10 minute play festival.

Details:

It's on the 27th of January to the 1st of February @ 8:15pm (Tuesday to Saturday) 5:15 (Sunday)
At the Newtown Theatre (cnr of Bray and King Streets, two blocks up and over the road from St Peter's Station)

Tickets $28 Full / $23 concessions (that's just $2.80 a play each! Whatta Bargain!)

Bookings here -

Anyway, hope you can make it

Since April this year ferkster and I have had a play produced (or at least give a rehearsed reading) at least once every month:

April to June - Relics (in the Shorter and Sweeter Regional Tour)

July - Relics (in the Sydney run of Short and Sweeter)

August  - Multiple Choice (given a rehearsed reading)

September - Crossed Lines (in Playspotting or Melborn 08)

October  - Crossed Lines (again in Playspotting) and The Old Crowd (in Spring Carnivale) and Multiple Choice (performed at Ballarat Grammar)

November - The Old Crowd (in Spring Carnivale)

December - With This Ring... (next week in the Blue Mountains - still waiting on details.)

Kind of sets the bar higher for next year, but we shall see...

ferkster 's and my play The Old Crowd won the audience favourite at Crash Test Theatre in Melbourne last night (and $100 each). It tied for second place in the "official" judging.

And Crossed Lines is on tonight. I'll let you know how that pans out.

(The Old Crowd just made it into the 2007 Sydney Short and Sweet wildcards program, so this is more money then we would have made had it actually been in competition! Crossed Lines was a wildcard entry in 2005 - and the first play we wrote together.)

For me at least. It's still got another three weeks or so before the gala and the end of the festival.

I kind of enjoyed acting again, and kind of found it an imposition. At least we were the first play of the evening which meant two things:

- I could leave early and

- the play didn't work.

Our play ("Play Removed Due to Legal Advice") was meant to disrupt proceedings, not lead them off. As it was, on most nights, it took ages for the audience to warm up and enter into the spirit of it.

We shouldn't have been so parasitic as to ride in on the energy created by other plays, but whoever scheduled the running order can't have read the plays, otherwise they would have known that our play shouldn't have gone on first.

Oh well, I'm looking at it as another lost opportunity (like "The Old Crowd" last year, which was miscast but still kind of worked. We were robbed of the chance of seeing what we actually intended though.)

"Play Removed" certainly wasn't one of our best plays, but I don't think it was shown in it's best light.

Still it was good to work with Mal again, and also some of the cast of "Gone Bush" (as well as Nadine, Fran and Luey who worked behind the scenes on "Gone Bush" but were onstage during this production.

But, it seems, we should go back to writing more conventional plays.

last night's dress rehearsal went well, but (as I remarked to Mal - the director) the last time I acted on stage was when my father was dying...

(I hope Mum's all right...)

but both of ferksterand my plays got into the Sydney Short and Sweet short list this year.

One is definitely going ahead (as Ferknerkle's entry) - the other is unlikely to (because of its, ahem, unusual casting requirements) - but still...

[first in a series of catchup posts - bear with me]

Last Wednesday night, murasaki_1966 and I went to see Casey Bennetto's Keating the Musical at the Seymour Centre:

The Good:

The cast were great - Mike McLeish was a revelation as Keating, capturing the charming bastard perfectly whilst keeping up a blizzard of tap-dancing and singing. Eddie Perfect and Terry Serio as everyone else were good too - Perfect being a very fetching Alexander Downer in the "Freaky" segment.

The first half - had a real dramatic momentum, going from the Kirribilli agreement to Keating's first election win.

The Bad:

The second half - all dramatic momentum drained away by loosely connected songs dramatising the "highlights" of Keating's prime ministership; Cheryl and Gareth, the Mabo decision, the Redfern speech. Any sense of story was thrown away in the second half until we reach a surprising and, to my mind, rather masturbatory conclusion. The songs were better in the second half, I grant you, but the overall effect of the show was diminished.

The depiction of Howard. I'm not a fan of Howard but the emphasis on his physicality and general nerdiness were crass (as I guess was Downer as Frankenfurter, but that was saved by being funny.) Serio did a good job of capturing Howard's physical tics, but I realised why the Right (at the time) complained about the bullying from the Left (deeply ironic now, I know, but still...) The end of the show left me with an unpleasant sensation that was compounded by:

The Ugly:

Trying to leave the Seymour Centre car park we got stuck behind an endless succession of BMWs and Jaguars that just kept pushing in a head of us. We literally couldn't move for twenty minutes (whilst other cars backed up behind us) until some dick jumped in his Jaguar, drove the length of the car park and tried to push in in front of us. I lost it. I swore at him and reflected later that -

This is what the Keating legacy and the Howard ascendancy has made us

and

I must never, ever, ever fall to road rage again - as a passenger.