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w/e 11 February 2018

A lot of this week was taken up with three classes and preparation for them:

  • Learning lines,
  • Practicing cues and
  • Doing preparatory work for two characters for
  • The first of five Advanced Scene Study classes with The salon:collective.
  • Continuing a series of relationship improvs in a drop-in class.
  • Another disappointing Meisner-into-text class.
  • Helping a friend structure her movie idea.

The Advanced Scene Study class was great. We’re working on two scenes from The Women by Clare Boothe Luce, and two from The Physicists by Friedrich Dürrenmatt. I’m playing two characters in the latter. Everyone came prepared with lines learned and preparation done and even, in some cases, costumes and props ready. So, no messing around and we could just give things a whirl straight away. Four hours flew by.

My partner and I have decided to stop the relationship improvisations we’ve done for a few weeks in drop-in classes. They had their moments but things didn’t seem to be progressing and we had no idea why. Try something else.

Aside from all that, and with no work on at the moment, I’ve been slogging through my current highly solipsistic web project. It is, as usual, even more time-consuming than I anticipated and I’ve spent a few days doing laborious data entry, and wondering what on earth I’m doing.

There does come a point, after leaving Helsinki bus station a long, long time ago, when one’s been doggedly staying on the bus for so long that the theory comes into question. What if this bus is heading into territory that will never be of interest to anyone else? What if this bus is on a circular route and staying on it for longer is not progressing anything at all? What if this bus doesn’t eventually lead to some kind of achievement and originality but to… CLIFF!!

Bus from 'The Young Ones' going over a cliff

Away from tapping data into a computer, we finished watching Spiral season six this week, and it was as good as ever. It’s one of those shows where I miss the characters when it ends, which isn’t true of all good programmes.

When we watched the first two episodes of McMafia I read the Guardian’s episode recaps, before giving up on the show. Spiral started about the same time but this season the Guardian didn’t bother doing recaps for it… and so Spiral fans posted all their discussion in the comments of the McMafia recaps (here for example). A couple of weeks in and the Guardian hastily caught up.

The few Spiral recaps I’ve read there seem a bit pointless; they simply recount events with little commentary or point-of-view. Not as fun as, say, Rebecca Nicholson’s recaps for Girls or Top of the Lake, which felt like watching along with a friend. But some of the comments have been great. e.g. user “auroreborealis” here and here on “le prix du réalisme” of shooting in certain areas of Paris, and also in this thread on some of the French language used. A shame this kind of thing doesn’t make it into the main articles.

That’s all for this week. Have a good one. If you’re going to The Story on Friday maybe I’ll see you there.