w/e 18 February 2018

On Monday I went to see The Memory of Water, a play by Shelagh Stephenson, performed by the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Just over a year ago some classmates were working on a scene from this, so a few of us went to see the full play, seeing as it was on. Milton Court Theatre is a nice theatre. 223 seats, with two balconies, all quite close to the sizeable stage. (Still not worth destroying the original brutalist Milton Court building for though.) A fun play that was best in its fast, funny parts.

I forced myself out of the flat on Thursday and to the Tate Modern to the Red Star Over Russia exhibition of Stalinist-era posters, photographs, design, etc. I’m a sucker for that stuff, loving the graphic design particularly. I took a few photos. One room, at least, did emphasise some of the human cost of the period, useful to bring one back down to Earth after getting excited about jaunty red-and-black typography and dramatic photomontage.

And on Friday I went to The Story conference which was as varied and interesting as ever, and resulted in lots of catching up with familiar friendly faces. The talks were people relating things they’ve done, often only loosely related to stories. The highlight was probably Juno Dawson talking about how she started writing young adult fiction, ended up writing sex education books, and then wrote more fiction. All told in a very entertaining, possibly flu-remedy-heightened, manner. Quote of the day was Elijah’s description of the conventional, expected working life: “get a job, get the tube, eat carbonara or whatever.”

This week I stopped going to one of the acting classes I’ve been doing, the one that’s not with the Salon:collective. I’d done five of twelve Thursday evenings and decided that, unfortunately, I wasn’t getting much from it. I’d assumed the other students would have more experience with the Meisner technique, and they also didn’t seem to be making much progress with it. I hate stopping things before the end and will usually see anything and everything through. Last year I tried quitting something, and ducked out of a five-day corporeal mime class after the fourth day, and I’ve felt shit about it ever since. That helped 2017 feel like a year of personal failure. But this time I think I’ve made the right choice. I guess that’s learning?

Talking of seeing things through to the bitter end… I spent much of the week finishing the current Laborious Personal Project which probably took about five times longer than I’d anticipated and, as usual, is of little use to anyone. But I finished it! More on that in its own blog post, when I have time, in a week or so probably.

That was that week. Tomorrow is another one.