This Storyteller blog follows the progress of writer/performer Robert Crighton as he writes a series of new stories for live performance - as well as any other interesting theatre thing that might cross his path.
I have been reduced to write an 'Angry of Tunbridge Wells' blog at the inability of the press to read blurb. I've had to fend off two reviews for Storyteller this year, both of which were marred by the reviewer's inability to read blurb. Both came to the "Comic
Ghost Stories... including
the tale of a poltergeist hamster" and then wrote angry disappointed reviews that the show was comic and featured a poltergeist hamster. The public seem to be able to grasp this but the press - sent additional material with passages like -
"A traditional ghost
story show, with a difference – it’s played for laughs not for fear.Ghosts are faintly absurd things, they wander
around making noises, feeling generally sorry for themselves – why do we take
them seriously?"
- seem incapable of understanding this simple fact. So... just in case you don't already know, in case there is any confusion lingering, let me tell you now...
THERE'S A FUCKING HAMSTER IN IT - ALRIGHT!
And relax.
Okay, I'm not that worried about these reviews because, like myself, they're on a blog and so no one reads them. This partly explains the lack of editorial control on one review that did actually libel me. Not critical opinion, actual proper libel. Well, they did for about two hours, until I saw it, wrote a polite letter explaining the law and demanding a retraction. This was got, within minutes. But that's the problem of the wild west of blogging, a lot of people forget there are rules and standards out there in the real world.
But I can take heart that it's even more dog eat dog in the wider publishing world. Have you read the reviews for the all female Julius Caesar at the Donmar? Well, they're mixed, some love it, some hate it. This is fine. It is the sexism of the commentary that makes my blood boil - the implicit and occassionally explicit commentary from three Daily Telegraph reviews saying that women just can't hack these bloke parts. Not a review of the performances, the play, the staging, but a blatent piss orgy on women doing an all female Shakespeare, stating that because Shakespeare did it the other way round (boys playing girls) this is somehow NORMAL. RIGHT.
Women playing men, men playing women - HOW IS THIS NEWS! We're actors. That's what we do - we pretend to be other people. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. That's it. It is one thing to say that this production doesn't work, it is quite another to say that women can't hack it - which is implicitly what this particular boys club is saying.
Usual plea, buy tickets, etc...
And now some pictures... I haven't done any work to them - there are a couple that will need adjusting... but I'm rushing around at the moment so here they are. All photos (bar one) from The Fantasy Terrorist Variations.
In the beginning there was a big bang... or something like that. Stuff happened, planet came together, chains of protein got busy and eventually grew to realise lots of stuff. Stuff, stuff, stuff.
Anyway, to more immediate history, we're premiered... as it were. Had a few lovely audiences for both shows and started to get a sense of how to play the plays. I know, that sounds a little odd - we've been rehearsing for weeks and we've only just figured that out? Well, yes. It takes an audience to tell you which bits work and which bits need work, what gets a laugh, what gets you killed. Sometimes rehearsals - especially so with monologue work (which about 70% of this stuff is) - are just a mechanical exercise of building a car from instinct in a darkened room. Yes, it feels like you've put it together correctly, but you won't know till the doors of the garage opens and you have some light to see by. And sometimes that's when you discover you've put the engine in the boot.
Not so I think with these shows. The audiences leave smiling, they leave us their email addresses and buy the scripts of the shows on their way out (if they haven't already done so). Nothing reassures me more than an audience that wishes to spend more cash on the show AFTER it has finished. Unhappy audiences do not do this.
But, it's still early doors, it's possible the audiences so far have been idiots who are delighted at the prospect of simply sitting in a darkened room, watching the words fly past their heads, happy in their ignorance. It's possible that the future audiences will sit their, arms folded, grumpy faced going - well get on with it then. This is entirely possible. But unlikely. I hope.
Photos from the show will follow soon - it's been a hectic week and we just haven't had the chance - so that's something to look forward to.
So, bye-bye November, you've been a busy month. On with Christmas and a Happy New Run.
"Teched last night and we teched the night before,
We're all tired of teching, we don't want to tech anymore.
When we tech, we're as happy as can be,
But a hundred fucking lighting cues is much to much for me.
Wait for it, just wait for it,
We've another half an hour of this wanky shit,
We don't think the crew can take much more of it,
We don't want to do it anymore."
This above was a ditty I adjusted from "Gassed Last Night" when doing slides on a production of Oh What a Lovely War. The tech wasn't actually that bad, it was a long one but it was a complex show - what are you going to do? But it's always nice to have a moan, especially in verse. It was however a versatile little number, wholey appropriate for other productions which were wanky to the nth degree.
I'm glad to say the technical rehearsal for Fantasy Terrorist Variations didn't fit the above. It was very civilised. I got on with the lights, while Simon and Keith ran lines. We then did a cue to cue and a run. A few minor stumbles on cues, but that's what tech rehearsals are for. To rehearse. And then get right.
So, just a few hours to go now people, book those tickets - etc - you know the drill by now.
See you on the other side.
Just a few things today - it's two days till first night and I'm gathering props and costumes together ready for tomorrows tech/dress. Then a run of Ghost Storyteller. Waiting in also for the script/programme for The Fantasy Terrorist Variations that arrived on Friday when I was at home, but they assumed I wasn't in, didn't even ring the bell, and left a card saying they missed me. Most annoyed.
Today has been a good day for this little blog - started about 18 months ago and this month has had the most hits - even more than this time last year. So, nice to see you've been reading.
I was in London yesterday doing a bit of publicity, being interviewed on Monocle 24 - a sort of commercial World Service radio station. I discovered on the way that my shoes leaked, so did the interview barefoot - my shoes and socks quietly steaming on a radiator. My host, Georgina Godwin, did not seem to be offended. In fact, we did talk about my damp socks briefly during the interview, before moving onto ghosts, terrorists and arts subsidy - on which latter subject I don't think I was wholey convincing. For those who missed the interview the station also do podcasts, so it may reappear shortly for you to judge for yourselves.
On the way to the interview I, and the other occupants of the West bound Metropolitan Line train at around 12.40pm were harangued by a gentleman slightly worse for wear and definitely very angry about something. We all, dutifully, ignored him. I caught his eye a couple of times (my technique must be off) but I think I got away with it. It was only as he got off the train that I suddenly realised what he was talking about. Beyond calling us scum, though using other four letter words instead, he was also calling us thieving cheapskates.
He was talking about the rebate.
Now that's a better class of drunk.
Okay, normally this close to the beginning of a run in London I would be blogging all about that - though as I have just mentioned the shows - tickets available here, BOOK NOW! - you could argue this blog is about them. Except it isn't. It's about another premiere - which is happening in Spain. I am now an international playwright, quite accidentally I must add.
The mastermind behind this production is Jamie-Glyn Bale who used to work at LOST and who was there when I won various very nice awards at their One-Act Festival. He does work in Spain where for the last few years he has been wanting to translate and perform some of my monologues/plays. Every so often an email would appear, I would give permission and then time would pass. However, this year everything has come together - tonight there will be the first Spanish performance of a collection of pieces titled The Alternative Seagull and Other Stories. Which translates as La Gaviota Alternativa y otras historias. Here is a link to prove this is true. The company performing it are La Palabra Teatro and here is a link to their website similarly to prove that they too are true. Because I do need to check every so often that it is.
If I wasn't stuck in rehearsals here, and had some spare cash, I would pop over and watch. But I can't. So, I'll just bask in the warm glow of performance. My little babies have flown the nest - just look what they are doing now.
So, thank you Jamie and break many legs La Palabra Teatro. May your Seagull fly... or if you know the content of my play, sit there doing very little unless moved by another person.
Yup, that's about it. Write the play, stage the play, make sure it's good and don't tell anyone (beyond the cast - they might not notice unless you do) that it is written in verse. Unless it's written in rhyming couplets (which in English is a hiding to nothing) then 99% of the audience won't notice. To call your play a verse drama is to label yourself as an elitist arty wanker, regardless as to whether you are, and you won't get a very broad base for your audience.
*
Which leads me onto issues to do with audiences rather well. The arts editor at the BBC said something a bit foolish... not because what he said was wrong, that is up for debate, but it wasn't very well contextualised. Here is a report about what he said on the Guardian website - the comments section is quite interesting for once. Basically he seemed to say that subsidy is all wrong because in all the years of the Arts Council the numbers of poor people watching art hasn't increased. And, to make matters worse, he weighted his arguments about elitism against ballet, opera - the usual suspects, as it were - rather than other, more successful art forms. This is a simplification, but that's how it came across, which is all that matters here.
Now, on one level, he has a point. We have failed as a nation to embrace art, even though routes to it are greater than ever. The verdict on Verse Drama is a good example. Nothing puts the backs up of those who don't earn much money more than something that smells of arty wank. Even from my gilded position in the middle of the middle classes, the whiff of suspect wankery is something that I avoid like the plague in my own work - as I also do with cliched expressions. This is the national mood. High art is for wealthy people, even though I suspect the majority of wealthy people actually can't stand high art either, especially all that Opera they're supposed to always be watching.
Of course, I reject this cultural instinct because I know it is irrational. High and low are pretty mixed concepts these days (if you accept the concept at all) and access to work is greater than ever. Attendance to art galleries rocketed up when free entrance was introduced, and though the numbers of the poor did not go up as much as the middle classes, they did increase and that is a start. It takes time for interest in free art to achieve currency (free stuff is inherently untrustworthy) and I don't think we've actually been very good at appealing art to anyone outside the middle class bracket until fairly recently, the last decade or two, so real change will take time. Or not. Perhaps the poor are just not worth the effort. Perhaps we should just cull them now; if they don't want our ballet then they're obviously sub-human.
Also, these institutions of art are middle class in their appeal and inherently hard work. Our more wired in society wants art that fits around them, not the institution. I take in a lot about culture from the internet, vicariously I admit, primarily because I live in the middle of nowhere. But there are people who prefer that because that's how they like to see art. Taking in beauty without a numb bum or tired legs or the extra effort that the physicality of some arts institutions have to impose because they are solid. This doesn't, however, negate the importance of these institutions, because they are the loadstone's to culture, they are the hubs around which the virtual editions orbit.
There is also a deleterious argument here about money, looking at all things in terms of money. Now, a body like the Arts Council must be able to justify itself to the government, to appear to give value for money, because this is how everything is justified to the tax payer, fair do's. However, if you only look at the money then you are missing to point about art. Same point applies to issues of access.
Arts subsidy is about balancing out the ecology of art - maintaining standards in the non-commercial sector, training artists and giving opportunities for artistic risk which the commercial sector will not uphold. Now, the commercial sector will, therefore, benefit from the training this gives for those people who cross between the two (i.e. basically most artists, and by proxy, all) and the commercial sector is then free to use this talent to cater to the mass audience that the subsidised sector doesn't. They can go for mass appeal, producing work that is openly populist and, if necessary, catering to the lowest common denominator. This isn't an attack on the lowest common denominator, the language is loaded but it isn't, people WANT art that is easy as well as hard. The poor, having by definition less money, do not gamble their money on high art that will be a. hard work, b. not guaranteed to be any good and c. which there is a risk they might not get it (even though, being human, they probably would - but perhaps we should cull the stupid with the poor while we're at it?). The poor, needing to invest their money wisely on a relatively guaranteed good night out, will go to a pop concert, a musical, something on ice - because it's easy and after a long day it is an escape.
That isn't to say that sometimes they will not go to high art, but it's an occasional gamble, not a way of life. We of the comfortably off (and I should add I'm not actually comfortably off, I'm just from a family of comfortably off, comfortably off by proxy) will take that gamble more often because we can and because we can it has become a habit. So the issue here isn't access, it's about a habit of art.
AND THIS is I think where Will Gompertz was going with his argument. We should be looking at ways to subsidise audiences as well as artists - or subsidise audiences to help generate revenue for artists. And in principle I totally agree. This has worked for art galleries (though there is still a LONG way to go) but for my sphere of work, the theatre, it isn't particularly practical. Unless we develop and Orwellian strategy to get everyone who books a ticket to bring their tax return and see how much of their ticket is to be subsidised by the tax payer, I don't see how you could implement it.
And artists should be engaged not just with what they want to do, but also with what their audiences want. Okay, in todays marketplace audiences are fragmented, we choose who we sell our work to, but to only pick the middle class intelligencia all the time is a dangerous law of diminishing returns. You don't have to compromise on the work either, for once you have an audience in the room so long as the work is good they will tend to go with it. (Though this isn't an invitation to lie in your publicity.) So, whilst you could argue my show The Fantasy Terrorist Variations is ultimately aimed at middle class types (I hope not, but it will mostly appeal there we think, though it is accessable to everyone) my show Ghost Storyteller is aimed at everyone. It has a clear title and clear messages - i.e. it's a bit funny. Now, this should bring in a broader audience, perhaps even a less middle class audience - but that doesn't mean the show itself compromises for a second in its form or aims. You can do both.
And while we're on the subject of the show... Go on - book tickets NOW! Here, click HERE, to get them.
Milk Bottle
Productions Presents...
Ghost Storyteller
Comic Ghost Stories Written
and Performed by Robert Crighton
Returning this
Autumn / Winter following the success of the run last year!Ghost Storyteller is a lightly comic
selection of ghost stories written and performed by award-winning writer and
performer Robert Crighton.
From the ghosts of
empty houses, to the personal ghosts we carry around us, this collection is a mixture
of the fantastic and the “real”: including the tale of a poltergeist hamster
and the pub that cried ghost.
Running Tuesday to
Sunday from 27th November 2012 to 6th January 2013
Tuesdays to
Saturdays at 7.30pm – Doors Open at 7.15pm
Sundays at 6pm –
Doors Open at 5.45pm
No performances on
Mondays, Christmas Day, Boxing Day or New Years Day
One week to go before Ghost Storyteller and The Fantasy Terrorist Variations comes to life and I'm already thinking what I'll get up to during the run. In between rehearsals, publicity work, line runs, I'm building up to what will fill in the gaps when I settle into the routine of the run.
Six weeks is a reasonably long time for me, in terms of repeating the same show. The nice thing about doing a storytelling piece is that it is genuinely, largely, noticeably, different every time I perform it. And I don't mean in a small way, not in the standard play sense of "it was a difficult house tonight" or "I wasn't feeling it" etc.; the audience in storytelling create the relationship between the performer and them, creates the show in many ways. So, boredom is not a problem. But a routine is. The day to day element of getting up at the same time, doing the same journey, doing the same things. The routine around the show is the problem.
So, how will I keep myself fresh? By writing a new piece over those six weeks. By spending a set hour plus in the morning typing in front of my computer and another hour in a London coffee establishment writing out notes to be typed up the following morning. The three/four hours I'll be spending on a train each day I have set aside for reading. Last year I made good inroads into unread Dickens, but this year I think I'm going to dance about a bit. I'm doing a lot of science reading at present (don't mention the word 'meme' to me at the moment, boy will I bore you) but I'm also working through this years Booker shortlist. Though I will occasionally defer to a George Gently novel if tired. (Rather nice little books, can finish one in a day - though be warned, they are completely different to the television adaptations - in fact the BBC should really be prosecuted under the trades descriptions act for calling the series an "adaptation".)
But here I hit the problem. Which project should I write over Christmas?
Here are the front runners:
The Attack of the Christmas Squirrels - 30/1
Yes, the ever promised story of dangerous furry rodents that regulars on this blog knows will probably never get written.
Trolls 2 - 6/1
The sequel to last years The Natural History of Trolls. More trolls, more action, more memes. In fact, I've got 3 sequels in mind, one provisionally titled: Peter Git.
Portrait of a Singer - 9/1
This is a morality thriller that has been bubbling away, a proper play with characters and everything. I think I will spend sometime this Christmas on the research for this one, but writing probably deferred till next year.
The Juliet Scandal -5/4
A favourite of mine, a reversed version of the Romeo and Juliet story, where their love tears families apart rather than (belatedly) bring them together. Though this would be a monologue, possibly with hints at Venus and Adonis and Lucrece. Or not. Don't know yet.
Something else - 10/1
Some other idea I haven't had yet... might just pop up and I have to do it.
Those are the front runners, there is at least one other play bubbling away under the surface and probably dozens of stories. I'll let you know next week which has won out. Or you could ask me - in person - when you come to see Ghost Storyteller. Go on - book tickets NOW! Here, click HERE, to get them.
Anyway, I'm off to do a run of Ghost Storyteller, wish me luck as you book those tickets.
Milk Bottle
Productions Presents...
Ghost Storyteller
Comic Ghost Stories Written
and Performed by Robert Crighton
Returning this
Autumn / Winter following the success of the run last year!Ghost Storyteller is a lightly comic
selection of ghost stories written and performed by award-winning writer and
performer Robert Crighton.
From the ghosts of
empty houses, to the personal ghosts we carry around us, this collection is a mixture
of the fantastic and the “real”: including the tale of a poltergeist hamster
and the pub that cried ghost.
Running Tuesday to
Sunday from 27th November 2012 to 6th January 2013
Tuesdays to
Saturdays at 7.30pm – Doors Open at 7.15pm
Sundays at 6pm –
Doors Open at 5.45pm
No performances on
Mondays, Christmas Day, Boxing Day or New Years Day
Now, onto the second cast member of The Fantasy Terrorist Variations. Following the form of my last blog I will write a balanced piece, refusing to gush about an actor just because they happen to be in my show.
Mr Simon Nader and I go back quite a few years now. I first met him on a touring production of Othello where he stabbed me every single night. This wasn't because I was being particularly annoying, it was in the script, though I will accept the possibility it was both. There was that look of glee in his eye as he did it. There is much that could and often is said about this first production together. Unfortunately for you, dear reader, Simon and I have been dining out on the story of the Othello tour for years, and frankly it's the kind of story that deserves payment in cash or drinks, so I'm not going to give it away for free on the internet. Sorry. Come and see one of the shows and ask me all about it. After buying tickets.
Needless to say, (or possibly not) we both came out of the run rather like old battle scarred warriors with a bond forged in the freezing cold tour dates of East Anglia in winter. Or something similarly insulting to actual soldiers on proper battlefields. That did verge on gush. Will move on.
Unfortunately for Simon the story doesn't end there, as he was soon being whisked up by the Milk Bottle machine and coerced into joining the cast of Teaching Gods and other stories as performed at the Tabard Theatre in another cold winter of early 2009. He hasn't looked forward since. Whenever he goes off to film work in something that brings respect and money, like The Borgias, he knows that the call will come and he'll be obliged to do another show with me. Yes, you've guessed it, I've got the photographs.
Simon returns to this show to perform 'his' monologue, Keynote Speaker. It is his in the same way as Bink! is the almost property of Cat LaCohie (or Catherine Eccles as we still like to call her in Milk Bottle) - these are monologues that I wrote either for them or gave to them before I had a go - they are monologues that I have never learnt. That seems to be the rule - whoever learns my monologues first gets a de facto stake in their future performance. They have first dibs.
Unfortunately, again, for Simon, I've made a few rewrites to Keynote Speaker. It was never a monologue I perfected, it needed tweaking. And there's nothing harder than relearning a tweaked version of a monologue you've already learnt. But if I had to relearn the whole of Ghost Storyteller then Simon can relearn Keynote. Tit for tat ladies and gentlemen. But seriously, this does mean the show is better and that is all that matters.
Last week was a momentous week in rehearsals for The Fantasy Terrorist Variations in that both members of the cast were in rehearsal - AT THE SAME TIME. It meant that rehearsals for the third play of the show The Project After could now begin in earnest. And boy was I happy to see this little play get up and run around. It's a lovely little piece, funny and serious, funny about being serious and only 35% likely to cause the deaths of myself or any member of the cast. Because it really doesn't insult Islam. It really doesn't - as we debated at length. See earlier blog.
Tomorrow we move into the final phase of rehearsals - the books are coming down, the words are flowing, we're starting to get it right first time, rather than doing it a bit right, stopping, doing it again a bit better and then again and this time right, and building a show. For which you should all buy tickets. Not to do my Ghost Storyteller show down (I'm not, it's a show I'm very pleased with, buy tickets for yourself and all your friends) but The Fantasy Terrorist League is a show that needs to be seen. It makes you think, it pushes the audience down uncomfortable paths, it is gripping and slightly dangerous.
And it has Mr Simon Nader in it. And he's rather good.
Which is as far as I'm allowed to go in terms of praise under the Non-Proliferation of Luvvy Gush Treaty of 1987. Not enough people have signed up to this treaty and too many people die of embarrassment in atrocities all round the world (remember Paltrow) so please, don't be a wanker. Don't gush. Think of the children.
Simon Nader:
Simon Nader is a core member of Milk Bottle having played Teiresias in Blind Spots, Treplev in The Alternative Seagull and several solo pieces including Keynote Speaker. He trained at London’s Academy Drama School. Previous stage work includes: Billy Blister, Billy Blister’s Circus (Watford Palace Theatre); George, Of Mice and Men (National tour); Colin/Policeman, Maggie’s End (Shaw Theatre); and most recently Qudz at the National Theatre Studio venue The Yard. Feature Film work includes The Dead Inside as Wayne Andrews and Guildenstern in Fodor's Hamlet (2006). Radio includes BBC Radio 4’s The Chess Girls, whilst recent TV appearances include a recurring role in The Borgias and follow up to multi-award winning series Pillars of the Earth: World Without End.
Yes, with but a few weeks to go before The Fantasy Terrorist Variations comes to London it's meet the cast time. Today it's Mr Keith Hill, who has the joyous crows feet inducing task of performing Fantasy Terrorist League and the all new The Project After. I first encountered Mr Hill at one of those theatrery networking things - you know the sort, where you turn up hoping to make connections with the industry and find that, actually, the industry hasn't turned up and there are just mirror versions of yourself wandering around looking for love, employment or the next drink. Thusly we found ourselves holding drinks and nattering away about politics/art/lifetheuniverseandeverything. We met a few times this way and Keith has also managed to come and see a fair old number of my plays/stories. It is at this point I should say I went to see Keith in a fair old number of his - but shamefacedly I bow my head and admit... I haven't. Like the small child who's forgotten his homework I shall mutter my dog-ate-my-homework excuse that I live 50 miles away from London and catching people in plays is appallingly difficult.
However, I have seen Keith perform in little pieces in scratch nights and was suitably impressed (no I refuse to gush over performers, even for publicity purposes) and had in my mind that he should join Mission Milk Bottle one day. That day came when he watched last year's The Natural History of Trolls (for which I think he was the only audience member that night - we had a wretched two weeks out of four where we got nearly no one) and over the briefest of drinks afterwards he mentioned that he'd quite like to do one of my earlier monologues Fantasy Terrorist League (2005) in some kind of way. This got my brain going - as I've been toying with doing a new show based around the monologue for years - using it as a starting point for other stories. The reason I'd not gone forward with it is that I've grown... if not tired as such... but a little weary of performing it. And more importantly, the piece gives you terrible crows feet. Fine a little later in life, but early onset crows feet in your twenties looks odd. (What? I hear you exclaim - the answer to your confusion is that you have to smile continuously for about half the monologue, which does horrible things to your face. Smiling, not recommended for small children or adults.) So, the idea of passing the monologue on and building up a show for others appealed greatly.
Keith in character... with a bag.
We started rehearsals a couple of months ago - though we haven't worked continuously. We did a starter rehearsal, reading through the text, discussing it, discussing politics, discussing what we'd been watching on television - going back to actual work. We then walked through the play slowly, creating a rough blocking which - barring a few minor changes - has stuck with us. It's a very different staging to my version. For starters (and this is a very radical change) Keith gets to move. I know, exciting. I my version I stood still, barely moving, for nearly the whole monologue - but Keith has blocking. And props. Which reminds me, still need to sort out a good box. The exactly right kind of box. It's very important.
We then did a three day rehearsal block in the space at Barons Court and really nailed the blocking, the themes, the character, the generalness of the show. It was an exhausting three days, both of us talking a lot about elements of the show that bounce in different directions. I am, frankly, very glad that I'm not performing the piece again - it's a tough piece to play (though not to watch, he added, quickly) and Keith can carry off crows feet better than myself. Which is as close to actorly gushing as I'm prepared to go. For more you'll have to come and see the show yourself.
Keith Hill:
Keith, has seen a
lot of Milk Bottles over the last few years, but has never managed to get into
one until now. He was cast after a campaign lasting four years and a promise
not to play his accordion. Stage work has included Lucifer and others in The
York Mysteries , two productions of Road, Vaudevillains for Les Enfants
Terribles, Feydeau farce for DeadAnt, Torben Betts’ The Error of Their Ways
(then a UK premiere) for Eleanor Rhode. And now this.The one person he has played in the last few
years who is not homicidal, deluded, drunk, or all three, was the leading Miscarriage
of Justice campaigner Paul May in Someone to Blame earlier this year at the Old
King’s Head for David Mercatali.Film
includes The Last Time I Saw You; Exit with Julian Glover, an anthropophagite
home chef in the forthcoming Valentine’s Day for Benjamin Taylor and most
recently The Maid for 721 productions, which is nearing the end of
post-production. Keith has also recorded a number of audiobooks, ranging from
The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ to the enormous social history of
post-war Britain: Austerity Britain, by David Kynaston
Six Weeks of
Storytelling at Barons Court Theatre - Christmas 2012/13
A selection of
(mostly) comic stories and storytelling from award-winning writer and performer
Robert Crighton and his friends.
Two exciting new
productions performing in repertory at the Barons Court Theatre this Christmas,
spearheaded by writer, performer and storyteller Robert Crighton
Press Night for both shows:Tuesday 27th November 2012
Two
comps plus programme, do contact us if you can review the show.
Ghost
Storyteller:“Ghosts don’t pay tax.”
A traditional ghost
story show, with a difference – it’s played for laughs not for fear.Ghosts are faintly absurd things, they wander
around making noises, feeling generally sorry for themselves – why do we take
them seriously?
Robert Crighton’s
ghost story is about a poltergeist.But
why should it be one of those over the top sinister ones?So his is the poltergeist of a hamster –
doing what all hamsters do, running on his wheel all night.
Writer and Performer
Robert Crighton:“It is a comic show,
primarily because I don’t believe in ghosts.Since I first started this show I’ve been inundated with stories – some of
which were, unbeknownst to the teller, quite hilarious.Like the person who told me all about the
ghost of a nail that appeared in their kitchen.A paranormal nail!However,
making fun of ghosts can have its drawbacks.There was a heckler one night - he wandered into the show after five
minutes and then started saying, very loudly, that ghosts were real and that I
wasn't showing them enough respect.I’m
sorry, but ghosts don’t pay tax or vote so I don’t see any reason to show them
respect.”
In fact lots of
people think the show should show respect, as Milk Bottle regularly receives
abusive messages from offended members of the ‘ghost community’, who don’t take
criticism of the paranormal (in a light and inoffensive fictional storytelling show) as reasonable.So just wait till we get to the second show
of the night.
For more on this
year’s ghost story show at tryout and the author’s lack of belief in ghosts, go
to:
The Fantasy
Terrorist Variations:“Three plays – one
subject – BOOM!”
This is a show that
spins off from our 2005 play Fantasy
Terrorist League which won the award for best writing at the LOST One-Act
Festival.There are three plays that
deal with different aspects of the terrorist world since 9/11 – internment,
prisoner abuse and offense, specifically offense caused by criticism of
Mohammed.Recent protests in the Middle
East highlight how different views of free speech can be used to create fear
and hatred.These are just some of the
themes dealt with in the show.
For a full account
of THE FEAR and the author go to
Robert’s blog:
Comic Ghost Stories Written
and Performed by Robert Crighton
Returning this
Autumn / Winter following the success of the run last year!Ghost Storyteller is a lightly comic
selection of ghost stories written and performed by award-winning writer and
performer Robert Crighton.
From the ghosts of
empty houses, to the personal ghosts we carry around us, this collection is a mixture
of the fantastic and the “real”: including the tale of a poltergeist hamster
and the pub that cried ghost.
Running Tuesday to
Sunday from 27th November 2012 to 6th January 2013
Tuesdays to
Saturdays at 7.30pm – Doors Open at 7.15pm
Sundays at 6pm –
Doors Open at 5.45pm
No performances on
Mondays, Christmas Day, Boxing Day or New Years Day
Robert Crighton is a
multi-award winning playwright and performer and the only entrant in the 25
year history of the Lost One-Act Festival to win three awards in successive
years.
Robert graduated
from Middlesex University in 2003 with a degree in Performing Arts: Drama which
he occasionally uses to bolster his self esteem.On leaving he immediately set up a residency
with his company Milk Bottle in various studio spaces in Suffolk where, apart
from occasional touring work, he has been based ever since.
With Milk Bottle he
has produced a mix of work, from classical drama to new plays, swapping roles
from production to production.Sometimes
writer, director or actor (always designer – he does all the design work on his
posters, including painting the picture of the cat) he has stamped a distinct
and simple playing style in the Milk Bottle repertoire.
For Milk Bottle he
has written and often performed in The Natural History of Trolls, Shoes That
Angels Fear To Wear, Cuckold’s Fair, Teaching Gods and Other Stories...(Including the monologues: Problem Tree, The
Examiner of Small Ailments, The Alternative Seagull, Keynote Speaker, Teaching
Gods and Fantasy Terrorist League), Sunmakers, Myth, The Bear Named Mo-, Blind
Spots, Thebes, Apathy, Apocalypse, The Happy Fluffy Bunny, All Singing, All
Dancing, Pop Up Show, Amateurs & Lord Ashborn – as well as adaptations of
Antigone, Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, The Birds & The Bacchae.
***
Milk Bottle Productions
Presents...
The Fantasy Terrorist
Variations
Written by Robert
Crighton, performed by Keith Hill and Simon Nader
A series of stories
spun from the award-winning ‘Fantasy Terrorist League’.A man is interned as a terrorist on the
flimsiest of grounds, a chancer looks how to make money out of
counter-terrorism and the story of the non-existent artwork that might get
people killed. The Fantasy Terrorist Variations is a powerful account of fear, the
policeman on our streets and the ones in our heads.
Running Tuesday to
Saturday from 27th November 2012 to 5th January 2013 at
9pm
Tuesdays to
Saturdays Only at 9pm – Doors Open at 8.50pm
Keith, has seen a
lot of Milk Bottles over the last few years, but has never managed to get into
one until now. He was cast after a campaign lasting four years and a promise
not to play his accordion. Stage work has included Lucifer and others in The
York Mysteries , two productions of Road, Vaudevillains for Les Enfants
Terribles, Feydeau farce for DeadAnt, Torben Betts’ The Error of Their Ways
(then a UK premiere) for Eleanor Rhode. And now this.The one person he has played in the last few
years who is not homicidal, deluded, drunk, or all three, was the leading Miscarriage
of Justice campaigner Paul May in Someone to Blame earlier this year at the Old
King’s Head for David Mercatali.Film
includes The Last Time I Saw You; Exit with Julian Glover, an anthropophagite
home chef in the forthcoming Valentine’s Day for Benjamin Taylor and most
recently The Maid for 721 productions, which is nearing the end of
post-production. Keith has also recorded a number of audiobooks, ranging from
The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ to the enormous social history of
post-war Britain: Austerity Britain, by David Kynaston
Simon Nader:
Simon Nader is a
core member of Milk Bottle having played Teiresias in Blind Spots, Treplev in The Alternative
Seagull and several solo pieces including Keynote Speaker. He trained
at London’s Academy Drama School. Previous stage work includes: Billy Blister, Billy Blister’s Circus (Watford Palace
Theatre); George, Of Mice and Men
(National tour); Colin/Policeman, Maggie’s
End (Shaw Theatre); and most recently Qudz at the National Theatre Studio venue The Yard. Feature Film
work includes The Dead Inside as
Wayne Andrews and Guildenstern in Fodor's Hamlet
(2006). Radio includes
BBC Radio 4’s The Chess Girls, whilst recent TV appearances include a recurring role in The Borgias and follow up to multi-award winning series Pillars of the Earth: World Without End.
THE COMPANY: Milk
Bottle Productions
Milk Bottle was
founded in 2000 by Robert Crighton and has been performing a constant stream of
small scale, high quality theatre productions.Robert Crighton is an award-winning storyteller, writer and performer,
whose last big project was performing every Sherlock Holmes story back-to-back
over the Christmas season.He is only
entrant in the 25 year history of the Lost One-Act Festival to win three awards
in successive years and is sadly no longer eligible to win anymore.
What is Milk
Bottle?It's a name, it's a way of
life, it's a flower in a storm, it's Robert Crighton. It's weekly repertory,
storytelling, book publishing, epic theatre, tiny theatre, three times
award-winning theatre; it's singing cats,dancing flowers, blind men and magic shoes.
Since 2000, Milk
Bottle has produced dozens of new plays, old plays and other stuff.It has been the management under which writer
and performer Robert Crighton distributes his work. It is based in his head
most of the time, but when it leaves there it visits Suffolk and London on a
semi-regular basis.Come and join the
fun.
REVIEWS:Praise for Robert Crighton and Milk Bottle in
previous Productions...
THE NATURAL HISTORY
OF TROLLS - 2012
★★★ Remotegoat:“It is admirable then that writer and
performer of The Natural History of Trolls, Robert Crighton, is able to sustain
the interest of his audience as well as a wizened comic and create a
large-scale, convincing fantastical environment merely with his words. Although
two talented and attractive actresses have been recruited to assist with the
telling, The Natural History of Trolls is undoubtedly a one man show and
Crighton, with his diction like John Gielgud and dressed like a sort of
Dickensian sex pest, is an accomplished storyteller...His story is a charming and original one
that, as an audience member, made me yearn to be sat at my Grandfather's knee,
listening to a similarly tall tale of a world beyond our own.”
THE COMPLETE
SHERLOCK HOLMES - 2010 / 2011
★★★★London Theatre Network: “Crighton is an accomplished story teller...
Immersive, enjoyable and cosy, you will leave the room with a satisfied smile
on your face, as if you’ve just visited some old friends.”
★★★★ Remotegoat: “Robert Crighton gives you a
unique evening of storytelling... It is easy to see why Robert Crighton has won
awards for his performance.”
TEACHING GODS &
OTHER STORIES... - 2009
Fringe Report:
“Verdict: Funny, fast-paced, with depth... There are a lot of good reasons to
see the show. It's funny, fast-paced... surreal fantasy, with an edge of
revenge... Robert Crighton performs with great energy and no little charm...
well viewed after a drink, before a bigger one and some cheese, in celebration
perhaps of strange dreams and the campus cat.”
I'm a person who can get a little carried away. I'm aware of this. In fact, the awareness of the fact has made me a little careful of late. Whereas my younger self would run with something and promptly fall off the edge of a cliff, I have of late hung back. This was not inherently a bad thing at times, but it isn't a habit to get stuck in. In the past I have taken on projects simply because they were there. A few basic plans were made, but there was a lot of running blind and going on instinct. With the exception of a few notable disasters this has steered me into interesting and successful territory. But this impulse has faded.
Well, it did until I fell ill. There's nothing like sitting around feeling sorry for oneself to help get your convictions set out in a row. But I'm careful not to let my personal convictions get in the way of the work. Which is what leads us to my current project and my fear of getting carried away, of causing offence, of letting my convictions stand too proud.
I have mentioned, in passing in this blog, the new show The Fantasy Terrorist Variations. It is a work in progress, probably always will be, dealing in short plays with the issues of terrorism, politics, civil liberties and religion. And it is the religious part that causes me trouble - not in the sense that I have much doubt about the nature of religion, my personal convictions are quite clear; not in writing the plays, not in producing them - but in the presentation of them in publicity. If you've seen any of my plays you will have noticed that gods and magic get a fair amount of time on stage. This is because this is where gods and magic belong. In fiction. They are lovely plot devices, ways of testing the mettle of your characters and shouldn't be seriously applied to the real world.
This is not a particularly safe opinion to hold, historically. For most of history, professing this view of the universe would have got me killed. In some parts of the world, it will still get me killed. And you will have noticed, if you haven't been living under a rock, that the world and religion are having issues at the moment. Offence is being taken across the globe and any additional opinion, any debate, does not necessarily go down well. I've been sitting on a press release for The Fantasy Terrorist Variations for a month now as one of the plays plays with ideas of belief and religious belief and fear and lots of stuff, and so, not particularly inclined to add fuel to the flames or, more importantly, to look as if I were trying to profit from them, I sat on it. Adjusted it. Watered it down. In the Middle East people have died, there are enormous issues at stake, and a small late night fringe show should not attempt to elbow its way into the limelight by jumping on the back of what is happening.
BUT... but... is that the real reason why I haven't told anyone about a play, The Project After, 1/3 of the show FTV, that deals with the prophet Mohammed? Am I doing this to avoid being a cynical callous bastard, trying to sell tickets off the back of many deaths and the news scrum that ensued, or... am I doing this (not doing this) because I'm afraid. Because of THE FEAR. I mean, I have to publicise this show eventually, don't I? I have to tell people sometime. So why... weeks after the riots in Libya etc. have I not sent out anything? I think it's because I'm afraid.
We, dear readers of this blog, can discuss this issue, can't we. We can talk about it here. No one is watching. I can always cut out all the dangerous sounding religious stuff from the press release and talk about this stuff here. Some kind of publicity can go ahead. The safe, unnoticed kind. The Fantasy Terrorist Variations has its starting point in a play I wrote in 2005. The play Fantasy Terrorist League was about internment, about how someone like me - explicitly me in the first version - would cope with being locked away without trial or any human rights. This examination of injustice, bald, clear cut, was balanced out (so as not to be agit-prop) by centring the piece on a love story, by making all the actions personal, by making the centre character just a bit unreliable and the whole nature of what happened to him debatable.
It was this blurring of lines that has led to the Variation project. Looking at ideas circling the 'war on terror' as it was once called, from different perspectives, questioning the value of the speaker, displaying their bias, known or unknown. The important element of that play, and the others that make up The Fantasy Terrorist Variations, are that they are full of people who are human, unreliable, that any message included in the work is seen through the prism of the human, not social theory. That means that I have to be brave enough to introduce characters who undermine their own argument, to make people act like people and so say things quite casually, which leads to them saying things which border on the sexist, racist and intolerant. These people may not really mean to be so, they would be horrified to be thought of as any of the above - but how many of us haven't been caught out saying something casually, whilst a little worse for drink perhaps, what we really think, which challenges our own perceived beliefs about what we think we think. These little Freudian slips drive these play and hopefully gives them power. Of course, they also open up the danger of misinterpretation.
The second play of the trilogy (currently it's still a trilogy, but I can see at least three more variations on the horizon) is Keynote Speaker whose central character is fairly unreconstructed. He's a bit of a geezer, even if he has gone up in the world, who can't quite see the ironies inherent in some of the things he says. His variation on the original story is to take internment and attempt to make money out of it. He actually plans to get interned so that he can claim compensation - he even converts to Islam to make himself look like a better terrorist suspect, because in his eyes all Muslims are terrorists. Whilst he whizzes from one generalisation after another, the Muslims he encounters in this story, rather than being terrorists, are the only people who act decently. He is quite disappointed in this fact as it slightly ruins his plan.
This is where we reach the difficult play of the trio in FTV, the one that could appear to cause offence. This is the play about fear. My fear of offence. Even though it shouldn't cause offence. It isn't offensive at all. The first play was about government power and it's abuse. The second play turns this power on its head, making those who we are told to fear into the closest we get to heroes. But variation three, The Project After, is about another side of this world of 'terror'.It is about the fear. It is about the fear that drives western liberals when facing (or not facing) up to the world of fundamentalist Islamic belief. The 'War on Terror' and the government reactions to it are reflected in plays 1 and 2. Play 3 is all about the fear that drives these reactions and how we relate to it. Because we (massive generalisation here, but we'll move on) in the West do fear fundamentalist attitudes, we fear to debate these issues, because we see what happens to people who do. Because there are a great number of people in the world who do not discuss, do not debate, people who will and do kill to protect their God. A small fraction of people who hold this view have attempted and succeeded in killing people who hold the same views as I do. I.e. That freedom of speech is more important than offence. And somehow I have to write a play about this and not get trapped in the fear itself.
Now, even positing such a simple point I'm already engaging in generalisation - people will and do argue that Islam is a peaceful religion, that there are plenty of moderates around the world. I am, of course, not worried about the moderates. Moderates will just talk to you sternly, they don't stab your translator or shoot your publisher.
And, with that qualification about moderates you can see I'm already reacting to a pressure not to say something inflammatory. I'm reacting to the fear, the fear that these words and the ones that follow, the ones that I will put into a play, will get me threatened and or killed. Regardless whether this will happen or not (and I doubt it will) the fear is there. There is part of me that is trying to stop me from engaging an idea.
Sadly, ideas are often not welcome in this world. If I lived in Pakistan I could be under sentence of death for writing The Project After or for mentioning out loud many of the views that I hold. This isn't exaggeration. There is a blasphemy law in Pakistan that makes the expression of the ideas I hold punishable by death. And it isn't alone in the world in this regard. It is somewhat ironic to find myself writing a play about fear of offending Muslims, whilst actually fearing the consequences. And it's not as if I'm actually attacking the religion. I'm just debating how far fear can go to stop us thinking.
I am, speaking personally, an arch atheist. I believe, pretty strongly, that I and everyone else in the world is probably wrong about most things and that we shouldn't worry too much about it. This is especially true of religion, about which everybody is even more wrong than everybody else about, precisely because they are so convinced that they are right about it. I, everyone, should be able to live in a world where such thoughts expressed should come as no surprise. It is self evident to me that the world of religion is a bubble that has been comprehensibly burst, that many terrible evils are still needlessly committed in its name, that it is my duty to the future and our present to not be beaten down by fear and not speak out. In the case of this play the religion has to be Islam, because that is the religion we fear, that is the religion which was engaged with in the 'War on Terror'. If I get round to writing another variation on the war on terror from the American viewpoint, well let's just say right wing Christians will be in as much of a spotlight. Except I'm considerably less afraid that a right-wing Christian would kill me for doing so. Though this is not unknown either.
All this aside, as a playwright I don't write polemics. I write people. They maybe caught within morality tales, but their actions should not necessarily be moral, the outcome needs not come out in any pat moral way. Both Fantasy Terrorist League and Keynote Speaker are coloured by the very real possibility that both narrators are lying. That we should not take their side absolutely. In FTL this is because the subject of the piece is slightly unreliable, in Keynote because the man is a shyster. In The Project After the characters are an artist and his dealer, two people with radically different opinions as to the purpose of art and so take different positions in the debate.
And so we return to the question of fear - fear of offence, of breaking a taboo. And the most obvious taboo of our age is talking about Mohammed. People die on a regular basis for this man, either because they said something against him or because they have suggested that his life story is not wholly consistent. It doesn't actually matter to me if he did exist (someone like him probably did) or whether he had a hot line to God (I don't believe that he did) what does matter is that no one should die because they question him or, as the most obvious example points out, depict him.
Let me make it clear, The Project After does not depict Mohammed. In this, I suppose, I'm a coward as it is a concession to fear. (Why shouldn't I draw a picture of him, it won't actually harm anyone?) The play does, however, deal with an attempt to depict him. It's a play about art and about an invitation to draw a picture of Mohammed. As a situation it feeds on fear - the fear of the cast, the fear of the author, the fear of the audience. No one does draw a picture of Mohammed. This isn't because I'm a coward, but because I'm not performing the play myself. It's one thing to write something that will question belief systems and so set oneself up for opprobrium, it is another to incite my cast to do it for me and so put themselves in the line of fire. It's hardly sporting.
The play is entirely driven by conceptual attacks on religious certainty, and is an attempt to make people think, rather than a physical provocation. Even within this form it was enough for one of the cast to cry out (rather inappropriately): "Oh Jesus Christ!" when the nub of the dilemma is laid out. Fear again, plus a sense of exhilaration at seeing something that questions, that is rightly probing.
I don't want to go into too much detail of the content of the play (as otherwise what incentive would you have to watch it?) but here is the untrailer for The Project After, play 3 of The Fantasy Terrorist Variations. It covers the thrust of the argument of the play.
Needless to say (if you've read the above properly and I've done my job effectively) the characters that are caught up in this issue are not perfect. Their debate is flawed because of their own interests, their class, their humanity. The worry is that people watching will react to them and not the play, confusing the medium for the message. But that's just a risk I will have to take.
But then again, it's a risk I have already taken, having dealt with the evil of blasphemy laws before. In 2007 I wrote a one-off monologue called The Bear Named Mo- which was written is response to an incident in the Sudan, where a teacher, Gillian Gibbons, was arrested for naming a class teddy bear, Mohammed. It didn't matter that it was a member of the class who named the teddy bear or that Mohammed was the inevitable choice a. because it was the boy's name and b. as it's a pretty prevalent name in those parts, she was arrested. Her punishment could have been a prison sentence or forty lashes. Crowds of thousands of people gathered after Friday prayers demanding that she be put to death. She was, eventually, released. The school where she worked was then closed down. Considering that the person who allegedly spoke against her to the authorities worked at the school and disapproved of how it operated (teaching by and for women for example) you could say the closing of the school was the primary aim of the whole affair. The forces of ignorance really won out that day.
My response was comic - the same story, but where the teddy is a. actually alive and b. where the bear was in fact named Mo Socks III and a member of the teddy bears picnic club, whose members would go on to attempt to rescue him. The same fate of arrest awaited my heroine, though in my version via a misunderstanding. In the course of the public cries for her death and the destruction of the teddy (we never did find out what happened to the teddy bear in the real case) leads to a pyre being made of children's toys, all ripped from the hands of infants, as a cleansing act. The pair are only saved by the children turning on their parents, en masse and asking why? Why were they doing this? It didn't make sense? Wishful thinking, of course.
Of course, to many millions of people, this simple tale of a teddy bear is probably enough provocation to see them wish me dead or at least silenced. But that isn't to say the play was provocative. It, again, never named the bear as Mohammed, it wasn't disrespectful of Islam at all, placing the uproar more in the hands of a corrupt government (more true than I thought at the time). But the point is that the discussion is the blasphemous part. To even ask a question, in ignorance, can and has been enough to put people behind bars.
None of this isn't, incidentally, why the script wasn't published or why I didn't perform it again. It's because the piece heavily features various fictional bears, which would require far too many literary clearances to make it worth my while. I've nearly gone to the trouble more than once, but it was also based on a very specific case and much of it only worked as a specific satire of the time. I haven't found any follow up about the case - perhaps Ms Gibbons, reasonably enough, hasn't wanted to revisit the incident.
But it was a good example of how my principles came second to a sense of self preservation. A week before the piece was to be performed I got a call from Look East, the local B.B.C. news programme for the eastern counties. I was naturally delighted, publicity like this does not come to theatre often. And then they started asking if I was insulting the prophet Mohammad? Would it cause offence? (That word offence again.) And I was grovelling in my attempts to make it clear that there was nothing, nothing at all, no, just no, it couldn't possibly be interpreted that way. Which, naturally, nulled any news value and I heard nothing more. Within days the teacher was released and my little satire was no longer news. I performed to a nice local audience, no one complained.
I was suitably ashamed of myself. It's not that I wanted to insult people, but the knee jerk 'don't offend anyone' response was pathetic. My response was driven, not by the accurate description of the piece (which it was) but by fear. And fear is not something we should have to deal with.
So nuts to the fear, nuts to my own imagined terrors and nuts to those who wish to impose their views on others through violent means. The Fantasy Terrorist Variations will deal with the issues I wish to deal with, it may or may not cause offence, and I will not change a word because of the fear.
Now I will await your indifference.
Milk Bottle
Productions Presents...
The Fantasy Terrorist
Variations
Written by Robert
Crighton, performed by Keith Hill and Simon Nader
A series of stories
spun from the award-winning ‘Fantasy Terrorist League’.A man is interned as a terrorist on the
flimsiest of grounds, a chancer looks how to make money out of
counter-terrorism and the story of the non-existent artwork that might get
people killed. The Fantasy Terrorist Variations is a powerful account of fear, the
policeman on our streets and the ones in our heads.
Running Tuesday to
Saturday from 27th November 2012 to 5th January 2013 at
9pm
Tuesdays to
Saturdays Only at 9pm – Doors Open at 8.50pm
