Beige Soul

Got a bit sick of the stereotypical angsty teenagers I was sat on a train with and wrote this...

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Wanting to be someone famous
Whilst sitting on a train
Headed for the bustling metropolis
Hoping for the rain
To hit your face and then the pavement
As you walk with anonymity,
One underweight epitome
Of the Indie scene cliché.
With your bangs in your eyes
And your lips painted red,
Under your arm is a book
Of classical poets, all dead.
Falling in love on the hour
Just to keep from being bored,
And, still, for all your cleverness,
'Pathetic' is the word
To describe the shallow scratches left
By pangs of pains that don't have names
A calculated charming coldness
Is your only claim to fame.
The drink in your system
And the drugs that you take
Are just painting the picture
You're dying to make.
Waiting to find something
That's enough to inspire
You to take the first step
And set the whole world on fire
But that would take a talent
That you're sadly lacking
So you take another round trip
And forget about packing
Anything but a notebook
And an eyeliner pencil,
Using all negative media
As a kind of a stencil
To feel alive but unknown
Whilst trying to find
The courage that's needed
To leave it all behind
Whether you jump on or in front
Of that bus you can see
You'll only be mourned
For the things you won't be.

Coming Out...

"Thespians do it on stage."

I finished my drama A level last year, before that I did it as a GCSE and ran a small AmDram group with fellow students, I also used to be involved with the New Youth Theatre, a production company with whom I did two large musicals and two dramas. I have loved every second of the past five years where All-Things-Theatrey are concerned.

I am now doing a third year at college but, even though I've been seeing plays non-stop, and even though I've been writing and reading as much as possible, and even though I'm excited about the prospects of studying drama in an insane amount of depth for three whole years at university next year, I am feeling the loss of, what was, a tremendous presence in my life.

I went to my first session of the college's own AD Society today.
Even though I feel drama is a massive part of me, I'm pretty socially awkward a lot of the time, often enveloping myself into a character is a good way of dealing with this problem, so a Youth Theatre is both exciting and a little scary.
I loved it. This freedom to direct and act and bounce ideas against people that can then run with or improve those ideas without worrying about the constraints that exams place on theatre, as a drama exam is, essentially, about knowing which hoops to jump through...and they tend to be on fire.
It was an amazing amount of fun, and even though I'd turned up feeling nervous, I couldn't believe how quickly those two hours disappeared.

A particular highlight for me was when someone found a small bottle and asked what it was.
I muttered "You do know what you're drinking is meant for eye surgery?" and assumed no one would get the reference, but was immediately told to "wear a jacket", which was immensely fun!

Absence supposedly makes the heart grow fonder.
What I've found this summer is that it rips me to pieces.
I think it's fair to say that nothing makes me happier and, even though there is the worry that I'll get out of uni with a BA in drama and no hope of a career, I really can't imagine doing anything else with my life.

Rainy Day...

First day back at college had me stepping on the bus thinking just one thought; Why am I doing a third year?

My only answer is that it seemed like a really good idea at the time. You know, jobs are hard to get, so why not spend another year in free education? Also, I wanted to apply to universities with the best grades I feel I can achieve...but, after a rocky first year, I kind of achieved all that I wanted to in my second year...which left me feeling a little lost today.

On top of that, rather than knuckling down and getting into the gritty bits of the courses I've chosen, the teachers decided to ease us in by getting us familiar with the other people in the class.
No offence to them, I'm sure they're lovely, but I'm sticking around for one year and then hauling out, so, to be frank, I couldn't care less what you're favourite colour is or whether you went to a festival over summer.




Had the afternoon free, which cheered me up and made me realise that, even though I feel I'm lagging a year behind my self, I have a very lovely group of people who have decided to lag with me. Some very old faces and a few new ones.

It ill be these people that get me through this year. Hopefully. Them, and a determination that I will not waste a year. I will make this year count for something, I will test myself more than ever before and, hopefully, with a bit of courage and a lot of luck, I will come out on top, feeling as if it ere all worth it after all.
That, at least, is the plan at any rate.

The West End's Equivalent of a Blockbuster...

I saw Arthur Miller's All My Sons yesterday having heard nothing but fantastic reviews about it. I studied The Crucible all the way back in year eleven and subsequently had all of my interest in the play or the playwright driven out of me by a combination of over-analysis and a very bad film version that we were forced to watch, so I walked into the theatre with a slightly heightened sense of scepticism.

David Suchet and Zoe Wanamaker take the lead roles but one of my favourite actors, Stephen Campbell Moore, was also on the billing and was one of the main reasons I decided to escape to London for a day to see it.

Any apprehensions I had were immediately banished when I saw the set, a beautiful set of garden furniture speckled with the overhead gobos to give a perfectly realistic 1930's-America-at-dusk feel.
I could talk about the clever stage dynamics or the perfect costumes or the thoughtful lighting, but I simply don't have time to write about all of those things and would prefer to focus on the acting, which was, possibly, the best I've seen on stage.

Most people know David Suchet as the eccentric Belgian detective, Poirot, so hearing his spot-on American accent was very nearly surreal.
All of the accents, in fact, were done to a t. I can imagine that even one bad American accent would have ruined the entire play but the actors had obviously done a hell of a lot of prep for this production.

Now, I've mentioned the one of the reasons I went to see this play was because Stephen Campbell Moore was in it. The last production he did on stage, and later in film, was Alan Bennett's The History Boys. I read an interview in which he said he'd been offered scripts since then but none of them compared with that, so he couldn't allow himself to take them. However, when offered the part of Chris, he couldn't turn it down.
So, having come to see the very well-spoken, timid-looking British actor play a challenging role I was pretty upset to see, what I thought was, the understudy in his place. A man carrying off a bold, deep American accent and giving an experienced soldier's view of the world and the war and the distance between those two things made him an interesting character and I was prepared to sing his praises, despite him not being the actor I'd come to see when, upon looking closer, I realised it actually was Moore.
This character, so far from the actor's usual roles, completely blew me away. There was something energitic about seeing a man, typcast as a bit of a wet-blanket, playing a hardened soldier, falling in love and trying to keep his insane family from burning itself out.

I shan't spoil it all for those who haven't seen it, but I will say that, very close to the end, there is a gunshot heard from inside the house. I cannot possibly have been the only person in the audience who was half-expecting this seemingly-inevitable crack to rip through the troubled but determined atmosphere that had fallen over the play's climax, but the entire audience, myself included, almost hit the ceiling at the sound.

Silence is something which can be used, in films and theatre, in a million ways to create a million feelings and, I think, it is my favourite sound in live theatre, but I've never known a silence like that.
I've seen actors stand still, and silences fall onstage, and characters struggling to catch their breathe again but I have never known an audience, not just to be quiet, but to be silent. No one moved, or crossed or uncrossed their legs, or adjusted their atire, or lifted their hand to brush away a tear. It was a moment frozen in time and it was the most spectacular feeling I think I've ever known.

If I was asked one day, to chose a point in my life that I would like to go back to and re-live, it would be that moment of silence. The moment that was only a few seconds but, as cliched as it sounds, honestly did appear to stretch on into minutes or more.

When I was in London for a week, earlier this month, I saw five plays and a live music gig. They were all great, they were all worth seeing, but I haven't been able to write about them because they were very good productions which flowed and moved from point to point, which isn't at all a criticism, but All My Sons was different.
All My Sons seemed to be made up of moments, not from a production point of view, the production was fluid and every transition was seamless, but for the audience, as I can't think this is only my feeling of the play, the show was made up of memorable moments, burst of pure emotion and heart-fluttering seconds of a play which I cannot recommend enough.