The Christmas Schedule - Free Audio

This Christmas I'll be presenting a short burst of audio storytelling and drama - each audio burst will be published online sometime after midday (GMT) as per the schedule below.  All pieces will be on my audioboom feed - or on the homepage of my microsite which can be found here.

Christmas Eve: The Ballad of Gentleman Jim
A coda to Lost Tribe of the Trolls - this is the story of the rise and fall of Gentleman Jim, a mysterious character whose origins didn't quite make it into the text.

listen to ‘The Ballad of Gentleman Jim - Part One’ on audioBoom

listen to ‘The Ballad of Gentleman Jim - Part Two’ on audioBoom

Christmas Day*:  Fantasy Terrorist Variation 5: A Little Learning
[*Delayed - due to editing problems - i.e. lot's a background noise I can't get rid of... sorry.]
A one-off short drama from my series of pieces exploring the fall out of the war on terror, which I started nearly ten years ago.  This is the story of a young girl kidnapped because she was receiving an education - lest we forget on Christmas Day those trapped in the wars, ideological and physical, that are occurring across the globe.

Boxing Day:  The Paper Moon Trolls - Part 1: No Introduction

27th December:  The Paper Moon Trolls - Part 2: An Unofficial Official Meeting with an Unofficial Official.

28th December:  The Paper Moon Trolls - Part 3:  In the Asylum

29th December:  The Paper Moon Trolls - Part 4:  A Conversation of Memes

30th December:  The Paper Moon Trolls - Part 5:  Peter Git in Conference

31st December:  The Paper Moon Trolls - Part 6:  The Death of Peter Git

And then in the evening of the 31st December I'll be performing my End of the Road Show at the Quay Theatre from 10pm till Midnight - to celebrate the end of my artist residency of 2014 and announce my plans for next year in some level of fullness.

Two Days of Writing

I've two days of writing.  Two days of solid writing.  I'm trying to keep my schedule clear, but it hasn't been easy - people have been very kind trying to keep my commitment to the Panto I directed this year light, but there's always something that drags you back to the theatre and I need to finish, I need to complete the work in hand.  It stops the brain from working, from doing the next job - even though the Panto doesn't really need my input anymore.
I took a day off from Pantoland the other day - or half a day off - and went to see a screening of The Crucible by Arthur Miller, as recorded at the Old Vic.  I've never liked Miller.  No, that isn't fair - I can't warm to him.  I don't see it is possible to write the sentence 'I love Arthur Miller' as I can write 'I love Shakespeare' or 'I love the Moomins'.  I can admire, I can respect - definitely respect - but love... not so much.
I lit a production of All My Sons the other year and I couldn't get excited by the play.  It functioned, it had power but... Even his truly great play Death of a Salesman (and it is a brilliant piece of work) is difficult to love, only admire.  The Crucible I've always given short shrift to, partly because we studied it at school (usually a killer) and partly because I've never seen a fully fledged production, only handmedown drama student work or film or audio versions which damaged the structure or the language.
In the documentary series Changing Stages Arthur Miller was interviewed and spoke about reading Shakespeare and marvelling at the construction, the density of language - copying it out to feel the weight of the verse or prose.  You can see this in The Crucible.  The language has a density, a layering which is above natural speech and yet feels real.  I had never appreciated this before and the production brought this clearly to the surface.
I mention all this because, as I tend to do when watching screened plays, I drifted.  I started thinking of my own writing, of the next projects and started writing in my head dialogue for a short piece.  It has been in my mind for a while, but the recent attacks on children in Pakistan made this piece urgent in my mind.  It was time to write and I sketched out the dialogue as I watched and wrote it down on the bus home.  It will be a short Fantasy Terrorist Variation and I will record it on Tuesday and release it on Christmas Day.
Of course, I should be finishing The Trolls Trilogy - I am finishing The Trolls Trilogy.  But this piece needs to come first - because it insisted, and who am I to argue with my brain.  I plan, over the next two days, to finish this short and the last work on Trolls ready to record on Tuesday.  I will then release these last stories each day.  The new FTV on Christmas Day, the new Trolls from Boxing Day through to New Year.
On New Year's Eve I'm performing a secret version of my Trolls stories which I plan to record and put out online next year and maybe I'll even release so of my End of the Road Show.  But we shall see.
Merry Christmas.  More soon.

Two down, one to go...

At last, I have posted the final episode of Lost Tribe of the Trolls - which means I'm two thirds of the way through my trilogy.  The final story is The Paper Moon Trolls - which thanks to upgrades on audioboo, can now be released in longer episodes, will be in six to eight parts, released every couple of weeks or so across the year - the final episode on Wednesday 31st December to mark the end of my artist residency at the Quay Theatre.  So, if you've missed out on the story so far then have a listen on the players below.
Enjoy.

Part One:  The Natural History of Trolls

Part Two:  Lost Tribe of the Trolls

The Kraken Turns Off the Snooze Alarm

And I'm back in the room.  It's been a while and I can tell you've missed me.  Well, from Wednesday I will be six and a half projects down out of the ten of the year.  That will see the last episode of Lost Tribe of the Trolls release and the writing of recording of the final story of The Trolls Trilogy for release over the next few months.  That leaves three projects.  But what are they going to be?

Well, here the Seldom Plan hits again (see past posts ad nausem) - there be changes afoot.  I'm still going to be presenting the oft mentioned Historic Crimes in October - this will be a live streamed radio drama, tickets for the recording will be available from the Quay Theatre box office.

Otherwise, the last two projects are going to be more internet based and have no specific timetable.  I have already started one.  It is called The Museum of Tat - and it has a blog all of its very own.
http://themuseumoftat.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/welcome-to-museum-of-tat.html
This will be an evolving project, but in the short term it will mostly be made of photography and video pieces - which will be published online.

Then there is another work in progress I'm calling Just Say Yes (no affiliation to a rather dull Snow Patrol song, youth empowerment companies or fascist organisations etc)- which will be created at the Quay Theatre (probably) on the fifteenth of September.  Or not.  It will be a one-to-one piece, but later a video work.  Or not.  More later.

Otherwise, two of my other projects are still alive and well.  The Shakespeare Delusion is performing again in London in October, as will the very popular The Juliet Inquiry, which I might be able to stream live (details to follow.)  So, this is very much the year of my Shakespeare Trilogy - which Historic Crimes will complete - all three pieces performing in close succession.

Return of the Trolls

Time to start giving you some details about what's coming up next year.  I've given you the broad outline, now for a little bit more.  The first project for Project 10/52 begins on New Year's Day 2014 and continues online for the whole year.  In fact, a bit of it will start in the fag end of 2013, but that's the old material, so it doesn't count.

The Trolls Trilogy
An Overview

It all started two years ago, when I decided to write a piece of storytelling over the course of a year.  I would vlog and blog about it, premiere it towards the end of the year and then do a run over Christmas.  And then I promptly killed that idea off by booking it into performance in July.  This was The Natural History of Trolls (NHT) - which appeared at the New Wimbledon Studio July 2011 and then in Suffolk and London again in late November the same year.  For full info on the 'journey' of the production of this show go to this blog post and work your way up forward in time, or watch the vlogs - the first one is here.
I've been coming back to this story every so often, as there seemed to be more directions to take it.  Slowly, two other stories came to me, mixed in with all the random material that didn't get used the first time.  So, in line with the original plan for NHT I thought it appropriate to write the next two stories over the course of a year, ending with a masterwork epic showdown in December.  Only this time the story will be 'broadcast' online in weekly installments - so you get to follow it as it goes along.

Part One: The Natural History of Trolls - revisited

Because a trilogy tends to work best in three parts and not everyone who might listen to the weekly show will have seen the first part, I'm going back to NHT and recording it for free online release this December.  That way everyone gets a chance to listen to the story from beginning to end.  However, this recording will only be in four episodes, not strung out over months, so a more involved listen.

I have made changes to NHT over the course of its life and the audio version will have a number of minor revisions.  I'm going to change a couple of names and slightly alter the way the second half works - but it will still be in essence the story of Bernard, Vicki and a mass chorus of orange penguins.

The Natural History of Trolls - the first part of The Trolls Trilogy - will be released online daily from the 28^th to 31^st December 2013 on my audioboo board, latest by 12pm each day.

Part Two: Lost Tribe of the Trolls
The first part was all about a rather buttoned up tribe of trolls, trolls with a Victorian view on life, who were trapped underground for much of the 20th Century.  This story (LTT) is all about the trolls that got away, about The Noble Guild of Trolls (Luton Branch) who adapted to the modern world and (to some degree) lost their souls.  In it a person called Robert (who's remarkably like me) is guided by a character currently known as the Recording Angel, who collects memories, specifically of war.
It's a story about how the old world changed into the present, about how we remember the past and how much that we think is new is just repackaged.

Part Three: The Paper Moon Trolls

I won't abbreviate the title of this show as (even with the late addition of a The) the acronym is most unfortunate - but it's such an apt title I won't change it.  This is the final chapter in the lives of the trolls, creatures who change at the will of others, who are effected physically by ideas.  The guide character in this story is Peter Git - a bio-engineer and theorist - who is trying to find a way of splicing troll and human DNA.  It's a story about ideas, about changing the world by changing the way you see it, and about what the dark side of the moon actually looks like.  It is also, as eagle eyed observers will have gathered, partly a homage to Peer Gynt.

So that's the outline of Project One - appearing on a laptop near you.  This project is the opening and close of Project 10/52 in that the final live performance of the trilogy will mark the end of the season.  It'll be a big performance and a closing party, hopefully with food and drink and laughter and thought.  I have a feeling I might be quite tired by the end of it all.

In the Residence...

Right, the cat's out of the bag.  I'm an Artist in Residence.  The Artist in Residence at the Quay Theatre.  I'm residing.  Making art.  At a theatre.

Right.

It's just, and this is the odd thing, I've actually started making less art, not more.  This is a glitch.  This will change.  But there's been so much planning and general work getting this far, that I have tended to forget that I should really sit down and do something theatrical.  Create something, write something - you know the thing.

I'm getting going on re-rehearsing The Summoning of Everyman and starting on the storytelling event The Storyteller Will See You Now which I'm doing in the Quay Bar next month.  But these are not the main event, as it were.  They are shows I've done before.  I'm not creating these from scratch and I've got ten shows to pull together for next year - twelve if you break Project One: The Trolls Trilogy down into three.  Which I'm not.  Cos that would be scary.
I am aware that I'm mostly concerned at the moment with fundraising.  The above shows are fundraisers, I'm sending emails and press releases to raise awareness and cash - these are necessary things if next year is to be anything like it could be.  Even this blog post is, by talking about these things, part of the general HELP-fund-me blob that is my life at the moment.  And that's fine, because I'll either get the money, or I won't.  The art will continue, just much, much smaller.
But, today I sat down and wrote words.  Today, I got in the zone.  Today, I insisted that to forget the whole art thing is rather a betrayal of the whole art thing.  And Artists in Residence don't do that sort of thing.

So there.

And what did I write?  A scene, the draft of an episode for Project One: The Trolls Trilogy, from part two, Lost Tribe of the Trolls.  An encounter between the Recording Angel and Robert, someone who's remarkably like me.  This episode will be released probably around May next year.  I then made some general notes about part three, The Paper Moon Trolls, which you won't hear till the latter part of 2014.  I'll go over this first project in detail on this blog next week.  Or you can visit the Trolls page of the Project 10/52 website here...
And if you want to hear it, see it, be involved in it and other projects of mine, then click on this link and be a contributor.

Yup, back on the money.  Epic fail.