A Wee Break

Almost two weeks, to be precise. I'm in Scotland, visiting the family and celebrating the Other Half's birthday. Back in London on 7th July. Enjoy my absence and this old picture of Edinburgh Castle from Princes Street Gardens...

Deja Vu

You're standing on stage, listening to a fellow actor, you hear the prompt, you say your line and suddenly you're thinking. I've been here before. A few minutes ago. In front of the same woman (or man), who said the same thing and I responded the same way. At the back of your mind (all this going on while you're watching and listening to the scene and waiting for the next moment that you're going to open your mouth), you tell yourself that you did indeed say the very same words 24 hours ago, and 48 hours and 72, but the more conscious part of your brain (which is buzzing away while your mouth is articulating your next line, a line which you are convinced you also said only a few minutes ago) is telling you that although it was 24 hours ago, it feels like that time off-stage never happened, it was a dream that compresses a day into a minute and in fact your life is now nothing more than standing on a stage repeating the same words again and again and again.

It doesn't happen every night, but there have been occasions during this run, which did not occur the two other times I have been in a production, when I have felt that I was on some kind of time-loop and that reality was no more than the doss-house room in which our characters circulated endlessly, the dark waiting area off stage and the dressing-room where we play musical chairs as thirteen of us try to sit on ten seats. It's not an unpleasant feeling, but it's weird and it is a reminder that our brains can sometimes trick us into believing that reality has somehow warped.

Anyway, whatever time-loop I'm in, I know it's coming to an end very soon. We have only tonight's and tomorrow's performance, after which I will be heading to Scotland for 12 days, where I will try both to have a holiday and to prepare for Loss (which as you all know by now, is the overall title for the four one-man plays I have written, including the one in which I am performing, next month). Throughout the run of The Lower Depths, audiences have been getting bigger, our performances have improved and I'm beginnning to suspect that I might have some kind of talent that it would be a shame to deprive the rest of the world of...

Enough convoluted prose for today. It's stopped raining and the Other Half and I may have enough time to go shopping before the downpours begin again....

Not Fantastical

With friend Chris to the Blue Elephant Theatre last night - a location that seems to have slipped in quietly among the housing estates of Camberwell like an overweight TARDIS when no-one was looking - to see Justen Bennett's The Fantastical Adventures of [Not] Being With You. I was drawn there primarily by the participation of Ryan Wichert, whom I first met when he tolerated my many fluffs in the one scene we had together in As You Like It in January, and who impressed me then and since as a good actor with a strong stage presence. I was also intrigued by the idea of a play that was about a relationship yet was gender-neutral and which just happened to be performed by two men.

The good news was that Ryan's performance was excellent, as was fellow player Max Wilson's under the able direction of Justen Bennett. The bad news was that the play, written by the same Justen Bennett, was less than wonderful and ten minutes into the eighty minute run I was already losing interest.

What Bennett offers us is much less a portrait of a relationship - either in its current form or as it has developed - than a series of episodes in which the two cast members cavort around on the stage. All these episodes, with perhaps the exception of engaging the audience in a simulated orchestra, are well-written, well-played and often funny - such as Wilson's rapid drawings of underwater creatures to Wichert's manic commentary, or the slapstick the pair occasionally indulge in - but they seem to have been inserted for their own sake and not as illustrations of how and why these two individuals came together.

For most of the play, in fact, the fun takes over, until the author suddenly remembers that he is supposed to be writing a play about a relationship and he throws in a few minutes illustrating that fact. But these moments are shallow and unconnected and while we get a vague sense of the attraction and even love between the two, there is no exploration of their personalities, what brought them together, what keeps them together and what might tear them apart. In short, we were presented not with the three-dimensional picture of a couple in love, but a two-dimensional picture of affable clowns - Morecambe and Wise, or Vladimir and Estragon without the pathos.

Wichert and Wilson will definitely go far. Bennett obviously has the skills of a writer, but this play only hovers over the surface of people's lives; it's time for him to look underneath.

Things Never Run Smooth

There's a line in The Lower Depths, where Yegor the labourer says something along the lines of "no matter how well you think your life is going, at any moment it can fall apart..." My life hasn't fallen apart, but theatrically-speaking the last 48 hours have been bumpy. Firstly, the morning after all the publicity for Loss was completed and put online, one of the actors (Who Shall Remain Nameless) realised that he hadn't told the rest of us that he was no longer available on one of the dates. Which meant several hours rejigging the timetable, checking with the rest of the cast, redrafting the publicity and putting it back online. The silver lining to the situation was that we were behind schedule and had not yet sent out press publicity.

The other problem was yesterday's performance of Depths. For some reason, my mind was not on the play and I began badly, crashing Mark Forester-Evans's lines. I recovered and think I did well for the rest of the first act, but new blocking of a key scene in the second act threw me and I forgot prompts or lines in three places. Twice, after a brief pause, I recovered and Mark covered for me the third time, but I was annoyed with myself for my unprofessionalism. Luckily, friends who were in to watch the play (the ever suave Todd and the ever lovely Narinder) hardly noticed and said it didn't matter, and Mark and other actors accepted my apologies afterwards, but it was a mistake that shouldn't have happened in the first place.

This morning life is back to normal. The new Loss timetable is now online and I will start contacting the press this afternoon. Last night's cast get-together, fuelled by several cocktails each, went very well and left me with almost no hangover. Things seem to be on track, but Yegor's remark is still resonating at the back of my mind. Just when you think all is going well....

Loss: four new one-act plays

We have finally started to promote "Loss - four new one-act plays by Martin Foreman". They will be performed on 14th, 21st and 28th July at the Lord Stanley Theatre in Camden, London, as part of the 2012 Solo Festival of one-man / one-woman shows.

My four pieces all derive from short stories that were published in my collections A Sense of Loss and First and Fiftieth. Angel, which I perform, is about a priest forced to confront his faith and his sexuality. A Sense of Loss, with Chris Annus, tells the story of Death in Venice from Tadzio's point of view. Ben and Joe's, with Barry Clarke, tells of a group of men in a bar whose lives are changed when a young stranger comes in. Finally, Los Feliz, with Robin Holden, is about a man separated from his wife and child, who meets the woman who comes to mean everything to him.

We're all excited by this mini-season and believe that the plays will have a significant impact on audiences and - we hope - our careers. Two of the plays will be performed on Saturday 14th, all four on Saturday 21st, and three on Saturday 28th. Tickets range from £7 for one play to £20 for all four. Details of times, plus more information on the plays and the biographies of the actors, can be seen at www.martinforeman.me.uk/loss-at-solofestival.htm and I will regularly update and promote the event on this blog.

Scots Wha Hae...*

Last night, the first of the second week, I imbued Luka with a much stronger Scottish accent than is my wont. The accent wavered a couple of times, but on the whole it gave the character more depth and most of the other actors seemed to appreciate it. It also resolved the contradiction I had always felt when Luka says "I'm no philosopher, just an educated peasant" - a phrase that sounds false in the tones of Morningside and Fettes.

Meanwhile, the pain of seeing myself on film has gone away, soothed by those who tell me all the best actohs dislike seeing themselves on the screen. Balm was also applied by the two friends and Other Half who came to the performance last night, none of whom are known for their tact but who appeared to enjoy themselves. The OH was of course critical, but underlying his negative comments was the genuine belief that I am improving and should continue. My thespian friend reminded me that my voice sometimes falls quieter than it should.

(That problem has marred this production from the start - the voice levels are all over the place, with some of us shouting as if we were in the West End and others whispering as if we were on intimate camera; it is a pity that neither actors nor directors have paid attention to the overall sound of the piece. I try to boost my own volume, which is naturally low, but do not always remember or succeed.)

So, another night tonight and another opportunity to show myself and the world what I can do. But before then I have to start learning the script of Angel, the one-man show that I am putting on in July. No rest for the wicked or stupid...

* "Members of the Caledonian tribe who have ..." the country's unofficial national anthem, which is, predictably, about fighting the English.

Film Two Depressing

Yesterday I spent 14 hours in the Clapham Grand - a faded music hall now used as night club and film set - as a supporting artist in a Paloma Faith music video. Interesting and boring in equal measure, not helped by concerns of a cough and sore throat.

Today I have the displeasure of seeing myself act in a video with extracts of the first night of The Lower Depths. I think my performance has improved since then, but it's distressing to see how amateurishly I play the part and it's seriously making me reconsider my decision to continue acting after my one-man play in July.

Judge for yourselves: I appear between 3.04 and 4.20 minutes: